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July 22, 2006
This is probably the most relaxed I’ve been before the national conference in years. For the first time in several years, I’m not a workshop speaker. Plain and simple, I missed the deadline to submit. :o I enjoy speaking and giving workshops but it does take some of the stress factor out. I also love to fly but it also seems terribly easy to hop in my car for a 45-minute drive and voila…I’m there.
This is my tenth national conference and every year I learn something new and find myself inspired. I won’t sit through workshops all day, but I’m looking forward to “refilling my well” with some sessions.
And speaking of “refilling my well”…there’s the literacy signing. I’ve said it about a gazillion times and I’ll say it again — I don’t write for myself. I write because I want to offer readers the opportunity to laugh and love and occasionally cry through a book — to leave their world behind for a while and join in an adventure. I love meeting readers and talking about books and writing. If you’re attending the literacy signing, please stop by to say hello!
Of course, I’m looking forward to seeing friends I only see once a year. This year is especially exciting as two friends have sold in the last year. Woohoo!!! I can’t wait to share a celebratory drink with the fabulous Kris Starr and Dee Tenorio. I’m also looking forward to meeting new Blaze author Tawny Weber. My conference roomie is from California and this is our once-a-year get together and catch-up time. Unfortunatley, our other roomies couldn’t make it this year.
I suppose I should be nervous about the RITA’s on Saturday night but I’m not. I’m excited that my family (the DH and the Girl) will be there with me but that’s more of a case of them getting a sample of what National is like than being torqued out about whether I win or not. That outcome’s already been decided by the judges and while it’d be great to win, it’s been a fun ride either way. 
All of that said, it’s also a fact that crowds make me nervous. I’m also GREAT with faces but LOUSY with names…and then I get nervous and it just confounds the name thing. (Once I was introducing my next-door neighbor of 12 years at a party. This woman and I walked together every morning. I just blanked out. I finally had to lean into her ear and ask her to remind me of her name. Jennifer. How sad is that?) So, please don’t be offended if you say hello and I have to check your name badge.
July 20, 2006
I’ve taken advantage of the gap in my schedule (NASCAR proposal is in and National conference doesn’t start until next week) to come home to see my mother and my step-father. I’ve been quite worried about my mother. She had open-heart surgery last September and when I saw her in June she was doing terrible. After I threatened to pack her up in my car and take her to Atlanta to see a cardiologist (guaranteed to light a fire under them), they finally switched doctors. Hallelujah! New doctor adjusted her meds and she’s doing great. She sounded good on the phone but I needed to come see it for myself.
This morning while I was out for a run (yep, better get out there early since the thermometer’s gonna hit in the low hundreds today), it occurred to me that while people will arrive from all over for National next week, they won’t get a real taste of the real south. Atlanta, which I love, with its blend of cultures from all over the world, is like an appetizer. For a true taste of the south, you have to find the small towns like the one I grew up in.
Here’s my taste of the south when I come home:
Supper is the evening meal. If I slip up and call it dinner my stepfather is quick to remind me, “Girl, you’re in supper country now. We don’t have dinner.”
Supper last night was fried chicken, macaroni and cheese, potato salad, fresh butterbeans with okra, sliced tomatoes, sweet tea, and good conversation. All homemade.
The dishwasher is…me. They don’t have a dishwasher and Mama always fusses that she can do it, but I wash and she dries. You know, you can have some good conversation cleaning up a kitchen.
Sitting on the back stoop in the shade drinking a cold beer with my stepfather before supper because Mama doesn’t like beer in the house.
An after-dinner, oops, after-supper walk is down the one-lane dirt road that runs past their house. Giant pin-oaks that have probably stood there for sixty years stretch their branches clear to the other side and form a green canopy studded with mistletoe.
Standing out at the fig tree and picking and eating fresh figs. This is probably one of my favorite things in the world. It’s impossible not to know a moment of sublime contentment when you pluck a fresh fig and bite into it.
Everyone knows you, even if you haven’t lived her in 25 years. I was standing in the grocery store line to buy a six-pack of beer. My elementary school principal was behind me and said, “I see what you’re buying.” Let’s see… quick calculation… I was legal 25 years ago. Still I said, “Yes, sir. My mama knows I’m getting it.”
They’ve added a traffic light since I left home. There are now three in town.
I can only access the Internet through a 1-800 dial-up. No other available connections.
A large number of churches per capita, mostly Baptist and Methodist, a couple of other denominations sprinkled in.
It’s my south, and I love it. It’s home.
July 17, 2006
http://www.inkalicious.com/musings/archives/74 - author Michele Albert
I have realized, and made peace with, the fact that for me writing is 80% thinking and 20% writelikecrazyandracethedeadline. Seriously. Until I have a real understanding of my characters, and they start to click for me, all I do is struggle in the writing. And once things “click,” then the story flows so much better. I do wish, though, that the click thing would happen a lot sooner than two months before my deadline. Hard on the nerves, that.
Michele and I are apparently living parallel lives except I’ve not made peace with this.
July 16, 2006
Yay! I’m finally getting in the groove with this book. Whew! Not a moment too soon considering the first three chapters are due tomorrow but I’m having fun and starting to really have a good time with the characters. Okay, off to write like the wind today (ha, I hope…translate that to I NEED to write like the wind).:[
July 15, 2006
I got my hair done on Thursday. Roots were reaching critical mass. Of course, maybe they weren’t that bad or I have the world’s most unobservant secretary because she asked me afterwards, “Oh, you’re not a natural blonde?” Uh…not since I was about nineteen.:p
Anyway, my stylist is a little out there. She “does hair” three days a week and the other days she works as a musician singing back-up at a studio in the city and writing and recording her own songs. She’s young and hip and gorgeous and she sees me as a fellow artist. I usually give her free reign on my hair and I think she sees it as an opportunity to indulge her creativity.
This time she said she thought we needed to go more red. Okay. So, she’s gooping up my hair while we’re gabbing about professional ennui, Johnny Depp’s hot factor despite the fact that he’s too skinny and has a hairless chest, and Gnarls Barkley. When I’m all gooped up I decide to pay attention.
“Uh…just how red are we going here?”
She dabs the goo on my eyebrows which is, BTW, incredibly attractive coupled with the foiled color duo going on on my head. “Pretty red.”
That’s “pretty” as in a sizeable amount as opposed to a state of attactiveness.:x
Anywho, the hair turned out okay. Copper with blond chunked in. The Girl likes it.(y) My uber conservative husband says he does — course that could just be the man being smart since he has to share a bed with me.:p
(After all these years, I think he’s just numb to the hair thing. At least it wasn’t like the time I went on a business trip to L.A. and a bunch of the guys I worked with dared me to get a buzz cut–ya know when you’re twenty pounds lighter you can carry that look a whole lot better. I came home with a flat top and there wasn’t even any alchohol involved.:o My gay friend, John, called me Betty Butch for the next two months.)
But…back to the red factor. The hair is okay. I like it.
It’s the eyebrows. They’re copper.
Thanks to the eyebrows I look like an escapee from clown school. :(
But I’m not despairing. I think the dye is still on my skin beneath the brows and I’m trusting that will fade/go away. And there’s always the magic of a brow pencil. And I can just pull my bangs down into my eyes.
And maybe next time I’ll pay a little more attention when I’m in that chair.8)
July 14, 2006
Posted on Amazon re: my book, Highland Fling (the 1 rating didn’t come through, sorry):
Offensive and Not Entertaining, July 10, 2006
Reviewer: J. Wallace “Voracious Reader” (Tennessee) - See all my reviews
My sister asked for this book as a gift because she’s been on a Blaze kick and we both agreed the time travel aspect would be nifty. However, it is not. For starters, there is reference to something in such poor taste in the first two pages, it may turn your stomach. It’s not cute, it’s not cool and gripping, and it’s not funny, whether or not it is supposedly reallistic. And trust me when I say neither of us is a prude. The incident has absolutely no significance in the overall arc of the book, either. Structurally, it only seems to be there for the sensationalism. And second, once the time travel part occurs, it’s got all the historical accuracy of a Hagar the Horrible cartoon strip. The humor is forced, and the sex scenes are rote. Not recommended by my sister, who reads a ton of Blazes and erotica, or by me, who reads a ton of everything. I have rarely if ever been moved to write an Amazon review, but this gacked me out so much I felt compelled to share. And not in a “Oh my gosh this is gross, taste this!” way, either. I do realize I’ve made it sound titillating in that “stare at the car wreck to see if there’s any blood and guts” kind of way. Some may rush out and buy it, and any author who can convince her publisher to run with this deserves the income. But no more from me; I’m too scared there will be more painful attempts at humor that are in similar poor taste.
Okay, let me set the record straight…I swear I didn’t pay her to post this. Had I paid her I would’ve insisted it go out without incorrect spellings.:d But I feel as if I should pay her. I’ve had a ton of people e-mail me that they’re rushing to buy the book to see what was so offensive. While I’m disappointed that she didn’t like it, I’m sincerely grateful for the boost in sales.
I don’t usually come with a money-back guarantee, but I’m making an exception in this case. If Ms. Wallace will stop by my table at RWA’s National Literacy signing (she’ll be there, according to her website), I’ll have $6 in cash with me at my table to reimburse her. That should cover the cost of the book, tax, and the mental/emotional trauma she obviously suffered during the read. She can keep the change for her scintillating review because I suppose I really should pay her.
July 13, 2006
A study conducted by UCLA’s Department of Psychiatry has revealed that
the kind of face a woman finds attractive on a man can differ
depending on where she is in her menstrual cycle. For example, if she is
ovulating, most women are attracted to a man with rugged and masculine
features. If she is menstruating or menopausal, she tends to be more
attracted to a man with scissors lodged in his temple and duct tape
over his mouth while he is on fire.
No further studies are expected.
July 12, 2006
Who’d have thunk a guy in eyeliner with gold teeth and dirty fingernails could be so “shiver me timbers” sexy? Yowza. Yep, you don’t have to be Einstein to figure out we went to see POC, Dead Man’s Chest last night. :p
I enjoyed the movie. It was entertaining but really, Depp just steals the show with sheer force of character. My girl is an Orlando Bloom fan and I like him well enough although he’s a bit fresh-faced and young for me. Will Turner’s erstwhile-ness grates on me a bit while Jack Sparrow’s machinations are much more appealing. Sparrow is the ultimate unwilling hero. And Johnny…well, he’s quite brilliant really.
July 11, 2006
My Blaze time travel, Highland Fling, where a contemporary E.R. doctor finds herself whisked back to 1744 Scotland, is out now and I’m so excited because readers seem to love this book. I’m getting a slew of mail on it. For me, it’s incredibly gratifying/satisfying/validating. (*)
A number of letters are from readers who say they’ve never read a romance before but they’ll be reading more. (y) That’s awesome! I love hearing that a reader liked a book and I like hearing about their favorite part or their favorite character.
It’s especially gratifying since I’ve plunged into the murky waters of this NASCAR book. At least once upon a time I wrote a good book….:s
July 10, 2006
Anyone else out there diggin’ Gnarls Barkley? Love his voice and it’s an interesting blend of sounds/selections on his…uh, can’t remember which cd and I can’t find the jewel case but it’s the one with Crazy on it.
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