My Whovian Adventure in the Great Northwest

A couple weeks ago my son and I went on a trip to Seattle and the surrounding area. I had told him years ago when he turned thirteen I'd let him pick anywhere domestically he wanted to go as his present. This is partially selfish, because I adore traveling. And, this year he turned thirteen! A terrifying prospect. And I had to pony up on paying for this trip :) His birthday was actually in February, but a friend that lives out there said the weather is awful in February, and that summer was best. So, we picked July, which happened to be my birthday. It was a pretty epic time. We had a blast, both in the city, and doing a lot of hiking in Olympic National Park, as well as Mt. Rainier. We went whale watching, too, though I didn't get any good pics of the whales due to the boat pitching back and forth. One other thing that was cool about the trip was that my novel Martinis with the Devil is set in Seattle, so I got to do some setting research since I'd never been there. Google Earth only gets you so far :)


Anyways, I thought I'd share some of my favorite pics!

The Chihuly Glass Museum

On the Needle with a jaded teenager (he loved it, he just kept pulling these ridiculous faces for the camera)

A Dalek at the EMP Sci-Fi/Fantasy Museum (my kinda museum!)

The Needle at night

Chihuly at night

The glittering lights of the city

Pikes Place (a magical place - the Diagon Alley of Seattle)

Atop Hurricane Ridge in Olympic National Park

Overlooking the Sol Duc Falls at Olympic

Rialto Beach (my absolute favorite - stark and gorgeous)

Rialto

Sunset at Rialto to finish up my birthday

Ruby Beach

Selfie at Ruby

Lake Quinnault I think

Mt. Rainier

The Paradise Visitors Center at Mt. Rainier

We're now back home safe and sound, but I wish we'd had more time to explore out there! How about you - any fun trips recently, or coming up? TTFN!

Long overdue blog post

So, I have been very remiss in my blogging lately. Nothing terribly exciting to report - I've just been going through another major set of edits before I begin querying agents again. Adding more inner dialogue for my main character, tightening up the flow (removing extra words, awkward phrasing, etc). I'm about two thirds of the way through.

Hopefully within a couple weeks I'll be back at work contacting agents... it's so nerve-wracking. While I'm editing I think about all the parts that I love so much, and how awesome I think the book is, but as soon as I send out sample pages I think how dreadful it is... alas, the craziness in a writers head.

So, this next go round I'm going to work on finding my Zen place when I query agents, and having a little faith. And I'll have my trusty blog to look back at when I get published and am asked how it all began.

Happy Birthday to me!

Since I have no new writing news (alas, my fantasy of having an agent ask to read more of my book on my birthday seems unlikely unless it happens in the next 82 minutes), I will share about what I did today. I got to sleep late, then I wrote on my second book for a few minutes, having done a lot of research on Paris last night and therefore having dreamt about it all night. Then I went to a very tasty lunch with my husband, kids, sister and mom, ending with a coconut cream bomb cake - need I say more? I guess I'll just say super yum... then my husband and I went shopping and I got an awesome new pair of jeans and some shoes. Then I came home, took a late afternoon nap, got up, talked to my BFF in Colorado, and now I'm about to write on my book some more. Oh, and there was a gorgeous sunset, which had that awesome effect where it seems to leak into the air and make everything seem yellow... I love that.

Sooo... tomorrow I have another day off from work and I'll definitely spend a good deal of it writing. Just getting past that pesky first chapter that can be oh so tricky.

Back from vacation

I refer to vacation from the internet and an actual vacation. I wish I could say that the actual vacation was longer than the internet vacation, but not so. We finally have high speed internet here in my country abode, but there were a few days between disconnecting the old ISP and getting hooked up on the new one... during which my internet addiction became scarily apparent.

Anyhow, my actual vacation was just two days down at the beach during which I thoroughly edited the prologue of Eternal Memory. Of course, I also lounged on the beach and soaked up the sun, the salt air, and a mango margarita. Returning home was not so pleasant, especially because the air conditioning in the house broke and I had a quite sleepless night. However, all is restored now, internet, AC and soon my brain (after I get some sleep).

The next few days will involve editing, editing and more editing! Then I will be submitting to more agents. So, prepare for another stint of obsessive introspection and the tiring out of my gmail account...