In which I'm painfully honest...and NEWS!!

We'll start with a virgrant about Gibb's smacks since I figure probably a few of you will either have experienced this, will experience this, or know what I mean because something similar happened to you.  Always start with the identifiable bit-Journalism 101. (That's a lie...start with a hook. But I digress.)

I flew to Texas. I packed kinda heavy. I sent my three kids off on a complicated schedule that involved transfers and nights here and there... they had multiple school days while I was gone and one of them had a cold.

I brought all that with me.

I also didn't bring my 'handler.'  My best friend, more often than not, offers both organizational services as well as social lubrication. In her words, I socialize like I swim. If she hops in the water with me, hangs out by my side, within a few minutes of bobbing around in Uncle Benny's pond, I've ripped off my life jacket and I'm laughing. If you just drop me in the pond, I forget I can swim, I panic, I flail, and I end up an emotional train wreck, arms wrapped around my knees on the dock refusing to get back in the water.

No one hopped in the water with me. No one organized me. I was required to be a big girl. And remember, I was carrying all that luggage. Were the kids okay? Did someone remember to get them after school or were they home alone? With a high fever. Which caused dizziness and hallucinations. And I have wrought iron chairs so I was sure one would fall over, knock their hallucination filled gourd on a chair and lie dying in a pool of blood with no one noticing until the next day when they didn't show up at school...

Hey, back off.  I'm a writer. I get paid for my overactive imagination, thank you very much.

So, the first night I stared at a ballroom full of people, teeth bared (arguably, they were smiling), with complete and utter terror.  Everyone was talking to someone.  Everyone except me.  (It felt, btw. There were literally at least a hundred people who would have gladly given me a chair and talked books, tv, sexy men...had I done more than smile vaguely and walk in a big circle while having my internal panic attack.  Please remember, it wasn't everyone being assmonkies, it was me freaking the hell out...I just couldn't see it AT THE TIME.)

Eventually, I took my terror and fled. On the way out the door, my publisher tried to start a conversation and introduce me to a fantastic lady.  (Again, more proof that people WOULD have talked to me.  Some were trying. I was weighed down with the baggage, though, and my blinders were quite firmly in place.) I smiled, met her, wasn't sure where to go with the conversation and continued my terrified exodus.

And then I got lost in the hotel.  Yeah, for real.  Had I not gotten terrified and lost, I wouldn't have gotten my ghost pic, but that's neither here nor there. 

It wasn't until the next day when a friend gave me a verbal Gibb's smack that I really looked at what I was doing.  Aside from not living in the moment, not enjoying the fact I was surrounded by people who love books as much as me, I was busy deciding I wasn't good enough to be there.

I know I'm not the only one to do that.  I had this whole mental ranking thing in place.  Oh, she has a contract with so-and-so?  Better, bigger author. Oh, she's with so-and-so? Equal. And there were very few equals in my mental estimation.  EVERYONE was better, bigger, belonged there...and I firmly decided I didn't belong.

It. Was. All. Me.

Whether it's clothes, purses, bank account balances, cars, book contracts, weight, hair, boob size...we women are HARD on ourselves. We're the very best at knocking ourselves down and the very last ones to agree we're deserving of any sort of accolade.  (I'm pretty sure I'm not alone there, am I?)

Once I let the bullshit go (coming down with the BlackPlagueOfDeath probably wasn't helping, either...it was like the perfect storm of what can go wrong, rofl), I could look back and see smiling faces. I can remember talking and laughing with people. It was a really fun weekend.

When I wasn't mentally flogging the shit out of myself.

The moral of this virgrant? Thank goodness for friends with verbal Gibb's smacks and if you have this moment...you're not alone.  Do remember, though, which fortunatly I did, even when I was doing it...it's all going on in your head. Don't go all Carrie on people because you're struggling with your self confidence. You'll regret that far more than you will ghost hunting in a haunted hotel by yourself.

*giggle*

Oh, and news!! I promised you news. I don't know if you've noticed but if you don't get enough of me rambling over here, I blog twice a month over at the Diamond Authors blog because I'm a Diamond Author!!

Also, I'll be participating in a March Madness blog hop with some really fantastic authors and there are some SERIOUSLY great prizes. Keep an eye out for details.

Until later, lovies, Happy Writing!!

Attack of the fog...Photoblog

Sick Author haz a Sick

Me and Heather Long

I've heard of concooties but I'm pretty sure this isn't that. I think it's a combo of my kids cooties (thank you, public school system, for your diligence in your quest to keep our immune systems occupied), change in climate (according to foursquare, I traveled more than a thousand miles each way), and normal post-con-tired, but I'm coughing, sweatin', snottin', and I'm chugging cough syrup like it's coffee.

Jeanie!

Good times, right?

It's meant that I've been sort of quiet since there's codeine in my cough syrup and one doesn't like to look a little drunk online.  Kind of ruins one's rep and all that jazz.

So...photoblog.

Man-wich

I hopped on a plane last week and flew into Dallas/Fort Worth.  I kind of tried to backwards run into Dakota Cassidy.  Had I not contacted her at the last minute...I might have a picture of her, a signed Starbucks napkin or something else jazzy to show you.  I forgot she lived in Dallas.  *headsmack* I'm a terrible fangirl.  But, hey, I remember to read her books.  Maybe I'm a good fan after all.

On my way, someone cut a fiberoptic cable in the tower...adding a massive delay.  So by the time the fantastic Heather Long picked me up, I was so frazzled, I shoved my luggage into her car, snapped in, panted for a second and then, like a brontosaurus who just got his tail kicked, faced her and said something classy like, "ZOMG! You're really you!"

Riverwalk in Rivercenter Mall

Luckily, she'd talked to me for something like a year so my brand of weird was not terribly stunning to her.  I also got to meet Jeanie, Goddess of Shoes and Dynamic Personality of the Year.  This lady is not only stunningly beautiful, which you can see in her Marilyn Monroe-esque photos, she's just as NICE as she is pretty.  It's mind boggling.

So, then we road tripped to the Menger.  I went totally tourist, since the last time I was in Texas I saw three things: The San Antonio Airport, The Road to Lackland, Lackland Air Force Base.

I didn't shoot JR.

I did not see a single armadillo.  Apparently it was too cold for them.  Since I figured they'd be as common as squirrels, I was bummed.  I saw a TON of hawks.  TON.

They also advised me they're in a drought which was why the grass was dead.  I don't think if you watered what they were calling grass, it would turn into what we up north consider grass...but that's just a Yankee talkin.  I saw cactus, too, and everyone kept telling me it was 'cold.' *snicker*  Yeah, it wasn't cold.  There were a few days where it was chilly.  Cold?  No snot freezing in your nostrils weather for the Texans.  It kind of reminded me of Colorado, to be honest.

I remembered...

I got to be in a man-wich.  These beautiful guys are Ellora's Cave Cavemen.  Aside from being handsome fellas, they were both super nice.  *waves to the guys*

The Menger was haunted.  That was badass.  Just sayin.  And the conference was awesome.  If you go look at my facebook wall, my twitter feed, my instagram feed...you can see a TON of pics of authors, pubs, editors I fangirl squeed all over.  I met bloggers, reviewers, readers...and a really cool Irish family.

I got to go to South Fork. Saw the Alamo.  The Riverwalk.  Oh, and that guy?  He doesn't know you're looking at him.

Okay, I'm off to chug more hydromet syrup.

Later, lovies.

Happy Writing!

This guy doesn't know you're all looking at him.  Shhh...

Today, I'm giddy

I went out with a friend on Saturday night. Drank a little, relaxed and didn't worry about what people thought about me.

We were chatting and somehow age came up and I asked him, "Do you ever feel like you're faking it? Like everyone looks at you and sees a responsible adult but you just feel like you're pretending?"

He said he got it but it made me think that maybe we're all doing this in all the facets of our life. At work? Faking it. Acting like we know our answer is the right one even if we're just pretty sure it is.

Parenting? Faking it. Sometimes there are gray areas, choices we have to make and we're left just hoping we've made the right choice, the good call, not sure if we're messing the whole thing up irrevocably but pretending to know for sure what's right.

Writing? Today I got an email that put me literally in tears. And I've been on Amazon's best seller's list for over a week now. I write, tell my stories, hope people will like them but worry...

Like I think most of us do at some point or another...
Do I have the chops? Is my stuff good enough?

And then we get those little shining moments.  The really giddy ones that fill us up like a balloon on helium and for that one glittering second...it all makes sense. We were right. We are the good grown-ups, parents...storytellers we hoped we were.

There are more of the 'faking it' moments than the unicorn dusted ones.

So, I leave you with Seether.



Happy Writing!

New Release from Saranna DeWylde!

Too Bad About Your Girl
Saranna DeWylde
FF erotic Romance

Blurb:

Kerrigan Black is the hard drinking, hard partying and even harder working frontwoman for the riot grrrl band Sugar and Cyanide. She keeps her relationships simple—she doesn’t have them. But she has sex and a lot of it. For Kerrigan, it’s not about the orgasm; it’s about the power she wields over her partners. Kerrigan doesn’t do love. At least, she didn’t until her bandmate and best friend—the one woman she can never have.

Dia Miller is good at revenge, so when she finds her boyfriend in bed with another woman, she decides to return the favor. She asks Kerrigan to pretend she and Dia are lovers to punish him. The show goes a little too far and feels a little too good. Dia, ever the hedonist, can’t resist exploring new sensation.

Will fulfilling Kerrigan’s secret fantasy and satisfying Dia’s curiosity shatter the bond between them or give them something more, like Happily Ever After?

 

All Romance Ebooks | Amazon | Nook

Valentine's Day can be any day...

Today, on my facebook, I told the story of my first real Valentine's Day. In Turn Me On, my recent MuseItUp release, I looked at how Valentine's Day can go wrong.

Two extremes but they both have a little something to do with the expectation.

Television, movies, books, our friends...all these trustworthy sources tell us that the day of hearts and flowers is special. If someone loves us, really loves us, they'll do something on Valentine's Day to make us feel special.

Everyone knows that.

But...it's a big fat lie.

Valentine's Day this year is a Thursday.  It's nothing more than another Thursday in a long line of Thursdays stretching as far as we can remember into the past and into an unknown number of future Thursdays.

What puts all the weight of expectation on a Thursday this year is that we're trained, programmed, and taught Valentine's Day is the holiday of love, of devotion, of extravagant displays of affection.

So, I have another romantic story to share with you.  My ex-husband was not one for buying me things. In the entirety of our years together, he bought me one card and a couple bouquets of gas station flowers. The flowers were always attached quite obviously to arguments, not just-because-flowers. So...they meant less because of their intended peace-making skills.  If you've messed up and think you can buy off any argument with flowers...

Yeah, my emotions are worth more than gas station flowers that will fade as fast as you'd hoped my annoyance would.

Anyway, at some point in my next relationship, I told the guy I was seeing about the gas station flowers.  I don't remember now how it came up or why but, one day, an ordinary day, he brought me a rose.

The card was simple, just a small square of white cardboard.  On it, he'd written, "Happy Thursday. Love, me."

I asked him what the rose was for.  It wasn't for anything.  It was a Thursday rose, it's whole purpose to make me smile. I did smile and out of all the flowers I've gotten...I remember that silly rose. It still makes me smile and it's been dead for years.

Valentine's Day this year is on a Thursday.  Just another Thursday in a long line of Thursday's stretching into the past and future for an undetermined number of weeks.

Don't put all your expectations on a Thursday. You'll have really good Thursdays and really bad ones. Getting depressed because, on this particular Thursday, no one made your heart patter in your chest is just as weird as getting upset on any other Thursday because no one bought you a rose.

The ones that matter, that you'll remember, will make any old Thursday special. Even if the Thursday in question isn't a Hallmark holiday.

And, well, remember the moments that mattered...not the ones that make you want to cry.

I hope your Thursday is as wonderful as you are, readers.

Happy Writing!

Rumor Has It book trailer

Taming of a Sex God Book Trailer