Living in the D.C. metropolitan area, when I first found out that the 2009 conference would be held in my backyard, I was pleasantly surprised. The conference fee alone is hefty for my budget — air or train fare plus a hotel would price me out in short order. When registration open, I reluctantly got out my credit card, held my breath, and charged the fee. 

Since then, I’ve gone back and forth about whether I even wanted to go to nationals at all. Why spend all that money — worse, let it rack up interest on the fee on my credit card — when I’m unlikely to be able to get much out of it? Several times in the past few months, I’ve very nearly gone online to cancel my registration multiple times. The more I think about it, the more nervous I become. The thing is, I’m not just an introvert. I’m painfully, painfully shy, and the shyness puts a cold aura around me people seem to read as clear as if I were shouting for them to stay away for me. I get shaky and fumble. And sometimes, when I’m overwhelmed, I can panic and freeze up and need to leave NOW. Even knowing that romance writers have a reputation for being a friendly, welcoming lot, it took me a couple months after joining my local chapter to even gather the courage to attend the meeting. One time I went, found the building, got out of my car, walked around the block, and then had to go home. I tend to sign up for things and then either not go or withdraw in that window where I can still get my money back. Because at the meetings I can now attend I always sit in the back and try to be invisible, I don’t even know anyone from my local chapter. Every face at nationals is going to be a stranger. Not my ideal environment. 

I know, I know. I sound like so much fun, don’t I? As you might imagine, I don’t have the easiest time building rapport, never mind making friends with anyone I don’t see on a daily or weekly basis. I often consider that I should take acting classes just so I can learn to detach and fake a breezy confidence in life’s many difficult (for me) situations until I get comfortable enough to at least be natural.

I also know I’m going to feel like an impostor. I haven’t finished a MS. I’m not going to pitch and I probably won’t make any contacts.

So why am I going? As a child, I was so shy that my mother was actively worried about my future, but one of the things I’ve learned over the very bumpy ride I’ve had through a pitifully uneventful and staid life is that I can’t let my fear get in the way. I could totally be one of those people too afraid of the world to ever leave my house. But I don’t want to be one of those people. I want to be going out, doing things, trying things — even some socially-oriented things. I want to be experiencing life. I can’t let fear rule me. I won’t let fear rule me, whether fear of looking a fool, or sounding like the dumbest person ever born, fear of being mocked or judged, or fear of rejection. I have to do things many, many, many times before I’m comfortable, but if I don’t work through those first nightmarish attempts, I would never find the comfort in the things that I love. I would never know what I love because I wouldn’t have been able to try anything. I never would have stepped into a yoga studio or a pottery class, and I really never would have ever stepped into my very first ballet class, pink shoes and tights and all, in my mid twenties. And while the act of writing is innately so very solitary, I don’t think I would have ever been able to permission to seriously pursue romance writing as a career. 

I know I’m going to come down with a dozen or two more cases of severe panic about the idea of attending nationals between now and the actual event. I don’t know when I’ll again get the chance to attend — maybe New York in 2011 if I start saving now — but this summer will officially be my practice attempt number one. The next time I go, I hope to have a completed MS or two (or three!) under my belt, I hope to have been active in shopping my work, and have many more reasons to delve into the business side of the business with networking and all that good (terrifying!!!) stuff. Going through it now to get my bearings when I don’t have much to lose will be good for me.

At this point, it really only comes down to one thing. I just have to remember to breathe. I might also be practicing, “So, tell me about what you write” in the mirror. 

Sharing your own stories/thoughts/impressions/musings/ on nationals from any perspective is welcome.

I realized, in my I have all these ideas and I have to do every single thing that crosses my plate personality, that while things are getting done, I’m not working efficiently so things are taking three or four times longer than they should, and I’m not as creative as I could be. And when most of my jobs require some kind of degree of creativity, that’s not a good thing.

For the past month or so, I’ve actually found myself still working past midnight, falling asleep in the middle of writing an email. (er, I hope my client emails at least made sense when I sent them…).

And a lot of this, I believe, is happening because I’m burned out. I’ve been on the verge of ’so close to being caught up I can taste it’ for… well, going on two years. And with this constant pressure to being ahead of the game, I’m not taking the time for fun. And without fun, I’m stifling my creativity, and, really, you know what they say – All work and no play make Lara a raving beeyotch, I mean, a dull girl.

But, now that i’ve gone three years of working too many jobs, I actually don’t know what to do with myself. I could turn to TV, but I’d like to do something that doesn’t require me sitting on my ever-expanding tushie. (And, quite frankly, I’m a little annoyed with TV right now. Life on Mars, I’m looking at you. It was all a dream, my butt. What the heck kind of reveal is that? ).

I did go out and buy a Wii, and while I can spend hours bowling, it still is kind of a solitary action. Especially since the Guy won’t play with me anymore, cuz I always win. LOL.

But… I’m stumped. I’d like to do something involving other people who are real. (I love my online friends, but dude, I need human contact). Something that gets me moving and outside and just not distracted by my laptop reminding me of all the work I should be doing.

What do the kids do these days? What are you doing for fun? Got any ideas for a completely out of shape, really not looking to sweat too much, but still need to be doing stuff kinda gal?

Have you ever entered a contest?

Kendal: Well, I have. Only two and they were both this year. The first one I got such drastic differing points that I was completely turned off contests from that point forward. I received (out of 125 points) a 123, 121 and a 63! And the marks weren’t the only things that varied! Here are comments I realized.

From the 121 point judge:

Response to overall option: I have the feeling I’ll be seeing this in print before long. Congrats on a wonderful storyline and great characters. You have a unique way of setting up a scene and placing the reader there without bogging us done with details. Nice job!

In response to the judged synopses: This is great! I love the wording and your confidence.

This from the 63 point judge:

Neither of these characters are likable. I’ve already discussed Cassie.  Blake truly believes his callous actions are justifiable, but they are not something a HERO would do. Remember that characters are not REALISTIC, but they must be believable.  In a romance, the male and female characters are not protagonists; they are called heroes and heroines for a reason. She is an unhappy, judgmental person and that makes the style/voice somewhat uncomfortable for the reader.  It’s important that the reader wants to spend time with this character, and that’s just not the case.

Well geez, that’s just great. Thanks for the help. Hey, I don’t mind hearing a strong critique. Bring it on. Did I just seriously waste my money to get both a pat on the back and a smack on the hand? To be truthful, I actually appreciated some of the things that were pointed out. It gave me a moment to pause and consider if I was on the right track with the story. But I got so confused that I have since shelved the entire story.

There is a new contest that I want to enter. Its deadline is fast approaching and on my mind. Will I just be wasting my time and money? Should I even bother? The reason I want to enter is that if I am fortunate enough to proceed onward, final round judge is an agent.

April: I had the opposite problem. Two low scores 55 and 58 and a higher score 88 out of 100. I had entered erotic romance and they had to collapse the category and put it in paranormal. Considering the number one comment was, “I’m not sure who the hero is?” and my story was a ménage, I somehow don’t think the category switch worked well for me.

Scorer 88 loved my story and was dying to read more – since I’ve had several people read the story now and they all agree, I have to go with her (of course that may just be my own stubbornness bleeding through.) Scorer 55 showed so much disdain for my story I believe she stopped reading after only eight pages, that or her comments were so acerbic that the people running the contest deleted them.

Interestingly, I had the same conflict and confusion – I haven’t tried to do anything else with that story. A. Because I felt for awhile that it must suck and B. Because I’m unsure what comments to take and which ones should be thrown out with the bathwater.

But while the contest itself put me at a standstill with that story, it really gave me a wake-up call. In short, I thought I had come a long way since getting serious about writing a year and a half earlier (two years ago now) but I still had so much to learn. Things I had thought I’d gotten the hang of—weren’t as good as I thought. I had problems with POV, character development, start of story, hooks and dialogue tags.

Those are things I would have just continued to get wrong. Much of the comments were more a kick in my butt to do better, to dig deeper.

I admit. I shed a few tears. I was confused. I questioned whether I could create something worthwhile (I still struggle with this). And while I really thought I’d nailed it, I now realize I had some fundamental issues that most people find hard to pin down… for example, several of my past stories left people with a ho-hum… it was OK feeling.

Those comments, coming from anonymous sources that could care less about my ego, found the weaknesses that I couldn’t see.

So overall my opinion is that contests are excellent places to take your ego. If you’re good, you’ll get an ego boost. If you’re not, well get ready to get hammered. And sometimes that’s just what you need. It will also get you used to receiving lots of comments and crits (good and the bad).

At the same time, the story is still yours for the telling.  In the end, you have to decide what suggestions to take and which ones are crap.  

Kendal: I’d love to hear others thoughts on contests. Help change my mind! Tell me your good experiences.

I used to be a big Where’s Waldo fan when I was a teen. I even dressed up as Waldo during one of my high school’s Homecoming spirit weeks. Managed to find a Waldo mask, opted for a red sweater (couldn’t find a red and white striped shirt), black pants, and my Eastlands. Totally cracked up my Government teacher when he walked in the room and saw Waldo sitting in the back.

But… I know… the more important question is… Where’s Stephanie?

Life has been crap. When life is crap… I have a tendency to withdrawal. Not the smartest thing to do, but it’s how I cope.

Personal life? Hit a crappy point back in April.

Writing? Uber crap from about late April up to two weeks ago.

Thank God I’m not waiting on any more contests because if I’d got one more score sheet with one more off the wall low score . . . I swear I’d burn all my WIPs. All writers believe that they don’t suck. All writers believe they deserve better than that 32 out of 50 they got; or scoring in the lower half of the Golden Heart. But I know in the deepy-deeps of my gut that I’m not a low scoring writer. Just when one’s drowning in crap… you start doubting yourself.

Job? Lost that two weeks ago… due to “budgetary cutbacks.” (It was only a matter of time.) So that can be classified as crap.

And I’ve got a move ahead of me. Moving to Savannah, Ga., in August. I still have mixed feelings about that–I don’t want to leave Philadelphia–but at least I’m not classifying the move as crap anymore.

I know… it could be worse. There are people out there who are obviously more enlightened than me who would claim that I’m one of those whiners and that I need to get over it because there are people who are far more worse off than me.

I am obviously not that enlightened because I’m the one who has to live in Stephanie World–not (for example) the bum who tried to sell me a SEPTA token the other day at McDonald’s so he could buy breakfast–and I’m more concerned about what’s happening to me, to my fiance, to our cats that will… in turn… affect each other since we all have to live together. When I get me straightened out, maybe I’ll start poking around in the worlds of others.

I’ve been tiptoeing around with writing the past two weeks, but nothing has clicked yet where everything’s been fun and I’m lost in my fictional world again. I used to just stop writing until the crap passed, but I’ve learned that if I don’t write at all… that just makes for a more crappy Stephanie. Yet I’m not the type of writer who just keeps writing through the crap until they push through it and all is well again.

So how do you do it? How do you make the crap less crappy, so you can get back doing the things you love (like writing)?

And because I’m not above trolling for the sympathy vote…

I’m a finalist in NYC Midnight’s Tweet Me a Story Contest.

On May 27, entrants were assigned a word and had four hours to come up with a story in 140 characters or less. If you like my story enough to toss a vote my way so I can compete in the final round… I’d certainly appreciate it. (You can vote for as many stories as you like in as many groups as you like.) There’s cash prizes, but I really want to be one of the top 10 writers who get free entry into the Creative Writing Championships.

You can vote for me here.
I’m in Group 4: Secret. My story’s the fifth one down; written by Stephanie Smith.

Voting ends June 8 at 10 p.m. Final round finalists will be announced at 11:59 p.m. June 8.

To quote Bartles and Jaymes: I thank you for your support.

Hey All,

It’s the long-lost, missing Inker.

My name is Kat and I’ve been a member for a while. A friend of Haven’s for even longer. Mostly, I’ve been keeping up with things via the Romantic Inks daily digest from the Yahoo group, as I’m a little scatterbrained on the when and where I need to be. And to think I used to be so organized. *sigh*

Let me tell you a little about myself and what I like to write. Don’t worry this shant take long. 

I’ve been writing for a long time - in one form or another it’s been about 30 years now.  Serious about the craft for about the last 15, and published since 2006, when I had a short story published in Writers’ Journal Magazine.

Though my first love was fantasy and sci-fi (I had planned to be the next Mercedes Lackey or Anne McCaffrey) fate intervened and pushed me more into paranormal romances. Which is fine with me. I always did write a little more on the romantic side of the story than the other side. Not to say my books aren’t a good mix of romance and other elements, but I’ve always been one to believe love and relationships with others illustrates who we are as people. Like that line the Wizard tells the Tin Man in the Wizard of Oz. “A heart is not judge by how much you love, but how much you are loved by others.”  - To me, without a bit of romance, the story is only half told. No matter the genre.

And since I write in just about every romance sub-genre, I think there is at least some proof there in my pudding. My primary pen name is MK Mancos, in which I write, paranormal and fantasy. Then comes Kathleen Scott, who is a little edgier with futuristics/sci-fis/and erotic romances. Then there is Kate Davison. Kate is the youngin’ of the bunch. That’s the personality who writes Contemporary romantic suspense, and will probably branch out to historicals. But they will have no paranormal elements involved. Though ancient artifacts do show up. I’ve gone through my first edits for my first contract novel under Kate Davison, called Tin Gods: Ruins and Relics Book I which will be available from The Wild Rose Press. The concept of the series is to marry the action of FBI-esque thrillers with the adventure of Indiana Jones. Sprinkle with a hot romance and exotic locals, treasure hunts and hunky federal agents and it’s yummy time.

Today marks another release for me from The Wild Rose Press. This is a Scarlet Rose book from Kathleen Scott, titled, Hotter Than Hell. It’s the sequel to my Oct. release, A Hot Day In Heaven. (Do you see the theme brewing here?)

This installment features the hunky fallen angel, Damon in his very own adventure to save his charge, Ivy.

Here’s a bit of blurbage for you reading pleasure.

Fallen angels never have it easy. So it is with Damon Serif, who’s just landed the most difficult assignment possible—protecting his sexy neighbor, Ivy Hawthorne, from a hoard of water demons bent on making her their queen. Though keeping the smoking-hot costume designer out of evil’s clutches is something he’s trained centuries for, Damon knows the real challenge is having her close without tasting her charms and indulging in her rather unique perspectives.

Ivy’s luck is finally changing. After years of designing costumes for off-Broadway plays, she’s finally got a shot at the brass ring. But now, her sizzling neighbor is following her around the city, insisting she’s the target of a demonic conspiracy. What’s more, his mere touch causes her body to climax with an intensity of which she’d only dreamed.

When Damon and Ivy connect, even the demons feel the heat, because together they are…Hotter Than Hell.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Thanks for reading! I look forward to many more posts in the future.  And hearing from other Inkers and bloggers.

-Kat

Has your regency heroine ever had a sweet tooth? Mine has. Let’s face it, our characters, even though it sounds completely psycho, are just as real as you and me. A while back, I was perusing the web and stumbled upon a great find. A scanned pdf file from Google books of a Regency candy and sweets cookbook, called The Complete Confectioner by Fredrick Nutt (copyright, 1816). Two of my favorite things: the Regency and desserts. My heroine keeps insisting that I try to make some of these tasty morsels. Unfortunately, I haven’t gotten so daring yet. However they are fun to read, especially the instructions.

Here are a few of my favorites. I’ve included a few photos, because I was shocked to see that some of these desserts are still made today (in some of those fancy gourmet restaurants where the appetizers cost more than my one week wages) :

On page 16, I discovered Monkey Biscuits, Not to be confused with monkey business.

Take six eggs and break the whites and yolks separate, and mix the weight of six eggs of powdered sugar with the yolks, and beat them well together, then put the whites in a copper pan, and whisk them well, and put a little cinnamon pounded in with the yolks and sugar with the whites; then take four eggs and the weight of them of sifted flour, then mix and stir them all together; then lay three or four sheets of paper on the plate you bake on; and take a tea-spoonful of batter, and put it on the upper sheet of paper, then make them round and about the size of a half crown piece, and join two of them together with a spoon; and sift powdered sugar over them, and put them in the oven, watch them for they are not long a baking, and when they come out, cut them off the paper while they are hot and put the two undersides of them together

Then on page 53, I found a tasty treat. Brown Bread Ice Cream! Hmm…

I’ve included portions of other recipes, because the directions say to follow the same directions as other recipes before it.

Put in one pint of cream into a freezing pot in a little ice, whisk it about till it hangs about the whisk, then take the whisk out and put as much powdered sugar as it will lay on a half crown; stir and scrape it about with your ice scraper till you find it all frozen; rasp two handfuls of brown bread and put it into the cream; then put it into your mould , and put them into your ice to take the shape.

Carb loaded, I’m sure.

Here’s some modern Brown Bread Ice Cream:

Finally, on page 55, I discovered Parmesan Cheese Ice Cream. *eyebrow raised in quizzical fashion*

Take six eggs, half a pint of syrup, and a pint of cream; put them together into a stewpan and boil them until it begins to thicken; then rasp three ounces of parmesan cheese, mix and pass them through a sieve, and freeze it.

Here’s some Parmesan Ice Cream from one of those fancy restaurants. I’m really digging the bread cups…

Are you more daring than me? I still haven’t gotten enough courage to try it. The only thing remotely daring I’ve made recently was vegan fudge… Oh, and Chipotle fudge is in the works for this weekend

Enjoy a taste, albeit a little strange, of the Regency!

Arianna

So how do you decide which genre to write in? What if you love historical, you love paranormals, you love contemporary… What if you just can’t decide? Well it’s been described to me like this: And I quote
Imagine it’s your birthday and one good friend thinks that handmade, chocolate covered toffee is your favorite, and has given you a two pound box that you’ve opened because you couldn’t wait to dive in. And imagine that another friend is equally sure that chocolate truffles are your favorite and has also given you a two pound box. Maybe you put the box of truffles in the refrigerator and you enjoy the toffee first, all the while knowing there’s a wonderful treat in store when you get to the truffles. You’re not giving them up forever, simply for now. Deciding what to work on right now is similar.
So I finally decided that too many irons in the fire are getting me nowhere. I have to make a decision, even if it’s wrong. I’ve searched my soul and I’m committing to writing a Young Adult Fantasy Romance for the next 3 months. If I don’t have the framework of a first draft done by September 1, then I’m done. I will have been writing for 1 ½ years without a finished manuscript and I’ll just be done. Not done with writing, but done with novel length fiction.
I currently have 3 completed children’s picture book manuscripts. I have an agent. And she is going to start submitting to publishing houses this month.
So I bid farewell to my Inks pals for 3 months. This is my last hooray. I’m taking a leave of absence. I’ll check back in with you in September. I can’t have any other commitments of any kind right now. A girl has to know her limitations. In the meantime, I wish all of you the very best with reaching and meeting your writing goals.
~Rebecca

When writers of historical fiction get together, one topic that often arises is research. Not just the nuts and bolts of where to find specific information or which source is more reliable, but the general topic of how much research is necessary when writing fiction. This is a subject that will never have a single answer, of course. Writers vary in how much time they can put into research and the importance they attach to getting the details right. Most of us fall somewhere near the center of the spectrum, disagreeing only in how many of the minor details we can bend to our needs before the story becomes unbelievable. But there are people at both ends.

The spectrum ends are easy to define. I know several aspiring writers who devote so much time to research that they never manage to write. If their heroine is poised to enter a room, they can’t continue the scene until they have identified every detail of that room – size, shape, décor, furnishings, colors, knick-knacks, etc, etc. They have to know the maker of every piece of furniture, the type of latch on the door, the exact details of the fireplace, and how the pictures are attached to the walls. Without that knowledge, their heroine can’t take a single step, let alone open her mouth to speak. And if there are people already in the room, these writers need to know who they are, what they are wearing, every detail of their backstory, why they are present, and on and on. They bury their minds in so much minutia that the story has no chance of getting off the ground.

At the other end of the spectrum are the writers who care so little for the setting that they do no more than toss a few period phrases into the book and call it historical. Their stories are so generic that they could take place anywhere in the world – and sometimes at any time in history. Any reader of historical fiction has seen books that are merely contemporary tales in costume. Other books might be quite appropriate for one setting but fish out of water if set someplace else. One of those sits in my warning collection. The setting is supposedly Regency England, but the only actual English detail is a liberal sprinkling of lords and ladies across its pages. The only period details were horses and carriages for transportation. Beyond that, the plot violated everything that makes England unique. This book would have been far better if set in the 1850s in either the American west or the Australian outback or in the wilds of early medieval Scotland – someplace in which the rule of law had not yet been fully implemented. Since law and order were well established in Regency England, this book’s plot was obviously impossible even to readers who know little of the period.

Which leads to my own view of historical research. I believe that even fiction must conform to the facts that make the chosen setting unique. So if my story is set in Regency England, the society in which my characters live will be organized by class with significant differences between the classes. The laws concerning marriage, inheritance, and individual rights or lack thereof must overrule any plot devices. If my characters choose to ignore society’s customs, they must recognize and accept the consequences. And dates of well-known historical events cannot be moved, no matter how convenient it would be to do so. On the other hand, if the story demands that I change a bit of minutia, I will do so without angsting over it. In The Rake’s Rainbow, I needed six inside passengers in a mail coach – real mail coaches barely held four. But I needed six, so the book had six. And I’m far from the only writer who has had a lord serve as the local magistrate even though lords were usually barred from holding that post.

So do enough research to understand your period. As writers, we must be capable of crafting a story that fits its time and place. But don’t get bogged down in tiny details. Readers want a gripping story populated by enticing characters. They don’t care if dance cards were actually used in 1819 and don’t need to know every ingredient in the pasty the hero just bought from a street vendor.

April: Writing is a solitary profession. Find a desk, a chair, a piece of the ground and start writing. You can take it anywhere and one of the most comfortable places to take it, is home. In fact, it’s probably the biggest draw for new writers… the thing they dream about most — quitting the day job, firing their boss, and spending time in the cozy confines of a snuggly comfy office.

It’s the first thing most writers dream about when they imagine their perfect day.  Wake up, get the kids off to school,  and then grab a hot cup of Jo and settle down to a morning of uninterrupted writing time. The reality however is far from ideal. After two terms of unemployment  whereby I “lived” the writers life, I can tell you it’s not all it can crack up to be.

Yes, it’s lovely to have uninterrupted writing time in the comfort of your own office (if you have one). But that uninterrupted time to yourself really begins to wear on you. Soon, you’re hankering to go somewhere exciting—someplace wild like… the library. Or socialize—if you’re socially anemic like me, you’re stuck on an endless loop with just yourself as company. You start to get itchy, you just need to get out of the house, do something different, meet some people… DO something to get away from what you used to think of as a haven and is now becoming a dungeon.

If you don’t have any money, you’re stuck with nowhere to go. Acerbate that with no cable TV and you’re really in for utter boredom. Soon even the writing dries up. You crave going back to work—just to get away from yourself.

Work and homelife also begins to blur. Soon you’re working during family time, unable to disconnect the two. Soon, you begin to forget to make dinner, the kids become cranky from lack of attention, and the hubby is ready to divorce you because you never have any time together…  

Kendal: You make very good cons on why it might be a negative to stay home, but list as many as you want ’cause until I get my chance I don’t think my dream will ever change! Here’s why: I’d be my own boss (until I land a dream contract and have an editor and an agent making demands), I get to have a whooping zero dollar commute cost (I currently have a 155 km commute per day = about an hour and a half each way). There are other benefits to working from home, such as being able to do your shopping in off hours and not having to deal with hoards of rude shoppers. Being about to cook more healthy meals. To be honest, I am huge at getting my lunchs on the run and ordering in dinner after long days at the office. I think I’d be healthier all around too because I would make time to go to the gym routinely. This might help with your concern about not having social life.

Now onto actually writing reasons I’d want to stay home. There are so many online courses I want to take to better my craft and skills, but I haven’t because, let’s face it, there are only so many hours in the day. I dream of the time when I might actually work from home and have time to ‘do it all’. I’m currently self-employed so I understand the importance of turning off the tv and committing to daily, weekly, and monthly goals.

If I was at home writing full time I would finally have enough time to blog, forum hop, take courses, volunteer for extra stuff like contest judge, etc, Oh, and of course write. Plus, if I wanted to go to a conference or an RWA meeting I can! I currently work straight weekends and it sucks huge. I never see my DH because he works a 9-5 job with weekends off. So staying home for me, makes sense and is a dream. Could I even consider it if DH didn’t have a regular job with a steady paycheck and benefits? I doubt it. The stress to be successful in a career that is difficult to break into would be something I doubt I could handle.

There are ways around the lack of social time if you are an at home writer, and they don’t have to cost a lot of money either. Join a few forums, take an hour a day and go to the gym, take an online class and meet other people, walk the dog (cat, rabbit, guinea pig), grab your laptop and write somewhere different like the library, a coffee shop etc. Take one afternoon a week and make a lunch date with a friend. Anyway you slice it, I’m not going to complain about it! Maybe it’s one of those things that you have to experience to see the negative side of, but until I’m there, I’m still keeping the dream! 

April: All of that sounds nice but when you’re under deadline and those goals of going to the gym or setting up lunch dates quickly fall to the wayside. The project will come first. 

Yes, I love the idea of working from home, having a five minute commute (I also commute long distances, nearly a total of 2 hours a day), and I absolutely love knowing  that the next day is all mine when I go to bed at night.

Certainly, I know those options you’ve mentioned Kendal are available BUT I also know me… and I know that no matter my intentions; I know that I’ll really need something or someone that motivates me to get out of the house on a daily basis.

My writing dream lives on, not because I want a home office (a drawback for me) but because I love writing down my stories, manipulating my words to get the right tone and feeling, the process of creating… that’s what I get excited about. I get excited about the fans and the idea that my story will touch someone and make a difference for them, even if only for a few hours.

Sure, I love the idea of being my own boss… but my dream now includes an office close to my kid’s school with an assistant who helps me keep on track with the days of the week, my appointments, exercising daily, and basically keeping me on track. I admit it—I want a keeper, someone that will keep me connected and active.

Otherwise I might just get lost in myself.

Anyone else have this experience working from home for prolonged periods or do you think I’m completely nuts…. Share your opinion and experiences!!!!

I might have mentioned on other blogs, in other places, that my first exposure to romance came via Harlquin/Silhouette. I can still remember the first category romance I ever read (Permanent Fixture by Janet Joyce), but in all fairness I can technically argue that the exposure goes back even farther. As a child my teacher parents enjoyed summers off, and packed us up on long vacations to see national monuments and oddities worthy of the “world’s largest” label. To quell the boredom of staring down endless miles of passing pasture and road signs, Mom kept the VW bus stacked with Archie comics.

At the age of ten, I already understood the concept of the love triangle. Like other Archie fans, I suppose, I secretly pulled for Betty whenever Archie hit one of his many emotional crossroads. Where Veronica Lodge appeared artificial and seemed almost incompatible with the gang at Riverdale High (Honestly, public school for the millionaire’s daughter? It’s one thing to keep your kids grounded, but I just don’t see the Lodges denying their only child the best education possible. Sorry Miss Grundy.), Betty was Everygirl – the one you wanted to win in the end. She had a charm and sweetness that went ignored, and that baffled me. I suppose the Archie comics were also my first exposure to the grim reality of the “mean girls,” and thus inspired hope in their comeuppance.

To read that an upcoming story arc in the Archie universe has our favorite redhead proposing to Veronica, I must admit, is unnerving. Granted, while the good folks at Archie Comics are keeping mum on the six-issue event – and Betty fans commenting on the news articles are holding out hope – there is just something that bothers me about the whole thing. To me, the entire Archie franchise hinges on the perpetual cycle of “Betty or Veronica”. It is a smooth-running train that, if one of these spokes is removed, will most certainly derail. I don’t read Archie comics anymore, but I always imagined I would buy some for my little one when she is old enough to read them. I suppose it would be difficult for me to share something that has so drastically changed.

Many reactions I’ve seen to this announcement indicate a “jumping the shark” moment for Archie. Indeed, this is the comic book equivalent to the Professor choosing between Ginger and Maryann, to Stephanie Plum choosing between Morelli and Ranger, to Maddie and David finally doing it…some things just should remain sacred. To be honest, too, the idea of Archie losing his virginity…shudder. I spent many years believing nothing had been drawn underneath those pants.

So my plea to Archie Comics is this: keep the romantic entanglements the way they have been for the last 60-odd years. The point of Archie is that he doesn’t grow up, and in a way those of us who grew up with him can look back with some fondness about the mistakes from which we learned, and our own romantic triangles, or trapezoids.

Of course, if this is merely a plot to sell comics, have Archie move to Iowa…