Whoa! Where the Heck Have I Been?

I can't believe the month of May is nearly over, and I have only blogged once!  I have an excuse...I've been writing my fingers to the bone.  I think I mentioned a while back that I finalled in the
NEORWA Cleveland Rocks Romance contest...well, guess what? 

I WON! 

I placed first in the Contemporary Series category.  Woo Hoo! 

So in between trying to decide what I'll wear for my first appearance on Good Morning America and what to spend my first million on, I've been busily working on that manuscript so I can submit it.  And can I just tell you something? 

It takes a lot of time and mental energy to write a book.  Who knew?  Since I've just been putzing along, writing in my "spare" time here and there, I wasn't really surprised that I hadn't gotten much done.  I just figured out that one day I'd wake up and my  manuscript would be done, and I'd casually spend a weekend editing it, then send it off to my crit partners, then lalalala, maybe submit it to...someone.

The committee in my head spends a lot of time telling me not to bother, I can write tomorrow, or just not to write at all because I suck.  But then I won this nutty contest, and the committee was speechless for a few minutes, and the Self Confidence member (who had been on sabattical) spoke up and suggested that it might be time to get to work and give this a shot. 

So, yeah.  I've been writing.  It is hard work, but it's fun work. 

I'm also slowly coming out of the closet about the writing thing.  Thinking about ditching the Teri Anne Stanley thing and just being Tracy.  But I'll think about that after I figure out what to wear for my first Oprah's Book Club appearance (because, yannoh, she'll have a special episode just for me).

Fly Like a Pig!

Yesterday was the 14th annual Flying Pig Marathon, in Cincinnati, Ohio.  It's my favorite athletic event in the universe. 

I do not compete.  I do not enter.  I have it on my bucket list, but it's going to go down with the ship. Hopefully not along with the "FINISH a novel" item on the list.  Maybe one day I'll walk the half, but no way in hell will I ever run it, and the full is just not going to happen.  But I love this race.

For one thing, who wouldn't love a marathon named for the fattiest of the fat? Here's a link to the history of the Flying Pig Marathon . It's kind of a funny story.  In brief,   Cincinnati has been referred to as Porkopolis, because of it's heritage involving slaughterhouses and sausage and bacon and stuff.  When other cities were having artists decorate fiberglass horses and cows and things, we did pigs. 

So then, someone had the great idea to have a marathon here, and someone said it should probably be named after pigs, and the Flying Pig Marathon was born. 

I am not one of these people, tho somewhere there exists a picture of me in a pig suit. 

And it's a riot.  It's just a fun, fun time.  I've been volunteering as a Grunt for the past six years. 
In the past, I've run a fluid station (water stop) for runners of the 10k portion of the race. This year I helped at a Party Pit Stop for spectators of the actual marathon.  So not only was I an official Grunt, I was  Squealer Support Personnel.  These are Squealers:

All kinds of famous people participate in the Pig:

 I saw Forest Gump yesterday, but the pictures from this year aren't up yet.  Oh well. 

 Okay, I really don't know who this is, but she kind of reminds me of Chelsea Clinton.

And now we've reached the Finish Swine of this post.  Have a great week, everyone!

Memoirs, Light the Corners of My Mind

A couple of weeks ago, surfing around on Amazon, I came across  Will Love for Crumbs, by Jonna Ivin. It had an intriguing blurb, so I downloaded it. It languished on my Kindle behind a few other things on my TBR pile.  I started it yesterday, and finished it this morning...all I can say is "Wow". 

You know how sometimes you go to a movie, or finish a book, and you can't watch TV or even listen to the radio for a while, because whatever you just experienced is banging around in your head so loudly that you can't hear anything else?  That's what this book is like.  Here's the blurb:

"Raised by an alcoholic mother and without a father, Jonna learned at a young age to put her needs on the back-burner. After her mother dies of cancer, she goes on a spiritual journey looking for enlightenment and a purpose for her life. Eventually, she ends up as a volunteer in the relief effort following Hurricane Ike. There she meets a man that will forever change her life.

 In the swamps of Louisiana and the hills of Arkansas, Jonna follows her heart to build a life with an American hero - a 20 year veteran of the Army Special Forces. Only after uprooting her whole life, leaving everything and everyone she knows behind, do the pieces of this fairytale start to unravel. Realizing the man of her dreams is actually the stuff of nightmares; Jonna must once again go within and discover why she is a woman willing to love for crumbs."

It's always amazing to me that smart, seemingly self-aware women get into situations that baffle them...us.  I have a great life, but it's not perfect (shocking, I know!).  And without dragging any skeletons out of the closet for public viewing, I can say that there were some observations that Ms. Ivins made in this book that really resonated with me. 

Another memoir I love is Operating Instructions by Anne Lamott. I read it while I was trying to survive my first year of motherhood (the kid is 19 now, and I'm still not sure I've survived, but I still  contribute to his therapy fund on a regular basis). 

I think that people who can share the moments in their lives that shape them, and do it with humor, are people I want to be around...in real life, and in print. 

That's all! 

A Friday the 13th *SQUEE* for me!

I'm going to toot my own horn here, my friends.  I actually do, occassionally, actually write.  My crit partners, Mary and Dawn, encouraged me to start entering contests.  Which was kind of dumb of them, because that meant that I would be bugging them for more critiquing than usual.  So I have been whipping into shape the first couple of chapters of The Novel That Won't Get Itself Finished by Itself, aka Safe Harbor (which is not a great name, mostly because there are like 50 other romances with the same name out there).  
I entered the NEORWA Cleveland Rocks contest, and guess what?!  I'm a finalist in the Contemporary Series category.  How fun is that? 
I won't know if I'm the Supreme Writer of the Universe for a while, but really...it's an honor just to be nominated. Hey, I'm motivated to finish the next chapter now (really...all future editors and agents who might be reading this...I'm WAY farther along than chapter 3.  Like, I've almost got 4 done...really). 

The Right Words for Mama Drama

So. In my other life, I have a kid who is a a girl scout.  I sent someone an email last weekend, asking if maybe we could use a phone tree for communication because I missed an email about a cancelled meeting.

 I wrote,
"Maybe next time we have to cancel a meeting, we could use a phone tree, because I don't check my emails on the weekend."

I got six paragraphs back about how she (the person on the other end of the email, henceforth known as That Person) didn't have time for petty issues like this, and her brother-in-law is sick, and, as a business woman, I should know how important it is to check my emails.

So I wrote back, "It was just a suggestion, I wasn't trying to bust your chops".  And I got back three pages about how if I wanted to be in charge, I shouldn't have quit being the leader , and I have been critical since That Person started being the leader, and she's not going to be the leader next year because she's had enough of people like me who think they could do it better, and....

At which point I should have stopped responding, because I tried to defend my position, and it got even deeper: Apparently,  I made a mistake and I was trying to push the blame onto That Person, and was unwilling to admit that I should have been checking my email, and I am trying to drive a wedge between That Person and the other leader of this group...and we could both take a lesson from this exchange, specifically that I should be nicer and check my email more and not blame other people for my mistakes (no mention of what her lesson might have been).

Finally, I said, "I'm sorry for any miscommunication on my part."

And That Person said, "I accept your apology."

At which I wanted to say, "OH HELL NO YOU DON'T, NOT UNTIL I GET AN APOLOGY BACK!"  But I put on my big girl pants and I didn't respond.  Maybe I forwarded the exchange to a few people, to drum up support, but whatever.  

THEN, on Friday afternoon, I got ANOTHER email from That Person, apologizing for snapping at me--but if I wouldn't try to blame other people for my mistakes, and if I hadn't sent her so many derogatory emails in the past, (huh?  I can't seem to find the emails. I remember a difference of opinion about a cookie sale, but I don't remember it being derogatory. Or even heated), blah, blah blahblahblah, none of this would have happened.

And okay, I recognize that That Person is a little nuts.  Maybe a lot nuts. 

But I also recognize how incredibly difficult it can be to communicate with the typed word.  I was perhaps a little terse in my first email, but I didn't want to get into a whole thing about why I didn't check my email.  I just didn't.  It was Sunday, I was working in the yard. No biggie.  And then when I made the "didn't want to bust your chops" comment, maybe that came across as sarcastic?  I don't know.  I was trying to respond to That Person's message, not feelings behind it. 

I'm a writer...or at least, I'm trying to be.  Maybe I need to get better and using SHOUTY CAPITALS and Smiley Face Emoticons. 

Anybody else have any good stories about how not to go postal on someone when you are trying to get a point across? 

And for the record, Boy Scout dads are WAY easier to communicate with.  Their response would have been, "Yeah, that's a good idea, you organize it", or "Screw you.  Check your email."

Stop Smirking at Me! And Enough With the Fists!

We all have go-to words when we write, and even more so when we speak.  One of my favorites is "anyway".  I use it instead of transitional sentences between paragraphs. Mostly because I have (undiagnosed) ADD, and

*SQUIRREL! *

Anyway. 

I just finished reading something in which the hero and heroine spent a LOT of time smirking at each other.  He smirked, she smirked, he smirked again. And now I really, really dislike smirking.  The occasional smirk to show disdain or irony is fine. I love irony, and quirking one side of my mouth to acknowledge that I "get" the irony happens quite frequently.  But really, people.  Enough already (and Linda Grimes, if you can ignore smirking, you can read Fifty Shades.  My jury is still out on the "quality" of the book, but I'll probably read the next one, just to find out who gave Christian all those scars).

After trying, and failing, to ignore the smirking in every other paragraph in that book, I am now overly sensitized, and can't help but notice how much smirking is going on in the book I'm reading now, which only had one smirk...but it was a big one.  ACK! 

I realize that there are only so many ways to describe an action.  Like "fisting". The first time I noticed this was during my Nora Roberts phase, about fifteen years ago.  I was on vacation...Destin, FL, as a matter of fact.  I had a big stack of NR romances to keep me company.  In  each book, during the first or second big love scene between the H/H, someone was always fisting their hands in someone's hair or shirt (Ha!  Did you think I meant "fisting" in some other context?  Really, people...it's Nora Roberts.  Get your minds out of the gutter). 


My point is, that when I write, I TRY to watch for those words that I overuse.  There is a website somewhere that does this cool thing that shows you which words you use the most...you paste in your text and it makes the words you use most bigger than the other words.

What words bug you? 

The TBR List From HELLLLLLLLL

I have a lot of books.  Seriously.  A. Lot.  I'm sure I wouldn't win any reality TV library hoarder contest or anything, but my husband would still probably nominate me. 

When I got my Kindle last year, a friend gifted me with a flash drive with a couple THOUSAND books.  Where she got them might be a don't-ask-don't-tell kind of a thing, but there are a bunch of awesome books on there, some of which I plan to read. Someday. I have the Calibre e-book management software installed on my laptop. I don't use it as effectively as I could, and my Kindle is a mess.  That is the biggest drawback to the Kindle, it's a bitch to organize the stuff I have on it. 

Then there are the dead-tree books.  For a long time, I just recycled everything I read. I ran through books like raisin bran through a four-year-old. There is a used book store in my area that gives you a 25% credit of the cover price for paper backs, and then you can use that towards the purchase of more books, so it's a pretty ecological and economical situation. 

But then, when I seriously decided to start writing, I started keeping more of the books I read.  And of course, buying even more.  And making little notes everywhere of things that I want to read.

Now, my little used book store is closing, and is selling everything WAY cheap.  So I keep going in to buy more and more books.  Series romances are 8/$1 right now...even if the books suck, that's cheaper than toilet paper, so if I get in a jam...Anyway. I now have a few hundred paperback romances piled on my bedroom floor.

I'm trying to orgnaize my lists of "Books I want to read but don't own yet", "Books I own and might read", "Books I own and definitely plan to read", "Books I've read and don't want to buy again", "Books I own and want to re-read"....and a jillion of them are electronic and alot are paper, and alot of them are post-its.

Holy crap!  So not only do I need to organize my lists, I need to organize my actual books. 

I looked for reviews of "book organizing software", but that was a little confusing, and then I remembered that I do have a Goodreads account...duh.  I spent most of yesterday hunkered down on my bedroom floor with my laptop logged on to Goodreads, trying to get things entered, and then piled stuff according to genre and actually alphabetized some. 

I've got my Harlequin Superromances, the Harlequin Intrigue, the Blaze and Temptation, Big Juicy Historicals, the Chilling Romantic Suspenses, the Secret Throbbing Back Row Behind the Self-Help Books, The Suzanne Brockmann Section, the JR Ward Black Dagger Brotherhood And Sexy Angel Pile, The Lori Foster Area...and then there's the big pile of Books that Don't Fit In a Category. 

What do you use to keep track of your books?  Does it work for you?