Some news, an update, and some silliness…

I survived the camping trip – but just.  There was a typhoon on Saturday afternoon that lasted almost an hour.  The rain was torrential.  I’m pretty sure I saw a cow float past at one point.  And they say the monsoon is over.  I guess, but the rain would belie that.

Kelli helped me the other day with the plot for Dalton and Olivia’s book.  One of the things I learned from Francesca and Thomas was that a book really requires a plot.  You may laugh, but it seems that I have no problem whatsoever with sitting down and writing 80,000 words that never go anywhere.  That is all well and good for geniuses like Anne Tyler, but not so much for me. 

Kelli is a whiz at mapping out the plot – such a weakness of mine, and I am grateful that she will sit with me for several hours with a piece of poster board and different colored post-its and help me put it together.   Now that I have a map, I can easily write to each destination.

One quick little note about The Bandit.  Since he started kindergarten at Sassy’s school this year, and the school requires uniforms, I’d saved some of Sassy’s unisex outfits for him to wear – things like pants and polo shirts.  There was one particular pair of pants that look perfectly unisex except for a band of fabric inside the waistband.  Now, I figured these wouldn’t be much of a problem since no one would ever see the waistband of his pants.  The other morning, it was a little chilly and rain had been forecasted so I brought out pants for him instead of shorts.  Those pants.

“I can’t wear those, Mom.  They’re girl pants,” he protested.

I held the khaki pants up for inspection.  “They don’t look like girl pants,” I said. 

“Well, they are.”  His face looked particularly mutinous.

I tried to look perplexed even though I already knew the answer before I asked the question.  “How can you tell?”

“There’s pink in there!”  He pointed with his little, indignant finger at the pink polka dotted waistband.

“Oh that?” I scoffed.  “That’s not for girls.  That’s the tickleband.”  I tried desperately to keep a straight face.

He stopped frowning and his face expressed burgeoning interest.  “What’s a tickleband?”

“Well, it’s really cool,” I told him while I stealthfully slid his legs into the pants and pulled up the zipper.  “Every time you go to the bathroom, or even think about your pants, the tickleband will give you a little tickle around your middle.”  I demonstrated exactly how this would work.

Now, the only problem is, he only wants to wear clothes with a tickleband.  Where does one pick up yards of pink polka dotted fabric on the cheap?

My Honey took my kids camping.  They don’t have school tomorrow so they left after school today.  There is a huge group of family from both sides converging on a lake about an hour outside of town.

I couldn’t get Friday off, so I’ll drive up after work tomorrow and wander aimlessly through a camp ground for what will seem like hours trying to find them in the dark.  Can you hear my enthusiasm from way over there?

I know I have expressed my opinion of camping on these pages before.  It’s not a high opinion.  Unfortunately, I married in to a camping family and my father and brother are a little over zealous about it as well.  The only other sane one in my family is my mother who also detests camping.

There is just so much to revile about the whole process: the dirt, the bugs, the sun, the bugs, the dirt.

That and I can feel how annoyed everyone else is when all I want to do all day is sit in the shade and read as opposed to fishing (ick) or boating (ugh) or some other equally wretched outdoor activity.

BUT my husband loves it so and he’s brainwashed the children into loving it and since I love them, I will drag my city girl butt out to the wilderness and pick dirt out of my food and swat insects and ride in a boat.  I draw the line at fishing.  That’s not going to happen – no matter how much I love them.

You can rest assured I will have books with me since I can’t bring the lap top to work on Dalton & Olivia.  Saint Edward is still performing surgery on the lap top.  It’s a pretty grim diagnosis but I’m keeping my crossables crossed.

Anyway – my original intent of this post was to talk about my night of family freedom.  All day, I considered what I’d do with myself.  Should I go to a movie?  Take myself out to dinner?  Shoe Shopping?

As soon as I got off work, I headed to a book store.  Pretty typical of me.  I bought 6 books.  Yikes.  The pile of “To Be Read” is so tall it’s teetering.  I went with a list of other romance authors my agent represents and, to my delight, I found quite a few.  Also, an entire series from one of my favorite writers I hadn’t gotten to yet.

Then I came home and ate blueberry waffles for dinner.  Isn’t that wonderful and decadent?  My how my definition of decadent has changed since Sassy and the Bandit came along.  I didn’t worry about vegetables or protein or any of that healthy nonsense.

And then I fell asleep on the couch waiting for Project Runway to come on.  My favorite designer is going to make it to the finale – I’m just sure of it.

I’m going to go to bed here in a minute and watch TIVO’d episodes of Glee.

Ahhhhhhhhh.  Bliss.

I am writing this from Cloud 9.  Ava came to work today with a thumb drive and a DVD disc from Saint Edward.  All day I longed to go home and see what was on it.  I would open my desk drawer and peer down into the darkness of my purse where I could see the edge of the white envelope that held what promised to be eight missing chapters of Dalton & Olivia’s book.  I would sigh and close the drawer, knowing I had hours and hours before I could see what was on the disc in truth.

Even when I got home, there was kindergarten and 2nd grade homework to do and dinner to make (it was the tried and true spaghetti – I’m so predictable when it comes to my turn to cook).  Then there were baths and stories to be read and snuggling to do.

Finally, I got to the office, plugged in the drive, and opened it up to find not only the 8 missing chapters, but so, so much more.  I had forgotten, or refused to ponder, just how much I had lost.

I tend to do a bunch of research before the writing begins.  It makes me feel

A period kitchen

 inside the story.  By research, I mean, photos of period clothes, people, household items, houses, carriages – you name it.  Additionally, with this story, I had taken the advice of one of the guest speakers at our local RWA meeting and did an entire psychologial profile on each of the main characters: Henry Cavendish, Marquess of Dalton, the Honorable Olivia Goldsleigh, and the wretched Reginald Foreman (our villian). 

For goodness sake, I’d even designed a family crest for Dalton.

I was obviously upset at the missing chapters and for good reason, but when I saw how much more I’d not even considered when I was tallying up the casualties…UGH!

So again, thank you Edward.  You are really the best.

xoxoxo

-A

Poor Beaker.  Nothing good ever happens to him.

One of my fun little surprises during my work day is popping over to Google.com to search something and finding that they have a theme logo for the day.

Today’s is especially awesome.  Double click to enlarge, turn on your sound, press play and enjoy.

Happy birthday, John, where ever you are.  Maybe hanging out on Penny Lane or the Strawberry Fields?

Sassy has watched The Wizard of Oz on DVD maybe 5 times in the last month and asked if I would buy her the book.  I had to wipe a tear from my eye. 

A) She loves the Wizard of Oz!

B) She wants (wants!!!!) to read the book

C) She is duly impressed that I know every word to every song in the movie.

D) AND I know the dance steps down the Yellow Brick Road

Its getting harder and harder to impress my daughter.  It seems that she’s

But we do agree on the funniest member of the Lollypop Guild

 launching early into the my-mother-is-an-idiot stage.  Had I known all I needed to do was sing and dance – well, hell.

So we sat down to watch it again the other night, she was rife with questions.  The thing is, I thought I knew everything about The Wizard of Oz.  I can answer obscure trivia questions in the middle of the night.  I can tell you behind the scenes tidbits long lost to antiquity.  What I can’t answer are Sassy’s questions.  Here are two of the doozies.

Where did Dorothy get the dog? I have no idea. Really.  I’ve never even considered it. 

What shoes is she wearing before she gets the ruby slippers?  Good

Everything is better with great shoes!

grief, is she even wearing shoes before?  She’s a farm girl after all.  I’m not even 100% sure she has feet before she crashes in Munchkinland.

So there you go.  It turns out all I know is useless when it comes to Sassy disecting a classic.

There is no way I’m letting her ruin Gone With the Wind or Casablanca.

One of the things that makes writing a romance novel hard to tell people, is, lets face it – the cover.  Romances have a tragic history of excruciatingly bad cover art.  For crying out loud, they kept me from reading one for decades.  They were too embarassing.  I’m the first to admit.  My ego couldn’t allow for me to be seen reading, much less enjoying, a book with those covers.

These days, the writing is often extraordinary.  The industry has jumped that hurdle.

And the cover art is better.  Sometimes. 

However, this site : The Wonderful World of Longmire has celebrated the age of god awful covers.  He’s taken actual covers and renamed them and added funny blurbs.

 Behold

 and this one

Aren’t these hysterical!  Enjoy some more…

You should pop over there and see them all.  Some readers have sent in some of their own as well.  Enjoy.

“I want Bandit to be my Butler and Henchman,” Sassy told me.  She said it off the cuff like her request wasn’t at all out of the ordinary.

The butler is odd, but not as odd as a henchman.  “Do you know what a henchman is?” I asked her.

“No.” She shook her head.  “But it sounds cool.”

“A henchman is someone that does another person’s evil bidding.  Sort of like a minion, but of higher rank.”  I could see she didn’t understand.  “Remember in Snow White, when the Evil Queen wants to kill Snow White she sends her into the forest with the Woodsman to kill her.  The Woodsman is her henchman.”

“But the Woodsman didn’t kill Snow White,” Sassy pointed out.

“Yeah, the Queen’s henchman sucks.  Remember when you get a henchman make sure he can follow instructions.”  This seems like excellent advice to me.

“Bandit’s not very good at following my instructions.”

The Bandit smiled and nodded.  Who would have thought that all along his short attention span was just a ploy to avoid being a henchman.

“What about a Butler?  What does he do?” she asked.  The Bandit also appeared interested. 

“He butles,” I said, cracking up and just delighted that I was able to steal a line from a funny movie at just the right time.

They waited patiently for me to get a hold of myself.  “A butler is in charge of a house and all the other servants.”

“Like Daddy,” Bandit pointed out.  “Daddy, you’re a butler.” 

I’m not exactly sure who The Bandit thinks the other servants are in this house, but he better not be looking in my direction. 

I think I need to get myself a henchman.