Friday

AGAIN!!!!!

"It's never gonna stop raining. Not until we drown." -- the kiddo as a kid when the rain wore him down.

One of the dogs woke me at two freakin' a.m. to get a drink. Now, I can understand having to go to the bathroom unexpectedly. That's normal. An emergency, even. But to get a freakin' drink?? Gimme a break. After he got his drink, I shoved his ass out the door anyway. Not that he did anything after he got out there, but I felt better for it.

Anyway, you know me and naps and rainy days. I wrote seven pages and my eyes were drooping so bad that I couldn't even read what was on the screen. (And it was in an eighteen-point font.) So I took a nap. A four-hour nap. Man, I felt good when I got up. I even wrote another seven pages just to prove it.

But I've missed my preliminary goal on this book: I intended to finish it today. Sadly, I'm still about thirty pages from the end. But I wrote a few extra "nothing" days into my schedule, and they should just about get it done and get me back on schedule. Next coming up for me -- after following this one with a proposal starring the hero's little brother -- is a novella. I never was great at writing short, but everyone's going shorter these days, so it's a good skill to learn.

And in between things, I'm making a quick trip to Dallas. Leah and I are cruising down to help out at our chapter's T-shirt sales at the RWA national conference the second weekend of July. We'll swing by and pick up Liz, hit the conference hotel, sell the hell out of those T-shirts with fellow chapter members Linda, Ashley, Deanna and maybe Margaret, spend the night at Liz's, then head home again.

So if you're in Dallas at the RWA conference, come by the Romance Writers Ink and be prepared to part with $17 for the coolest T-shirt on sale. And say hello while you're there. Liz, Leah and I will be happy to see you.

Even if it's still freakin' raining.






Rachel9:07 PM

Thursday

AGAIN. Enough said.

How are my tomatoes supposed to get big and beautiful and juicy and red if they don't ever see the sun???

Cool sign on a local church: America: land of the free because of the brave.

The Fourth is coming fast -- and everyone around here is worrying whether it'll be dry long enough for the fireworks celebrations. I haven't bought fireworks in more years than I can recall -- since the kiddo was little, I'm sure -- but I'm going to pick some up this year. My niece is in Central America, doing this missions thing for the third year in a row, and she'd wanted some. Her parents will probably remember, but thought I'd get some, too, just in case. She's an amazing kid -- goes to school, makes good grades, works, does tons of volunteer stuff at her church, does these missions trips in the summer, makes a special effort to look after my other sister and her husband and our mother, and still has energy to spare. Wish I could borrow some of it!

Her older sister is great, too. She's married, has a young stepson whom we all adore, and is a neonatal intensive care nurse. Trust me, she's got some stories to tell. I admire people who work with sick kids in general, but particularly with kids who aren't going to make it. I couldn't do it, but I'm grateful as hell that people like Lauren can.

Back to the Fourth . . . Mom's family gets together at my uncle's house for burgers and other great food, and they all contribute fireworks that the kids set off once it's good and dark by the pond. Robert and I usually go for the food, but leave before the fireworks. We live at the top of a big hill -- gee, haven't mentioned that before, have I? -- so we have an excellent view of the fireworks in Sapulpa, at Tulsa's Riverparks, in Bixby (I think), and (in the past) at Bell's Amusement Park in Tulsa.

Bell's has been around forever, it seems, but they're packing it up as I type. They lost their lease at the fairgrounds. Going to the state fair won't be the same without a stop to ride Zingo, the big roller coaster. I remember going when I was pregnant with the kiddo, and being so disappointed because Robert wouldn't let me ride. (Wonder if that has something to do with why the kiddo has never, ever liked roller coasters -- or, really, rides of any kind? But he thinks going a hundred and fifty on the Ducati with his hair on fire is fun. Go figure.)

Ah, another tangent. Back to the Fourth again . . . Robert prefers to watch the various city displays from our hilltop. One time we took two cars so I could wander home when I was ready. The only reasonable way from my uncle's house to mine goes past the Sapulpa fireworks display, and honest to God, people were stopped right in the middle of the highway watching it. It took me more than an hour to go maybe seven miles. Sure, I had a great view of the fireworks. In my truck. All alone. Hot hot hot, and needing to pee really badly. No freakin' fun at all.

Don't know what I'll do this year -- go home early and miss out on the traffic and the fun of spending more time with the family or stay and miss out on the oohs and ahhs of the professional displays. Of course, if it doesn't stop raining, it doesn't much matter, does it?

Wishing, hoping and dreaming for a little dry spell . . .

Rachel9:53 AM

Wiindsday

Again. Ugh.

Well, no thunder or lightning -- yet -- but plenty of rain.

Among my myriad problems with too much rain: rainy days are perfect for snoozing. One of my favorite things to do is turn down the AC to get it nice and chilly, then snuggle under the covers and let the slow, steady breathing of one or more of the dogs lull me off to sleep.

I'm sleep-challenged. Have been since I was a kid. But when I was fifteen, it was a lot easier to get by on four hours of sleep than it is now. Now it doesn't matter how much sleep I get; I'm always sleepy. Not tired, necessarily; just sleeping. In the past I could blame it on my sleep apnea -- you know, where you stop breathing when you're asleep? I tested at "moderate apnea" on the sleep study a few years back because I woke up "only" 24 times an hour. Only??? No wonder I was pooped.

The thing is, you're not really awake most of those times. After you stop breathing, your brain wakes up enough to send a message to the lungs to get their asses back to work. But then there's that occasional one where you stop breathing long enough that when your brain does jump-start, you give this great big panicked-sounding inhale that usually wakes not only you but everyone else in the room with you. (And scares the pee out of dogs. Take my word for it.)

Which is why I sleep every night with my CPAP -- a little machine that creates Continuous Positive Airway Pressure. It's like sleeping with a vacuum turned to blow clamped on your face. No shit, nights are not romantic in the Butler household. First I have to braid my hair in two Swiss-mountain-girl type braids to keep it from getting tangled in all the Velcro. Then I put on this full-face mask, which actually only covers my nose and mouth. The headgear is like a five-point restraint system, plus there's a another strap that goes on last, under the chin to fasten on top of the head. Then there's a six-foot hose coming out from the vicinity of the nose to hook onto the machines next to the bed. One actually creates the air that blows continuously into the mask; the other is a humidifier.

Once I'm all hooked up, it's hard for Robert to even find a bare spot to kiss goodnight. It's hard to talk with the mask on, though I have learned I can sound something like Darth Vader if I try. And sometimes, in the middle of the night, the seal around the mask will break and it makes a loud whooshing sound until I finally wake up. And we've learned that we can't snuggle face-to-face when I'm wearing it because the CO2 (?) vent blows right in Robert's eyes.

Dangling on the right side of the mask is the panic strap -- required by law, or so I was told, on all full-face masks. It's a little string that, when pulled, undoes the Velcro fastening in back so the mask comes loose. Gee, I dunno . . . I'm panicking and need to get the mask off asap. Am I going to fumble around in the dark trying to find this little dangling strap, or am I gonna just reach behind with one hand and yank the sucker apart? I'm voting for yanking.

Learning to sleep with the machine wasn't as tough as I'd thought it would be. I mean, you're wearing a mask and head gear and you've got air blowing constantly into your nose/mouth to keep your airway from collapsing, and the machine makes it own noise and you have to learn to breathe out against the incoming air. But honest to God, it wasn't hard at all. However . . .

Thank God I don't have the regular kind of job where I have to get up and leave the house in the morning. Mask + head gear + me mashing face into pillow all night = some pretty funky lines all over my face. Everyone knows if I was bad and skipped the mask the night before, because I'll be missing the lines that all the injectible stuff in the world couldn't plump up. And they last for hours. Fortunately, I haven't run into anyone crass enough to ask, "What's wrong with your face?" (Oh, that question could mean soo many things.)

Okay, all this talk about sleep has made me sleepy. And I haven't written a word elsewhere today, so I'd best try. If it's tough going, I can always take a nap, then try again.






Rachel10:07 AM

WTF, It's Tuesday

Leah smacked me for complaining about the rain last week (or whenever the heck it was). Just because the state's been in a long drought that was starting to make the Dust Bowl more imaginable . . . well, I'VE HAD ENOUGH RAIN. I don't want it to stop forever. I just want to walk out in my yard one time and not sink into the soggy muck. I want to mow the whole freakin' yard once more before winter. I want the slimy green yuck growing on the rock steps I built with my own freakin' hands to GO AWAY.

Then it can rain again. Every Monday, six a.m. to noon. That should do nicely.

I did get a little trimming done this morning before the rain started again. The grass was too tall and too wet for the mower, so I had to take the trimmer out. I was wet from the knees down by the time I finished. I'd scheduled an hour, and that's about what I had when the wet coming down from the sky started to match the wet flying up from the grass.

Started reading Harry Potter 2 last night. You know I love the books, but they're not perfect by any means. Harry's home life is just downright depressing, and the world-building isn't always consistent. And the kids at Hogwarts must be the most superficial kids in the world. One minute they're awed by Harry, the next he's their hero, the next they suspect him of dastardly deeds.

And have you noticed how the truth serum only comes out when it's convenient to the plot? Right now I'm at the point where Harry's suspected of putting the cat and the kids in a state of suspended animation. Someone attacking students at the school -- sounds like a great time to whip up a little veritas or whatever it's called. But, no, that would clear things up too quickly. So instead we dawdle along with people making accusations and pointing fingers and, basically, doing nothing until Harry proves his own innocence.

All that aside, though, Rowling tells a good story, and in the end, that's what we read for, isn't it? To be entertained, caught up in a story to the point that we don't notice its problems? And this is like, the fifth time I've read this book, so I'm clearly entertained!

Rachel9:45 AM

WTF, It's Monday

It's hot. It's humid. I'm late to the office because I took some time this morning to vacuum -- not my job, but we're about knee-deep in dog hair, dust and dander. And to unload/load the dishwasher. And to do a little dusting. (Also not my job, but see above.) I'm already tired and sleep-deprived, and I still have twelve pages to go to reach today's goal -- and I haven't even opened the file yet!

Yep, it's Monday.

Saturday I went shopping with Rober to buy a new holster. (Bad puppy ate part of the old one.) Let me grab the first Harry Potter book to read while you're in the store, I said. Gun stores aren't my favorite place to hang out. I've got my nine, a holster, a rug, extra clips. It may be old, but it's a great gun. It'll still kill an intruder dead. And unlike the males in this family, I've got no interest in having more than one gun, so gun stores aren't my favorite place to hang out.

So I hurried into the front room -- if we were snootier, we'd call it our library, since it's where 90% of our books are housed -- and began looking on the shelves for the matching set of six hardcover Harry Potter books. These are not small books. The longer Rowling writes, the longer she writes. Two walls filled with books, and I couldn't find the HP books. (So I read a magazine while Robert took thirty minutes to buy a holster almost identical to the old one and shoot the shit with the off-duty cops inside.)

After working all day Sunday, I was determined to locate those books. Okay, so I'm a crappy housekeeper. Could I really be so crappy that six big hardcover books could disappear into the debris? Sad answer: yes. But not in this case. I finally found them -- on a chair in the same room, underneath another stack of hardcovers waiting for shelf space and behind a stack of old record albums waiting for -- who the hell knows? For vinyl to make a comeback?

(Let's throw them away, I suggest. But what if we want to listen to them? Robert asks. On what? I counter. We don't own a record player! My mother doesn't own a record player, which means they have gone the way of the dinosaurs.)

Anyway, I've now reread the first Harry Potter, and will start on #2 after work this evening. Presuming that I ever get to work. And hopefully, by the time the new HP comes out, I'll be caught up and all the details will be fresh in my mind.

Yep, it's that funny. My mind is a scary -- and forgetful -- place.

Later, gaters!

Rachel10:14 AM

Saturday

Forecast: woke up to clouds, got some rain, then got some hot, humid and sunny. Didn't feel so hot, so I took a long nap. Now I feel thick-headed and not so hot. I can't seem to get my fingers working at the same time on the keyboard, so just about every word's missing one or more letters for me to go back and fix.

Work done today: zero, unless thinking about characters counts. It wasn't even useful thinking -- just that drifting-off-t0-sleep thinking that you usually forget by the time you wake up.

Evening forecast: more clouds and more doing nothing. Nah, I'm gonna try to write if I get this brain fog to go away and if my fingers start obeying better than my dogs do. (Excuse me a minute while I roll on the floor laughing at the mere thought of "dogs" and "obey" in the same sentence.)

On the other hand, I may just go to bed early. I've never slept the better part of a Saturday away, but it's never too late to try.

It's just one of those days. Rachel6:39 PM

Ever have a day like this?

Isn't he a doll? And typically male. Getting himself in trouble, and odds are, the one who pulls him out will be female.

One of the best commercials ever: for Sea World, San Diego: "Want a job? Put on a pink dress. Now stand on one leg." (Switch to pink flamingos in the pink-flamingo habitat.) "Sorry. That position is taken."

Among the worst commercials ever: anything with the creepy, freaky Burger King guy. You know, he wears that stupid giant head and never talks and just raises the ick factor about 900 %. Makes my skin crawl -- and believe me, when you're trying to entice people to eat at your restaurant, skin-crawling is not good.

I read a discussion over All About Romance re whether knowing an author (or personal information about her) makes it hard to read/enjoy their books. I was shocked by the people who said yes. Yikes! Meeting someone has never changed the way I felt about books. Okay, there was this one New York Times best-seller whom a friend of mine adored, and when she got a chance to meet her at a writers' conference, Ms. NYTbitch coolly said, "I don't like to be disturbed by readers. It's just so rude." I never could have liked the woman's books after that, but the thing is, I didn't like them before that. She didn't make the Times list off the piddlin' two sales she made to me, 'cuz that's all it took for me to figure out we weren't a match.

What happens for me way more often is that I read a book by someone I don't like personally and damned if it's not a good book. I read a number of authors whom I wouldn't want to be seated next to for more than two minutes, because that's probably the longest time I could be civil. Or I adore the author but her books just don't grab me. Or someone adores me but doesn't like my books. (I can tell. Even if they don't bluntly say so.)

I just find it really odd that knowing an author has three kids and five dogs and goes to church every Sunday and likes Mexican food could have any effect on your enjoyment of her book. I'm the opposite; I like knowing how writers think and what their everyday lives are. Maybe it's because I'm a writer, too, and it's good to see other people going through the things I do.

Or maybe it's just because I'm nosey.

Rachel8:38 AM

Whiling away the time

Yep, that's different from dallying. Dallying is wasting time, putting off what you need to do. Whiling is just passing time.

Anyway, a couple good places to while away the time. These first three are the youtube videos of the Axe bomb-chicka-wah-wah commercials. They're a hoot.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kFA594MpJrs

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JTGC7R9toSk

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=27QP6vJf9KM

And a surprising look at Daniel Radcliffe, better known as the cute and geeky Harry Potter -- geeky no more! Wow!

http://rpm.vox.com/library/video/6a00c2252298fe8e1d00d4141e709f685e.html

Gotta get the Harry Potter books out and start rereading them in preparation for the new one. Yep, I read 'em over again, start to finish, with each new title. So much info, so much I forget. Will watch all the movies again, too, though of course I won't go see the new movie in the theater. I do plan to catch Shrek 3, though. Love Shrek and promised my little cousin Caitlin I'd take her to see it. (Gotta have some excuse for being in there with all the other kiddos.) Rachel9:47 PM

Dallying around

There are times when I'd rather do anything than open my current work-in-progress and start writing. No shit, I've been known to scrub toilets and vacuum just to avoid it -- and I've got a note from the allergy doc saying I should never vacuum or dust again as long as I live.

It's not the actual writing that I dread. It's the actual opening of WordPerfect and the file. Once it's open, I'm fine about it. Kind of like exercise -- if you can just get the clothes on and get started, you usually enjoy it.

I usually delay by reading and answering email, then checking out my favorite blogs and (sometimes) blogging myself. Then I play a few games of MahJong or Cubis or Solitaire . . . which leads to a few games more . . . and more . . .

In the interest of getting some work done, I've declared all games off-limits until the end of the day. (Except for whatever I can play during my designated lunch hour -- assuming that I don't watch Jerry Springer instead.) And it's really helping. (Duh -- if you actually write, you get a book done. No brainer there, huh?)

But I still have to check email and blog. If you didn't have me to brighten your day, what would you do? (she asks slyly.)

Okay, so I'm dallying. Let me think of some truly dallying sort of things to say.

Um . . . with all the recent rain, the jungle has truly taken over my yard. I expect to see exotic creatures swinging/flying/slithering along any day now.

I started my glamorous-day-as-an-author yesterday by cleaning up five piles of puke, all from the same dog, all scattered around the living and dining room. Then I cleaned up pee from her brother, who likes to pee where another brother eats breakfast and dinner.

The hot-humid-sunny day the weatherguy promised yesterday got my feet soaked on the way to the office. If I could get my hands on him, I'd drown him. BTW, smart-ass Leah reminded me that God's already given the instructions for building the ark, but I want them in simple English!

My hair is no longer Intense Red Copper but this month is Medium Mahogany Brown. Gorgeous color, but I think it's too dark for my fair Irish skin -- and I do mean fair. If I didn't have freckles, people could be forgiven for thinking I'm dead. So my usual blog picture doesn't really fit anymore, but I don't have time to find one who's Medium Mahogany Brown, so it'll have to do. Besides, I'll be that color again. The only colors I'll never be again are Platinum and Strawberry Blonde. Promise.


I watched AFI's Top 100 movies show last night. Sheesh, what a list of stinkers. I hadn't seen probably half, hated at least another half. In the top ten, I think I'd only seen three or four and hated hated HATED one of those. I think I must be pop culturally challenged. BTW, when they praised Titanic as Casablanca's modern equal, I just about puked. Did I mention I hated Titanic? No, wait, "hate" is too mild a word for it. {{{Shuddering with revulsion}}}

Okay, it's coming up on ten o'clock, and those twelve pages on my schedule for today aren't going to write themselves -- wouldn't it be too cool if they would? Enough dallying for today.





Rachel9:36 AM

Rain

Remember that kid's rhyme: Rain, rain, go away, come again some other day?

Enough al-freakin'-ready!

Oklahoma's been a drought for several years, but no more. Honest to God, I can't remember the last day it didn't rain. The thunder rumbles, the lightning flashes, and the skies open up. On me more often than not. And on the dogs. Do you know how wet dogs smell? And they always want to sit with me after they've gotten wet. Yuck.

The other day it rained so hard in the afternoon that the paved road that leads to our dirt road was under a foot of water. At least we don't have to worry about that here. Living on top of the hill, all the rain just rolls down (and washes the dirt and gravel from our road with it). But if we flood here, we know it's the end of the world as we know it.

The good side of the rain: everything's really green. The bad side: it's really squishy. And wet. And I swear, fungus is growing on everything that stands still. And, of course, I am allergic to fungus.

(Remember the line in "Ghostbusters" when Annie Potts asks Harold Ramis what his hobbies are, and in that deadpan way of his, he says, "I collect molds, spores, and fungus"? When I came out of the dermatologist's office one day, covered with hives and contact dermatitis and clutching a handful of prescription forms, Robert asked me what he'd said. "I collect molds, spores, and fungus.")

Rain is good. I understand that. Especially when we've been way below our annual rainfall totals for three or four years in a row. But come on. Give us a break, God. Our "rainy season" ended over two weeks ago, but the rain didn't. Just let us dry out for a day or two, and then You can start it again.

Otherwise, send us the instructions for the ark and we'll start building.







Rachel10:03 AM

Goals

Last week the best writers' group in the world, Romance Writers Ink, presented a workshop by bestselling author Jaci Burton (http://www.jaciburton.com) on setting goals -- a monthly plan, an annual one, a five-year one.

(Best laugh on "That Seventies Show:" some dude asks Hyde where he expects to be in five years. "In prison," Hyde responds.)

Considering that my alter ego and I together have written sixty-freakin'-four books, neither of us is very good at goal-setting. Where do we expect to be in five years? Not in prison, is my best guess. Writing is supposed to be creative, right? Unstructured? Liberating?

Snort. Biggest eye-opener to me in my career: writing is a damn business. Okay, so it doesn't require a college degree or pantyhose or even leaving your bed. It's still every bit as much a business as accounting, lawyering, or anything else. There are contracts to negotiate, edits to compromise on, a product to improve, expenses to track, taxes to pay, ongoing education.

(Years ago, Robert taught at a school that was part of Fleet Aviation Special Operations training in California. Part of his first discussion with the students always ended with, "Learning will take place." Ditto here. A writer's life doesn't depend on it, but her career does.)

Anyway, back to the subject. Jaci convinced me that I needed to actually sit down and think about something beyond the deadline for the next book. How exactly was I going to get to that deadline? My usual MO: piddle around, work in the yard, play with the dogs, read, play way too many freakin' computer games, then write frantically in those last few weeks before the deadline, generally managing to rush the book off overnight one day late (for only a puny fifty-five buckeroos or so). Listening to Jaci, my eyes opened wide. There's a better way???

So after mulling it over for a while (translation: playing computer games until I damn near went blind), I sat down one morning last week and came up with a detailed list of the goals I want to achieve in the next five years and the even-more detailed monthly list of how I can do that. It looks so reasonable on paper. Nothing -- at least for the rest of 2007 -- requires writing more than twelve pages a day. Hell, I've written thirty-five-plus pages a day. I can handle twelve.

The question is: will I? I hope so. Working at it slow and steady sure sounds more appealing (and kinder to my hands) than the frantic last-minute frenzy The thing is, I operate well under pressure. Usually the best pages I write are those frenzy pages. But then I go brain-dead for a week or two or three, depending on how long the frenzy lasted. And once I get out of the habit of going to the office every day and writing, it's a long, painful process getting back into it.

But Jaci's plan makes sense. It sounds good. It might just kick my ass, and I may go running, cowering like a weenie in the corner until the deadline frenzy kicks in again. But I'm gonna give it my best shot.

Let's hope it doesn't shoot back. Rachel10:34 AM

Habits

Jeez, blogging is an easy habit to break! Kinda like working out, writing, and just about everything else in my life. (Except playing Mahjong.) I can blog every day for a month, miss one day, and find it oh, so easy to miss the next and the next.

So what have I been doing instead of blogging? Writing, for one. After weeks of working only from time to time, I've buckled down and gotten back to it. It's going nicely, too. Love these characters.

And I've been reading, though not enough. I decided today that I need about $500 and a few hours alone in a bookstore. I was standing in the checkout at WalMart the other night next to a display of remaindered hardcovers and picked up a John Sandford Prey book. I'd never read him before, but I'd heard good stuff about him, and hey, it was a hardcover for six bucks. Can't beat that. Even if I didn't like the book, it was still a bargain.

It was Hidden Prey, I think. (Have I mentioned before that I hate series titles where the same word is used over and over? I can't keep them straight, and that annoys me.) Anyway, it's the one about the Russian spies. His style took me a while to get used to -- very short scenes, one after another in the same character's point of view, no reason to break them up into individual scenes. But once I got used to it -- and once I got know Lucas Davenport, the protagonist -- I loved it.

After finishing it in two days, taking time away from blogging and everything else, I had to go back to WalMart to get dog food (amazing how fifty pounds disappears in no time flat), and I found myself standing in the same checkout line, and hey, there was another Prey hardcover for six bucks. The one about the serial killer and the nuthouse. Loved it again. I think there are only about fourteen or so others in the series to get caught up on now.

In the serial killer/nuthouse book, Lucas has received an iPod and a gift certificate for one hundred downloads from his wife, and he's determined to download the best hundred rock songs. He has one hard and fast rule: no Beatles tunes. Have I mentioned here before how much I detest Beatles music? How cool that Lucas doesn't like them, either.

However . . . at the end of the book is Lucas's list of the best one hundred. I didn't even know about twenty of them, didn't like about twenty more, and hate about twenty more. Hey, I have great taste in music. A little on the eclectic side, I admit. I don't listen to much that was recorded post-2000. I think Ella Fitzgerald had the best voice ever. Love BB King. Eric Clapton. Beausoleil. Louis Armstong. Early Garth Brooks. Eagles. Bonnie Raitt. Zachary Richard. Etta James. Carly Simon. TransSiberian Orchestra. I love all kinds of music. But not much on Lucas's best one hundred list.

And of course, I can't be wrong. It's my blog. I'm never wrong here. Rachel8:57 PM

Cool Trailer!

If you haven't visited my homepage lately, check out the new video trailer the Diva did for Scorched. It is too cool! I love the music, the background, everything! Great job, Diva Mary!


Did you hear about General Pace not being renominated for Joint Chiefs? According to NBC News, during the press conference to announce that General Pace was out and Admiral Mullin (Mullen? Mullins?) was in, every major cable network cut away for breaking news from Los Angeles about Paris Hilton being sent back to jail.

Give me a freakin' break! That's not news, and it damn sure isn't as important as who's going to head the Joint Chiefs. Paris is rich and pathetic, but she's not breaking news. Okay, so a grown woman boohooing for Mommy is more entertaining than a dry press conference, but hellooo. We're at war. The Joint Chiefs are important.

There's something seriously wrong with this picture.

On the other hand, there's something seriously funny about this picture:



Not anymore, sweetie! Rachel10:41 PM

Career Planning

Good advice, paraphrasing filmmaker Peter Ferrelly: It seems like common sense, but don't ever, ever rob a bank.

Embarrassing truth: the reason I haven't blogged in the last five days? My keyboard was buried under a bunch of papers, notes, junk. It was easier to skip blogging than to dig it out.

Now back to the subject. Career? Planning? Do those two words actually go together? Not in my experience. But the best writers' group in the country, Romance Writers Ink, met Saturday, and our speaker was multi-published erotica/paranormal author Jaci Burton, and she convinced me otherwise. It's easier to get where you want to go if you have a plan to do it. Common sense, like the quote up at the top, but sometimes you need someone to point it out to you. (Check out the six thousand books she has coming out at http://www.jaciburton.com)

So one of my career plans for today is to make a career plan. It's especially the schedule part that I'm most interested in. If I don't have deadlines looming, I can piss away an entire month and have nothing to show for it. (Though with another hour and a half, my yard will be done. Until tomorrow, when I have to start over again.)

So I've got Jaci's handout with samples, and I'm going to head to my office later this morning (where the keyboard never disappears from sight), and I'm going to make a career plan.

I'll let you know how it goes. Rachel8:08 AM

I wish I may

Okay, so my idea of a perfect vacation does not involve a beach chair in the middle of a sunny day. But right now, anyplace that's not here sounds pretty good.

It's been a long time since I've gone anywhere for pure pleasure, and that was a very quick trip, when the kiddo gave Robert and me tickets to see the TransSiberian Orchestra in San Antonio. We left OK on Friday morning and got back Saturday night -- rushed, but way too much fun.

I don't have time for a trip right now, but I swear, come mid-October, I'm going to Louisiana. That's when the grandkiddo is due. The kiddo and his bride are supposed to find out the sex at her next appointment -- a couple days! {Girl, girl, girl, please!} Mom and I went to Babies R Us today to pick up a gift card for a friend of hers, and we saw the most adorable little dresses and bonnets. White eyelet, pink lace, lavender and mint green -- too, too cute! I can hardly wait!







Rachel5:27 PM

Smiling for the camera

The Web Diva has asked me to supply her with a picture of me for use in various and sundry stuff, and has even gone so far as to dummy up one. (It was a hoot.) It's not that I'm camera-shy. It's just . . . well, you don't need to know what I look like to enjoy the books, do you?

Years ago I was at a Romantic Times convention where they have a big booksigning with dozens, maybe hundreds, of authors. This woman walked up to a table shared by three authors, scrutinized each one in turn, then shook her head. "I've saved money for months, just to come here and meet my favorite authors," she said. "And you're all just . . . normal people. There's nothing special about any of you. I'm so disappointed." And she wandered off and out of the room without buying a single book.

What the ?!? Someone actually cared what the author looked like? Oh, granted, I remember finding out years ago that some romance novels I'd enjoyed were written by a man and thinking, "Ewww." And I probably could have lived without knowing that the really kinky, steamy, totally hot erotica on my shelves was written by a chubby blond-over-gray grandmother.

But don't we read for the books and not for the person behind them? Does anyone -- besides that woman at RT -- really care what the authors look like?

Maybe. So if I can get the uploading thing to work, I'm going to show you how I look. Let's give a shot.

There you go -- Rachel, a little embarrassed posing for the camera. Rachel10:13 AM