Today I was at Riskey Regencies (where we will be interviewing Katherine Caskie on 9/16) with a contest and four questions for your consideration. Check it out!

I was also over at Racy Romance Reviews where I was one of three people talking about True Blood Season 2. Drop by and share your opinion.

Labels: contests, Risky Regencies, True Blood

Lucky me, I have Monday and Tuesday off. The last of the furlough days at the day job that were supposed to compensate us for the reduction in salary. We still have the salary reduction, but no more furlough days. Sigh.

Still, this means it's still the weekend for me and that is good.

I've been writing and on hold with AT&T. It took in excess of an hour to get my father's cell phone transferred to my bill. It's still not done because I can't put him on my Family Plan until the new phone arrives. I don't even want to tell you about that nightmare. Suffice it to say there were many incredibly stupid reasons this could no not be done reliably, cheaply or at a price that made any sense whatsoever.

And then, I kid you not! Not even 10 minutes after I finally hung up with AT&T, my father came home and as I was telling him that his new phone (NOT FREE -- shh. I did not tell him that part) would be here in a couple of days, he says to me Oh, good, because I think I lost the phone. I took my phone to his car and called his phone in case it just fell out of his pocket (remember my post yesterday about the ventilated clothes?) but this met with nothing but silence.

Which meant I had to call AT&T back to report the lost phone. I am happy to say that this was not as bad as I feared and I'm pretty sure they didn't cancel the new phone order though for a minute I thought he was going to.

Anyway, I wrote today but I don't know how much or how well because I was on hold most of the time and that voice is just gadawful. Odd, but I was never once tempted to add any of those services. In fact, I just kept thinking all those additional metered minutes data plan smhan stuff was an incredible rip off and that it would be a cold day in hell before I ever give up my iPhone because frankly, I think if you paid ala carte for all the stuff the iPhone just does, you'd be paying in excess of iPhone money.

So, my Monday had some very Monday qualities to it and yet, I was not at work and don't have to go to work tomorrow.

And, last night was True Blood night. May I just opine that Alexander Skarsgard is insanely hot?

Thank you.

Back to work.

Labels: Alexander Skarsgard, hell, True Blood, writing

Tomorrow I'll be at ComicCon in San Diego at the Hachette Books booth signing FREE copies of My Forbidden Desire starting at 10:00 am. If you're around, please come by. That would be awesome indeed. Since I have an early flight I'll be leaving for a Park N Fly hotel tonight. If I'd had my brain on straight I would have arranged this for Saturday when I wouldn't have to worry about commute traffic. I've flow down and back in a day before, it's a bit tiring, but completely doable.

And, Saturday is, apparently, the cast signing for HBO's True Blood, including my One True Love, Alexander Skarsgard. He plays Eric.

Commiserate with me. This is sad indeed that I will not see him. Sniff. OTOH, I'm hoping my badge will permit me to wander around and look at stuff. Maybe poke my head into a panel or two. The worrywart in me insists on worrying that I won't be able to wander around and I'll be stuck doing nothing until my flight back. It's not easy being a worrywart.

It's getting on to the time when I need to be feeding the boy and figuring out what I'm taking. Laptop? yes, I think so. In case I can't wander. Or maybe not. Maybe it will be too big at PITA to bring. OTOH again, maybe I should because sometimes crowds freak me out and a laptop would be a good thing to hide behind once I'm done with the signing bit. You see my issues? I won't have a place to stash anything like a carry on bag so maybe I'll bring along my RWA bag or my huge green Dell bag just in case there's swag to carry away.

Worry worry worry.

Now watch something remarkable:

Let it all go, Carolyn. It's one freaking day. Bring the damn laptop because it's not heavy, it's named Fang, after Mr. Skarsgard, and bring the green Dell bag because it will scrunch up easily in the laptop bag.

Ahh, yes. Off to cook dinner and then drive to the airport hotel. I will tweet for sure and maybe even blog.

Labels: Comic Con, My Forbidden Desire, True Blood

Ranting about Literature

Today I saw a little blurb that suggested Virginia Woolf's To The Lighthouse was the best beach read ever. To which I immediately said, WTF?

There's just so much wrong with that statement, which yes, I do realize was meant partially in jest. But what's behind that jest? Nothing less than the usual insulting dig at commercial fiction and the readers thereof-- actual beach read books, which I hope we can agree are books you can take to the beach and read to forget your problems or simply enjoy an exciting story. To suggest that To The Lighthouse is a beach read is simply absurd. It implies that people who read actual Beach Reads are somehow so silly and harebrained that we have to be led down the path to literature because otherwise Beach Readers would never know about Virginia Woolf.

And then there's To The Lighthouse itself. This book is not an easy read. It takes concentration and exquisitely careful attention to the prose. I once said To The Lighthouse is a cubist novel and it is. If offers a perspective that shifts and feels uncomfortable and forces you to struggle to give shape to what you're reading. You are forced to see the world and The Novel itself in a whole different way. It is a tour de force. But as you learn how to follow the shifts and make new shapes from the prose, a new world opens up.

To The Lighthouse is NOT a beach read. And guess what? I've read To The Lighthouse and I've read actual beach reads and I get value from both. I bet I'm not the only one.

True Blood

Last night I watched the season 2 premier of True Blood, the HBO series based on Charlaine Harris's Sookie Stackhouse books. Which, by the way, I loved.

Then I heard about a controversial opinion that in the final scene of the episode, Eric Northman bites the penis off a hapless redneck who has done vampires wrong. Could that be so? I know other appendages were, er, removed (an arm, seen in silhouette), but was there actual biting off of a male member? Well, upon review the scene and doing my best not to be distracted by the obvious fact that my One True Love Alexander Skarsgard has been working out, I can only conclude that, well, yes. He did do that.

My Current Obsession

Did you read the paragraph above? No, not To The Lighthouse. Alexander Skarsgard. I have it bad. Really bad. It's embarrassing and mostly I'm not even embarrassed.

In other News

I have begun receiving my candy of the month from the brilliant Hank Phillippi Ryan and guess what? Since I won it in Brenda Novak's diabetes auction (ignore the irony! It's for a good cause!) I'm in the club all by myself. And I'm not sharing. Sorry.

Not really.

Also, I finally worked my way out of my earliest dead end in a Work In Progress (WIP) ever. Chapter 4, for crying out loud. But now I'm out of it and things are looking pretty good.

I'm not due for another episode of Writer's Neurosis for another 6 chapters at least.

So, who else loves Alexander Skarsgard?

Labels: books, chocolate, literature, The Next Paranormal, True Blood, writing