Amy Lane's Blog: Writer's Lane, page 179

And Introducing Prom Chicken....

OKay-- I left the picture of Squish in for scale-- because (and some of you already know this!) it really does go that damned fast. I also led with the pictures I used to lighten her up--the ones where I was pretending to be Austin Powers and she pretended to be one of his models. She was so pretty--I wanted her to be happy and pretty, and she was.

Isn't my Chicken beautiful? Isn't she amazing? I don't care that she didn't go to prom with a boy--who needs a boy?
She went to prom so she could dance and hang with her buddy. Her buddy got tired on the way home, and Chicken ended up not going out afterwards, so I got my fat, creaky mom-butt out of my comfy desk chair, and took her to Leatherby's for a sundae (which I ate an embarrassing amount of) and she told me that she had a great time.

I looked at her and thought "I hope so, baby, because I had a great sixteen years watching you get here."

One of the sad things was that I got on Twitter and said that she was beautiful--no beaux yet, because she was also a brilliant smartass, but she was beautiful.

The response I got was that because she was a brilliant smartass, she would probably not ever have a million beaux.

It made me think that we need to raise a better class of beaux--and a better class of people in general. We need to have girls who aren't afraid to be beautiful and brilliant, and boys who aren't afraid to be kind. We also need girls who don't shit on kindness and boys who don't feel threatened by smart women. It's a society in progress--but it should be a priority, I think. The world will be a better place for it.

I have hope, anyway--my Chicken is too wonderful to have to settle for a Turkey.

Tomorrow I'll post a prom chicken...

But tonight, you get princess Squish!

Anyway-- sorry--another rushed post. I've been on Torquere's LJ all day. Once again, I'm feeling a little bit bad for the last minute rush. Like I said, I've been a couple of places this week--I'll put links down at the end of this post!

That being said, Chicken went to the prom tonight, she looked stunning--there will be pictures of her (and possibly her friend, who also looked very lovely) tomorrow:-)

We had two conversations of note before she left. The first one was after she'd been SUBLIMELY bitchy as I'd been helping her get ready. I know why she was being a total shit--she was uncomfortable and irritated, because she's so used to being confident and cool, and putting on girl clothes had totally thrown her off her game. Anyway, I was telling her about putting her shoulders back because it made her look thin and stunning, and it showed off the twins. It made her laugh, and she said, "I"m sorry, mom. I'm sorry I've been such a..."

I smirked.

"What's so funny?"

"Nothing. I was just finishing that sentence in my head."

That cracked her up. As did this, while we were at the Mongolian BBQ:

Chicken: "I gotta go to the bathroom, mom, and fix my face."

Me: "Okay."

Her: "Now see, a friend would have said, "there's no fixing that!"'

Me: "Or maybe, 'There's nothing to fix!'"

Her: "What kind of friend would say that?"

Me: "A BOYfriend."

Her: "Well played. Except I wouldn't have that kind of boyfriend. Now move. I need to fix my face."


So that's what I've been doing this evening! LIke I said--pictures tomorrow. Anyway-- here are the promised links. I know, I know-- the contests are over. However, I'm a couple of posts away from 1000 posts, and was going to have another story giveaway (I still owe someone a copy of Marcus & Phillip--I was going to print it out when the final draft has been edited so it's perfect and send the completed e-book!) so folks who follow me on this blog will be taken care of:-) (Needletart-- tell younger son that if I sell enough e-books of Jack and Teague, they'll publish it in paperback. And then I can send you a copy!!!)



This is me at the LJ, talking about Waiting
This is a contest question that features Adrian
THis is me blogging about Bad Boys.
And this is "Waiting" at Torquere Press!

And this is me.. signing off and getting to work. A Solid Core of Alpha is closing in on done, and I'm SOOOO anxious to finish! I've been given some REALLY fun cover art, and I've got some comedies in my writing queue, and one REALLY happy ending for Talker--and a couple of days on Quickening--and, basically? I'm ready to see Anderson and C.J. happy. Really really happy. If anyone deserves it? They do.

We're Sorry, Due to Technical Difficulties, Your Author's Head is About to Explode

Yeesh! You think something's simple and then...

* And then the computer program I was using to do editorial work kept crashing my internets--and I kept assuming it was my fault.

* And then a perfectly good tire went flat... there was some nonsense about me hitting the curb too many times, but really, I think it was a conspiracy to render yesterday a complete waste of any time or peace of mind I may have possessed in the first place.

* And then my normally even-headed Chicken has decided that she needs yet another dress to wear to a dance once. I mean I get it. Goddess Forbid you show up at Junior Prom in the same frock you wore to homecoming... especially since Junior Prom is much more formal, but, uhm, can we say Squish's Birthday? Because our bank account can!

* And then shopping for said frock takes more out of a day already sliced and diced by said spare tire.

* And then I went down for a half-an-hour nap, and Chicken let me sleep PAST her Open House. I should probably get the #badmommy tag, but honestly? I just don't think Chicken wanted me to embarrass her in front of her teachers. (Which is too bad--her teachers were a lot of fun at the beginning of the year.)

* Of course, Chicken might have just been using her supernatural Chicken powers of reading mommy's mood, and figured that after staying up until heaven-knows-when to get some frickin' writing done, maybe letting mommy take a slightly longer nap would be conducive to people not getting their faces ripped off.

* And then my poor pregnant neighbor had to have a total freak out after psyching herself out about people coming to get her because her husband's out of town. Mate did a circle of her house, I came inside and said, "Uhm, Mate said it sounds like trees--I think it's a tree!" and she still called night patrol.

I was highly amused at this one, though--because you know what? If I'd called night patrol, I would have gotten grizzled officer with a beer gut, telling me that this noise was all in my highly hysterical head. My attractive young neighbor? No. She got Sparky the Fresh Faced Young Thing, with a big K-9 sweet doggie to sniffle around her house and tell her that she's got two dogs and, hey, a tree scratching on her daughter's outside wall.

That's okay-- I came in and told Mate (who was wondering why I hadn't come home after the noise was discovered to be, hello, did I mention a frickin' tree?) that she'd called the police anyway. I said, "Well, you know, I might have been just as hysterical if I was pregnant and alone in my twenties."

Mate gave me a long look, and we both remembered that time we spent up in Ophir, when he was gone five days and six nights a week with work and school, and he said, "You were. In a scarier house. And you didn't call the police once."

My husband called me brave. I couldn't think of a nicer compliment:-)

* And then I sat and knit with my son's friend's mom, who poured me alcohol, bless her. I was all fine, and then I came home, and slept for another two hours, because, well, I was running on four hours as it was and did I mention the frangelico? Anyway--it was a good sleep. I slept with kids in my lap, and that hasn't happened for a long time, which is a good sign that it will, very soon, stop happening at all, and I shall miss it.

*whew* And then that was plenty. Between Squish's party weekend at the Mall and Chuck E. Cheese, the flat tire, and the crashing internet, well, you may have noticed that Squish's picture was up for quite some time. In fact, I was pretty surprised to realize that this post would still be up on Saturday, and that, well, yeah. WAITING will be out at Torquere books! (That link is just to Torquere--I'll post the actual link to buy the book probably on Saturday.)

And that reminds me-- YEARNING is out at amazon.com and ARe in case you were waiting for that to check out Jack & Teague & Katy and the little spin-off from The Little Goddess series.

And now? I'm back to writing some angst in space-- because when I'm done, I'm taking two days to write on Quickening, and I can't wait!

Spoiled? Not Sos You'd Notice

OK. When I started this blog, my Squishy (also known as Ladybug) looked something like this.




After a year or so, she'd mellowed, allowed a little more of her true world domination power to escape, and had barely grown some hair:



A year after that, there was more hair, an intense knowledge of the power of the big baby blues, and a tendency for purple, pink, princess dresses and a disdain for housecleaning of any stamp (or maybe that was just me:-)



And the year she turned three, we really knew we were in trouble. I mean... seriously. Look at her. Men would kill and die for her, just from this picture alone:



When she turned four, she wore a sweater mama made in her two favorite colors (guess!) and made sure her brother stood next to her to help her blow out the candles. This was the year she got the doll in the cake, and the year her birthday came right at Easter, which was a BAAAAAADDD thing because it made her assume that the ENTIRE FRICKIN WORLD gathered for her birthday and her birthday alone.



This year, we did our damnedest to live up to that:






I don't venture to guess what next year holds for my dessert baby. Probably not quite this extravagance--for one thing, this happened the way extravagance does--with very little planning on my part. But I do know that she just, as I was typing this, came out and asked me to sing her a lullaby.

I sang her "Sunrise, Sunset," from Fiddler on the Roof, because just like seedlings turn overnight to sunflowers, my dessert baby has blossomed before your eyes to a sturdy force of nature, a blinding smile, and my youngest daughter, who still needs to snuggle in the morning, but has us all wrapped around her finger by the night.

Happy Birthday, Squishy. You fill my days with sweetness, with plenty enough tart and spice to keep it interesting. I love you more than words, more than pictures, bigger than sky, deeper than blue, and more far away than sparkling stars. You have made me exasperated, crazy, grateful, and sane, and you are, just like words, knitting, your brothers and your sister, proof to your mother that there is a divine force in the universe, and that when it conspired to make you, that force was full of win:-)

#amwriting

Okay-- not just writing, but also working out, ignoring the shitpile my house has become, and getting my ass liberally kicked by springtime, which sprang on us like a jungle cat on an obese, out-of shape opossum, waddling through the pollen encrusted grass on the way to the water-aerobics hole.

Today, I had an errand to run, and the true horror of another summer WITHOUT air conditioning in my car became truly apparent. There I was, sneezing like a cat, as we drove down the tree-lined streets of Sacramento with my windows open. And to make things worse, that REALLY tires a girl out! I finished my errand, and then took Squish to a sit-down lunch at Mongolian BBQ-- she was SO grown up--she got her own Root Beer ( and knew what it was--I think it was that pre-reading symbol identification thing) and sat down and ate her noodles happily, and talked to me constantly, and I gave her my 100% undivided attention. We went from lunch to pick up the big kids (which meant I'd left the house at 10 am and got home at 4 pm) and then, she went and quietly played. The result? The giant Rapunzel Barbie (see Christmas) all decked out in her old knit dress (which, *sniffle* has been half devoured by fucking moths. Fuckers.) Anyway-- that right there is the photo above--proof, I guess, that although I've been #amwriting (as well as twittering, in order to explain that little symbol right there) I've also been fairly productive on a personal level too. (Although not as busy #amhousecleaning as Samurai Knitter, bless her! She CLEANS her oven--she doesn't just try to use the drippings inside to kill off any sentient oxygen breathers in a two mile radius.)

But my final monthly writing total (not counting some editorial work for DSP) was 67K--I was proud, even though it's not quite an entire novel, what I've got is pretty complex and dark, and I go slower when it's darker, so, well, yay! (I hope "Yay!" I haven't had a release since February. I know I've got two this month-- Waiting and The Locker Room--but I sort of got used to lots of feedback, right in a row, and I'm, sadly, going into withdrawals.)

And Squish is 1/2way through a really thick workbook for preschool kids. She's taken some of the assignments and ignored the directions, but she's good at what she does, and works hard. I'm proud of her--I want her to be able to write her name and read a little by the time she hits Kindergarten-- it's looking like that might happen. She can already count to twenty and with some refreshing will probably know her alphabet, so, well, go Squish!

Anyway, besides a rocking workout, a whole lot of sneezing, and some moments with Squish--that's all I've got. (Re: workout: one of the ladies I was working out with had some details about something that really pisses me off. I was doing tae bo moves--you know, punching water? Man, nothing like motivation to beat the holy living shit out of some water that desperately deserved it!)

Oh yeah-- wait-- two more things.

This morning:

Mate: Where in the fuck are the remote controllers. There were TWO of them? What did big T do with them?

Me: Well, you know, today WAS April Fool's Day.

Mate: Wait just a minute. (He disappears into T's bedroom and returns with two remotes.) Yup.

Me: Not a solid sense of self-preservation in that one. It's a good thing we've got another boychild to carry on the family name.


Also, Marie let Mary Calmes and I be Thursday Things at Cup of Porn. Beware if you surf the website-- the NSFW things are VERY NSFW-- but very tasty too.

Oh yeah-- I'm going to be doing a couple of guest blogs in the next few weeks--I'll post links, but if I get too caught up in #amwriting, and it seems like I'm only blogging twice a week instead of more than that--well, I'll tell you where I'll be!

Oh yeah-- a two headed synthetic leopard thing attacked itself yesterday! SKEERY!

@#%%$# Camera Cord

I actually HAVE pictures of the kids, being fricking ADORABLE, but since I can't find the camera cord, and I've been editing not one but THREE Green's Hill novellas for production (okay-- only Little Goddess fans buy these, right? NO one else will understand them! Just saying!) I thought I'd give you a picture of my yummy yummy sexy immortal Green before I commenced:



Okay-- so Chicken is enrolled in tap-dancing now, which makes us almost as busy as soccer season, since she's got dance three nights a week, Squish has it one, and Squish and Zoomboy have gymnastics on Saturday mornings. Big T's job is to get his shit together, study for his driver's test, and figure out how to be independent without constantly bumming rides from us. I'd give him a monster sized hint,--it involves getting a frickin' driver's license!--but for some reason telling him that he's shooting himself in the foot by putting it off only seems to make him resentful.

*sigh* He's going to be living with us until he's thirty-five. You mark my words--Mate and I are going to have to start staging kinky sex shit, complete with costumes and whips and chains in the living room to get him to move the hell out. I can see it now. I'm just preparing--because when he turns thirty and still doesn't have a driver's license, it's either scar him for life or buy an apartment and move out and just start sending him house payments.

The good news is that he had this sort of red-furred critter camping out on his face for the last three months, and he apparently held it down and skinned it or something, because he looks less like a hippy-viking, and there's red fuzz all over our bathroom. He promised me he'd kill that thing for graduation--bless him, I think this was his way of doing it in baby steps. I'm not sure if it's occurred to him that it's gonna grow again.

In other news, Zoomboy has lost a tooth--Hooray! And then he lost the tooth--Aww. So I told him to write the Tooth Fairy a note, explaining how he lost the lost tooth, and that the Tooth Fairy might have some pity on him, since this is the THIRD (out of five mind you) tooth that he's lost and lost. I wonder if the other ADD odd-ducks have this sort of problem with the Tooth Fairy--I'm betting they probably do, because I think between the "Hooray, I lost a tooth!" and the "Aww, where'd it go?" I would lay down pretty heavy odds that there's a "Squirrel!" or a "Oooh, shiny!" in there somewhere. Maybe even both.

And Squish? Squish is... Well, let's make a list:

* Is heavily interested in sparkly hair bling--most particularly a big red bow that came off a Mini-Mouse Christmas hat that we've been pinning on her pony tail.
* Insists that two hours is NOT too long per day to sit on my lap, which would be fine, but I'm not allowed to sleep during this time, nor knit, nor, unless I'm crafty, read.
* Enjoys it when I go to the gym, because then she can entertain her court with stories of her big brother and the six million birthdays she's going to have.
* Is incredibly disappointed when I explain that her birthday will only happen once, we can't invite the entire world, and will NOT happen simultaneously at Build-a-Bear and Chuck-E-Cheese!
* Is completely into my plan to buy actual flowers to replace the bulbs that have probably rotted in the savage rains we had during the last two weeks.
* Does NOT see the difference between mommy freezing her plentiful pale posterior off at water aerobics as a work-out and Squish, swimming with impunity, the way she does when it's 105 outside!
* Keeps coloring in the workbooks we use to prep her for Kindergarten, regardless of what the real instructions are, using pretty color combinations and a really impressive skill. (For me, anyway-- I can't draw for shit and neither can Mate.)
* Wants to sit in my lap at night, or have me lay down with her, because, well, this is a stretch, I think we're pretty well attached. I am forever grateful that I had some time to get this attached. When Chicken was this age, I didn't realize how girls did that with their mothers--I was honestly surprised when she wasn't ready to be a teenager at six. I had forgotten that just because my own mom split when I was that age didn't mean I was truly grown up. With Squish, not only have I been prepared, but I've been given the gift of some time and space to really appreciate having her with me. Even when I'm impatient, because she NEVER STOPS TALKING, I am, as I've said, forever grateful. She really is my dessert baby. I hope that never changes.

And in other news?

I've been editing-- Waiting, Reaching, & I Love You, Asshole have all been edited in the last week, and I'm so thoroughly immersed in the world of the LG that I think I'm going to celebrate by finishing a chapter in Quickening. I'm almost 65K into Alpha, and I'm SO proud of it so far--I think that this one's going to surprise folks. It's dark, gritty, twisty and painful. *blink* Okay, maybe not surprise them THAT much.

Oh yeah-- and I thought this was funny.

When I was editing Truth in the Dark, Lynn, my editor, had to go through and point out all my Em-dashes. They're a dirty little literary habit that I was sort of addicted to, and the number of them in that particular manuscript was truly appalling. Well, the lesson stuck, and I've been pretty good (I hope--Lynn, if you're out there, don't laugh at me!) at minimizing my nasty little addiction ever since.

Enter: The Green's Hill Werewolf novellas. Now see-some of you know that these were written before I leaned down my writing style a little in KPR and some of my other work for Dreamspinner. Well, the Green's Hill Werewolves are being put out by another publisher--one that hasn't seen my gradual weening from the ubiquitous Em-dash, and has been, well, surprised (i.e. shocked and appalled) at the number of them I've used.

They seem to want me to minimize that.

I've thought about telling Lynn--I really have--but I'm afraid she'd actually crawl through cyber-space to laugh at me and then tickle me until I pee. Because, it really is sort of funny, and, well, I really do sort of deserve it:-)

A little vodka, a little Gin...

So, Mate and I went out on Friday night-- casino style.

*snicker* yeah- that sounds all badass and hot, I knowsit, but Mate's job had a soiree-- I love the way his job does the soiree thing. It's all free (including desserts that I would kill you for, BEFORE I died in heaven while eating them) and the employees ask for tickets--in this case, Mate got two. One for Mate, one for his largish, socially inept +1. Who had a grande sized time, btw.

The thing is, Mate's friends are so ubercool, so fun, so nice, so excited about their jobs (even though they don't admit it) they are uberawesome people to hang with. (I'm sure they don't have the same thing to say about me, but, well, I only get to hang with them twice a year, so they're nice to me anyway.)

Anyway, they had a casino thing-- the employees got tickets to trade in for chips--neither of us did the gambling thing, but it was sort of cool-- turned out we knew one of the pit bosses, he helps run the company and our kids have been in gymnastics together for years! (Okay, this was probably only really exciting to me. It was like, "I KNOW PEOPLE IRL-- SERIOUSLY! SEE-- IS PROOF!") But then, maybe the whole thing was just given a nice rosy glow by the copious amounts of Ketel 1 Mate kept bringing for me. It was HWEAWAWESOME.

Now, you all know from past blogs that usually, I don't like to drink too much--for one thing, I've got a habit of running into embarrassing people from my past. But this time, not a hide-nor-hair of anyone who might not want to see me shit-faced, and my husband, who was taking great satisfaction from being one of the elite few who did. *bright smile* And after a nice nap and some Advil yesterday morning, I wasn't even that hungover.

It was fun-- talked to real people, just... I don't know. Re-the-hell-laxed. Some of you all know this was a long time coming--since early October, actually, and I enjoyed myself immensely. Don't want to do it a lot, but enjoyed it while I was there.

Anyway-- that was Friday, and the last couple days have been... well... I got a lot of writing done.

I've said it before-- the bad thing about writing is that it all happens in your head. You can jump up and down and sing, "I wrote 8K in two days!" and that's all well and good, but aside from the smashing feeling of accomplishment you get (and, well, yes I do!) there's not much else to show for it. I can tell you that Alpha is really exciting to work on, that I'm going to edit "I Love You Asshole!" tomorrow (love that title!) and that Waiting will be out on April 9th... and the Locker Room on April 22nd. And that I sat on the couch and knit some, and that was satisfying too.

Oh yeah-- and I made bread. Again. And the kids cleaned the kitchen to do it. Can we say, "Magic?" Oh--and one more thing. Shortly after making the bread, the following conversation occurred:

Me: "I, uhm, turned on the auto-clean function on the oven while you were gone."

Mate: "Did you at least scrape out the gunk first?"

Me: "Uhm, no?"

Mate: "Is there some reason you're not letting me in the house?"

Me: "Uhm, no?"

Mate: "Is there some reason all the windows and the sliding glass door are open?"

Me: "Uhm, not anymore?"

Mate: "How bad WAS the smoke."

Me: "Not so bad once we all sat outside for about half-an-hour."

Mate: "I'll clean the oven before you use it again, how's that."

Me: "That would probably be best."


Oh yeah-- and one more thing I've been doing: Reading the Gin Blanco Spider books by Jennifer Estep-- I'm enjoying the hell out of them. Anyone who likes UCF--go ahead and read them. Lots of gritty fun!

Originally Untitled!

Okay, so my knitting photography has never been the best--I'll just stick with Squish's expression here and call it good. It's a wrap, worked side to side, with a cable at the top and one on the bottom, and (this part's hard to see!) three medallion cables worked in the center. I'm about done with the second medallion, and am about to start the third--and I may even go back for another skein of yarn to do a hood with a cable...

And then I have to decide who I want to give this thing too, because it's alpaca, and I can't really be trusted with something that cool. It feels like angel's wings, did I mention that? Anyway--the cables show up better in person, and I'm hoping the design doesn't suck too much. It'll be able to keep a body warm during the next ice age, and that's always a plus in a garment.




And this is what happens when you don't watch the animals-- they have a party in Chicken's room and things get completely the hell out of hand! Look at that gray one--he's totally stoned. And the one in the drawers? Has a SERIOUS catnip addiction. Fucking animals... feed them, give them luvies, they totally think you're an enabler.

And other than that? I got nothin'. I've been writing up a storm-- 8K in two days-- and really enjoying the hell out of my project-- that's something! I saw a RL friend (the one with the wine... red, this time, which was a change! and we knit and made bread and it was a lovely afternoon...

Right up until I got home and realized that Big T, in a classic Big T move, had missed his bus and walked home because he couldn't get anyone on the phone. He didn't call his father (which is REALLY starting to piss me off) and he didn't let anyone know there might be a reason to miss the bus. This morning he did something similar, which was to wake me up and tell me he'd need to be picked up at 5:30. I told him I would be getting ready to go out with his Dad for an Intel thing, 5:30 wouldn't work for me, and to ask his father. He woke me up in ten minutes to day he'd need to be picked up at nine instead. I told him, for the fifth time, that MOM AND DAD WE'RE GOING TO BE OUT AT A WORK FUNCTION and to (get this--it's revolutionary) ASK HIS FATHER!!!

*grrrr* He never did ask his father. *shakes head* What is it about that? Why can't they ask their dad-- it's not like dad spoils them less than I do, and he's not nearly as moody. Don't get it. Don't get it, never will, but someday, I'd like to not be the one woken up at gawdawful in the morning to deal with it, you feel me?

Yes, yes, I'm sure most of you do;-)

Anyway--uhm, that's about it. Writing's a funny thing-- you're either doing shit all up in your head or pimping a recent or upcoming release. When it's the shit that's all up in your head, you're perfectly entertained--but, alas, not very entertaining! (That's why the word counts--I don't live an die by them, but, well, I just want to prove to y'all that I'm DOING SOMETHING, right? Especially as bad as the house looks-- if it wasn't for the little word count thingy on the bottom of the page, someone might come to arrest me for stealing oxygen!)

And now? Off to hope water aerobics haven't been cancelled. Swimming in fifty degrees--yaw-fuckin'-hee!!!!

Twenty-one minutes to breathe...

Okay-- I had two deadlines in one week. I had to have The Locker Room edited by Friday and a selection of blurbs in by tomorrow, and because I'm an idjit and do shit bass-frickin-ackwards, I started the editing first and then elected to do the blurbs second.

*facepalm* DOH!

Anyway, let's just say I felt an inordinate pressure to get both things done by March 23. (Even though, mind you, Locker Room wasn't due until March 25th.) And I did! As I started this blog, it was done at 11:39 p.m., and I have 21 minutes to breathe!

WOOT!

Okay-- I really don't have too much to talk about beyond that. I did the water aerobics thing today--it was 47 degrees when I left. When I got out of the (thankfully) heated water, if I'd had balls, they would have frozen off. (Alas, the big ass has remained exactly where originally seated. *snark*) But I did that, scooted my contract off to DSP, and bought Squish some brand new dry erase pens and a board and eraser to go with them. It promises to rain for FRICKIN' EVER and I thought she'd need the distraction. (Dudes, the bulb project can be safely written off... if they had little bodies to jettison, the bulbs would have sent them up to show me that all life in the poor suckers were drowned. As soon as the rain lightens up a little, I'll go buy us some new bulbs and try again. Yikes!)

So I'm back to hobbling my fat ass around the neighborhood in my rainslicker for exercise. It's a good thing I don't melt... but maybe it would make my life a whole lot easier if at least parts of me melted in the water-- just sayin'! And I do find it a little bit funny (not too much--it's going to happen again!) One of the things people found 'unbelievable' in Keeping Promise Rock was the flood that occurred in a pivotal part of the book. Well, Levee Oaks is based on a REAL town nearby-- one we drive through in order to get to my daughter's dance lessons.

Folks, those smaller creeks (like the one in the picture) are rising, and the Discovery Park (which is along the American River) is flooded again. We're promising to rain for another two weeks, and I'm telling you-- floods look like they're coming. Floods--big floods--happen in Sacramento. In fact, John Sutter wanted to build Sacramento someplace higher up, but James Marshall built Sutter's Fort near the river anyway. (I forgot how Marshall won that argument-- it was something underhanded.) Anyway, the damned city flooded for its first fifty years--the existing city is built on the silt and ruins of the previous attempts. Once every ten years this city floods, and once every twenty-five-thirty years it has a big kahuna. I lived through the big kahuna in 1986 barefoot and walking with my best friend on a deserted country road, trying to get to her horses which were JUST FUCKING FINE thank you--but that's another story. The second one happened while we actually lived near the river. My husband's mom called us up and asked if we were under water. We said, "Huh?" and she said, "Turn on the television!" We did, and every apartment building on our block EXCEPT ours was flooded. Dayum-- sometimes you're under water, and sometimes you're watching otters swim for it.

So anyway, my suburb is a little higher than the flood plain (although there is a small creek near us that doesn't look too promising) but I've got my eye out (as, I'm sure, does every weather service in the nearby area.) What happened before is that the ground got saturated, the waterways got high, and then a warm rain melted the snowpack, and WHOOSH! No place for the water to go. It's not a tsunami, but after Katrina, the big skeery buzz was that Sacratomato was the next New Orleans. They've shored up the levees since then, but seriously--I've got big eyes, like this: 0.0 --there are good things and bad things about living in the same place all your life. The bad things I could take two more blogs to list, but one of the good things is that at least you know what your natural disasters might be. Earthquakes, floods, and the occasional tornado.

I'll watch for the rain and hope for the best!

And I SWEAR I'll have a personal picture next time. I've got my deadlines met (for the moment) and tomorrow is all writing. And, of course, the twenty-one minutes to breathe:-)

Pardon Me While I Bow in Joss Whedon's Direction

Sort of random various shit to report, but first things first:

* Yes, I totally had my ass kicked in Round 2 of DU BWAHA. I Was not expecting the round to start that night (because there was something else on the site that said they weren't voting again until the 19th) and suddenly, voila! I was getting the beat down by Josh Lanyon. My one consolation (besides being in the ring with Holy God Josh Lanyon!) was that if I'd managed to get the same number of votes for Round 2 as I begged, borrowed, scavenged, and scrounged for Round 1, I would have totally won. That makes me happy-- and makes me very grateful. Thanks for everyone who nominated me and voted for me--you all rock, and that was TOTALLY FUN! Maybe I can write something outstanding and get nominated next year? I'll keep my fingers crossed!

* The Locker Room is out on April 22nd, and Waiting will be out on April 9th. WOOT! I'm really excited about The Locker Room--I'm proofing the galleys right now, and I'm like, "Oooh.. I don't suck!"

* I got a lovely visit with my Aunties Monica and Carol last night. That NEVER happens--but I just sort of zoomed away from the family, went, sat, knit, and talked in the dark. I love them both--I've just never really had a chance to visit them without my kids. I want to do it again.

* On Friday, I went to pick up Zoomboy at his friend's house--he'd gotten out early and I asked his friend's mom if she could keep him so when i went back to pick up Chicken's friend Stivie, I only had to make one trip.

I hadn't been planning on staying, because she was waiting with wine. And bread starter. And now I'm totally girl-crushing on this sweet woman with four kids and a reasonably messy house because she wants to be my real life friend and she got me to bake bread. And now I have to get the recipe from her because IT WORKED and it TOTALLY DID NOT SUCK! WOW!

* Oh yeah-- Living Promises now has a contract and will be out Late July/Early August! WOOT! I'm so excited about this one, but a little worried too. (Really, Amy? You worried?) Anyway, this work is just not that angsty. I'm sorry-- I mean, I know it should be--it deals with dead boyfriends and HIV, but Jeff from KPR and LP doesn't do angst. He just doesn't. He's snarky, sarcastic, and occasionally bitchy. Collin, his love interest, meets him snark for snark, and both of them are just too damned tough to go into angst. They know about death, they know it could happen to them, but damned if they're going to spend their time getting upset about that. They're both a little self-involved, both a little vain, and both a little bit hot tempered, and both totally survivors. I love them--I love their chemistry, but they're not Deacon and Crick, or even Mikhail and Shane. They're just two regular guys, trying to get by. I hope you guys love them like I do. (And as much as my beta readers, who kept assuring me that they were awesome, even as I said, "But, there's not a lot of angst." They were like, "That's okay-- with their backstories, too much angst is a really bad thing."

* Tomorrow I shall take a picture of Squish and my WIP-- I'm really getting excited about it, even though there's a mis-crossed cable down at the bottom that I have no intention of actually fixing, but I may do the Yarn Harlot's cosmetic fix, so I don't feel like a total slacker.

* My Alpha book is progressing at a satisfactory rate. Seriously--I'm having fun. If I wasn't writing doing some other work for DSP, I'd be on NANOWRIMO pace with this one! GO DRAGON GO!!!

* In the meantime, enjoy Spike. I know that a LOT of people told me that Adrian reminded them of Spike from Buffy, but although I've been watching the series for the last year (for the record, nearly six years after Adrian died for Cory and Green) I didn't really see it. There were superficial resemblances, of course--cockney accent, white blond hair (although Adrian's was floaty--and natural) and blue eyes--but I didn't really see the 'feeling' everybody was talking about. But now that I've seen the last episode (and thanks all of you for not warning me that was coming. *sniffle* Fucking series finale.) I totally get what you were saying. Eight years after the series ended, I am now totally in love with Spike. *sigh* I'm ALWAYS five-ten years too late for cool. But that's okay-- because Spike's mine right now, and not the entire world's. I'm totally happy with that. (Hmm... Spike & Dean... HelLO plotbunny... I swear, if I was doing slash fanfic, I'd SO... MMMMMMM...mmmmm.... yeah...)

* Aherm... anyway, I've been Twittering. I need to stop. It's not so much the timesuck, as it is the addictive properties. Besides... my dragon's getting snotty and screaming, "WRITE, BITCH, WRITE!" (That could just be Littlewitch, but I don't think so. The voice is deeper, and sort of growly.) But I need to remember how much fun it can be when I'm feeling lonely at home.

* It's supposed to rain a lot this week, which totally throws a monkey wrench in that hole water aerobics thing--and they're moving to another pool next week while the home pool is being repaired, and they won't have the same class times. *whinge* Yeah, I know, whine whine whine-- but I want to look not frighteningly blob-like when summer starts. It'll be the first time in quite a while!

* Chicken made it home safely on Friday night--I cooked corned beef & potatoes for her since we got to go out on St. Patrick's day, and that's one of her favorites. She was FULL of stories from her trip--I think she enjoyed herself, although I don't know if she'll cop to it. That's okay-- her story about the mornings was priceless. Apparently, all the girls in her hotel room woke up early and did their hair and their makeup and chattered her awake. "You need to get up! You're going to be late!"

Well, Chicken doesn't do make up, and her hair is limited to straightening her bangs so they don't spazz when she has her hair back in a ponytail. She got up, put on her clothes, straightened her bangs, packed her shit, put her shoes by her bed... and slid back in for another hour. She said they all stared at her and laughed at her--and then left her the hell alone.

*sniff* Makes a mom proud.

And that's alls I gots, folks--but then, I'm busy bowing in Joss Whedon's general direction.