The Wildly Eclectic Me

It's been a long couple of weeks! Last Monday, my poor little boy got a fever which shot up to 105 and he had a seizure! I wasn't even home! Bryon was all by himself with him and didn't even know what a seizure was. He thought that Nicky was dying! I got home like ten minutes after he got off the phone with 911. To make everything 100 times worse I didn't have my cell phone with me and we only have one car which I was driving! I'm a horrible Mommy! He's all better now. He hasn't had fever in like four days but I still have panic attacks! I've never been so terrified in my entire life! Also we're having work done on our house and it's almost done. To save money we are doing the flooring and painting ourselves. So we've been trying to take care of a sick baby, paint four new rooms, and put down flooring in all of them. I'm so exhausted I could just collapse! But we're almost done and Nicky is better so there is a light at the...

I finished writing Arrianna Penndragon. Well, at least the very rough first draft. I know there is tons I'm gonna wanna rewrite when I get back into it, but I'm going to let it lie and finish up Dana of the Whispering Woods in the meantime. And then off to the publisher with it. Eeeeeek!

*beats head on post* It's so freaking annoying. I know where I am and I know where I need to be, but I can't seem to find my way there. I've been sitting staring at two pages of a chapter for about an hour. And seeing as my hours are somewhat limited that is quite a loss! And now my crazy dogs are inspecting something that their sure is a burglar...It's probably just the ice maker if I had to guess. Well they didn't wake Nicky up so I guess I can forgive them for being nuts. Okay enough procrastinating!

Through the graces of a dose of Tylenol PM for the headache I got from the exhaustion and a darling husband to watch Nicholai while I slept in a drugged haze I finally got some sleep last night! I can't tell you how lovely it was! Now I just finished writing about six pages so I hope that's enough to calm my creative whims so I can get some sleep. Of course, writing might have just made it worse but we shall see. Can't stop the creative juices when they are flowin'!

Okay I don't know if any of you writers out there have experienced this, but it tends to happen to me when I working hard on a book. When I try to go to sleep I lay down and scenes start playing out in my head. So much so that its impossible to sleep! Yesterday I woke up at 2:30 when Nicholai was fussing and got him back to sleep and laid down and could NOT go back to sleep. So I laid there until about 4 when I completely gave up and sat up and just started writing. I got a little done. Not nearly enough for someone who was awake most of the night though!!! I can't do this anymore. I've got a little munchkin who doesn't permit naps during the daytime. It worked fine when I was younger and with no one to tell me he wanted a snack or a cuddle every two minutes. This morning I woke up at 2 again! Except this time it was Fippy, my crazy Lab, who did it. I swear! I love the dog! But he is NUTS!!! He is afraid of everything! This morning when he woke me up he wa...

You know back in the days when I used to write with pen and paper instead of on computer staring at a blank page was bad enough. However! There is something far worse about staring at an empty word file with nothing but that little black blinking cursor. I have terrible writer's block! Maybe if I just start writing something random that will help. Sometimes skipping around is useful. Of course then you have to make it blend in and it never blends in as well as it would if you actually wrote it in order. At least it doesn't when I start putting stuff together anyway. Of course that could just be me. Happy Belated Halloween!!! We had fun. Got the little munchkin dressed up like Darth Vader and took him to play with his two baby girlfriends. The highlight of the evening was Darth Vader, the fairy, and the witch all playing in the water table with the bobbing apples. It was tons of fun!

Okay, it's very strange how you can be going one way and out of the blue one of your characters just decides to take off on their own little tangent. One of mine decided to single-handedly rewrite the story of King Arthur last night. I'm not sure that I agree with what she did but hey what can you do when you're characters take over your writing.

Okay I'm doing some research and I found interesting stuff about games that Vikings play so of course I had to share! First of all there is the lovely game of Hnefatafl . I'm sure someone out there can pronounce that! I'm fluent in Danish, which is a Nordic language, and I couldn't even venture a guess! Hnefatafl is a game similar to Chess but according to some of the sites I found on it, it's actually older. There are pieces and its played on a board with a grid. The pieces simulate a Viking Raid so there are pieces in the middle which someone is in charge of defending and four sets of pieces along the outside which someone else attacks with. Those good old Vikings! Surround and conquer! Another game I found was Kubb I couldn't find anything but commercial websites about it so for all I know someone totally could have made it up just to make money, but according to their site its an outdoor game played by Vikings. Its a little like bowling or horsesho...

Ever have those days when it seems like you do nothing but work and when you're done you've accomplished virtually nothing! I hate those days!!! They make me want to pull my hair out! I did get several things marked off my To Do list though so I guess I must be accomplishing something. Last night I got a few pages writen and I was having a bit of writers block. I hadn't written anything really since the in- laws were here. I hate when I get out of the swing and its tough to get back in. I wanna finish the scene tonight if I can. That will of course depend on my baby bear. We shall see. Well back to real work now!

I'm doing some research for a scene I'm writing for Arrianna where the people of Sithein go and visit the dragon's for Yule. So I was looking up Ancient Viking Yule traditions and I'm finding some freaky stuff! Like for instance... The Yule Cat was a giant cat that came and ate people who were lazy and didn't get their work weaving done! Now if you ask me that's just freaky! Now back to work!

Upon further cleaning up of my rose bed. I discovered one more poor pitiful rose clinging to life in the thigh high weeds. I managed to get all the weeds out of there and treated the rocks lining the outside of the bed with roundup and fertilized and treated the roses with something to kill bugs and rust. Hopefully they will appreciate my efforts and survive. Actually I think one of the roses might actually be a wild rose that sprouted out of the root. We'll see if its actually still a hybrid tea whenever it manages to bloom. Poor roses!

I planted a flower bed early this summer and then laid down mulch...I thought that meant that the weeds wouldn't grow back. How wrong I was! I didn't know that you had to lay down some kind of cloth down t keep the weeds from coming through!!! So Nicky kept me busy pretty much ALL summer and I ignored my poor flower bed until today. I went after it with the weed eater and my hands. Should have worn gloves too! I'm gonna regret that tommorrow. After I used up all the battery my sad little weed eater could give I started yanking weeds. I discovered that all but three of the poor roses I planted this spring (I think there were about 8) died. And one little sad Mr. Lincoln (red) rose was just clinging on to life despite having become food to whatever lived in that grass! I did as much as I could before Nicky started screaming. For some reason he gets just horrified when I'm outside and he can hear either the weed eater or the lawn mower. I think he thinks they are ...

Wow! I'd forgotten how really strangely my mind works when I'm writing. Like it keeps writing even though I'm not actually trying to. It doesn't do it when I'm editing just writing. I've written about 20 pages of Arrianna in the last few days, which is more than I've written in ages and actually enjoyed it. Seems like when I was getting my creative writing degree it was more work than pleasure. That on top of the fact that I passionately hate writing short fiction and knew they were going to just tear it apart anyway cause it wasn't all angsty and drug-filled. Well most of it wasn't. It's wonderful to be back in familiar worlds that I enjoy writing about. Its just that... Well the world follows me out of the book to be quite frank. I was driving home from the Applefest this weekend and the trees on the mountains were just starting to change and I was thinking. "Jeez, it's pretty but its going to take forever to get over that mo...

O Lord! It's hard to be humble. When you're perfect in everyway. I can't wait to look in the mirror. I get better lookin' each day. To know me is to love me. I must be one heck of a fan. Oh, lord! It's hard to be humble. When you're an Arkansas Razorback Fan! GO HOGS!!! Okay I'm better now! We had a great game today so I'm still excited! We beat number two in the nation, Auburn! Yay us!!! And we didn't just beat them! We beat them soundly! After the game we went to Applefest and then to a party for work. So it's been a darn busy day! I'm just settled down now to do some writing. That is if Nicky stays asleep so that I can. He was pretty tuckered out from all of the partying. Back to working on Arrianna. I'm writing a fight scene and those always make me slightly uncomfortable. I don't fight...well not ussually...So its kinda difficult. Hmmm...I don't drink blood either. Why does it not bug me to write those scenes. ...

First the Vampire Goodies! As a way of clearing my palate from my Dana revisions to prepare my self for the absolute final after that I'm sending you to the publisher revisions, I've been reading the next book that comes after Dana. Click Me for a teaser of Arrianna Penndragon. It’s not quite finished yet and it’s been a LONG time since I've worked on it so I was trying to get in the mood to finish the outline. I'm totally digging it. I can't stop reading when I'm supposed to be going to sleep. Arrogant? It's not meant to be...but I just love vampire stories! Especially right now cause I'm totally Dragon saturated. There are dragons in this one too though. They do a great deal of interacting in these stories. So on to Pass Your Plate ... Lishy and I went to this store, where they have all the ingredients and everything ready for you and you put together meals that you can take home and freeze. We did the Split 10 deal and got a free meal beca...

Yay! My revisions are done and now I'm just waiting for comments before I subject myself to the pain and torture of submission! My grumpy little boy finally went to bed about 8:30 and I sat down to work and was immediately distracted by an episode of the new series Jericho. OMG It looks good. So of course I had to further procrastinate by finding the first two episodes online and getting caught up. Then I actually got down to work. Now its almost midnight and I'm tiiiiiirrrrrrrrred, so I think I'll be heading to bed soon.

Its Bikes, Blues and BBQ here in Fayetteville and I've never seen so many motorcycles in one place. There are also some scooters but not too many. If only we could have a GIANT scooter rally here... Oh well, one can but dream. There are even motorcycles as far out as we live, and if you're quiet outside there is a constant distant rumbling. My friend, Lishy, pointed it out to me and its really lovely! Like we have the ocean nearby or something. The dogs have finally gotten used to the sound of the bikes and don't bark every single time one goes by. That was getting more than a little old. My little guy is teething and he is grumpy and hard to get to take a nap anyway so dogs waking him up when he has just fallen asleep has been more than a little irritating.

I was playing with my embroidery machine last night that my sweet hubby got fixed for my birthday and made a t-shirt. I embroidered on the pocket area in burgundy "Society for the Protection of Dragons" and then put a little Celtic flourish underneath. I just love it! It's so cute. I haven't quite mastered the art of embroidering on stretchy fabric yet. I think I need to get some stabilizer that actually sticks to the fabric. They have some of that at our local machine embroidery store, B Sew Inn , but it's like 40 bucks a roll!!! So I'm going to hold off and see if I can't find something cheaper. My next embroidery project I think is going to be a quilt for Nicky with Knight's and Castles and stuff. I saw one in a catalog but I think I can recreate it cuter.

I've been working on my synopsis for a couple of days now and am still not completely satisfied with it. Of course, maybe I never will be. They are just about the most important thing you write. If a publisher isn't intrigued by your synopsis they sure aren't going to waste time reading your first chapters. I've also been working on some rewrites and I have my team of lovely ladies helping me with comments! Thanks Mom, Lishy, Jenn and Manda! I should be done with my 2.1 rewrites and ready to accept comments in a week or two. Its so exciting. Once I'm done, I'm submitting to Luna . It's a Harlequin Romance line that is focused on Strong, Magical Women! I can't tell you how excited I was when I discovered it. I've never read another description of what a publisher was looking for that was more perfect for Dana!!! Let's hope they agree! :D

I hope it works!!!