Category: This & That

Caught Around the Web–And In My Brain

Family-wise, it’s been a very hectic past several weeks. Picking up Youngest Son from university and having the extra body around as he unpacks his stuff and searches for summer work. Eldest Son has been super busy finishing up his second student teaching practicum and is now working on his last course for his teaching certificate plus is taking two of three courses needed to complete his Bachelor of Education on top of his B.A. and certification, plus he’s moving out! Very slowly, as he tries to fit the moving out with three classes.

I’ve been experiencing a bit of Motherhood Mania, when you feel like you should have enough hours in the day, but extra brains are EVERYWHERE. I don’t know about you, but extra brains deplete my creative energy and finding butt-in-keyboard time has been a challenge, particularly because I’m at the brainstorming/drafting stage of a new project (as Cindy).

Thus the slow-down in my blog entries.

Did you know you can now put your blog up on Kindle and subscribers can pay a fee to receive your posts on their e-reader? I wouldn’t consider Kindle-izing my blog at this time, because I believe that if you’re going to Kindle-ize your blog, then you should be writing a steady stream of content, and that’s not a position I find myself in.

I’m not likely to subscribe to blogs via my Kindle at this point, either. For one thing, I’m not using my Kindle exclusively—I still have a paperback and hard cover TBR pile as well as a Kindle TBR pile. To me, subscribing to a blog via Kindle would feel much like subscribing to a newspaper or magazine via Kindle. I’d feel like I should be picking up the Kindle every day to check in on my subscriptions. But I’m not on my Kindle every day. I am on my computer pretty much every day, and I check my fav blogs via my blog-roll.

So here are a handful of new blogs I’ve discovered that I intend to put in my blog-roll so I’ll remember to visit them (instead of having to be reminded through Facebook posts that I should visit). I hope you find them interesting, too.

First, D.P. Lyle, M.D.’s Writer’s Forensics blog. I discovered Dr. Lyle’s blog while writing SEX, PIs & PACKING TAPE, the mystery romance single title that is currently enjoying a bit of back-burnering in anticipation of pitching the manuscript at the RWA National Conference in New York in June.

I don’t read Dr. Lyle’s blog daily, or even every week. But when I’m working on a book with a mystery or suspense component, his Forensics blog is invaluable.

Romance author Shannon McKeldon has begun The Happy Writer blog. Her tag line is “Life’s hard. Write happy.” It’s a great idea for a blog (and also the sort of blog that I think deserves Kindle-izing). It’s all about remaining positive—and providing tools to help writers remain positive—within this rollercoaster business. Because, yes, it’s fun to get to do what you love for a “living” (ahem) every day, but writing for publication is very, very difficult. Deadline pressures, an editor messing with your voice (has never happened to me, but I’ve heard the horror stories), losing an editor and then suddenly losing your ability to sell to his/her replacement, despite that you have published several award-winning books (yes, it happens. Writing is subjective, and what one editor loves, another might not). There are pressures and there are stresses that no one but other writers truly understand. So if you need help maintaining a positive attitude, check out Shannon’s The Happy Writer.

Another writer’s blog to check out is Cathy Yardley’s. First, she has her main blog, which I really want to read more often (so it’s going in my blog-roll), and then she has a marketing/writing blog called Rock Your Writing, tag line “Sell a Lot without Selling Out.” (I really love these clever tag lines!).

Cathy lost several posts during a blog implosion (her words). But her blog is definitely worth checking out. Both blogs are going in my blog-roll.

Lastly, New York Times bestselling author Jennifer Crusie and multi-publishing romance author Barbara Samuel (aka Ruth Wind and aka Barbara O’Neal) have been discussing the new e-publishing self-publishing model that has spawned success stories like Amanda Hocking’s. Their discussion occurs in three posts on Jenny Crusie’s blog. It’s interesting, although I found myself skimming because (a) I’m short on time these days and (b) I’m short on time. If you want to read from the beginning, here’s the link to Post 1. Post 2 continues their conversation, ending with Post 3, which discusses self-publishing and editing.

I’ve read Post 3 and Post 2, because naturally I’m reading them backwards. Don’t ask me why. I hope to get to Post 1 today. “Hope.”

Because I think I finally have a handle on the first scene of my short story WIP, in which my heroine appears drunk. My romance writer’s brain tells me, “She can’t be drunk. An editor would never buy that.” My Cindy brain tells me, “But she’s not drunk. She’s just really sloshed. And I’m writing this for a niche market, not a major publishing house that might frown on heroines walking on-stage inebriated.”

Really, it’s okay for my heroine to be sloshed in scene i. I need to accept that. Real people get tanked and still find love—why can’t my heroine?

Initially scene i was written from her point of view when she wakes up in the hero’s apartment and pieces together what happened the night before. Then it suddenly occurred to me that it would be great fun (for me as a writer, anyway) to show WHERE the hero found her (in the apartment building laundry wearing revealing sleepwear), which would lead to WHY she was down there, and basically adds a layer of “out-of-control”ness my heroine is experiencing at this time in her life. Let me assure you (why must I assure you?), she over-indulged for a very good reason. She was keeping up with her friend, who’s about to go all Bridezilla in the series. As the Maid of Honor, my heroine, Claire, felt it was her duty to keep up with Tanya. And, if you’ve ever drank a Mudslide, you know how easily they go down.

So there. That’s my justification. I have a drunk heroine in the first scene of my WIP. And I’m okay with that.

Will romance readers be okay with that? I don’t know. But that’s one of the nice things about writing a series like this for a niche market. If I’m writing for a niche, I don’t have to worry about appealing to the masses. I want to appeal to the masses, but I also want to write the stories that make me smile. And this one makes my madcap romantic comedy demon grin.

Hippy Happy Hoppy

Crazy Week continues!

If you celebrate Easter, have a great weekend.

I expect more crazy next week. May had better relax after this hurry-scurry April.

Are you hurry-scurrying around?

Weird Cat Tricks

Who has a weird cat? Hands up!

Is there a cat that isn’t weird?

You know how it is. You have this cat. It lives forever. Without you meaning for or wanting it to happen, this cat has somehow trained you to bow to all its commands. You swear—and I mean on a stack of National Geographics or whatever else is handy—that when this cat finally kicks off and you get another one, YOU will train IT. It will not train you!

Slowly, very slowy, the years pass. At about the 4-year point, you realize that, without you meaning for or wanting it to happen, YOU have once more been trained by your cat!

Agh!

I swore I would never teach my cat, Keisha, to drink out of the bathroom tap. Then one day I caught her in the bathtub trying to catch drips (after my bath) with her paw. Aw, that was so cute. So I turned on the tap just a little bit. And, awwww, how cute, she began drinking from the tub faucet.

It was only once. It was not meant to happen again.

Silly human. Of course it happened again.

From there, it was only a matter of time before I was turning on the tap in the bathroom sink so she could have a drink of fresh water. Yes, every morning I refresh her bowl of water on the portable dishwasher (she eats on top of the dishwasher or the beagle would eat all her food). But the BOWL of water isn’t good enough. No, she needs it out of the bathroom tap!

I quickly learned to set the stove timer for a minute or I’d forget the tap was running (because, being a writer, I could not stand to watch while she drank. No, I had to go do a minute of writing. That’s much more efficient. Kind of like deciding to do a bit of writing while you’re cooking dinner. Then, 20 minutes in, you smell dinner burning on the stove, because you forgot all about it. When you’re a writer, leaving a bathroom tap running for a cat is a lot like that.)

Well, I swore this drinking from the sink tap or playing with the dripping tub water after a shower would not progress any farther (further?) (grammar glitch—I haven’t a clue which one it is). Then, one day, I’m noticing that she’s jumped onto the edge of the tub, but doesn’t want to go IN the tub to play catch-the-water-drips. She wants me to turn the water ON. Don’t ask me how I know this. It was a Dr. Doolittle moment.

So I turned on the water. And she stared at it in fascination. And I thought, “What the hey, she’s been rolling in the dirt outside. Maybe she wants a bath.” (Really, I was thinking, I should get this cat wet—that would teach it a lesson). So I filled my palm with water and splashed it on her scruff. She loved it! I splashed more on her scruff. She hopped off and gave herself a bath, aided with my water.

This was 2 years ago. Now, about 4 times a week, she hops onto the side of the tub, and I scoop handfuls of water onto her scruff, under her tummy, onto her back, and sometimes even on her tail and the backs of her haunches. Then she goes off and gives herself a cat bath.

Truly, at this point I thought my cat was a genius.

Still wasn’t impressed with the tap-drinking, though, but I had it under control.

Well. A couple of weeks ago, I was thirsty and in bed reading. Instead of taking a water bottle and sitting it on the nightstand (which is my custom, as I have a nasty habit of knocking over glasses), I didn’t want to open a new bottle of water and I had none saved for refills, so I filled a glass child’s mug with nice and cold filtered water from the fridge and sat it on my nightstand.

Well! Miss Keisha decided it was for her. She drank merrily from it all night. Now, she doesn’t give two hoots for the bathroom sink, but if there’s not a glass child’s mug on my nightstand every single darn night, I hear about it. As in howls and yowls.

And still the water bowl on the dishwasher goes untouched.

I should count myself lucky that she’s not a food cat. Our last cat was obsessed with bacon, ham, tuna, and milk. This cat just wants cat food and water. But not HER water. Oh, no!!

Don’t get me started on how she needs myself or my dh to watch her jump onto the dishwasher so she can eat. She trained him in this area. I got trained by default. She sits on the floor by the dog’s food bowls and meows and meows. Finally, someone comes to watch this fantastic gymnastics routine of Keisha pretending like she can’t possibly jump over the dog food bowls and onto the dishwasher, she takes like 5 practice moves and looks, and then, miracle! She’s up!

My husband says he had to praise her as a kitten to get her to learn how to jump up there at all. And now she wants praise all the time. But heaven forbid she ever touches her own water.

How has your cat trained you?

In Flight. Or Not.

Insert heavy sigh.

I was halfway through the most amazing, excellent post about my experience swimming with dolphins in Cabo this winter and…I HIT THE WRONG KEY!! WordPress ate my marvelous prose. And just left me with a lower case b. Not even a capital B.

I am so disheartened that I didn’t think to hit Save Draft halfway into the post that, alas, I find myself unable to conjure up the will to write it again. Sooner or later, you’ll hear my tale. But not today.

Instead, I offer bird pictures. Re-sized for the blog but otherwise unaltered. So if my composition is off, just know it wasn’t accidental. Those birds might fly fast (or the boat might be moving fast), but, darn it, I meant to catch them off-center. And that’s the sort of truth. It’s more interesting that way sometimes, don’t you think?

A soaring...INSERT NAME OF BIRD. Might be a gull. Might be something more interesting. Really, I don't know. I'm not a book-and-binocs bird-watcher. I just like taking pictures of them.
Making a splash. I know this one! Wait a moment...I've nearly identified it...A pelican!
Muy (or is it mucho?) pelicans! On our way to Lover's Arch at Cabo San Lucas.
"Admire me. Damn it. Admire me, I tell you!"

What do you think? Is that one drooling? Or is that water dripping from its beak? Maybe it just ate its enemy. How are you to know? I’m not a reliable narrator, so don’t ask me.

"Two Birds." One pelican, one INSERT NAME OF BIRD.

Last one. A crab this time. They were crawling all over these rocks at what I like to call Isolated Beach.

"Little Brown Crab."

Oh, crap, that’s not a crab! That’s my father! Pretending to read, but he’s really asleep.

Now I’m in trouble.

A Spring in My Step

Spring is finally here! Unfortunately, that means I’ve taken up running with the beagle again. The inexpensive elliptical machine I received for Christmas (I know it was inexpensive because I ordered it, in case I didn’t like it) did its job of preventing me from putting back on the weight I lost in Peru last year. I started with a measly 20 minutes three times a week and worked up to 30 minutes 3 times a week. I thought this was remarkable!

The problem with a cheap, um, inexpensive machine is I never know when the read-outs are giving me correct numbers. I never could find precise directions for how to set up the digital thingie, so when I get on the elliptical, sometimes the calories are burning, burning, burning off! Other times, I hit a different setting and my speed is suddenly slower (even though I swear I’m going the same speed as my last time on the machine) and the calories don’t burn off as quickly. This is quite aggravating. However, I don’t have the time to figure out the instruction manual. All I care is that I’m using Program 2 (so it’s like I’m going up and down hills, which I never do when I run, because in real life it wrecks my back). And the second thing I care about is that my time is increasing. Up to 30 minutes 3 times a week!

That kept me eating chocolate bars while fitting into my new jeans all winter.

Except when I went away for two weeks. Then I had to kind of start over.

As the snow melted after this very long winter, I vowed to myself that I would start running outside again as soon as the street-cleaning machine cleared away all the gravel and the dog park wasn’t so soggy I sank up to my knees while stopping there for Allie McBeagle’s constitutional. I had taken quite a liking to the elliptical, but exercising inside really sucks up my writing time. Because Allie, you see, still needs her exercise. And so, all winter, I was walking the dog for 40 minutes (depending on what other dogs were in the dog park, which would lengthen the time of our stay) and then, upon arriving home, I’d do my 20-30 minutes on the elliptical and then spend another 10-15 minutes stretching, because, you know, I’m old.

Late last week, the street-cleaning machine came along. So I started running with Allie again on Monday. I extended my run two or three telephone poles beyond what we were doing before it began snowing and the roads became unsafe. By the time I reached that last telephone pole, I was exhausted and my thighs were burning. Well, guess what? I’d only run 17 minutes (with a break at the dog park). (The break isn’t factored into the time).

How can 30 minutes on the elliptical without a break not feel as bad as 17 minutes running with the dog?

Well, running with a beagle is kind of like salmon fishing during a marathon. You’re always reeling the dog in. And the running must work different muscles, because my inner thighs hurt!

Plus, I can keep a bottle of water near the ellipitical to grab and gulp. I can’t carry water when I’m running. It puts me off-balance and next I know I’m in the traffic. I’m lucky I can manage the dog!

Apparently, I am not running far enough.

Although, I must admit, at the end of my runs this week it hasn’t taken me as long to stop huffing and puffing. But I have nearly run out of telephone poles before I would have to go uphill. Sorry, sisters, I’m not running uphill! Running in itself keeps me going to massage therapy every other week. Running uphill is torture on my poor, middle-aged lower back.

The plan is to stretch my running time to 30 minutes, even if I have to change my course to do it. One telephone pole at a time, per week. My endurance sucks, and I don’t mind admitting it. Hey, I’m proud that I’m out there at all.

Has your exercise plan changed with the onset of spring? Or do you live somewhere where it’s a balmy 75 Fahrenheit year round?

I’m Not Here

Well, I am, but I’m keeping my head down. Working on projects for Penny while dealing with the aftermath of the business fire mentioned in my last post.

I did want to mention that I’m guest-blogging on the RWA ChickLit Writers blog on March 28th (next Monday). So I’ll have my act together by then.

In the meantime, BIC-HOK! (Butt In Chair, Hands On Keyboard, for those not in the writerly know).

Have a good week!