Category Archives: work

Procrastination

Yes, I am one of those people who, if you look up procrastination in the dictionary, will be pictured there. I am the queen–nay, the Empress of Procrastination! At least when it comes to blogging on my own blog.

Okay, I have excuses. Like, I left town. And then when I came back the computer was still in the shop. For the rest of the whole week. But I could have blogged. I could have used to backup computer, even if it doesn’t have any bookmarks to find places, and I’m not sure I even have the e-mail set up. I could have done it. But I procrastinated. I read. I read and read and read.

I also wrote. I learned a long time ago that if I want to get all the way to the end of a book, I need to Write First. So I came into my office and wrote every morning last week. Some days I only got 2 pages done, but I got them done. I need to remember the No excuses mantra. I want to finish the book this month. I’m getting close to the end. And unexpected things are still happening, so it’s all good. But I need to get more than 6 pages in 3 hours.

Anyway, that’s where I’ve been, and that’s where I’m at. Oh, I’m all excited. C.E. Murphy (of Urban Shaman fame) got an advanced reader copy of Eternal Rose and she wrote me this wonderfully incoherent e-mail all about how much she loved it. If you’ve ever met Catie, you will understand how wonderfully incoherent she can get about all sorts of things. So it was nice that my book was one of them. I’m all happy.

Off to sleep now. After writing time in the a.m., will go let the dermatologist look at my skin cancers tomorrow (WEAR SUNSCREEN!!!) and see how they’re doing with the cream treatment. Then I will go paint. I drew off a picture of one of the grandboys I love, so I’m going to give it a whirl. If I can successfully paint three portraits that don’t suck, I may donate one to Brenda Novak’s diabetes auction fundraiser next year. This is number two. Wish me luck.

Books, Books, Books

I came home Sunday evening from the 80th birthday party weekend for the fella’s dad and looked at the letter included in the second panel of Rita contest books I agreed to read…and discovered that I had until Wednesday (IOW, today) to read them all. Seven of them. By today.

Fortunately, none of them were massive tomes, so I was able to get through them fairly quickly. But I have been reading madly since Sunday evening. I read two Sunday night, two on Monday, one yesterday, and the last two today. And yes, I read them with full comprehension and can tell you what each of them was about. But I’m not going to because they are contest entries, and it’s a secret.

I think I’m kind of taking this week off from the writing, which is risky, because I really want to finish the book by the end of the month. So I’m typing it in instead, and doing my first edit/revision. I’d like to get 50-60 pages in by Friday. I’m heading to Waco fairly early on Friday, for the workshop I’m doing (finished it today) and the booksigning at Books-a-Million.

Oh yeah, I’m doing a book signing at Books-a-Million in Waco on Saturday beginning at 2 p.m. Hope it goes well. I’ve done absolutely no PR for it, but one of the other ladies participating has done quite a bit. So…

I’m ready to be home for a while. We’ve been gone the last two weekends, and the fella’s been gone for at least a couple of nights during the week for the past month.

I got an envelope from the agent with suggestings & critique about the last couple of things I’ve sent her, and now I’m going through the thinking part of my response. It takes me a while to think about what people suggest/say about my writing, whether it’s a critique partner, an agent, an editor, or whoever. Most of the time, what they ask about is something I’m aware of, and thought I had in there, but it’s obviously not clear, or not clear enough. So now I have to figure out how to make it clear.

And I have discovered that I really don’t like a lot of description in the books I read (and thus in the books I write). Sometimes I want to know about the clothes, but not every single stinkin’ time, and not in any great massive detail. Nor do I want to know about the furniture or the architecture, in great detail, which is why it’s hard for me to put in enough to suit other people. That happy medium is hard to find.

Anyway, I’m here. I’m heading off again. (The workshop is on The Plotter/Pantser Hybrid, or, Whatever Works for You is Right.) And I’ll be back again on Sunday, hopefully without a big stack of books I have to read in a hurry. (Though I still have one to read for a different contest, but I have till April on that one…which is good, because it is a massive tome…)

ISBN for THE ETERNAL ROSE

One of My Lovely MySpace friends told me that they pre-ordered The Eternal Rose from Amazon.com today. (Or maybe yesterday. Time is relative in cyberspace.) Anyway, I was totally shocked and thrilled, since I hadn’t known until then that the books were available for pre-order. (Yay!!)

ISBN stands for something blah like “International Standard Book Number” (which might be right, or might not, because I’m totally guessing) but that is what makes a book “real.” It’s not the paper or the cover, tho those totally help in the “real”-making, but e-books, which have covers and type, but no paper, have ISBNs. The ISBN identifies the book to the public, and to bookstores and to anybody who wants to know about a book. Two books can have the same cover. Two authors can have the same name (which is frowned upon, but happens). Many, many books have the same plots. (FYI, there are only 16 plots. Or maybe only three. Depends on who you ask.)

But no book will ever, ever, ever have the same ISBN. It identifies one book and one book only. MINE. What is this secret number, you ask? Well, first of all, it’s NOT a secret. (Share this news with your friends.) And secondly, there are actually two numbers. There are so many books, the ISBN people are switching from a 10-digit number to a 13-digit number.

That said, Here they are:

  • ISBN-10: 080957165X

  • ISBN-13: 978-0809571659

Go forth and pre-order. If you want to.

Oh, and I’ll be posting a pre-pre-order excerpt from the book for my newsletter sometime next month, probably (depending on when I can remember to do it, and if I don’t, nag me, ‘kay?), so if you’re not signed up for the newsletter and you want to be, send me an e-mail with “Subscribe” in the subject line, and I’ll sign you up.

Dadgum! It’s COLD!!!


I was going to do a blog about Maureen Dowd and her cluelessness, but I’ve never been able to read Dowd anyway (Oh, how I miss Molly Ivins! She’s the only one who really ever got Texas politics) and we all know she needs a great big giant clue, so forget about her. I just want to get WARM.

We finally got the snow/ice melted off our back patio, and it decides to snow again. And get really, really cold. It’s gotten warm enough to melt some of it off, especially off the streets, so I haven’t had to do the 4-wheel drive thing, but it only stays that warm till for about 15 minutes, then gets cold again. Ugh. This time last year, my tulips were coming up. It snowed all morning yesterday, and most of the morning today. Good writing weather.

I actually got 7 pages written today, the most all week, but still not as many as I wanted. I may reach Paris soon. In fact, I’m hoping to get everyone there tomorrow. Cross your fingers.

I should have re-potted my plants this afternoon–I bought the potting soil so I could do it–but didn’t get there. I went to the college basketball games, but missed the end of the women’s game and the beginning of the men’s because I went to community choir. All ladies tonight, but at least there was more than me and the director this time. (I forgot completely last week…) It was fun to sing, but I rusted the voice out doing it and didn’t cheer at the ball game at all. I clapped really loud, tho.

Just agreed to write an article for the Published Authors RWA chapter website. Got to do that by Monday. Now, if I can get any revisions for Eternal Rose from my editor, I may have my ducks in a row.


Um–another painting. I think I finished this one last August or September. I painted it from this photo I took.

Let’s see…I went on a reading binge earlier this week. I read Blood Bound by Patricia Briggs, Let There Be Suspects by Emilie Richards (a cute mystery with a minister’s wife heroine), Catching Stanley by Deirdre Martin (hockey playing hero, neurotically shy dog trainer heroine), Howling Moon by C.T. Adams and Cathy Clamp, (hero’s a werewolf, heroine’s a shapshifting jaguar with a serial killer jaguar after her), and Maelstrom by Anne McCaffrey and Elizabeth Moon (living planet that’s evolving the people and beings living on it). Hmm. No wonder I’m not getting much written this week. Reading too much…

Nothing new


Nothing much has happened since yesterday, except I did finally get boxes and stuff to mail out the goodies to the winners of the contest I held for my newsletter subscribers. They’re all ready to mail and sitting stacked in the den.

Didn’t call my sister for her birthday yesterday… (Happy Birthday Cathy!!) Didn’t repot my plants which are all sitting with the new pots on the kitchen counters. I really ought to do that tomorrow. Never did get tickets to the Sousa concert the Amarillo Symphony is having. I guess I’m not as productive as I thought I was…except I did get lots of stuff mailed.

So now, I’m going to post another one of the paintings I finally took pictures of. I finished this one around Thanksgiving…

Staying busy

I finished a new painting last night. I carried it out onto the patio (which is finally almost melted off, after a month of snow & ice back there) to photograph it –along with the others I hadn’t got round to taking pictures of. I’m really proud of how it turned out… Even if I did trace it with an opaque projector–it doesn’t look like paint-by-numbers. Now I have to find photos of the other kids to paint…

Been mailing a lot of stuff lately, clearing the decks to get back to finishing a manuscript. I sent the revised synopsis for the Victorian steampunk fantasy I’m working on to my agent on Monday. Yesterday, I mailed off a couple of contest entries. Today, I finished revisions on a dark-ish paranormal and will be getting that in the mail this afternoon. Hopefully the editor will get back to me soon on any revisions wanted for The Eternal Rose. Until then, I’ll be getting back to finishing the Victorian, New Blood.

Oh, I finished Kristi Gold’s new book, Fall From Grace, last night–read it all in one huge gulp. Fabulous book–one I think she was born to write, and I know she’s been wanting to write it for a long time. Wonderful, heartwarming story.

Let’s see, what else do I have to tell you? The lump on my wrist is what was once known as a “Bible cyst” (aka a ganglion cyst) because once upon a time, to treat it, you’d lay your arm/wrist out on a table and get somebody to thump it hard with a big Bible and pop it. As long as it doesn’t get to really hurting bad, I guess I’ll just leave it be.