Happy Monday to you!

It's a school holiday due to Martin Luther King Day--which, I have to say, though we're rural, the grade schools really, really do an excellent job about talking about discrimination and the importance of equality for all. They not only have an assembly but they go over it in classes all year. My kids know more about the civil rights movement at their age than I did by Junior High. My kids have a very difficult time understanding the whole concept of treating someone differently because of their race, though. They've been raised in an environment where that just never happens, so it just strikes them as odd. So, they've had more trouble understanding prejudice than avoiding it.

Well, as it's a holiday, you know what kind of email I received. Le sigh. I don't want to talk about it--not really. I did enter a contest at query tracker with Honor Among Thieves. This time the contest was actually open for an hour and a half and not just a couple minutes.

I'm revising Guest of Honor right now with the hopes of having it ready for a lulu run for my Mother-in-law. I'm supposed to be reading North and South. It's hard to read a book that others have said is "tough to get into."

Anyway--stuff to do--Reeve to drool over. I'll keep posting lines as I come across them on Twitter for those that are following my feed.

Happy Monday.

The work-life-writing condundrum

This is a particular problem for those of us whose life=writing, "work" =writing, writing=writing. Le sigh. I'm struggling to find balance in my life right now--especially with things I hate. *cough* cleaning and laundry *cough* Ugh. I can't seem to convince myself of the importance of things that I don't like as much as writing. *cough* cleaning and laundry *cough* I know that wanting to be a published writer to earn money isn't supposed to be something we admit to... but wanting to be published writer so that I can pay people to do something that I should be doing instead of writing--sound so good. Le sigh.

Well, this weekend should be busy. I need to get edited versions of my Honor books into Lulu because they're having a sale and my Mother-in-law wants copies of the books. This means I'm editing Guest of Honor--and--wow--it really, really, really needed it.

I've got stuff going on with both Scorched and Honor Among Thieves. If you click on the books to the side--I've set up sites to keep track of those things since those are the books I'm concentrating on right now. I don't expect you to follow them or comment by any means, but if you're curious... you're welcome to. I didn't want my random babbling about them to smother this journal.

Anyway, I should get to work on some of this stuff. Have a good Saturday, everyone!

Geeky Writerly Moment

Okay, so this is probably a really stupid thing to post, but I'm excited about it. I finally have hardcopies of all of my books up until now printed on Lulu. I have a bunch of betas that prefer that, and it is sometimes easier to find typos in them that way. It's also silly and time-consuming that I like to do all my own covers for fun, but I'm silly and most of my life is time-consuming. Anyway, so here they all are... all my books. Yay! I have them all in my hands--like a tangible thing. The top ones are the Honor books. Then, the Company of Him series. Finally, the strays that are stand-alones.

Scorched is still my favorite cover, I think.

Oh, and I should mention that it is especially silly to spend so much time on the covers since other than my hard-copy betas and me--no one else can get these books as they're private on Lulu. Yeah, anyway, it's still fun to see your name on the copy of a book--even if you're just printing it out to mark for typos.

Brain sluggish--not even good enough for a zombie snack

Any zombies reading this--move along--this isn't the brain you're looking for.

So, about ten minutes after I posted yesterday, I got a rejection letter for one of the two queries I have out right now. (I'm waiting until January for Honor Among Thieves.) I've tried to convince myself that this agent was just watching my blog and trying to sneak in a rejection while I was in a good mood--and not that fate is out to kill my Christmas spirit. (Speaking of fate, I had the most amazing idea for a story come to me in a dream. I've got too much to do this week, so I'm trying to ignore it--though I did write it down. Thus far, it's plaguing me still. It took me over an hour to get to sleep because of it.)

So, both Honor Within and Scorched made it to Lulu to be printed. Woo woo! That was today's project. I'm tuckered. Yesterday, I worked on photo books for grandparents and photos for Christmas cards. My lap top is a little hot from all this stuff.

Today, the car officially kicked the husband's tail. His motorcycle had already done that too. He wrecked and slid on ice this morning. (Yeah. Good times.) We drove the car to a local mechanic to see if they can drill out the drill bit--which is stuck inside the bolt--which is in the side of the engine block--which wasn't broken a week ago. (I don't know why she swallowed the fly--perhaps she'll die.) By drive, I mean I tugged it behind my SUV while the husband made sure it didn't crunch into the back of the car. I firmly believe such situations take years off your life. I think I just lost one year of my life. It was probably going to suck anyway, though. Let's face it--once you get beyond a hundred--the years aren't as kind.

So, tonight, I have a book club book to read. I've been putting it off. The Guernsey Potato Peel Pie Society or something like that--was never on my "books to read" list, but I picked it up--read for a bit--got bored--put it down. It's time to bite the bullet. My friend says that if I stick it out for forty pages, it gets better. She likes my books--so she must have good taste. :) I might resort to skim-reading if it doesn't really pick up by then. I read really fast, but so far--this isn't a page turner for me. Anyway, that's my goal for tonight. I couldn't make it through Pride and Prejudice either--and I've heard people compare this to that. That's bad news. It's rare for me to put down a book.

Okay, see you folks tomorrow.

It was a dark and stormy night....

So, on odd years, there is a cool short-story contest put on:

Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley Award for Imaginative Fiction

November is NANOWrimo (National Novel Writing Month)

I need to get a lot accomplished today which includes getting rid of a migraine. I took a sleeping pill last night to deal with it. (I'm beyond the sissy RX pills... and so I can only take pills if it's vital. It felt vital last night.)

So, cleaning... laundry... and so on. I got three copies of my latest rewrite of my first Honor book, and Stephanie promised to mark it up for me. I'm trying to figure out who else is likely to go through and mark things. The husband might have to... due to his great love for me.

Oh... for those that print out "proofs" on Lulu, they have a sale right now that is awesome. It's called the 10-4 sale and you get $10 off four books by entering in the couponcode TEN4 at checkout. (It ends on 10/4... of course.) My books typically cost me around $7 a piece and they're between 300-400 pages in the digest format. So, $10 off of $28... is a rocking deal.

Anyway, I should get to it.

Ta!