What's it like to be a writer? Well sometimes it's darned expensive!

This week's expenses:

425.00 Register for RWA National in Nashville TN
407.00 Buy round trip non-stop plane ticket Oakland to Nashville
188.50 RWA conf hotel hold on credit card
225.00 Enter RomConInc Contest because editor emailed authors about it, 3 books at $75 each.
093.00 Buy and ship books to contest via Amazon (I'm low on copies plus this saves me postage AND a trip to the Post Office, which would happen God knows when.)

Plus, the really evil thing is I had to use the credit card for some of this, so know I have to go to the "Writing Fund" Bank to get the cash to pay the credit card IMMEDIATELY because credit cards are evil.

Right now, I'm freaking out about money. I'll feel better when the amounts are all paid in cash. But still. That RomConInc contest is freaking expensive. I hope next year they lower the fee. Not that it matters because in 2010, I only have the Regency short story out. So, actually, I hope they lower the fee for the 2011 contest.

Then today, right when I was in the middle of sending an email to my agent about back cover copy for My Immortal Assassin, my website went down -- this would include email and I was on the webmail program. Everything just went ::poof::

Did you hear me scream? Prolly. Yeah, that was me.

So then I had to reconstruct everything and send it from my gmail account.

I'm whining, I know. And I apologize, sort of. But I'm in the middle of massive revisions and not only is that depressing on a number of levels, it's a lot of pressure to get them done both well and quickly.

To top it all off, I made a pound cake and it was a failure. It tastes great, but the texture is all wrong. ::sob::

Labels: baking, My Immortal Assassin, stuff, Whining

Elizabeth Hoyt is having a contest. You could win three of my books. (Indiscreet, Scandal and My Forbidden Desire) Enter here.

In other news, I made pumpkin pie for Thanksgiving and have since been baking lots of pumpkin stuff because I bought a big pumpkin and had LOTS of pumpkin left over. The pumpkin muffins have been consumed. Yummy. I made pumpkin soup last night that was amazing. That disappeared before it had time to cool. Today I made a pumpkin bread with cranberries and boy, it's really, really good. I'll probably make 1-2 more pumpkin-y things.

I've now been twice to see the movie The Blind Side. What a great movie! Go see it.

I'm in the middle of reading Diana Holquist's Hungry For More. It's really cute and I'm in awe of how accurate the chef details seem to be. From what I've read (I went on a Ruth Reichel binge a while back plus read a long New Yorker article about chefs) she seems to have nailed the details. And even if she didn't, she's making me believe she did.

This afternoon, I met some friends and had European Sipping Chocolate and talked about books. What a lovely day.

Currently, I am in denial about Monday and how much I've eaten. Please support me in this effort.

Thank you.

Labels: baking, contest, movies, reading

All righty. My 'speriment worked. Some of you may know that I loooove to take photos, especially of flowers. I have a Flickr account and I post my photos there pretty often. They have a nifty feature where I can post a photo from Flickr to my blog, and hey! It worked! This rose is called Honey Dijon, and it's the most amazing color ever.




It's been so hot here lately that the roses are getting scorched. Sad, sad, sad. I'll have to go out tomorrow with the clippers and prune the dead or fried ones.

In other news, I have been E.X.H.A.U.S.T.E.D. lately. Seriously exhausted. I missed the gym everyday except Monday because I needed that extra hour of sleep. Therefore, this morning I did Driveway Torture because I hate feeling like I'm turning into a slug. A big fat slug. I did OK and feel much better for having gotten some exercise. Even though it was too hot at 8:00am.

The writing is going pretty well, I think. Things are moving along and complexifying. I'm seeing my hero and heroine a little better every time.

In other, other news, today is my son's birthday party with his buddies. He'll be 13 on the 24th. He wanted me to make cinnamon rolls, blueberry muffins and cookies. I made the cinnamon rolls and the boys pretty much gorged. They're filling and rich and sooo sugary buttery good. Better than birthday cake, if you ask me. When they're this age, you hardly have to supervise at all. My job was mostly to pass out food and drinks and point them to the bathroom. Not like when he was five. Then it's a whirlwind of never stopping action intervention hey don't do that! Come have cake until it's over and you're glad this only happens once a year. Back then it was send them outside with squirt guns and water balloons which was pretty fun. But this is good, too.

OK, back to work.

Labels: baking, birthday parties, roses, The List