Dear Editor

I fear I may be channeling Miss Snark. This just appeared on my computer screen:

Dear Editor,

While contemplating a career of selling my extensive collection of literature and research books on e-Bay, it occurred to me that perhaps I ought to consider a different approach to bestsellerdom. Would it help if my proposals:

a.) contained a werewolf or other fuzzy animal, ie: a bunny rabbit?
b.) if I wrote “I am hairy and cuddly” in a dozen different ways, preferably involving sex with another species?
c.) If I moved to New York City?


Dear Author:

All of the above.

Dear Editor:

I fear supporting myself on e-Bay would be prohibitive with the cost of NYC rooms. Would a post office box suffice?

Dear Author:

If you can fit into a post office box, yes.

Dear Editor:

Hamsters will fit in a post office box. Hamsters are furry and cuddly. They like sex, so perhaps two, furry cuddly hamsters would reproduce into an entire line of furry, cuddly creatures who will mate like bunny rabbits and propagate furry, cuddly sales until bestsellerdom is achievable.

Dear Author:

Do hamsters growl and draw blood?

Dear Editor:

These are furry, cuddly were-hamsters who live in a post office box in NYC, having orgasmic sex with the mailman who is a vampire wombat, except a furry, cuddly wombat. They sniff each other on every third page and draw blood on every fourth, and rub each other’s rippling, cuddly fur at least once a page in increasingly imaginative ways and with ever longer sentences.

Dear Author:
Send manuscript. Not hamsters.


Dang, and I thought I’d found a way of unloading the mice and that old toupee…

Sorry, I'll shut that channel now and get back to your regularly scheduled programming...

Style

And shame on me, I'm not talking writing style. I just wanted to vent.

I finished MYSTIC WARRIOR today and shot it off to my editor. (yeaaahhhh, me!) So I took the rest of the day off and poked around to see what trouble I could get in. I'm sure I found some, but what I want to vent about has nothing to do with trouble and a lot to do with fashion.

I spent a leisurely few minutes flipping through fashion catalogs that had been piling up for a while. These are stores from which I actually buy clothes. Sometimes. In the interest of full disclosure, I am a prima dona, and I can't wear pastel. Summer clothes have always been the bane of my existence. Now I'm seriously considering moving to Alaska.

Since when have t-shirts become fashion? $60 a pop fashion? I swear, I flipped through hundreds of pages of catalogs and found exactly two shirts, and they came in abominable colors like lime and pink that I wouldn't wear if you threatened me. Maybe I need to threaten them with going topless until they provide me with shirts that have collars and pockets and buttons and things that someone with a neck can wear! I can't wear collarless shirts. And I WON'T wear $60 t-shirts that I know danged well they're paying some poor slave a few cents an hour to hem. I'm betting they don't put collars and pockets on shirts now because it requires people who actually know how to SEW, meaning they'd have to pay them real wages.

So it looks to me as if I'll either have to take up sewing again, or return to the boys' department to buy my summer clothes. They do still make shirts for boys, don't they? I'm afraid to look.

Cover Contest

To prove the vagaries of my Muse, I'm posting twice in two days! Although I'm posting today only because I'd forgotten to mention the ongoing cover contest at http://www.covercafe.com/.

MYSTIC GUARDIAN is a finalist in paranormal, if anyone would like to cruise over and vote. If you do, will you stop back here and comment on the various entries? I won't be offended. While I adore the cover, the book is historical with paranormal elements, and those elements don't include vamps or other dark angsty creatures. Therefore my cover doesn't seem to fit in with the others. But that's my opinion. What's yours?

Step in Time

I know, I've been remiss, but I knew I couldn't keep up the daily posts--or even weekly ones, apparently. I need inspiration to seek out the blog and lately I've been using my inspirations elsewhere. What I need is a good rant to unleash, I guess. Anyone got a rant they want out there?

The contemps are still sitting on various desks in NYC. I've drafted a proposal for a straight historical romance. And I'm still toying with ideas for the next Mystic Isle book. I think I hit on an interesting angle today---did you know that in England in the 1790's, with the French Revolution scaring the dickens out of English aristocrats, that they went into the same kind of paranoid panicked national security mode as we have today? They suspended the writ of habeas corpus, wrote new acts that practically convicted anyone of spitting in public if the administration didn't like them, and shipped boatloads of intellectuals to Botany Bay for daring to say the French might have the right idea. Scary, huh?

Now, all I have to do is figure out how to work that into a romance. What are the chances?

Creativity Charger

Back from RT and the brainstorming session. RT was fantastic and if I can pry the few photos I took out of my camera, I'll post later. Naturally, the camera batteries ran out before I took many.

The brainstorming session was eminently successful, despite our limited time. Maybe we're getting better at focusing instead of gabbing. We still managed to waste a few minutes here and there, all in the interest of recharging the creative batteries. We didn't have time for beading, but we did explore facade.com


Just looking at all the fascinating tarot decks was inspiring enough, but playing with characters and seeing which cards fell under their names was even more entertaining. I think I now have a Queen of Swords character!

Swimming Along

Just a note to prove I'm still alive and swimming along quite nicely. The new proposals went out last week. Haven't heard a word but that was a mass of material (or maybe a mess--I'm not prepared to say), so I don't expect to hear anything soon.

The good news is that I'm digging back into my long-abandoned historical and pulling it together after gutting the poor baby. And I'll be attending RT for a couple of days at the end of this week, then heading into Baltimore to brainstorm with my posse. All good!

And the sun's even out!

Flogging Blogging

I just shipped off my proposals today and had a magnificent time playing over on the wenches where the suggestions for new historical trends were absolutely awesome! Ideas are already bubbling, and I don't even begin to have time to start research. Which does leave me at point non plus, as my Regency characters are wont to say. While blogging stirs ideas and generates discussion and does all sorts of fantastic things, it leaves me little time for the thoughts generated! So I'm all talk and no action lately. Sad, very sad.

So just cruise over to wordwenches.com, read the blog about What We Really Want (it's almost too late to enter the contest as I write this, sorry!), get lots of ideas for books to read as well as research to dig into, and I'll start dragging out my research books tonight.