Supa-sweet linkage

Just a drive-by post to provide some linky goodness for you guys in lieu of real, actual content.

Do you like my fabulous agent Holly Root? Holly and her BFF Barbara Poelle (who is also a fabulous agent) are participating in the Do the Write Thing For Nashville auction. You can win tea with the two of them and a grab-bag of books! This is sure to be an AMAZING prize. I’ve been to a workshop where both of them discussed pitching, and it is hilarious to watch them feed off of each other. Go bid!!

Also, I got a nook a few days ago and blogged about my experiences with it over at Odd Shots. I even drew on pictures (and since I’m bad with photo manipulations, this took me far, far too many hours).

Very quick heads-up!

If you have emailed me in the past few weeks and I haven’t responded…I HAVEN’T FORGOTTEN ABOUT YOU! I PROMISE!

Email tends to be lower on the priority totem pole when I start to get buried, and I’ve been buried in a lot of back and forth stuff lately. I’m going to try to get to all the outstanding stuff this weekend, but just wanted to let you know that I haven’t forgotten you.

On confidence.

I think confidence is one of the biggest tools you need to be successful in publishing, at least from the author side of things. And strangely enough, it’s one of those things that’s also hardest to hold onto, even after you’ve had a measure of success.

Because in publishing, the goalpost is constantly moving backward, right? Let’s say your goal is to finish a book. Goal met! Then get an agent. Goal met! Now you need to get a publisher. Goal met! Now your book needs to come out and do well. Then you need to hit a list. Then you need to hit higher on the list. Then you need to increase your print run-size while still hitting even higher in the list, and oh, can you pull in a bigger audience if they start targeting ads at this new demographic and…

You get the idea.

So where does confidence come in? All over the place, actually. It’s confidence that lets you work on the next project. Confidence tells you that the story is solid when you’re going through the copyedits, and then the galleys. Confidence lets you resist the urge to rewrite the ending in the 11th hour. Confidence lets you go to sleep at night, even after your publisher tells you the size of your print run.

And it’s really, really easy to lose the confidence. It’s easy to start a new book that you’re excited about and have it lying dead (like a really dead thing) on the page. It’s easy to get caught up in numbers or reviews or Amazon rankings. I’m the poster child for neurotic-things-we-shouldn’t-track-that-drive-us-crazy but I can’t help myself. Normally it doesn’t bug me enough to make me stop writing, but somewhere in the past few weeks I’ve…struggled. I’m not sure why. Maybe it’s the change of pace, or a switching of projects. Maybe it’s because I’m dipping my toes into a new genre and the water’s not very warm.

Whatever it was, I lost my mojo.

I didn’t realize it right away. Instead, I played video games. Read some books. Played more video games. Watched hockey with the husband. Got out of the house a lot. Surfed the internet a lot. Whined via email a lot. Went to sleep crabby and woke up crabby.

(Author’s note – there is NO one that is more difficult to live with than a crabby writer. NO ONE.)

I was seriously avoiding working on projects. And so I wrote a ficlet or two, just for kicks, for no one to see. And it was…really fun. And when I brainstormed a new idea with my agent last week, I put aside the old, frustrating project and started the new one. It’s always hard to start a new project, but after I got two pages in this one, it just kind of…flowed. I ended the writing happy with what I had.

And today? Today I am confident again. I am in a great mood despite it being Monday, and a deadline week at work. And it’s all thanks to having a good writing day and getting my confidence back.

And sometimes that makes all the difference in the world.

Dear Journal,

It has been far too many days since my last confession. I know! Sad thing is, I’ve been pressed by hardcore deadlines at work, and spend my time at home working on a new project. Nothing exciting as of yet, except I’m having fun with it, and that’s really what it’s all about, right?

Revisions on MY FAIR SUCCUBI have been turned in to my editor and now I’m just waiting on copyedits. In the meantime, I’m plotting Book 4. Not that I have an official go-ahead for Book 4 yet, but I am like a Boy Scout when it comes to books – BE PREPARED.

Other than that, I did not go to RT and am a little sad. Everyone looks like they had so much fun. I had to be an adult this year and get the fence fixed. *grumble* Stupid fence. Maybe next year.

My friend Rae!

So a while back I read this super-awesome-amazing manuscript from a friend that we’ll call Rae Carson. It was about a princess with flaws, who had been entrusted with a Godstone, which meant she was the Chosen One. Except she didn’t want to be the chosen one – she’d rather sit around and be lazy.

I loved this book. So so much. I read an early draft and stayed up all night reading it. I gushed and gushed to Rae about how amazing the book was and how it had stayed with me. And every time I talked to Rae for the next few years, I’d always ask, “Where is the Elisa book? Has it sold yet?”

Today, I am THRILLED to say that Rae Carson’s book (plus two sequels!) sold in a PRE-EMPT to Greenwillow! Here’s what PM says:

Rae Carson’s debut THE PRINCESS AND THE GODSTONE, pitched in the vein of Kristin Cashore and Robin McKinley, in which a princess marked for an act of greatness is married off to a foreign king and swept into a world of courtly politics, dark magic, and war, to Martha Mihalick at Greenwillow, in a three-book deal, in a significant deal, in a pre-empt, by Holly Root at Waxman Literary Agency (NA).

Go and congratulate her! She happens to have an amazing agent, too.

(Oh, and I’m also over at Odd Shots talking about sweet, innocent men and Dragon Age: Origins.)

Sorta-but-not-really back

Hey all! I’m back from my Staycation, but now I’m working on revisions of MY FAIR SUCCUBI. I’m really pleased with it – my editor LOVED it. Yay!!

So I’m still going to be blog light for a few days more while I try to get them out. In the meantime, there’s an evil snippet of Book 3 over at Odd Shots.

On vacation

I’m on vacation this week!

(secret confession: I haven’t done jack, either. I had lofty plans of spring cleaning and errand running but I’ve mostly sat in my jammies, playing video games and reading.)

So yeah, not a lot of bloggy goodness heading your way. Mea culpa. In the meantime, I *did* guest blog over at the fabulous Michelle Rowen‘s blog. She’s hosting 30 Days of Demons in celebration of her upcoming release, THE DEMON IN ME. I had an early opportunity to read it, and it was hilariously fun, and the plot had a totally unique, kicky little twist.

Did I mention I’m giving away a free signed copy of GENTLEMEN PREFER SUCCUBI if you comment? Go comment!

(Sidenote: My succubi aren’t *really* demons but I do have demons in my books, so I totally count. Right? Right.)

Queen of bad analogies

So I was driving home yesterday and noticed all the birds that are out this time of year. This made me smile (a lot!) because I like birds. Or rather…I like looking at birds.

(As pets, they are poopy, and crap everywhere, and smell. And require a lot of maintenance. But I like to watch them. And did I mention they crap a lot? Yeah.)

And this made me think this was a great writing analogy. My husband often says that I have too much fun writing.

Fun!?! WTF? FUN?? Half the time I’m banging my head against the keyboard, trying to find the right word, because “He was so close to her, like a really close sort of thing” just doesn’t have that ring to it. And don’t even get me started on edits. Or synopses.

So I don’t automatically think ‘fun’ when I think writing. Driven? yes. Feeling the need to create? yes. Fun? not so much.

My favorite part of the book is the daydreaming. The endless possibilities of the story spinning out in your mind. I have to write to move the story along, which just spins along more plot ideas. So that’s what I like best. I don’t like hammering away at the keyboard. I like writing 2 pages, then going to bed and being unable to turn the story off in my mind.

You know, kind of like birds. Cute to look at from afar, but when you own one, it craps all over the place. Stories in the head = cute to look at from afar. Sitting at the keyboard = crap all over the place.

And I like the finished product! But writing it? I’m not so sure.

(I told you this was a bad analogy. I should stop blogging these. People are going to start thinking I’m crazy.)

My morning so far

This morning, I woke up and my husband was not yet awake. I didn’t want to disturb him, so I crept out of the room and got ready for work as he continued to sleep. I needed to brush my teeth, though, and the toothbrush was in the bathroom in the bedroom, which meant turning on the lights. And I didn’t want to wake him up, so I thought I’d try to be sneaky.

(You see where this is going, right?)

So in the dark, I’m feeling around on the counter for my electric toothbrush. Found the toothbrush, snapped the head in. Felt around and found the toothpaste.

Now, a person that thinks ahead would have stopped here, left the room with these implements, and gone to the bathroom on the far side of the house where you can, you know, brush your teeth with the lights on.

NOPE! NOT ME!

For some reason, I decided that I could put my toothpaste on my brush in the dark. So I uncap the toothpaste, and put my finger against the side of my toothbrush bristles. I figure I can squirt, and once I feel the toothpaste on my finger, I’m good to go. Right? Right.

So I squirt. No toothpaste on the side of my finger. Hm. Well, the tube is half empty. Maybe I need to squeeze further down. So I squirt again. Still no toothpaste hitting my finger. That’s odd. Now, though, I’m starting to smell toothpaste. Something’s not adding up.

I squirt one more time and…hear a big splat.

Uh oh. At this point, I decide that being sneaky isn’t worth it, and leave the room, toothbrush in hand. When I get into the light, I see…my toothbrush, covered in toothpaste all along the brush. Huge, heaping globs of it all down the brush. Covered. I have entirely missed the bristles, though.

I laugh at this…until I remember the splat. So I go into the bedroom and have to turn on the lights anyhow…and yep. I’ve gotten toothpaste all over the floor in big, nasty globs.

It’s definitely a Monday.

Middle-aged Hypochondria

Sometimes I worry that I’m becoming a hypochondriac.

Case in point – two years ago, I threw out my back. Couldn’t sit for a week, so I pretty much laid flat on my back for a week and read Kresley Cole novels. Ever since then, if I ever get a twinge in my back, I am concerned that I’ll be laid flat again for a week. It worries me. If no one would look at me strange for wearing a protective brace over my clothing, I would! But…that would be weird.

Another story. A person in my family recently had surgery to remove part of her thyroid because of thyroid issues. I knew another lady that had thyroid problems, and hers bulged from the base of her throat. Lately, I find myself constantly stroking the base of my throat to make sure mine has remained a normal size. I haven’t asked my husband to compare thyroids…yet. But I probably will.

The other day I woke up with a crick in my neck. Again, I worried about my back (I’m very protective of my spine as I had surgery on it a long time ago). I woke up one morning with a dry knot at the back of my throat and was convinced that one of my vertebrae had slipped and was pushing on my throat and I would 1) Choke to death because my throat would be too closed or 2) be bound to a bed just as soon as my spine finished freeing itself from my body.

My husband laughed at my fears. A lot. He also pointed out it might have been my old flat pillow causing the crick in my neck.

(He was right)

The worry is not just confined to my back, though! My teeth are extremely sensitive, and I often go back to the dentist, swearing that I have a cracked tooth or need a root canal. He sends me away, because nothing’s wrong with my teeth. I think he is starting to regret taking me on as a patient.

Or my dermatologist! He thinks I’m crazy. I went to him a few months ago because I had a mole on my arm. I’ve always had this mole, but I noticed that when I accidentally scratched it…it hurt! A lot! So I went to see him. I pointed out the mole and told him I had cancer. In retrospect, maybe it’s not that big of a mole, but how do I know? Anyhow, he looked at it, and then looked at me with the My-God-She’s-Crazy look. Said I was fine. I told him it hurt when I scratched it.

He said to stop scratching it.

(Can’t argue with that.)

And I swear I’m not crazy. I’m really not. Most of these fears are temporary and easily laughed away. I think I’m just hitting that age where things are starting to show their wear and tear. I’m heading towards middle age, and it’s on my mind a lot. I think this accounts for the hypochondria more than anything else. Not to mention that in the age of google, no one ever has benign symptoms anymore. A pulled muscle in your leg could be a sign of vitamin deficiency…OR LEPROSY.

Who doesn’t know someone that has a story along the lines of, “Bob went to the doctor because his ankle was hurting…AND IT WAS CANCER.” Couple that in with shows like ‘House’ and the gloom and doom constantly on the news…I am surprised that we’re ALL not hypochondriacs nowdays.

And if you ever see me and I’m wearing some protective brace and can’t turn my neck? Well. YOU KNOW WHY.