First review for THE ASSASSIN

Hey, here it is -- the first review for Selena and company. Harriet Klausner says:

“The key to THE ASSASSIN is the believability of Selena as a fighter, a survivor, and a woman in love…The story line grips the audience from the moment Selena shows her skills against a much heavier male opponent and never slows down until she must choose sides. Readers will wonder whether she will go with the father figure who “saved” her in the past or the hunk who offers her a warm enlightened future. Rachel Butler provides a gripping thriller that keeps her audience guessing which one Selena will select.” Rachel1:24 PM

Notice something new?

Yep, there are a few changes to the blog. That's because some putz spammed me last week with about a hundred posts for some online gambling thing. To quote some famous dead person, "Hell is other people" -- or, in this case, hell is spammers. Oh, yeah, buddy, the way to get me to visit your site is to inundate me with unwanted, uninvited, unwelcome mail! If I could get my hands (and feet!) on him, I'd give him a whole new understanding of "Texas Hold 'em." Rachel1:20 PM

My morning laugh

I'm not a baseball fan, but I caught Matt Lauer's interview with Jose Canseco this morning. What a hoot! To hear Jose tell it, he pretty much single-handedly made baseball a sport that people can care about. He says his book is the most fascinating book ever written on a sports topic, and that he'll prove the claims he makes therein (about steroid use in pro baseball) by taking a lie detector test -- but, apparently, only for big bucks up front.

Gee, maybe I should start telling people that THE ASSASSIN is the most thrilling suspense novel ever written! Think that would get me on "The Today Show"?

Just sign me . . . Still Chuckling in Oklahoma
Rachel8:02 AM

Deb Dixon's coming to Tulsa!

My wonderful writers' group, Romance Writers Ink, is bringing the master of Goal, Motivation and Conflict, Deb Dixon, to Tulsa for a one-day workshop on March 12, 2005. If you're within driving distance and have the least interest in writing, COME! Deb is a wonderful speaker, and I guarantee, you'll go home more motivated than you've been in a long time. The cost is cheap -- $50, plus you provide your own lunch -- and it's a bargain at twice the price. If you want more information, email me, and I'll point you in the direction of the person in charge.

Rachel7:44 AM

The daffodils are blooming!

That's always what I look for to suggest that spring is finally coming, though this year I wasn't expecting any. Last summer, I dug up what passes for a flowerbed near my office -- okay, so it's only grown weeds for the past eight years -- with the good intentions of planting a really gorgeous floral display. Didn't get that far, but in the process of the digging, I did dig up all the daffodil bulbs and never replanted them. At least, I thought I got them all. But nope, three beautiful little daffodils have stuck up their heads and opened up (after our 78 degree high yesterday, how could they resist??). It always delights me to see them -- especially when the morning's a little gray and chilly, like today. They just seem so hopeful! Maybe I'll actually get that flowerbed planted this year so I can have flowers all summer long. (See what I mean about hopeful?)

Rachel7:40 AM

Monday Morning

So here I am, locked inside my office, supposedly working on those darn revisions, and what am I doing? Anything but. Revisions, I've decided, are a state of mind. I have to not think about them for a while before I can actually start them. It's something in how my brain's wired, I guess -- my subconscious has to wrestle those pesky little problems into shape before my conscious mind can tackle them. The only problem with that is that sometimes it's hard to tell whether my subconscious is really working or just goofing off. Surfing the Net, playing Free Cell, piddling around the house -- whether it's work or not, it all looks the same, even to me.

See how good a handle I've got on this creativity gig? My writing day is mostly gone, and I don't even know whether I've started work or not.

Writers' schedules is one thing that always seems to interest non-writers. (Another is "How much money do you make?" And "Do you research all the sex scenes yourself?") I used to have one -- a schedule, I mean. I wrote all night, got to bed around 6 a.m., and slept until around 3 p.m. It worked for a while, then suddenly I began getting up at 5 a.m. and working all morning. That worked for a while, too, until I started playing through the morning and writing in the afternoon. Right now, I'm back to mornings . . . sort of. The problem is when I get up around 8, get dressed, work out an hour, shower, get dressed again, check e-mail, have breakfast, and finally make it to the office, the morning's practically gone -- not a good thing when my treacherous subconscious looks at the clock and says, "Almost noon -- hey, it's quitting time.\"

That's why my real honest-to-God got-a-deadline-to-meet schedule doesn't rely on time but on real honest-to-God work. I have to focus on the number of pages produced rather than the hours on the clock. Generally, I shoot for ten or twelve pages a day, though I might get twenty, or I might have to settle for three. Those are the times when the muse just isn't cooperating, and it's a total waste of time to continue. I'm better served walking away from the computer and doing something mindless -- rearranging cabinets or chopping down trees works nicely to reenergize the muse and get her to working again. Good thing I've got too many messy cabinets and thousands of trees on the property. Otherwise, I might have to beat her into submission, and who knows what she might produce then?
Rachel9:19 AM

"Revisions" is a four-letter word

Okay, yeah, I can count . . . but it's become such a dirty word in my household. I used to think that writing a synopsis (an outline to use as a selling point, then ignore when you actually write the story) was the worst job in the publishing biz. A synopsis requires me to know things that I never know when starting a book, like what's going to happen. But I found that you can finesse your way through one of those, especially if you focus on the emotional journey rather than the actual events.

But revisions . . . God save me. It took me four times as long to revise The Assassin as it did to write the book in the first place. I don't want to read the same (or very similar) book over and over, so I darn sure don't want to write it over and over.

Gee, can you tell I just got my revisions for Deep Cover? (Where are those blasted little smiley faces when you need one?)

Part of my dislike for revisions is just me. When a book is finished, for me it's finished . . . I don't mind a little tweaking, but that story is over and done with, finis, outta my head. My muse -- if she hasn't already hit the beach somewhere in the Caribbean -- is raring to go on to the next set of people living inside me. Our contract says she does the aforementioned tweaking willingly, but anything beyond that is like pulling teeth.

And part of it -- how silly is this? -- is semantics. I don't mind making changes to my story. I do it all the time, from the first line of Page 1 to the last line of the last page. But they're not "revisions." They're "changes." And it makes a difference. Hey, I said it was silly. Revisions make me hyperventilate. Changes are more of a challenge -- and like my heroine, Selena, I just can't resist a challenge. But until I find a way to trick my brain into thinking one word instead of the other, I'm still finding it just a tad difficult to breathe. Wonder if I can convince my muse to stay here and work and let me hit that Caribbean beach?

Rachel8:13 AM