I’m over at the Here Be Magic blog today, giving my take on the “is it fantasy, fantasy romance or epic fantasy” debates. (Warning: my two cents are not very serious ones…)
Podcast Discussion with E-book Revolution
Everything I Know About Task Lists I Learned in College
Angela James, now Editorial Director at Carina Press, took this pic of me at the RT Book Fair. Love how skinny she made me look!
So, now I’m home and getting back in the groove. I spent most of yesterday on day job conference calls and with my spreadsheets – organizing the next month of my life.
That’s how it works for me, kind of in chunks of time. I keep this running To Do List in Excel, with a column for each day. So, today’s list looks like this:
Don’t worry about not understanding my cryptic notes – it’s a mix of writing life, day job and Other. Significantly, I don’t have writing work on there because that two hours happens every day, regardless, and I have Another, FAR more complex set of spreadsheets to track what I’m doing there.
At any rate, that’s today’s column and there’s one for tomorrow and the next day, and so on, until Sunday 6/9, when it stops.
Why Sunday 6/9, you might ask? Well, this is the interesting part.
(And okay – I totally accept if you all find NONE OF THIS even remotely interesting. Feel free to move on and read something amusing like this XKCD comic.)
Still here? Go figure.
So, the reason it’s Sunday 6/9 is because that’s the day I fly home from the Lori Foster Reader/Author Get Together (RAGT). Up until yesterday, the list ended on Monday 5/13, RUBY’s release day. (Yay!) It’s also a week past getting home from the RT Convention. Do you see the pattern? It just hit me as I was doing this yesterday.
It reminds me of the habits I developed in college. I used to carry these day calendars that showed a week at a time. Don’t be alarmed, kids – this was back in the days when we didn’t HAVE handheld computer devices, also known as the 80s. I would organize my life my semester. At the beginning of each term, I wrote down all the dates of my exams, midterms and finals, along with major papers due – peppered with school holidays. Then I proceeded to work from deadline to deadline. Once a test was taken or a paper turned in, I looked to the next milestone down the road.
Which is totally what I’m doing now. Conferences, release dates and book deadlines – along with vacations – form the structure of my new life.
I’m not sure this is a good approach or not, but it’s interesting to see how I’m still working off those early habits. It might be worth examining if there’s a better way to do things.
Anyone have suggestions?
Tuesday 5/7 |
my blog |
make mani/pedi appt |
make wands – 10 |
send books & wand to Sullivan |
send wands – Amy, Much Ado |
Send WV notes |
NN Report – check errors |
Establish dates for GWR & NN |
to QA – 5/7 CCR Protocol |
write up Ph II/V history |
5/8 Laura’s PA |
before 5/9 call – figure 5-18 hours |
WV Enforcement Policy |
GWR Protocol |
Laramie place to stay |
Conversation Snippets from #RT13
I’m flying home from RT, where I got to meet the fab Linda Grimes in the flesh, and posting some conversation snippets from the convention over at Word Whores.
Snippet Saturday: Her Man (Heroine’s First Glimpse of Hero)
I was all giddy to see the cover for Platinum on the Carina Press banner at the RT Convention. I go home tomorrow, fortunately – running out of steam!
Today the lovely Jody Wallace is hosting me on her blog with a snippet from Ruby, coming out May 13. Stop by for a sneak peek!
Romance writer Jeffe Kennedy discusses her sexy novels
Fun interview with me on local TV!
The Inspiration for Ruby – Food, Masks and the Sensual Lure of New Orleans
I’m over at the newly launched Contemporary Romance Cafe today, talking about inspiration in general – and, in particular, for Ruby.
Season of Seduction Anthology
Dialogue and Accents – Don’t Be the Monkey with the Bazooka
This is one of the magic wands I’ll be handing out at the RT Booklovers Convention next week. They arose out of a post I did recently on my personal blog, about how I’ve become the Fairy Godmother of Good Sex.
I think they turned out pretty cool.
Today I’m over at Word Whores, talking about showing accents in dialogue – and how it can go oh, so very wrong.
Growing Up and Letting Go of Nostalgia
This is me back on campus at ol’Wash U. Thanks to Felicia Conway Korengal for the pic!
So, I mentioned on Tuesday that I was still processing my 25th College Reunion. People keep asking me if I had fun and if I’m glad I went and my usual answers have been “kind of” and “yes.” I think it’s good that I went and I don’t regret it, and there were many fun moments, but I didn’t really enjoy myself all that much.
I felt super emotional – lots of sadness – and I wasn’t sure why.
A few things played into this, I think. I’ve been back to campus and St. Louis many times over the last 25 years since graduation, but always with very specific plans. Sometimes I was there for work and arranged to see local friends. Once I arranged for a celebration of my favorite professor, who was dying of cancer. Many of his former students from over the years came together to talk about how much his teachings meant to us. That was an amazing, fulfilling experience.
This time, it was the random luck-of-the-draw, whoever turned-up-for-the-reunion thing. There were some people I knew – Felicia being one – and a whole lot of people I didn’t remember. Very few of them remembered me. I ended up walking around by myself a lot, which was fine because I’m good with that, and it also replicated how I was in college. Most of the time I went from place to place on my own, caught up in my own thoughts, following my own schedule. So that put me very much back where I was then.
And I became profoundly aware of how different I am now.
It was kind of wrenching to realize.
See, for a very long time, I regarded my college years as an ideal time in my life. And it was, in many, many ways. At Wash U, I found my tribe in a way I never had before. I blossomed – socially, intellectually and, dare I say, spiritually – and when I graduated and moved on, I deeply missed the community I’d had there. I grieved for it. I may have idealized it.
Because, walking around, visiting all my old places, memories came back to me that made me see how unhappy I’d been at times. Especially in the first couple of years. It was a time of great growth and change for me, which often means pain. To my surprise, instead of happy nostalgia, I re-experienced a lot of that old pain. An amazing sensation, 25 years later.
The extraordinary thing that hit me was, how much better my life is now.
It’s especially clear to me as I plan to go to the RT Booklovers Convention next week. My schedule is already full – meals and drinks and parties with friends, various writing and reading communities and publishers. There are so many people I’m excited to see and talk to.
They are my new tribe.
It’s an interesting experience, to realize you’re not the person you were. Almost like a little death. No wonder no one remembered me – I’m not at all who I was then. Which, I suppose, is how it should be.
I walked onto that campus at 19 and left four years later a transformed person. Of course that didn’t stop. One of the things I most value about the education I received at Washington University is the tools they gave me to continue a lifetime of learning and growing.
Learn and grow I have.
It will be interesting to see who I am in another 25 years.