Na-na na-na na-na na na

You say it's your birthday
Na-na na-na na-na na na

Yep the Big... Um... Not 30 Anymore. And yet I'm okay surprisingly. I usually spiral down into a deep depression around my birthday, especially 'milestone' ones.

Not this year. I'm taking steps to make changes. My Mom said something in a casual conversation a few weeks ago that for some reason struck home with me. She said, "Go live your life". But then I had to really think about whose life or whose version of my life or whose image of my life or whose fantasy of my life I was existing in and I sure as hell wasn't sure it _was_ mine.

So sorry for the lack of posts lately. I totally owe you all two Philosophy Fridays and a Thursday Thirteen. But I'm looking for an agent and I've just taken a new job where I have _so_ much to learn and I'm on deadline to turn in my WIP in December.

November is National Novel Writing Month and I'm going to have my head down, nose to the grind stone. I'll try to keep you posted of my progress, but I'm not promising.

Hope everything is wonderful in your world and {{{hugs}}} is it's not.

Hope Starts With One Step

Today, there is more hope than ever for people touched by breast cancer. However, there is still much work to be done to promote early detection and to help those impacted by the disease. To help make a difference, I'm participating in the American Cancer Society's Making Strides Against Breast Cancer walk in Washington, DC on October 22, 2006.

My last book, AFTERNOON DELIGHT, featured a one-year breast cancer survivor who fears the disease may have returned. Until she knows for sure, she vows to live every day to the fullest. And that's why I'm walking. To help make sure that every woman diagnosed have the chance to live another day.

I'm donating a percentage of my royalties from the sale of each copy of AFTERNOON DELIGHT to the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation. But I wanted to do more. Hope starts with us!

Thursday Thirteen

Thirteen Ways to Avoid Working on the WIP 1 Blog hop and read a bunch of other Thursday Thirteen lists 2 Go grocery shopping and read the nutrition labels on everything 3 Return home and consider which combination of groceries to cook for dinner 4 Call your mother who then proceeds to chat for an hour 5 Call your mother back because you forgot to tell her something 6 Get in 'brainstorming position' on the couch and accidentally fall asleep 7 Research literary agents on Agent Query and Publishers Marketplace 8 Write a query letter to a couple of literary agents and email it 9 Get a fast response from one, reply to her and then worry when she doesn't answer back despite the fact that it is now 5pm and she probably went home to her life 10 Consider getting a part-time job doing direct jewelry sales for Premier Designs 11 Clean the house for chat with- interrogation of sales lady in the morning 12 Decide which groceries to cook for sales lady 13 Check email yet again hoping to hear from literary agents Links to other Thursday Thirteens! 1. (leave your link in comments, I'll add you here!)

Get the Thursday Thirteen code here!


The purpose of the meme is to get to know everyone who participates a little bit better every Thursday. Visiting fellow Thirteeners is encouraged! If you participate, leave the link to your Thirteen in others comments. It's easy, and fun! Be sure to update your Thirteen with links that are left for you, as well! I will link to everyone who participates and leaves a link to their 13 things. Trackbacks, pings, comment links accepted!

View More Thursday Thirteen Participants

G'day, winners!

The following ladies participated in my little prize giveaway so,

May
Richelle
Maureen
Jenny
Lamb
and Bamabelle

have won an autographed copy of the Australian edition of AFTERNOON DELIGHT. Please email me with your addresses so I can ship your books. Congrats ladies, not only for winning but for making the people in your lives feel like winners, too!

Philosophy Friday

GOOD VIEW














GOOD NEWS
I bought some new jeans yesterday SIZE 10, baby!!!
I signed on for this years's NaNoWriMo
My new web design was finalized and should be up soon
There's still time to win one of my books

GOOD ADVICE
"A first draft is an anything goes space for you to roll up your sleeves and make a terrific mess... The first law of exuberant imperfection is essentially this: The quickest, easiest way to produce something beautiful and lasting is to risk making something horribly crappy... In the context of novel-writing, this means you should lower the bar from 'best-seller" to "would not make someone vomit". Exuberant imperfection encourages you to write uncritically, to experiment, to break your time-honored rules of writing just to see what happens."
--Chris Baty (NaNoWriMo founder), NO PLOT? NO PROBLEM!, page 32 & 33

Thursday Thirteen

Thirteen chapters from thirteen guides toimproving my craft 1."Writing Begets Writing, p35, WRITING FROM THE INSIDE OUT 2. "Motivation: The Why", p31, GOAL, MOTIVATION & CONFLICT 3. "Scene and Sequel: The Two Keys to Strong Plots" p113, WD HANDBOOK OF NOVEL WRITING 4. "The Building Blocks of Story People", p92 CIG WRITING EROTIC ROMANCE 5. "Writing About Emotion", p5 CREATING CHARACTER EMOTIONS 6. "Finding Your Forgo-able with the Time Finder" p41, NO PLOT? NO PROBLEM? 7. "Day Three: Plot Sketches", p26 FIRST DRAFT IN 30 DAYS 8. "Zeroing in on Problems", p43 SLEEP THINKING 9. "Cinema of the Mind", p63 FROM WHERE YOU DREAM 10. "Stakes", p59, WRITING THE BREAKOUT NOVEL 11. "Conflict", p 115, LIGHTS! CAMERA! FICTION! 12. "Dramatizing Scenes, Making Chapters", p119 WRITING & SELLING YOUR MYSTERY NOVEL 13. "The Winds of Change: Power of Purpose", p159 WRITERS GUIDE to FANTASY LITERATURE

Get the Thursday Thirteen code here!


The purpose of the meme is to get to know everyone who participates a little bit better every Thursday. Visiting fellow Thirteeners is encouraged! If you participate, leave the link to your Thirteen in others comments. I will link to everyone who participates and leaves a link to their 13 things. Trackbacks, pings, comment links accepted!

Links to other Thursday Thirteen!

DELIGHTful

Sorry I haven't been around- my Internet connection has been acting up and I've been going through email withdrawal!


The mailman dropped off a box of books this afternoon, all the way from Sydney! So, I have 18 copies of the Australian edition of my last Blaze, AFTERNOON DELIGHT to give away.

If you'd like one, all you have to do is answer a question. I'm in the mood to boost my self-confidence and that of the people around me. So in the comments, tell me something good/ positive about your writing or about yourself as a writer (if you're a reader just anything you're proud of accomplishing or creating).

Next Tuesday, Oct 17, I'll choose winners at random from the comment posts, but in the meantime, let's get a conversation going: I'm really good at creating realistic dialogue in my stories and I'm proud of a recent wip that was in a new-to-me genre. What about you?

With a Spoon

Paperbackwriter had this link on her blog to a site that will generate your secret true love. I don't know about that, but lust? Yeah, baby!

Philosophy Friday

GOOD VIEW















GOOD NEWS
A good friend talked me out of what might have been one hell of a writers block [Thanks, Rachel!] Unfortunately I didn't write a single word on the WIP before the block dropped on me like a ton of bricks because my editor for ASOM got fired and I have no idea what is going to happen at the moment. So why is this good news? It's not, really. I'm just holding tight to the whole closed door/opened window thing, determined to honor the work and finish the book.

GOOD ADVICE
"How do you work?" someone once asked Einstein. "I grope," he replied... As an image, groping has associations with unpleasant activities like stumbling around, feeling blindly with your fingers in the dark, or enduring a series of false starts and wrong turns. In other words, as an image it so perfectly captures the experience of writing... A professional writer's view of his or her work [should] include in it the reality that all artistic effort, in the final analysis, is groping toward something."
--Dennis Palumbo, Writing From the Inside Out

A Special Thirteen

Because my little anger turned 7 years old todayThirteen Things about Mia's Son 1. The 'counting method' didn't work 2. I drank too much on Valantine's Day 3. I had to spend six of nine months in bed 4. I first saw him at sunrise 5. He is the most beautiful child in the world 6. He has my eyes, mouth and feet 7. He has my temper and impatience 8. He loves to read stories together 9. He loves to draw pictures 10. Chocolate cake is his favorite 11. I worry about him... constantly 12. I couldn't love him more 13. He loves me back Links to other Thursday Thirteens! 1. (leave your link in comments, I'll add you here!)

Get the Thursday Thirteen code here!


The purpose of the meme is to get to know everyone who participates a little bit better every Thursday. Visiting fellow Thirteeners is encouraged! If you participate, leave the link to your Thirteen in others comments. It's easy, and fun! Be sure to update your Thirteen with links that are left for you, as well! I will link to everyone who participates and leaves a link to their 13 things. Trackbacks, pings, comment links accepted!

Links to other Thursday Thirteen!

At the moment

current clothing: cami top and jeans

current hair: needs serious help [salon appointment tomorrow]

current refreshment: Coke Zero

current annoyance: lack of personal assistant

current avoidance: cleaning house and answering certain emails

current smell: Johnson'd baby oil

current thing you ought to be doing: writing something other than a blog entry

current jewelry: earrings [never take them out]

current book: the one I need to be writing

current worry: I think my plot is getting lost in the stroytelling

current lyric in your head: BREAKAWAY Kelly Clarkson

current wish: to get over the latest bout of writers block

current happy thing: writing friends to get me through