Snippet

Seriously, I have a problem.

I've mentioned, I'm sure, that Elizabeth L. Brooks (the fabulous editor of He Loves me for my Brainsss!) and I are working on a collection of short-short stories.

When we originally discussed the idea, we were thinking of maybe 40 stories in the sub 1,000 word length.

(You, over there in the third row? I hear you laughing. Shut up. Seriously. Shut it.)

Thus far, I've written nine stories for the project.

They are:

After the Party - 1,016
Two Tents* - 933
Mouse Games* - 1,355
Away Games - 370
Home Inspection - 1,064
On the Job Training - 1,679
Dinner Service* - 811
Steal Not a Moment - 1,466
Surrender - 1,108

The stories with * asterisks next to them mean that the story isn't really complete. At least with Two Tents, I've got another two parts of similar length to go before I consider the story complete. Dinner Service has another two parts, Drink Service and Kitchen Service, ditto on them being the same length. Ish. I really want to steal Home Inspection, write another 1,500 words or so, and submit it for a collection. Also, Surrender isn't quite done yet either. I dunno about that one, I think I need to go back and fix some of it.

Even though I've managed to cut down my writer's bloat a bit (did I mention that my first novel, which is currently in content edits) was over 190,000 words as a first draft? My second novel, which is currently being read/reviewed for publication, is only 80,000... ) I'm still fighting a LOT with the short-short.

That being said, I really like some of these stories a lot, and I think the exercise is good for me. I might not be the short-short queen or anything, but at least in the process of working on this collection, I will get better. And that's all anyone can ask, right?

Here's a sample from On the Job Training...

“I'm Noel,” she said. 

A thousand puns and jokes leapt immediately to mind, and he bit down on all of them. It was unlikely that he could make a fresh one, and no one ever appreciated those sorts of things anyway. “It's a pleasure to meet you.” That was safe enough.

Noel raised an eyebrow. “Very good. I admire your restraint. You said, earlier... it was 'mostly.' Now, adorable as my shoes are, I have to say that if you're after a cheap one-night stand, please go elsewhere. You seem interesting enough, and I'm certainly not adverse, but I have strict requirements, and I'd rather you not waste your money if you're not qualified for the position.”

“Lucid's not cheap,” Danny chipped in from over his shoulder. “So it would be an expensive one night stand.”

“Not helping me here, bro,” Chandler muttered.

Noel laughed. It wasn't a titter, a giggle, or one of those fake chortles that he was used to hearing from women in bars. It was an absolutely delighted guffaw, full on belly-laugh that shook her whole body in delightful ways and was infectious. He couldn't help answering it. He blushed, embarrassed, felt more embarrassed, having blushed, and still couldn't help laughing. 

“Oh, that was wonderful,” she said, blotting carefully at the corners of her eyes with a napkin, leaving small red smudges behind. “What do you think, Danny? Is he worthy?”

Oh, god. He finished the rest of his beer.

“He drinks good beer,” Danny said, “even when his friends aren't here, so he actually likes it. He's not just showing off his hefty paycheck or his fancy palate. He plays darts a few times a month. In fact, I was expecting his crew in tonight. Responsible, too. I've never had to take his keys. And he remembers to tip.”

Chandler stared at the bartender. Really? He'd noticed that much? Suddenly Chandler felt about eight years old, being scolded for forgetting to write a thank you note, or for licking the butter knife, or any of the dozens of faux pas he'd committed in front of his grandmother. He felt the urge, however briefly, to just say never mind, pay for his beer and leave. 

If he did that, though, it was doubtful he'd ever be back. Not after having such a personal witness. Oh, well. He took a deep breath, met her cool, curious gaze. If he was going down, it'd be spectacular, and in flames.

Comparisons

First off, I want to give a huge Thank You to Kim Galloway. On extremely short notice, she helped me edit my story, Deep Breath, which is going to be published in Ladies of Steampunk magazine (or at least, unless the Seans find it unbelievably awful... ) Deep Breath needed grammatical and consistency edits, plus characterization checks, and at least 500 words cut. (The story was a bit on the Long side...)

Kim did a wonderful job, even if she was scarily nice to me. Look for a guest post from her later; her services are for sale (no, not those services! the editing services!) and I'd highly recommend her if you're a writer and need someone to proof and story-content edit your work. Her rates seem reasonable, although I confess I've never paid anyone to proof my work as yet. I'm always more of a "swap work for work" or owing people favors sort of girl. Maybe, when my writing gig starts paying more, I can afford professional services.

I was talking about her with my husband - as you all probably know, he doesn't read my published work, but he does provide a useful sounding board - and being a little embarrassed at the gushing she did.

This was a thorough pleasure to read.  You are a talented and excellent writer and it is obvious that you love what you do, as you do it so well.  :)  It is a rare treat for me to work with something that I so thoroughly enjoy.  Your piece, as is, is strong and well executed before the editorial comments that I made.

::blush::

I told him what she said, and he gave me this flat look. "You're a good writer."

I said, "I feel about average, most of the time. Maybe a little sub-par. And decidedly lazy."

"I want you to go on the internet and look up 'free sex stories' okay? Read a few of those and get back to me about you being average."

"I've read internet porn, hon," I said. Of course I have. If nothing else, I occasionally find good ideas for positions and situations. "I don't compare myself to that. I compare myself to the other writers that share the collections I'm in. I feel like mid- to bottom of the heap in that group."

"So, in essence, you're comparing yourself to all the students who got into William & Mary and saying you're upset that you're not a straight A student?"

"Erm...."

"That still makes you pretty damn smart, you know that, right?"

Comparisons are a bitchy thing... I have a lot of writer friends on Facebook, Sommer Marsden, Rue Volley, Kathleen Bradean, Shanna Germain, and more. And I often see posts like "Wrote 1200 words today, now I can eat breakfast" and I think about my miserable little 500 words that I manage to crank out a few times a week and I feel... vaguely ashamed. Like a pretender. Like I'm just pissing around, wasting time.

And then I have conversations with another writer friend and we're talking about projects I have out and projects I'm working on, and she's like "man, next to you, I feel so slack." (She's published two novellas, and several shorts... so...)

Here's my accomplishments:

In a little over a year - my first writer's acceptance was May, 2011, for a story that came out in October - I've seen 8 stories accepted and three stories rejected. Of those, I was reassured by one editor that a story was very good, just not a good fit for HER collection; one was rejected because I submitted 2 stories to the same collection and the editor had several stories like the first one, and she wanted the 2nd one instead, one that has been rejected twice with no commentary - all of these stories are back out for consideration with other publications. I hope they'll find a home somewhere.

Really, in a year's time, 8 acceptances is really damn good. I've got five stories currently out for consideration, one that I'm about 1/5th of the way done writing and have finished outlining, (due Oct 1) an idea that won't shut up, so I may try to do that one, although the deadline is pretty tight (Sept 15th... yikes!) and at least 3 more ideas that are percolating.

Yeah, ok. Maybe I'm just awesome.

Blah blah fabulous new shoes blah

Just so you know where the title comes from... this is one of my daughter's favorite books. And one of our favorite books to read to her.

There's a bunch of suggestions as to what the child is grumpy about... did you get up on the wrong side of the bed? Did you stub your toe?

And our favorite; did you have to go over to some adults' house where everything was weird and fragile and you couldn't touch anything and the adults all sat around talking about BORING stuff?

In the background picture, you see a bunch of adult torsos and legs (for some reason, kids in stories never seem to look UP) and conversation bubbles which say things like "blah blah furnace filter blah" "blah kidney stones blah blah" "blah blah fabulous new shoes BLAH."

My husband and I have used that phrase "blah blah fabulous new shoes BLAH!" for several years now, usually meaning "we talked about something that was dull" to describe parties, office problems, neighbor problems... For example: "Well, the UBC had a meeting to discuss the CAR and the ISP issue, blah blah fabulous new shoes blah." (No, as a note, I don't understand any of that, either. Something I think the husband doesn't actually understand any of it either, and neither does anyone else, they're just all involved in a massive game of blind man's bluff.)

Which is basically my long-winded way of saying there's not really a theme to today's entry, I'm just babbling. Blah blah furnace filter blah!

I finally got paid for Golden Moment. I know, I know, it's terrible gauche to talk about money, but still... getting a check for the work. BIG DEAL! That's a thing off my list. I am now officially a paid writer. (I've had a few other things published in small literary magazines that I was "paid" in contributor's copies... some of which I never actually GOT, mind you...) So that was exciting. Now, admittedly, selling short stories is the writer's equivalent of working an internship. You're not really getting paid. Not really.

Given the amount of work I put into Golden Moment; probably 8-10 hours of actually writing, an hour or so reading edits and crits, another 3 hours making those changes... I'm making ish about minimum wage. Which wouldn't be terrible if I was doing 10-12 hours a WEEK, but those hours were spread out over a few months. Not to mention the several months of stalking my inbox, but technically speaking, that was my off-time.

Which is not a bad thing, mind. I'm just saying, no one is going to get rich writing short stories unless they are incredibly prolific and in high demand.

What publishing shorts is for is getting your name out there. Getting experience writing in your chosen genre. Hopefully getting some fans. Making sure the publishers know that you've done your time in the trenches. And that someone else has taken a risk on your work, so maybe they can, too.

Like I said, I'm going to do NaNoWriMo this year. And I'm trying to decide what I want to work on. Right now, the two samples I posted (here and here) are the two things screaming loudest in my head to work on. Wormwood Trade a little louder than Blood Sight. I have almost a full head-worked outline for Wormwood Trade (if I can figure out how to show you my notes, I will, because some of it is pretty interesting from a technical perspective, but I don't have a scanner anymore, so... ) altho my characters are still a little hesitant to develop. I have characters for Blood Sight and a couple of key scenes that I want to hit, but no actual story-map.

Yes, I actually make story maps. I think that Hollywood does these too, where they sort of sketch up stick figures and write little dialogue bits next to them, or descriptions, and they move through the story LONG before the script is finalized, the parts are cast, or any of the special effects are developed. I thought it was a good idea, and I do the same thing. Altho I frequently write my scenes on post-it notes and move them around on the "map" as I work through the idea.

Which is to say right now Wormwood trade looks like this: girl and boy follow these GPS turn by turn instructions, which lead them from Point A to Point G and they go to B C D E and F in between. I just have no real idea who Girl and Boy are, as people. They may very well not go anywhere I want them to.

And Blood Sight looks more like this: Marcus and Rachel start here... somewhere they end up in Bad Guy's dungeon... and they have a friend, Raphael, who is an angel. There's a conspiracy and I think the head warlock is leading it? ...and I have no idea where they're going? Do we know where the fuck the hotel is? Why can't we get back on the interstate from Witchduck Road? We don't know where we're gooooooing... (this bad road trip memory brought to you by SciCon '92, VaBeach.)

I was also debating a bit, and writing a bit, about the werewolf urban supernatural romance (which would sequel Blood Sight) and while I did some research today about eliminating heat signatures and sniper rifles (I wonder if I'm on the FBI watch list yet...) I just couldn't seem to get the story flowing, thus you are not seeing it here...

So... my choices right now are:

Blood Sight: An urban supernatural romance. A very old vampire, Marcus, and a woman with the Sight, Rachel. There's a conspiracy to murder her because her abilities. She's not even aware of the extent of Power the Sight grants her. Not only does she get glimpses of the future, but she is also immune to most warlock and vampire abilities; since she Sees things As They Are, she's not vulnerable to the glamour that vampires and some other creatures use to hide themselves from mortals, beguile them, or otherwise harm them. Rachel has a twin brother, Noah, who's a warlock and may or may NOT be involved in the conspiracy to murder his own sister. (Don't ask me, I don't know!)

Or

Wormwood Trade: Steampunk time-travel romance: The Wormwood Trade is a pirate operation; using forbidden technology they travel between parallel universes, each one similar to, but not exactly like, their own. They can move items and people from one dimension to another. For a price. When a noble loses his only child to war, he pays the exorbitant costs to have an almost mirror image of her taken from a universe where she did NOT die... but when the mirror is discovered by her fiancee, who knows she died six years ago, what will happen? Is she an acceptable substitute, or have the years they've been apart (for him) changed him too much? Can she love the man he is now, or will she continue to pine for the man he was before suffering so much grief and loss?

Any opinions?

What's Your Name, Little Girl?

True story...

I excel at freaking out.

It doesn't take a lot to get my stress meter over 10 (it goes to 11!). And I'm really good at borrowing trouble. I try not to - it's been my experience thus far that "preparing for the worst" doesn't actually prevent any pain when I get to the worst, it just expands the amount of time that I'm upset - but it's been my habit for almost 30 years now, and it's not that easy to get past.

So, yesterday was... not a good day.

I got some edits done, was pretty happy with a finished story. I read it. I put it away. I brought it out and read it out loud. (I'm told this is supposed to help me. I don't know if it really does or not. I've found some errors that way, but mostly not. I think my beta readers are pretty good about catching my grammar mistakes.)

I double checked the submission requirements - I've had it pounded into my head that failing to follow any submission requirements, no matter how trivial, stupid or arbitrary, is grounds to have my submission rejected and my birthday redacted.

In between, I did my normal "day" stuff. Grocery shopping. Housecleaning. Fiddling around on various social networks. Played some Warcraft. You know. Stuff.

Got the mail.

Commence freak out.

Apparently my bank is making some changes. That is to say, they're doing away with my free-checking. $7 a month bank fee, unless I maintain a minimum balance or use direct deposit (I do). Plus a $5 fee, per check card (that's 2, one for me, one for my husband) per month, with no waivers for that fee.

About a year ago, the bank changed me over from Visa to Mastercard. I discovered exactly what a pain in the ass changing accounts is; I do a LOT of things online. Seems like every few days for about three weeks I was getting another email that said, "give us a new credit card number!" And then they cancelled our "rewards" program. It really wasn't that much of a rewards program, honestly. About once a year I could get a $50 cash deposit put back into our checking account, and that around Christmas, so it was useful, but not like fantastic or anything. Mostly they discounted any "regular" charges, so things like my rent, electric, food, or you know, the stuff I actually NEED didn't count as "money spent" anyway. Shrug. Whatever.

But taking the same (or less!) services than I have had for the last 10 years and now charging me $120 a year for it?

So, I'm spazzing.

And I get an email.

"Dear Ms. Townsend,

I think you may have meant to send this to {Contact*}. She doesn't work here at {Publishing Company}. Her address is {Contact@Differentcompany.org}

Sincerely,

{Someone I Never Heard Of}"

Great.....

I triple checked the submissions requirements. No, no, I sent it to the right email address (as listed in the submission request!) Ok, {Contact} is the person who POSTED the Call for Submissions... and {Company} is the place that's publishing them... there's no other contact information listed. There's no link to {Company.}

Freak. Freak.

I googled {Company} and discovered that {Someone I Never Heard Of} was indeed the person I wanted to send my submission to.

Lovely. Just lovely. It's not entirely my fault, but perhaps I should have been a little more careful, done the googling first... I should have done research! Damn it, freak out more! She's going to think I'm a complete idiot (you are a complete idiot!) and not want to look at my submission because I'm a moron. (and your work is terrible anyway.)

I write her an email back and explain my mistake. She seems gracious enough about it.

But of course, my brain's already in full botheration mode.

So, nothing I can do about it now... I push it aside and start making dinner. Only to realize after I've cut up the onion and started sauteing it that I forgot to take the phyllo out of the freezer. You cannot microwave thaw that stuff... I stare at the partially started dinner. Great. Now what?

Around this time, my husband comes home. I haven't quite curled up on the kitchen floor and started sobbing, but I'm almost there.

(Yes, I'm aware that none of these things are tragic. No one's going to beat me with a horsewhip for making mistakes. And everything is fixable. I know. It's part of my being bi-polar, and I can't really do shit about it. Sometimes I just fall to pieces.)

So, I'm telling him about all the stupid that's going on and he's watching me with that semi-comforting, somewhat smug look. While I don't think he likes that I'm bi-polar, I'm almost certain that he does like dealing with my little domestic problems because he can fix them.

"Wait," he stops me about halfway through my rant. "Who did you say answered your email?"

"{Someone I never heard of.}"

"I know her!" he exclaims. "I read her blog."

"...."

* Names have been omitted because I don't want to sound whiny at a particular individual if the story doesn't get accepted, because you know, that's just rude.

A Chat With Someone Else; S. M. Reine

I've read an awful lot of books in the last few days... one of them was 19 Dragons, by S.M. Reine... she's a charming woman, very funny, and I've spent some time "talking" with her across various online mediums, including Twitter.

I have to say first off that 19 Dragons wasn't at all what I expected. I wasn't sure what I expected, but the delightful, witty, and exceptionally poetic novella was NOT it. Truly, a wonderful, wonderful piece... so, Before we get to know my guest a little better, I'd like to say you should probably pick this up, because it's really quite fabulous.

Lynn: Obviously, as a writer, you're just a little on the strange side. What's the oddest thing you do regularly?

S.M.: I disassemble my food. All of it. I don't think I've ever eaten a sandwich by biting the whole thing. Instead, I eat the cheese rolled around the tomato, then shred and devour the meat, and then eat the crust of the bread, and... oh, you get the idea. I'll even do it to whole foods, like bananas.

Lynn: Tell me about how you set up to get some writing done; is coffee/caffeine on your Must Have list before working? Do you have a ritual? Favorite writing spot?

S.M.: I used to have a luxurious writing ritual involving a snifter of brandy, lingerie, and mood music. (Really.) Now that I'm a mom, it's more like guerilla warfare. I write whenever the Helpful Baby is distracted by his feet for more than five seconds. It's harder, because I can't get In the Mood anymore, but it really makes me value my occasional free time. Procrastination is at an all time low in my writing life. I just don't have time for it.

Lynn: We've all answered the question, "If you could talk to any writer, alive or dead, who would it be?" Is there a particular writer (or other famous person) that you'd like to have tossed out on their ear?

S.M.: Ooh. I can think of a few modern writers I wouldn't mind tossing into the fires of Mount Doom, but I have a personal rule against speaking ill of living writers. Instead, I'd like to sacrifice Oscar Wilde. I think he sat around making up pretentious quotes and then cobble them into "stories." I love the guy, but he was a hack.

Lynn: Have you ever done something specifically to "get book fodder?" Tell me about it.

S.M.: I refused to evacuate when I had an insane forest fire practically at my back door. I was entranced by the snowing ash and the bloody hue of the remaining sunlight. The whole side of the mountain glowed with smoldering trees. It was the closest to apocalypse I've ever seen. So horribly dangerous, but so moving and inspirational. Of course, I was younger and much stupider at the time.

Lynn: When did you first decide you wanted to write? What inspired you?

S.M.: I realized writing was my Destiny when I wrote my proto-feminist vision of X-Men (titled "Z Women") in second grade. It was basically terrible fanfic that expressed my irritation at the comics seeming to favor the male mutants over the female mutants. Not much has changed, really.

Lynn: What are some of your favorite books? Anything you'd particularly recommend?

S.M.: I have a million favorite books. Since I've gotten into reading indie books, I have even more, since I feel like I need to advocate for these amazing, underrated novels. I've recently loved "An Apple For Zoe" by Thomas Amo, "Descended by Blood" by Angeline Kace, and "Found in Blood" by Maurice Lawless. (Everything is "blood," isn't it? Haha!)

Lynn: Do you have any word or grammar pet peeves?

S.M.: I'm nutty about commas. My old critique group used to call me the "comma cowgirl." They're so easy to mix up, and they seem to be one of the most frequent errors in a fledgling writer's manuscript. I also get pretty weird about adjectives.

Lynn: 19 Dragons reads like prose, but occasionally the story slips into a poetry, with staggered sentences and blank spaces. I found it intriguing. Without giving away too much of the story, what made you decide to work in this technique?

S.M.: I'd love to say that The 19 Dragons was a masterfully calculated work of art, but I actually had no idea what it was about or where it was going until the end. I had to go back and do a lot of tweaking for consistency because I was really, really pantsing it on that one. The occasional "poetry" pieces appeared on their own. Total accident.

Lynn: Any upcoming new projects we should be on the look-out for?

S.M.: Actually, I have quite a lot coming up. My next appearance will be in an anthology called "Here Be Monsters." The sequel to "Six Moon Summer," called "All Hallows Moon," is coming this fall. I'm also organizing a charity anthology to benefit St. Jude Children's Research Hospital that will be released in December. Hard to believe I wasn't publishing anything a year ago, whereas I'll have five publications in 2011!

Lynn: Well, thanks for your time, and good luck! I know I've enjoyed getting a peek into your head!

What? Are you still here? Go... buy the book! Go read. Shoo!

Just a Quickie

Yesterday I was reading through a marketplace for submissions; essentially a web site where you can go and see if any publishers are looking for a story like yours, or to get ideas for new stories to write. I've got a bit of a gap between now and when my current WIP is due. (October 1, to be precise, and I've already written more than half of it...)

I wasn't even really looking hard for "new work". Just kinda getting a feel for it. Window browsing.

I came across one CFS that looked good; specifically looking for new writers, not at all published, or only published since June 2010. As my story in Steamlust isn't coming out til October, I'm pretty much exactly meeting those requirements.

However, the story call was Very Open. Topic/genre/setting all open, except for a few basic no-nos (which she spelled out, because we are NEW! Hehe!) No underage sex, no animals (shape-shifters don't count), no dead things (ditto on vampires being excluded.)

I book-marked it and wandered away from keyboard to do the dishes.

Open-ended... hmmm. I have a mostly finished story about ghosts/zombies. (I haven't really decided what they are, except for being recently deceased...) Maybe I could do that... well, haven't I written a lot of supernatural stuff recently?

And then I got hit with the inspiration mallet.

Literally. Hit.

Felt like someone walked up to me and wopped me on the head. I staggered backwards.

I hadn't thought about that particular episode in a long, long time. And honestly, as far as sex went, it wasn't that wonderful. It was kinda scary and had the thrills of possibility of being caught, which added to my excitement, but as far as technique? No. I was back in college and sex back then was never more than wham! bam! Heh. I didn't know any better and neither did my myriad lovers.

However... could I take the situation... and have a run with it?

Yes, yes I could.

And I did.

Two thousand words yesterday.

Almost another two thousand today.

And it's already done.

I don't know that I've ever written that quickly before.

Awesome!

My Three Favorite Words

DONE DONE DONE! (said with all appropriate amounts of drama... in fact, usually I sing them)

Finished off my WIP yesterday. Skating in just under the maximum word-count at 8,987 words (for a 5,000 - 10,000 word short story... honestly, 10k words doesn't seem "short" to me, that's 20 pages, but I guess it doesn't really fall into novella lengths either.)

I've said it before, I'll say it again; I get my best work done at the laundromat. How weird is that?

Well, it does have some things going for it - there's no wifi there unless I want to cross the street and work over at the Burger King. Without the web and email to distract me, I can get a lot more accomplished. (I've thought about trying to set up some sort of timer on the wireless in the house... push a button and the wifi comes down for an hour? Eh.... because you know, I don't want to set up some sort of from 10am - 3pm, no internet... what if I'm taking the day off and want to play Warcraft?)

There's something soothing about the sound of so many washers and dryers running, unless someone's load gets unbalanced, in which case it reminds me greatly of some upstairs neighbors I used to have. For them, I was so tempted to blare music with a good, steady backbeat, just because I felt sorry for them and their complete lack of rhythm.

And mostly no one bothers me anymore. I can get in a good solid 25 minutes, get up, stretch, switch the loads from washer to dryer and get in another good, solid 30 minutes. You might think I wouldn't get much done in less than an hour, but solid work seems to flow out of the laundromat. It's either work or watch daytime TV, and frankly, I'd rather spork myself to death than watch Wheel of Fortune, or any of the Judge Judy sorts of things that they have running in there.

Yesterday while I was there, I ran into a woman with some absolutely lovely tattoo work. So, after I bundled up my wash and got it into the car, I stopped to talk with her. Turns out she's a romance reader, so I left her my card. If she ends up here - Hi Courtney! - that's cool. I wish I'd thought to take pictures, her breastbone work was particularly amazing. That's the other thing about the laundromat... her dryer had broken down, so she's not a regular... I meet some fascinating people there. (sometimes less than fascinating... the skinhead guy who didn't want to take "no, I won't date you" for an answer comes to mind)

So... now I'm done with Shadow of Kenfig. I sent it out to my betas yesterday and already got one back.

Schedule:

edit Shadow of Kenfig, (Aug 1)

submit Shadow of Kenfig (Aug 10)

2,500 - 4,500 word short story, A is for Absinthe, Steampunk Romance (Sep 15)

edit Marked Man, Cha 1 - 10 (Sept 30)

1,500 - 3,000 word short story, Ripped, about succubi (Oct 1)

2,500 - 4,500 word short story, P.B.E.M., Duty & Desire (Oct 15)

Cloud 58

[As a reminder, there's only two more days to sign up for the promotional contest! Either Follow this blog --> use the little button on the right there, I don't write so much here that your RSS feed will be overwhelmed! OR sign up to fan my Facebook page or Tweet about the contest (@tisfan so i can see it! OR write a brief blog post directing people to this site... and tell me about it in the comments. Winners will get some cute promotional materials, coffee, and a copy of Dreamlover.]

Right, moving along.

I had a great coffee-chat with my editor yesterday. She was astonished to learn that Golden Moment is my first publication. Apparently my copy was so clean that there were a couple of comma changes and ONE word that she wasn't entirely thrilled with, but decided not to bother me with those minor edits. So, on the plus, it means I do a fairly good job of self-policing, and that my beta readers and editor-suggesters are awesome. I'd thank them publicly, but one of them would rather NOT be thanked (I understand this person's privacy concerns) and I don't want to give the other one over-credit. But, thanks y'all. You know who you are!

I got the scoop on an upcoming CFS (Call for Submission)... so I'll have to do some thinking about that.

She was also exceptionally pushy about my submitting my novel; Marked Man has been sitting in the trunk for a while. So, I'll schedule in edits for that, and start trying to move it.

We talked about books we've read, other writers we admire, our first pieces of erotic fiction (mine was Claiming of Sleeping Beauty, by Anne Rice) and kids. There's something incredibly bonding about discussing kids with another woman that I rarely get to experience. Most of my women friends either don't have children, or, in the case of my best lady friend, I already had a fairly close bond with before we spawned.

It's one thing; much as I love my beta readers, to have friends rave about your work. Not that I don't think they'd tell me something was crap if it was - in fact, one of my readers didn't actually like Golden Moments all that much. But I always wonder... how much praise comes from a fondness for the person behind the keyboard? It's something totally different to have a relative stranger, one who is herself an award-winning writer, give praise.

Apparently I was so high on life yesterday that my husband wouldn't let me drive home (I went to pick him up from work... him and three ENORMOUS zucchinis that he got from his co-worker... seriously, these are some scary gourds!) for fear that I'd run us right into a telephone pole.