Author: Cindy

I'm irritated because my posts won't publish.

It’s All Fodder

I scalded my mouth and throat the other day testing my homemade chicken soup broth that had only been boiling, oh, 4 or 5 hours. Dimwitty. It was just one tiny spoonful, but, wowza, what an effect! I knew right away that I was in trouble, and I drank a glassful of very cold water. Then I went on to other things. So yesterday I think I’m getting a sore throat. As time passed, I realized the soreness is a result of the soup-scalding and not a virus. It’s in the exact same place as where I felt the burn when I swallowed that damn tiny spoonful. Today, the area is even more tender and was especially so upon waking. So what do I do? Get a flashlight and shine it in my mouth and investigate the effects of swallowing a spoonful of scalding chicken broth, because who knows when I’ll want to maim a character in such a way? Yeah, maybe I could work scalding-chicken-broth-down-the-throat into a torture scene of my WIP. Maybe, if I really wanted to torture the character and not just inconvenience him, I could have the villain force his mouth open and pour way more than one tiny spoonful of scalding liquid down his throat. Yeah, baby!

I’m happy to report that one tiny spoonful hasn’t damaged my throat in any major way I can tell. I mean, I don’t normally shine a flashlight into my mouth. I suspect the skin at the back of my throat is meant to be pinky rather than kinda white, but at least I didn’t give myself throat blisters. Would my character get throat blisters, though, if he swallowed more than one spoonful? Hmm. I’m not about to use myself as a guinea pig and find out. But the funny thing that strikes me about the whole episode is how willing we are as writers to use any little experience in our lives as fodder for our stories. It’s all research…it’s all fodder.

Have you ever accidentally hurt yourself and then used the “research” in one of your stories?

Published
Categorized as Writing

Only 2 Days Left…

…to enter to win an autographed copy of BORROWING ALEX. I’ll pick a winner out of a hat at noon PST Friday, April 18th and contact the winner by email. You know what this means, don’t you? You have to enter by email. But only emails with a specific subject line qualify to enter the contest. If you haven’t already entered, it’s not hard. Just visit my home page. Details are there.

Good luck, everyone, and if you don’t win, please visit again on Monday. I’ll announce the winner on my blog then, plus…I have another giveaway to announce featuring not only my book, but several more. Tut-tut, no further details until Monday.

 

Tell Me Tuesday–The Lories!

Yippee, I’m having an excellent Tuesday. Last night I found out that BORROWING ALEX WON the Contemporary category of the From the Heart Romance Writers’ The Lories Best Published contest. The winners of each category now go to a bookseller for ranking, and the ultimate overall winner will receive a conference fee to RWA National or Romantic Times or a similar conference. How cool is that?

Other than that, I need to do page proofs (also called galleys or author’s alterations, depending on the publisher) for my Alter Ego’s December ’08 release. I want to finish writing a scene in my cindypk WIP first. But after that I better get hopping on the page proofs, because My Liege was very, very sick beginning Sunday night. He spent all yesterday in bed and bagged out in front of the TV. I’m hoping I don’t catch it. I have too much to do. Egad, can you imagine if I were going to Romantic Times this year? Where would I fit in the page proofs? I just learned about them on the weekend. If I were going to RT, I’d have been extremely busy these last couple of days. As it is, I don’t need to have them back to my editor until Saturday, which is very do-able, whether I get sick or not.

How’s everyone else? Good news to report? Yucky news? What are you working on?

Talk About Strange, Uh, Fun Promo

If you haven’t seen Jill Monroe’s and Gena Showalter’s Author Talk series of interviews yet, you have to check out this one. Featuring author Kresley Cole, it kept me in stitches. I don’t know how to insert a UTube video into my blog yet, so I’ll direct you to Jill’s blog. And keep an eye out for Gena’s “interpretive dance” number. Great stuff!

http://jillmonroe.blogspot.com/2008/04/kresley-cole-author-talk.html

His Future’s So Bright…

Was anyone as surprised as I was to see Michael Johns voted off American Idol last night? I picked him as one of my personal front-runners, along with David Cook, from early on in the series. Out of the two, however, I’d rather have seen Michael go for the simple reason that David seems much more certain of his direction as an artist. But I would have expected Kristi Lee Cook, Syesha Mercado, and Carly Smithson to leave before Michael.

It might be a good thing for him. It was for Chris Daughtry, another of my past favs. Of course, Bo Bice and Taylor Hicks were favs of mine, too. I bought the post-Idol CDs of all three, and only Daughtry’s didn’t disappoint me, yet he didn’t make it to the Final Two like Bice and Hicks. Both Bice’s and Hicks’s CDs sounded to me like some record producer’s idea of what they should sound like to appeal to the broadest spectrum of buyers. I understand Hicks has been dropped from the post-Idol record label, and I caught a recent interview with Bice where he mentioned getting back to his own style of Southern rock with his second album. I might have to give him another chance, because the first album didn’t “sound” like the Bo Bice I’d come to know on American Idol at all.

This is where I confess I’m not a fan of the American Idol voting format. I much preferred the format in the Rock Star series, where the public narrowed the choice to the bottom three every week and then the judges decided who got the boot. How about you? Do you prefer the Idol voting system, where it’s the calling-in public’s choice? Has your favorite been given the boot yet? Who do you think should go next?

Editor Interviews Up the Whazoo

I hadn’t visited Isabel Swift’s blog in ages, so yesterday, while waiting for my latest pages to print out, I hopped on over there. She’s started a series of interviews of Harlequin and Silhouette editors. I confess I only skimmed the interviews for content (very, very quickly–my printer is fast), but I counted at least five recent Q&As. The latest interview features Silhouette Executive Editor Mary-Theresa Hussey. Editors Emily Rodmell, Elizabeth Mazer, Joan Marlow Golan, and Natashya Wilson round out the others. So far, three of the five interviewed edit for Steeple Hill. However, hopefully soon Isabel will move on to other departments (not that I have anything against Steeple Hill, mind you). What an excellent resource! If you’re interested in writing for Harlequin/Silhouette, check them out.