on bargains...

So New Guy sent me a link to this podcast yesterday and insisted I give it a listen. If you all aren't familiar with Radiolab, it's a cool program where the hosts pick an overarching theme and explore it through interviewing ordinary people and discussing their experiences.

The theme of this particular episode was "What do you do when you want something, and the person putting obstacles in your way is YOU? How do you get around yourself?" They interviewed a woman who found a novel way to convince herself to quit smoking, and a doctor who'd managed to make a bargain with himself (a threat, actually) in order to push through his writer's block and get his book on migraines written. He gave himself a deadline that was a DEADline, if you get me, and managed to finish ahead of schedule.

I don't know how effective these strategies would be for everyone, but I've made myself a huge threat, and New Guy is prepared to hold me to it. Considering the nature of the bargain--finish a project within the next 40 days, or else--I'm hoping the motivation will work. If it doesn't...I don't even want to think about it. It's nothing dangerous or damaging--more in line with the retarded things they get people to do on Fear Factor--but I still don't want to do it. :P

So.

Today, I pick my project and get my ass in gear. And in forty days, come hell or high water, it will be ready to send to my editor. Or else.

Blue collar guys...

Don't know where this post came from, but it's something I've been pondering of late as I do my best to hurl myself back into the sexual marketplace.

I don't know about you all, but there's just something about a blue collar guy that turns me on. Say what you want about a well-groomed man in a Hugo Boss suit and expensive shoes--for me, there's nothing sexier than a man with a little dirt under his nails, a man with forearms defined by weilding nailguns, screwdrivers, sawzalls, wrenches, a man who knows how to assemble a carburetor or fiddle with a timing chain, rewire a house, solder a copper pipe or fit the perfect mortise and tenon.

Maybe it derives from my youthful days as designated coffee-fetcher and flashlight-holder for my heavy-duty mechanic dad as he worked on the cars? Mechanic by trade, he was handy in myriad ways. I remember him finishing our basement from bare concrete and naked ceiling beams--he did all the plumbing, wiring, carpentry and tiling himself (with a little "help" from us kids), and I'll admit I picked up a certain flair for creative profanity from him as I got older and he guarded his tongue less.

Maybe it comes from the occasional trip to pick him up at work with my mom--the teenaged me waiting in a lunchroom where every inch of wall and half the ceiling was plastered with posters of naked women, indelibly associating sex with the smells of diesel fuel and motor oil in my already half-way bent mind.

Maybe it's because a man who's good with his hands when it comes to laying tile or installing a bathtub faucet or cutting the perfect dovetail joint makes me think he'll be good with his hands when it comes to...other things? Maybe the roughness of sweat and physical work translates into visions of roughness and sweat in other contexts in my subconscious?

Whatever the reason, seeing a man with a streak of black on his forehead, a dozen little cuts and scars on his hands, grime permanently imprinted into the whorls on the pads of his fingers, and flecks of paint or silicone caulk on his t-shirt just...does it for me. Holy hell, does it ever.

A blue collar guy doesn't need the body of an Adonis to impress me (although the ubiquitous plumber butt-crack is maybe not the hottest thing ever, heh), he doesn't need a face like David Boreanaz or Clive Owen or Brad Pitt. All he needs is to be reasonably attractive and have the ability to take something that's broken and fix it, or take something that's nothing but a pile of raw materials and build it, and I'm drooling. Drooling, I tell you.

How about you guys? Any of you ever get the hots for your mechanic, or want to jump the bones of the guy who came to install kitchen cabinets?

Excuse me while I...

...indulge in a much needed, quasi-public panic attack.

My ability to delude myself into believing Christmas was still days and days away, still plenty of time, don't sweat it, it will all get done? Well, it abandoned me at about 8:30 last night. I suppose it had to happen sometime. I mean, I may have some mad denial skillz, but time and Santa wait for no man (or dirty book writing procrastinator). And right now, the fat man's red-velvet covered butt is about to squash me but good.

Still to do:

Wrap about 40 presents. Separate the stocking stuffers into piles.

Purchase two more presents (OMG, how could I have thought I was actually DONE?)

Buy a turkey with my IGA Turkey Bucks, plus potatoes, a loaf of good bread, veggies

Dig up my cattle prod and make my kids clean and toddler-proof the family room so my friend's half-demon hellspawn will be unable to blow up the house Christmas Day

Locate my HazMat suit and clean the upstairs bathroom

Work my last shift until the New Year

Get bank stuff in the mail to my lawyer

Bake a couple loaves of Christmas bread (optional, but if I don't, boy will my best friend be annoyed when she shows up with my bottle of homemade Irish cream and I have nothing to give her)

Swallow half a bottle of Tylenol with codeine so my head doesn't go all explody

Find SOMEPLACE in my cluttered little house to stow 60 bottles of wine

Drink 30 bottles of wine to make room

Yup. There are benefits to being a last minute kind of person, but right now I'm having a hard time remembering what they are. Still, it wouldn't be the holidays if I wasn't curled up into a ball in the corner, shivering and sweating and screaming "I want my mom!" and praying for it to just be over. I hope when the men in white coats come for me, they'll be gentle. It is the holidays, after all, and we could all use a little good will this time of year...

people are weird....

Okay, so I stuck a tracker on my website about a month ago, and now I can indulge my inner voyeur without getting myself arrested. This has, however, introduced me to a whole new world of bizarre and questionable Google search terms and the (I would expect) bizarre and questionable people behind them.

Most are pretty reasonable and applicable:

touching inside panties soaking

girls derty nickers with damp patch in [not mom-safe]

in side my knickers (not sure how these two hit my site, since I don't think I've ever used "knickers" in my fiction...)

steel between her legs

sitting across the office she parted her legs and showed me her [ahem] (have to credit this one--a complete sentence and every word spelled correctly)

he lightly touched her [ahem] with his tongue (again, astonishingly literate)

[coughcough] me through my panties

tear my pant with your teeth

romance thrust breasts hands (bwahaha! Why bother with filler words, let's cut to the chase, shall we?)

But other search terms give me mental images that I will never be able to scrub away, such as:

smell mom panties (oh, ewww)

.....or the one that made my eyebrows hit my hairline:

snake in my [place where no self-respecting snake would willingly go] (do I really need to comment further?)

So what do these people do when they get to my website? An astonishing number of them, even the aforementioned snake fetishist, spend between 20 minutes and a couple hours poking around, reading my free samples and looking at my bio.

Now, I've read some interesting books and seen some cool shows based on people who can read others' thoughts, and as a kid, I always figured it would be cool to have that ability. But looking at those last two search terms, I'm thinking I probably don't really want to know what's going on in people's heads. All things considered, I might just stop looking at my tracker and invest in a telescope and see what kind of normal, everyday shenanigans the people across the street get up to...

I haz a dumb

Yes, I am stupid. Why, you ask (or not, as the case may be, since I may only be confirming what you already suspected)?

Because I started a new project.

Yes, with two projects already on the go, screaming to be finished and submitted to two separate editors at two separate publishers, I started a new one. If any of you are feeling the urge to dish out a good, sound spanking, now would be the time.

Of course, it's not my fault.

I blame Laurie M. Rauch, Samhain's new exec editor. She's the one who posted the open call for fairy tale-themed hot romance. She's the one who got me thinking about that most Scandinavian of fairy tales, The Little Mermaid. She's the one who put the idea of fairy tale, mermaid menage in my head. And now that dang sea witch will not leave me alone! She wants to tell her side of the story, and she wants in on the HEA, too.

I'm aiming this for Samhain's Red Hot Fairy Tale antho, but if it doesn't make the cut, I'll be subbing it elsewhere or posting it as a free read on my site. I've been writing for one day and I'm already 3600 words in.

This will be a short project--25k or less. We'll see how well I stick to that.

Hugs.

Ahhhh....

So despite a delay caused by my inability to convince the ferry service to transport my children on a boat full of combustibles and toxic chemicals, I managed to get the little...uh...treasures off to their dad's for a Canada Day that will hopefully be filled with lots of laughs, togetherness and roasted marshmallows, and a minimum of bickering, fire-pit mishaps, and firecracker-mangled body parts.

This means that I....wait for it....HAVE THE HOUSE TO MYSELF FOR TWO AND A HALF DAYS!!111!!!111!

WOOT!

Odd thing is, I hardly know what to do with myself. I've already tidied the living room; got the kitchen mostly in order; went on a quest with my dog-catcher buddy to catch a stray husky (it eluded us, the sneaky devil); collected the laundry from all over the house (literally--there was a pair of dirty socks in the deep freeze. Don't ask); got the garbage ready to go out to the curb tomorrow; walked my dog with her new jabby collar that prevents her from strangling herself while simultaneously crushing the bones of my hands; eaten pizza (frozen, but still not bad); poured myself a Caesar; spent an hour looking at stuff on the internet I wouldn't want my mom to know about; watched some TV; did some editing; and now I'm watching Futurama (the episode with the anchovies) and doing this blog post. And coming to a realization that has shaken me to my very core.

I actually *gasp* miss my kids.

Now don't get me wrong, I'm overjoyed to see the rotten little cubs leave the den to go hang with papa bear for a few days. But it is hard to adjust to the lack of noise, arguing, mayhem and general distraction they create. But I swear, as god is my witness, I will not waste this time alone. I will write. I will fold nine loads of clean clothes and *shudder* put them away. I will vacuum and dust, without having to worry about a pack of young'uns following me around undoing all my good work. I will stay up as late as I want reading dirty books. I will dance around my house in my underpants if the spirit takes me.

Cue bagpipes and a gut-wrenching close-up of Mel Gibson's face as you scream one single, inspiring word with me: FREEDOM!!!

That is all.

Howsh it goin, you guysh?

I am stoned.

My injured neck and shoulder finally sent me to the doctor yesterday, and after commenting that he'd never seen two shoulders quite so uneven (my left has been riding about two inches higher than my right for the last week), and prodding my strained muscles and tendons, he told me to take two weeks off work and gave me a blammo prescription for cyclobenzaprine. He also recommended I see the chiropractor--we have a guy who comes to town once a week, and the first six visits are covered by medical.

Of course, there's no way I can afford to take two weeks off work, but I am taking a couple of days. Carrying trays of drinks and heavy plates of food in my left hand had me in agony over the last five shifts, to the point that after three or four hours my shoulder and my ear were trying to make sweet, savage love with each other. Even on Robaxacet, within ten minutes of starting a shift, I was lurching around like Quasimodo, complete with pained grimace and inarticulate grunts.

The cyclobenzaprine works much better than the Robax, but holy crapweasels, does it ever knock me on my ass. I took my first one last night at 5, and by 7 I was zonked on the couch, a puddle of drool forming on my pillow. I'm hoping that the side-effects will calm down between now and Friday, since my boss is stuck covering for me at work and I can't imagine he'll be having fun working a Friday night by himself.

This will also stall my writing for a bit--despite the perfect ergonomics of my La-Z-Boy/laptop setup, doing between 1 and 3k a day for the last little while hasn't been helping me get better. So I'm just going to take it easy and try to keep it under 1k a day. Although I refuse to take a total hiatus--I'm on a roll and could lapse into writer's block at any moment, so I have to forge ahead while I can.

The annoying thing is, I didn't even do anything to deserve this. Just about everyone has asked (with mandatory eyebrow waggle) what exactly I was doing when I threw my neck out.

Um, sleeping. Alone. I went to bed fine last Tuesday night, and Wednesday morning I couldn't turn my head. Which really, really sucks. I mean, if I'm going to injure myself in bed, I'd at least like to have earned it. But no, apparently sleeping is a high-risk physical activity for me.

Jeez, I feel old.

Procrastinating...

...is harder work than you might think.

My kids went to their dad's on Sunday and, Monday being Victoria Day here in Canuckyland, they stayed there overnight. This meant I had the entire house to myself for over 24 hours. My boss, realizing the rareness of this occurrance (on par with a planetary alignment or the day my daughter says no to cake), offered me the night off work, too, so I had nowhere to go, nothing to do.

Woot! So what's a writer to do with 24 uninterrupted hours but sink into the La-Z-Boy with the laptop and write some blammo smut?

Apparently plenty.

I spent all day Sunday cleaning my house. Living room, kitchen, family room, bathroom, a week's worth of clean laundry finally folded (but not put away yet--baby steps, people). Oddly, I'm a little disappointed in myself. I take a certain pride in my ability to maintain the stereotypical facade of the absent-minded, slovenly, obsessive writer. On any normal day, my house could be falling down around me, and I'd rather be bloghopping, writing or engaging in lengthy email discussions about books.



But never fear. I haven't quite gone over to the dark side yet.

In between these uncustomary bursts of domestic activity, I managed to read the entirety of Ann Aguirre's Grimspace (yes, I'm the last person on the planet to read it, but I've now remedied that), and enjoyed it so much I purchased the second in the series from Sony before I went to bed so I could start it first thing Monday morning. Monday, I did nothing but sit on my ass and gobble up all of Wanderlust in one orgy of sci-fi gluttony before the kids walked back in the door at 3:00. And I had pizza delivered for dinner because the last thing I felt like doing was cooking.

After dinner, smut time, right? Uh, no.

Despite the fact that Lianon and Rhianna have been trying everything short of semaphore to get my attention back where it belongs, I spent the evening tinkering with the beginning of my giant, huge, epic fantasy WIP from ages long past (ten years ago, to be exact), the wellspring of all my current books. I'd originally written it in MSWorks, and saved it in individual chapter files, and I'd been dreading the Herculean task of taking each one and going through them, paragraph by paragraph, to modify the formatting and copy them into one file. As I went, I began to read, and got sucked in.

Not by the awesomeness, but by the suckage.

Much as I love the story itself, some of those scenes... *shudder* Oh, the horrors of my then-newbie mistakes! POV inconsistencies galore. Clunky dialogue riddled with "As you know, Bob" exchanges and a dismaying lack of contractions. Infodumping that would shame even Robert Jordan. Redundant redundancies that are appallingly redundant.

"What was I thinking with those funky dialogue tags?" I expostulated to myself. "And the redundancies? And what's with all the telling? Where's the subtext? Do my readers need to have every little thing explained to them? Are they idiots? And the fade-to-black sex scenes? Sheesh, is one orgasm too much to ask? Also, the redundancies, what's up with them?"

In desperation, I opened some of the later chapters and was much reassured that my writing has improved over time. But damn, that thing is going to need some work.

One day, I'll be up to performing the radical surgery that will make that puppy ready for submission. One day, I will conquer it. But not today.

Today, my friends, is for smut. Hot girl-on-girl smut. Nothing will stand in my way, dammit.

Lianon and Rhianna, here I come...

What, me worry?

Okay, so about 11:30 last night, I formatted my manuscript, tossed off a quick email and hit "send". And felt like I was gonna puke my guts out. Not only has this book put me through a meat grinder, but I was anticipating a wait of up to a month before I heard a yea or nay--and I wasn't looking forward to it AT ALL.

So imagine my surprise when I looked in my inbox around 10 this morning to find an enthusiastic email from my editor. She loved it, and wanted to know if a July release date was cool with me. Of course, that would mean we'd have to blast through edits in less than a month, but between us, that is totally doable. Once I confirmed it was not an April Fool's Day joke (hey, I'm paranoid, so sue me), I happily accepted. Contract arrived less than an hour later, and we're set to get this puppy done by the end of the month.

Of course, that means I won't be working on Lianon and Rhianna's story for a while. But on the bright side, you all won't have long to wait to read The Chancellor's Bride. Yay! :)

Inspired...

...by an intriguing but questionable conversation with...someone who shall remain nameless *ahem*, I have penned a new short story and posted it on my website under the dubious title of Purple Panties**. It is entirely, completely, thoroughly not my usual thing, but it kinda wrote itself in a few frenetic hours and I feel much better now.

You see? This is what happens when I talk to people. *sigh*

And y'all, comments are still open in my revenge-o-rama contest. You've got 'til tomorrow night to enter, so do it!

**And mom, just in case you don't pay attention to the tags, I'm gonna bold it here: Don't look, mom.

O.M.G.

Lookit!

I'd say more, but I'm dizzy from sniffing the ink. Mmmmm....

Hooray, I have a headache!

No, really. Hooray!

I have a headache. I've had it since Friday. And yes, that's a good thing. I spend a lot of time lying down when I have a headache, not reading or watching TV or even sleeping. Just lying there, not quite asleep. Thinking. Playing scenes in my head. Letting my mind wander.

And that's when my best ideas are born. That's when the magic happens. Revelations occur in random flashes of brilliance that sometimes hurl me from my half-slumber, heart pounding and out of breath with the sure knowledge that this--this is the way I need to go. Forget all the crap I thought I knew about my characters and their stories. I knew nothing. I was a fool. Now I know better.

Saturday around 6 PM, I learned something about the villain in my current WIP that completely invalidates all the plotting I made myself do a couple weeks ago. It also makes every aspect of the story that much more perfect, makes everything fit together with perfect elegance. It was one of those POW! moments when my subconscious kicks in and overrides everything else. And damn, if that isn't almost better than sex.

About ten minutes after 6, another revelation hit me, an epiphany about the nature of my creative process--an amalgam of headaches, parental guilt, and getting things done. Last December, I got my tubes tied. Consequently, I was able to go off the birth control pill. When I did that, I went from having three migraines a month, to one--or none. And my daily word count plummeted. Between being more busy than ever, recently becoming a single parent, and no longer having an excuse to lie around on the couch playing pretend in my head, I hit a creative lull. Lie down? Who has time to lie down? What kind of mother lolls around daydreaming when there's laundry to be folded?

Well, this kind of mother, from now on. As of today, I've scheduled in two mornings of downtime every week for the foreseeable future. Hopefully, that will get my muse back on speaking terms with me, and my wordmeters chugging back along.

And if not, well, at least I'll be well rested. :)

I'm Even More Neurotic Than I Thought...

Okay, I totally stole this from Madame Butterfly, who stole it from Portia da Costa. You're supposed to tag six people, but I'm too lazy *ahem* I meant to say I hate to bug others with trivial stuff.

Six Unspectacular Quirks About Me:

1) I have issues with food--if I have potatoes left over after my meat and veggies are done, it ruins the experience. Likewise, if I'm eating pancakes or a burger, I save the middle for last, and if I'm too full by the time I get to it, I get all annoyed.

2) I am a compulsive self-editor. I can't even toss off an email to my mom without reading it through twice and rearranging my sentences and adding stuff in the middle.

3) I pluck my eyebrows every day, and can't tear my gaze from women whose brows need work--you know the ones. They waxed a month ago, and haven't done any maintenance since. Also, women who bleach their upper lip--helloooo! A blonde mustache is still a mustache!

4) I have worn a skirt exactly twice in the last ten years or so. To weddings. Even though I wore jeans to my own.

5) I hate asking anyone for a favor.

6) The only people I'm really nice to all the time are the ones I don't like.

There you go. Six things you now know about me, but wish you could unlearn.

All right, I'm not quite ready for the men in white coats, but...

Arrrrrrrrr!

It has come to my attention that today is International Talk Like a Pirate Day. To commemorate this occasion, I will write a few sentences in pirate-speak and post an amusing and appropriately themed picture.

So: "Avast ye, mateys! Behold yon scrap o' wenchly humor!"

Also, "Arrrr, do ye dare plunder me booty?!"

That is all.