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

Whew. I think I've fixed the last of the known pesky issues with the new website. Score one for me for tracking down the issues.

Today, I sent out my newsletter announcement for the release of My Forbidden Desire with a special contest for subscribers only. So, if you don't subscribe, you might want to click on over and subscribe.

I've almost finished my promotion stuff for the release. I have a few more guest blogs coming up.

So far, I've been these places:

• I do Not Want to Wait... for a fun interview with me.


• Pub Rants. This is my agent's blog. My post is about backstory, which you might want to check out if you're interested in articles about writing


• Fresh Fiction where I muse some more about supernatural reproduction.


• The Chatelaines for a pretty comprehensive interview with me by the always wonderful Jennifer Ashley

Uh, what else?

I have read ALL of Charlaine Harris's Sookie Stackhouse books and also watched the entire season 1 of the HBO series True Blood. Wah! I have to wait for the next book and for season 2 to be on DVD.

And how odd, but when I saw still pictures of the actor who plays Eric (Alexander Skarsgard), I thought, meh. But when he was on screen? omg. I thought my iMac was going to 'splode. How oh how am I ever going to wait for Eric and Sookie? Those guys over at HBO are mean. I have since seen other stills of him that hint at his epic hotness. But not the one of him on Wikipedia. Not to mention all the other websites made it insanely hard to grab a pic to show you so I gave up because it's getting late and I'm tired.

I have not cleaned my room and things are getting desperate. Must do something about that. Later.

Is anyone else hooked on Sookie Stackhouse? In my case, that would be specifically hooked on Eric. What are you hooked on? I'm always looking for crack-a-licious books.

Labels: more stuff, My Forbidden Desire, stuff

Had the day off work today on account of the President's Day holiday. I spent it mostly doing taxes. At least I can mail them tomorrow.

Contest and Bookmark news

I picked my contest winners for my Newsletter subscriber only contest. Books are being mailed out tomorrow -- except for one person who hasn't supplied a mailing address yet.

Bookmarks will start going out tomorrow, too. Wow, it's a lot of work.

My critique contest is still open. Leave an entry.

Weather

Today I was sitting in the car reading while my son was with his Math tutor - today they started on square roots, which his class hasn't gotten to yet. Glad to see the review is over and they've moved past his classwork. The kid needs to be challenged. Anyway, the Math guy lives pretty close to us, which means he's almost as in the boonies as we are. I was parked in the airquotes parking lot airquotes from which you can only kind of see the road, mostly it was just trees and green fields. It was really pretty. All of a sudden it got dark. I looked up from my book and saw the clouds overhead were dark dark dark gray. Two seconds later it was pouring so hard I could hardly see out the window. Very dramatic. We're so rain-starved here that even after a weekend of pretty frequent and hard rain the roads still aren't flooded.

Reading

The book I was reading, I'm sorry to say, was very nearly a Did Not Finish (DNF) even though it was by an author I normally enjoy quite a lot. I read the last 1/3 very quickly. A disappointment.

I started another of my iPhone Harlequin's and DNF it. Not good for me. Then I started another one and it's fantastic so far. Wow. I can't wait to get back to it.

Stupid Author Moves

Another author I won't mention took it upon herself to sign me up for her newsletter and then spammed me with her stupid newsletter. Man, you can't do that. Really. Don't. I don't want your stupid newsletter. If I did, I'd already be a subscriber. I'm just hopping mad. Deleted the email and removed myself from her list. File this under Stupid Author Moves.

Anyway, gotta work tomorrow. Which means get up early. Which means go to bed early. Think I will do so very soon.

Labels: bookmarks, reading, stuff

I had this totally amusing post to write but first I had to do a bazillion other things like try to stay on top of the bookmark requests. This weekend I will prep a bunch for mailing unless I decide to hold them until I get my bookmarks for Scandal and My Forbidden Desire. I emailed all the new people who didn't provide a name and address, too.

Then someone sent me a 10 GB file three times only I don't have broadband. I refuse to count satellite as broadband. It's not nano-band like dial up but it's still narrrow-band. My internet choked for quite a while. Urk. Then I had to send out an announcement for Scandal for the Regency Reader since they're doing February releases and since I needed to include the cover art that was a big attachment going upstream. I also had to view the revised book trailer for Scandal which I think rocks but I had to send it Megan F for outside opinion. Another big attachment going out.

After that I had to completely rewrite my "Proposal Blurbs" which my agent wants to send on to my editor before Friday. I did a complete re-do. Complete. I kept the names. That's it. But I got all three done with relatively low pain once I remembered that should I get to write these books, I'm not likely to stick with those plots. On the other hand, I found it was remarkably useful to write them as I am now much more focused on the central conflicts, and from there, my friends, even Carolyn can write a novel. Blurbs have been sent.

In between all that I had to feed the dog, spend some time with Soccer Boy, feed him dinner (gnocchi and sausage), show him how to back up his iPhone, uninstall crapware from his computer, report my Golden Heart scores to RWA and do laundry.

Also, I went through my stack of RWA books and found I have duplicates of duplicates. I feel a contest coming on.

That's why I forgot the amusing topic for tonight's blog.

Now to bed.

Labels: Book Trailer, bookmarks, proposals, stuff

Still stuck on dial up. I have concluded, definitively, that two of the companies involved in this Customer Service disaster are liars. L. I. A. R. S. Liars who don't care.

I'm reserving judgment on the third. But I am not a happy camper.

What else. Um. Still working away on The Next Historical.


Seemed like there was more stuff than that, but I'm so depressed (sob!) over all the stuff I cannot do because there's no real internet here, that I just can't think about it.

Sigh

Labels: stuff, The Next Historical

That's one of my all time favorite cartoons. And I love xkcd

I'm not procrastinating by the way. Yesterday, I pulled out the chapter outline for The Next Historical and added in all the new stuff and then rearranged the new and the old so I'd know what the new chapter order should be and which ones needed to be deleted. Two of them. The others I think have enough to warrant staying for a total rewrite. Then I reordered my chapters. Then I read Travels in Turkey and Asia Minor, Syria and Egypt (1844) and got some really good background information. But I had to also do some quick side research on The Levant Company to confirm a suspicion of mine about the Consuls. Uh, yes, it's true. The British Consuls were appointed but apparently needed to be approved by the Levant Company which was kind of the Middle Eastern equivalent of the East India Company. Politics and commerce. Hand in hand.

Today, my son had a soccer game in a town about 35 minutes away after which we went to Art in the Park where he ate a lot of food and looked at art. I bought a couple of things that will go into the contest stash and a couple of things I liked for me. Then I went grocery shopping then we came home. I was at the computer for a bit and when I actually fell asleep sitting up for a minute, I figured I needed a nap which I did for 2 hours. Then dinner, then cleaning up and now blogging. And so, maybe I surfed the web a bit, maybe.

Anyhoo -- off to get SOME work done because I have two deleted chapters to make up...

Labels: art, research, stuff, The Next Historical, writing

Sometimes Fridsy just seems like a two minute wonder, doesn't it? There's a soccer tournament this weekend, so we're off very early tomorrow. On the road by 7:00 AM I'm hoping. I had to do some work for the day job this evening. I got the power seat at Starbucks and fired up the two laptops etc and got done by 7:15ish. In between waiting for stuff to finish, I worked on Xia. I was actually kind of po'd when everything finished because I had to stop at an exciting part. The guy behind me kept having distracting conversations with or about his girlfriend. Oh my gosh. Why do people put up with baloney in relationships? He's yakking to a friend about why he even has the woman in his life, blah, blah blah, and I'm thinking, Look, pal, just dump this loser babe. And then he gets on the phone with her, so I presume, and he's all, not quite whiney, but sounding like he really wants her to love him more than she apparently does. It was quite clear the two have different visions of the relationship. Mars. Venus. I'm not even sure they were having the same conversation with each other. Anyway, I was the evening's technology winner, what with two laptops, two phones and a thumb drive. Hah.

I have to say I'm tired of hearing about the plagiarism scandal. I can never decide if I like the Smart Bitches blog because sometimes they're just so darn mean, and I get these proto-hives and think, man, someday that could be me they're bitching about like that. I end up feeling kind of sick. But when they're discussing stupid plots or tropes, I end up laughing and saying, right on! But sometimes I just want to say, ya know, there's enough really awful stuff in the world is it really necessary to be vicious, personally vicious? And you know why? Because when I was growing up, I was not one of the cool kids. I was a dork and a bit too chubby, and smart, too. I didn't have to work very hard to get A's and I wasn't all that attractive, either. And I was the target of mean and vicious boys and young women. People played mean, horrible pranks on me and boys said mean horrible things and threw things at me, too. Great. I know exactly what it feels like to be on the receiving end of someone who's being vicious to someone who can't fight back. Then I went to college and got skinny fast and guys would ask me out, and I would look at them and just shake my head. I thought they were trying to trick me. Seriously. I hate vicious people. And I guess I think the Smart Bitches should mention their findings and then just shut up about it instead of conducting a mean-fest.

Labels: overheard, stuff, Xia

I'm tired. I'm going to bed soon. I can't even remember why I was up so late last night. Oh, yeah, I was notebooking Megallan's Witch, closing in on what I think is the final Big Tweak before the story really takes off. But here's the news that matters to me!

The following items have been shipped to you by Amazon.com:

---------------------------------------------------------------------
Qty Item Price Shipped Subtotal
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Amazon.com items (Sold by Amazon.com, LLC):
1 Lover Revealed: A Novel of... $7.99 1 $7.99

Shipped via UPS Next Day Saver (estimated arrival date: 06-March-2007).

This, in case you live under a rock, is Lover Revealed by JR Ward. And March 6 is tomorrow.

Sorry, JR, I don't care about your lay down date.

In other news, what a day. It went like this: Get up 4:30am blah blah workout, day job, get mangled automated voice message that implies my son has 2 overdue library books (me: WTF?) pick up my son, mention overdue books. He gets a look on his face and asks if it's okay for him to run back to his classroom to get the overdue books I knew nothing about (there was a field trip) get him home to change for Aikido, drive him to Aikido, drive to library to return books, go grocery shopping, then drive home, unload groceries quickly because I am 5 mins late to pick up son, go to bookstore to get a book on Japan because the library is closed now and he has a report. Buy book on France. Buy $50 of other books, one of which is about Japan, But the are really great books..... Get awesome take and bake Margarita with extra garlic pizza for dinner, come home cook pizza. Feed son. Check email, blog.

Now I go read to my son and fall into bed.

Labels: Magellan's Witch, stuff