You, Me and Aunt Louis

My life revolves around writing, family and the military. If I'm not writing or hanging out with the family, I'm handing out cold sandwiches and taking notes for my sporkncork blog down at the USO. I love my Sunday job mostly because it provides me with so much material but also because it's a nice thing to do.

I'm full of stories and embarrassing moments from my 4-6 hour Sunday shifts. This past weekend I had the chance to try on one of those ginormous backpacks those guys have to lug around. I fell on my ass. It's a pretty funny story and even my Mom was in tears when I shared my latest fiasco with her.

I'm telling my aunt - who may no longer be my aunt because she's divorced and no longer married to the family, but I still love her - about me and Air Force guy and I tell her that I told him (he said, that she said, that I said...) that if he ever picked up a novel and recognized himself it was purely coincidental and there was no need to call a lawyer.

Aunt: I didn't know you write!
Me: You proofed my baseball story.
Aunt: I thought that was school project.

Side note: I'm not in school, when I was I was never asked to turn in a full manuscript for a grade and my aunt is border line c-r-a-z-y.

She says she has a friend who has a sister that is a published author. Oh, no. Here we go again.

Aunt: Do you want me to have her call you?
Me: No, really it's fine.
Aunt: She's a romance author. She could help get you in the door.
Me: HUGE GIANT SIGH

I tell my aunt that would be great because I don't have the heart to explain that this author, that we all know because she is also a member of DARA, is probably really busy staying in the business of being published and probably doesn't want to talk to someone she has met in passing so she can help get her in the door.

What is wrong with people? Bless their hearts, I know they are only trying to help. If only it was that easy.

My infomercial monologue will read like this:

You too can be a successful best selling author! It's so easy and my program will tell you exactly what you need to do to get in the door. I'll share with you all the inside secrets that agents and publishing houses DON'T want you to know. blah. blah. blah.

The secret? "Just meet a published author and BAM! You're published. Foot in the door. Over night success. How FREAKING easy is that?" In really small letters I'll add: 'Sorry no refunds' and 'the results exhibited in the infomercial were not typical'.

What. Ever.

Seriously.

Groupies or stalkers?

As some of you may know, I got to meet my Favorite Author last weekend! Way cool. In the interest of not naming names, I'm going to create a blog with no first names. Or try to.

Anyway, FA is a wonderful person for those of you who know who I'm talking about. She's really friendly and bubbly and she rebuilt a 1964 and 1/2 mustang from scratch. In between being a best selling author and globe hopping for all these events that come with being a best selling author. You've gotta admire a woman who can rebuild a car.

My money bought me a visit to the author's reception Saturday night and then out to dinner with FA. Sunday included getting to sit at her table at the literary event. Nine of us won this privilege.

Needless to say I was a bit excited. I got all fancied up and drove to the hotel where we're to meet. I'm one of the last to arrive so everyone has been sitting around chatting and getting to know each other. When I arrive, all names are thrown at me, as if I can remember names, and I smile and try to look like I really want to be best friends with them all. Two women describe themselves as FA's stalkers. OOOkkkkaaaayyyy. I look around for the cops, but none are to be found.

Then FA shows up and we all pile into a van. Think of opening a sardine can, to be rather cliche. I scrunched against the wall, but I'm two seats down from FA so who really cares. The lady sitting next to me is one of the self-admitted stalkers and the entire time we're squashed together she is talking to FA about FA's life. FA is chatting away with her, obviously not as freaked out about this as I am. The entire time this lady, let's call her stalker lady, SL, sits next to FA and has to be the dominent in the conversation. So if you ask FA a question you can tell she's not a happy camper b/c now FA is paying some attention to someone other than SL. SL doesn't like that.

However, get SL away from FA and she's really nice. Just one of those people that has to have all the attention on her and she draws that attention by making herself sound more important by knowing all this info about FA. Interesting pychology study.

The other "stalker" was more as I'd describe myself. Fairly normal, but a huge fan. The difference between us is that she goes to all these FA author events. But the other lady was freaking ME out and I'm not even a famous author.

Oh well. FA is wonderful, love her books and she's just as nice in person as she seems in her books.

But she had apparently had enough too b/c during the tea she stuck SL across the table from her.

So, are people like me who go to these things groupies or stalkers? What's your opinion?

things that make you go hmm ...

and i'm not talking about the 90s song from c+c music factory.

some of these "sights" i saw on our cruise. some i think could really facilitate some dialogue among us. so, i'll be interested to hear your thoughts on ...

leather doesn't make it any better.

flapping running shorts is like a low-cut shirt on a woman - hopefully nothing slips out.
when mosquitoes are bad, you don't care about fashion. maybe the above 2 guys were trying to scare mosquitoes with reverse psychology?
meet my next hero. al paca.
from my hometown newspaper. i don't think i could even dream up a scene like this.

please vote for your favorite.

i got 99 problems and PEACH is no. 1

tip(s) of the day: if you’re going somewhere close to the equator, take bug spray. and always, always take bug spray when you go into the jungle. any jungle. even if you are wearing long sleeves. even if you tight-roll your jeans like 1991. even if a guy named hey-seuss offers you his bug spray. take. your. own.

well, no jerky mishaps like angie, but i did gather plenty of bloggable stuff during our cruise. there were lots of “characters” on the ship. in fact, biscuit started a simple naming system in which to identify these characters—all male characters, by the way. i will save this jewel for another blog.

since this was a “love” cruise, i lovingly decided to leave my laptop at home. this decision made my eye twitch for most of the cruise and leaving it at home in the barb room was almost as sad as leaving my two young sons (my dogs) at their lavish canine resort. nonetheless, i was excited to read a new book. i really enjoyed the first book in this series; you guys probably remember me questioning the white jumpsuit thing, but aside from that, i loved the story. well, the second book … not so much. the author obviously did a lot of research and i learned lots of new things, which I always appreciate—but, because there was so much “research,” i felt like the story suffered. the dialogue was just not up to the caliber as the research and because of that, the whole story seemed off-balance.

then there was the issue i always have issues with: the characters’ fashion.

disclaimer(s): blogger is not a fashionista. blogger is simply opinionated and confused based on the author’s fashion choices for her characters based on the current date and time in which we live—2008.

… O. M. G. biscuit and i would be sitting there in our cabin—yes, on a love cruise and not on the lido deck playing shuffleboard, but him watching the UK vs. Alabama game on TV and me reading this book—and i’d read biscuit the outfit causing confusion and he’d shrug his shoulders and say, “i don’t even know what that is.”

let me back the bus up for a minute. while on this cruise, i saw things i’d never seen before. “characters” that made me stop, analyze, and reflect. characters that wore the things i have serious issues with. let me break this down even further—girls, i saw leather deck shoes in person!!!! in real-time. even when i poked biscuit on the arm and said, “oh my gah, look, LDS,” and he said, “huh?” and i clarified, “leather deck shoes,” and he was like, again, “i don’t even know what that is,” and i was like, “LOAFERS. LEATHER LOAFERS. ON THE LIDO DECK! WHAT IS WRONG WITH FREAKING FLIP FLOPS!”

then he got it.

but back to the book. this author didn’t just dress the heroine in peach, she dressed ALL the female characters in peach. i kid you not. every outfit was peach—for every freaking female character. peach, peach, peach. even their nail polish was peach. first of all, i have nothing against peach. as in the fruit. but the color, as in the peach crayon found in a 64-count box of crayolas, nope. not working in 2008. when i go to stonebriar, i do not see lots of peach-colored attire on the racks. this story was set in a certain large U.S. city that is not located near a beach where one might potentially spot peach-colored attire. and the female characters were all in their early 30s. hello? at least there were no peach-colored sarongs or thongs.

now, it would have been different if the heroine or another female character wore a cute, peach-colored babydoll shirt or maybe a peach-colored sundress or even a peach-colored sweater from ann taylor. but no. we're talking blouses. what is a blouse anyway? that word sounds suspicious to me. i call them shirts. short-sleeve shirts, long-sleeve shirts, sweatshirts. some are dressy shirts, some are T-shirts. some are tank tops. blouse is like using the word caftan instead of a lounge chair or chignon instead of bun.

there was one exception to peach … when the hero was wearing navy slacks (when i say “slacks” out loud it sounds as if i have a crouton lodged in my larynx) AND a navy SILK T-shirt. yes, a SILK T-shirt. when i think of “T-shirts” i think of 100 percent cotton with screen-printed lettering on it, like one tequila, two tequila, three tequila, floor.

anyway, it’s not that big of a deal, but the fashion distracted me throughout the story. maybe the author wasn’t even aware that she was using the same color over and over and over and over, but I noticed. i know, i know, i pick up on anal things, but that’s what i do. writers are supposed to be detail-oriented.

let’s look at some acceptable ways to work peach into a story:

she was a lightweight and ordered a dekuyper peach tree schnapps, but when a hot guy walked in, she needed something stronger. like tequila. “hey, bartender, make it a peach margarita instead.”

after working out, jill stopped at the gym’s café and ordered a peach smoothie.

jeremy was clueless. what the hell had he been thinking, offering to cook dinner for natalie. that was easy. he hadn’t been thinking jack—he’d been staring at her body. damn, she had a body. the woman clearly spent a lot of time in the gym. fruit. yeah, he bet she liked healthy stuff, like fruit. strawberries, grapes, peaches. and probably something tropical like papaya or kiwi. maybe he could pull this off after all. jeremy slipped on his nike flip flops, grabbed his keys, and headed to whole foods.

melanie squeezed her eyes after her mother stepped out of her 1991 coupe deville. what in the hell is my mother wearing? a peach moo-moo with kitty cats? i gave her a generous gift card to talbots. why, mother? why? you're meeting my boyfriend for the first time today and now he'll assume this is what i will look like in 30 years! ugh.

my great-grandmother loved that movie, a league of their own. back in the day, she was a rockford peach.

kate turned up the volume on her ipod when prince came on. peach. awesome song. the next song that came on had her rocking out to the steve miller band … you’re the cutest thing that i ever did see, i really love your peaches, wanna shake your tree …

i rest my case.

next time you go to victoria’s secret, i challenge you to ask an associate to show you a bra or teddy (not a bear) in peach. if she whips one out of the drawer in zero to three seconds, i stand corrected on peach being a universally accepted, fashionable color in 2008. however, if the associate cocks her head and looks confused, FACE!

Tomfoolery

Isn't that word AWESOME! Props to Christie for using it and props to me for stealing it for my own blog post.

I tried to upload an adorable image of an english sheepdog with so much POOF you couldn't see his eyes. Bless his heart. Now I know how Trinity feels about the uploading picture thing.

Okay, so to continue Christie's line of thought from last week, I'm going to talk about sorta the same thing. How amazingly easy it is to pen a novel and get it published and be in LOVE with the entire process!! I mean who doesn't love waiting for months upon months for that 'We really liked your work but..." letter that shatters all your hopes. Are you perched on the edge of your chairs? Don't be...that was completely tongue in cheek and I don't want you to be disappointed in the long run.

Now, let me apologize upfront to my friend who probably won't appreciate being the subject of this discussion but she is a perfect illustration of what Christie was so delicately pointing out.

There are very few people who know I live the secret life of a tortured writer. In a nutshell, I agree with Trinity - it's just easier than having to explain (or in our case - DEFEND) what we are trying to accomplish. Smirks, snide remarks, and basic school yard bullying is just not worth it. But when I'm published, I'll be wearing that badge for all the world to see and God help whoever decides to open their mouth because I have 32 years of pent up anger just waiting to be released.

My friend went to see a multi-published best selling author, one whose books are ALWAYS made into major motion pictures, speak when he was here in town recently. The next day she explained to me how disappointed she was in him. What? Come again. MULTI-PUBLISHED. BEST SELLING. MOVIES. I see nothing to be disappointed in.

She explains that she got the feeling that he just wrote books to have them made into movies. I tried to explain the writing is a business. Oh, sure it can be a hobby, but the truly dedicated souls that slave night after night while their family is off in fairy dream land know, they know, it's one of the most competitive businesses probably in the world.

For most, we write because it is what we are made to do. I wrote my first short story in the third grade. We were asked to write a paper on what would happen if the sun suddenly decided not to shine. I turned in a five page story. FIVE PAGES and I was EIGHT. Why do I remember this? Because later I would realize that was when I knew what I was supposed to do and that was write.

I am sure there are authors who don't give a rats ass about what they are doing, they were somehow blessed with a natural ability to plot and form sentences that make marketable manuscripts, but I bet they are fewer than we think in the fiction world. This particular author might well be one of those few but who cares? When it all comes down, it is still a business.

You write because you can. You publish because you either have a great agent that pushes your work endlessly or when a tired editor happens to read your manuscript while drunk and you sign the contract before she sobers up. I'm kidding, but I think you understand our chances are slim, slim, slim. Luck has to play a huge part.

After you publish, you hope for a movie deal (insert snicker) but you don't wait for that because you are already pounding away on another manuscript that you hope keeps the publisher interested enough to give you some heavy marketing or you end up at a bookstore with only your fellow spanksters alternating autograph requests with sympathy shining in their eyes.

And guess what? You write that next book with the same damn dogged determination that I had when I penned that short story when I was eight. Not because you can, but because you have to. At least for me. It's like OCD. Gotta write. Gotta write. Gotta write.

Sometimes I'm so sick of it I quit. Stop writing for months but I always go back. Because I have a story to tell. Because Muse Bob won't stop nagging about how much time we are wasting reading and blogging and youtubing when we could be producing. And then you go to meetings and hear things like "Five thousand dollar" advance for first time authors and I want to throw my laptop off the roof. Do they know how much time I spent on this thing? Anyone done the math? Is that kind of pay even legal?

It shouldn't be about the money, but how can it not be in the long run? It's a business. I don't live in a village where other people pay my mortgage because I need to finish my manuscript. I'll take that advance but you can damn well bet I'm gonna make sure my next work is worth a hell of a lot more. And more after that.

We can't work two jobs forever, and that's exactly what writing is for me. A second job. I love it (and hate it) but I spend hours a day plotting and planning and penning words that float around in my head all day long.

It all boils down to this for me: don't make a judgement call against a successful author because he has the talent to turn books into movies because then you are judging me.

I have six, seven if you count the trash I wrote in high school, manuscripts. Some complete. Others still in progress. I have a book of poetry I began in middle school. I have a notebook that I literally use rubber bands to hold together full of ideas I may never use.

Yet...

I have never won a contest. I have never been offered a publishing deal. I don't have agents beating down my door throwing Range Rovers in my face begging to represent me.

Until you've walked the world seven times over in my shoes don't tell me what writing should be about. Sometimes I hate the words I've written. Hate the characters I've created but if someone wants to buy something I hate, then heck yeah, I'm gonna be all over it. In less than a heartbeat.

everyone can run

i was glued to the olympics this year. my heart went out to lolo jones when she clipped that last hurdle. i totally understood how she felt in that moment when she fought to get across the finish line. she'd spent four years of her life preparing for a race that lasted 10 seconds. four years. ten seconds. her dream was crushed - just like that.

as i watched track event after track event, the runners made it look so easy because come on, how hard is it to run? most of us can - it's really just a faster version of walking, so how hard is it really to do the 100 meter dash - right? could i run the 100 meter dash? sure. could i run it in less than 30 seconds and without injuring a hamstring? doubtful. the point is yes, i could run it, but it is not my expertise and no coach would ever recruit me to be on the olympic team.

the same concept can be applied to writing romance. we all hear the flack about the genre we love and how "anyone" can whip out one of those little harlequins. ok, those of us on the inside of the romance genre know that is just tomfoolery coming out of their mouths because harlequin is a complicated beast. and if harlequin is complicated then getting published by a NY publisher is a combination of astrophysics and advanced calculus.

publishing a book is NOT easy. anyone can write a book, but not everyone can publish one.

this is what has been on my mind lately. it disturbs me that people think once you have written a book it should be a piece of cake to get it published. we all know that is not true. and, IMO, trying to get published in romance is more difficult than any other type of genre or type of writing. it's tremendously subjective and we are competing with thousands and thousands of writers for one of a few limited spots with a publisher. people who don't read romance - people who have some "false image" of romance don't get what we're trying to accomplish here. people say to me, "well, can't you just try to publish an article in some magazine," or "have you ever heard of something called self-publishing?"

yes, i believe i could publish an article in a magazine - if i switched gears to feature writing. publishing in a magazine requires a different type of writing style, a different type of marketing approach, and i am not interested in doing that at this time. and self-publishing - one of my favorite women's fiction authors started out that way, but that doesn't mean it's right for me. in fact, in our genre we are basically told self-publishing is career suicide. and that's why we're trying to publish a book - because we want a career in romance writing. writing is like any other profession - there are different types of writing. but romance writing is not like any other type of writing. i know most people just don't understand this because they aren't as intimately involved with it as we are, but it bugs me when they just think it should be as easy as pushing that big red EASY button at staples.

maybe romance writers do live in their own universe, but i'm happy where i live and i'll continue to pursue publishing in romance. when people start trying to give me advice about how to publish "faster," i'll listen, but in my head i'll know the truth. that it's not easy to publish, just like it is not easy to run the 100 meter dash. especially when there are lots of hurdles a long the way.

if you can feel me on this, holler.

Sex, Sealing the Deal and Closure

In this day and age modern women don’t have sex and immediately fall in love, right? Okay, I will allow that there are some boiling-rabbits-on-the-stove women still around that associate sex with L-O-V-E, but come on. The generation of today’s youth could give a hippie commune a run for its money.

‘Debbie Does Dallas’ was once a just porn flick I heard about in high school. Turns out Debbie, Ryder, Kendra – and any other name you can think of – not only does Dallas, but then moves on to Ft. Worth and when them pickens are lean…let’s not go there.

Sex in the City says it all. Women are strong. Financially stable. Self confident. And the word SLUT just doesn’t have the same connotation that it once carried. Unless you live in a small town, and like Miranda Lambert says: “everybody dies famous in a small town,” so you have to earn a rep somehow.

Here’s the deal. I’m reading through a work in progress and I’m struggling to write anything. Just staring at the blinking cursor and wishing like hell my enter key was missing and my shift button was stuck – because it would give me something to do. I’m reading a love scene. Wait, is that old fashioned? EEEK!!! I mean SEX, sex scene. And it occurs to me that perhaps this is why I pull my hair out, screech and moan when it comes to writing the end of a manuscript.

I know I’m not making sense but just hang in there a second. In the world of romance novels, once a woman has sex with a man she is either destined to be one of three things:

1. The horribly killed off ex-wife
2. The incredibly bitter ex-wife, girlfriend, etc…etc…
3. The heroine

It occurs to me as I’m moving my eyes over the text I have written that perhaps that’s why I am so incredibly horrid when it comes to closing a book. Because in my tiny little brain when the sex is happening – that’s it.

They’re together.

Sure, you can throw in some twists and turns, stage the HUGE BLACK moment when they are ripped apart – but guess what? They get back together. Because that’s how it works in novels of the romantic nature.

Sex. Fight. Confess Love. The End.

And sometimes you get an epilogue that shows the reader how splendidly happy they are five years down the road with devishly handsome twin boys and a house with a white picket fence.

I feel so cynical. Like I’m taking something away from the hours we are slaves to the keyboard clicking out those intricate plots and character flaws. But I’m not trying to be. Just sharing a conflict that is becoming increasingly difficult for me to overcome.

I’ve been aware of it for a while, talked about it at some of our meetings but I don’t know what to do about it. I discovered tonight that it takes away from the emotional attachment I feel toward my characters. Oh great, they went and did it. FUBAR’d the whole shebang with the having of the sex.

Perhaps I’ll just go back to the days of “Insert Sex Scene Here” and move along knowing that they had sealed the deal but convincing myself that since I hadn’t really written the scene – it hadn’t actually happened.

Right. And Debbie decided she liked Dallas and didn’t have the energy to take on Fort Sill.

Sorry. I can’t keep the military references out…it’s an annoying new habit. Along with the thumbs up thing.