Colorado Vacation Pics

Just got back from Colorado yesterday! I went for one of my best friend's wedding, and to do some hiking. I managed to get some writing done, too, as I have a self imposed deadline of July 4th weekend for the first draft of Vengeance and Vermouth, the third Zyan Star book.

I thought I'd throw a few pics up here on the blog before I get back to writing :)

Union Station, Denver

Denver Botanical Gardens

Me at the wedding (the humor in this is that I'm a vegetarian)

Moose!!

Grand Lake, CO

My son at Rocky Mountain National Park

RMNP again

My son, me, one of my besties at the Tundra Trail in RMNP, over 12,000 feet

Any summer vacays or weddings coming up for you? Hope the summer is going awesome so far. TTFN!

Some Things I Did Last Weekend While Not Writing

I had an entire hermity weekend planned out. I was going to sit on the sofa and edit my happy little brains out (literally, I think it's dying a slow death). Then my husband announced that we'd been invited to go boating at a nearby river. At first I resisted... but then I realized that sometimes us writers just need to get out and relax, be with people, not bore the hubs and kids to death, etc. So, here are some pics:

Mr. Dragonfly applauds little dude for exercising proper boating safety.

To me, this is the real Florida - no flamingos, just a nice jungly swamp-like location.



A random tree, which may have been used in the filming of either Tarzan, or Creature from the Black Lagoon. 

Some pretty flowers.

What have you been doing lately while not writing?

Final Countdown and a Lovely Poem

It's here. The week of my first conference. At the very beginning of January when I signed up it seemed like ages away, but here it is.

But there's something else big happening this week: me and Colene's Luck o' the Irish SPD Blogfest!! If you haven't signed up yet, hop over to Colene's blog to sign up. Also, see this post, where she shows a number of the pretty new releases coming out that could be yours free! And to further entice you, I've written an elegant poem. Try not to get too teary-eyed at its beauty:

Saint Patty’s Day totally rocks
Our blogfest will knock off your socks

Anything Irish will do

And there’s free stuff in it for you.

Leprechauns, clover and green beer

Will put you in good Irish cheer

Blarney, rainbows and pots of gold

Are always cool and never get old

Join the ranks of Stoker, Wilde and Yeats
Give us your best literary feats
But 200 words is all we ask
And in your awesomeness we all will bask

Two Irish lassies will pick their fave
But we’ll love you all for being so brave

Your bloggy friends will love you too

Go forth, write and the luck o’ the Irish be with you

Ha, hope you enjoyed that. And yes I know Yeats and feats don't technically rhyme, but hey.

Okay, now to conference talk. I promised a final checklist, so here it is:

- Write, practice and memorize pitches

- Research agents

- Make list of questions for agents
- Practice answers to questions commonly asked by agents
- Print several sets of sample pages to bring for agents and publishers

- Order business cards

- Test record function on cell phone to make sure it works for taping critique session with agent

- Decide on outfits

- And of course, get a total hair makeover

Just joking on that last one, this actually resulted from a year of debate and getting more and more bored with my hair... but I figured what better time than before my big writery debut?

So, see you guys Thursday for the blogfest and then I'll report next week with all the juicy conference details!

The Chamberlynn Bloggies!!

Thanks so much to everyone who commented about awards etiquette. I really love having a community of fellow writing peeps. So, since no one seemed to think it was a big faux pas if I created my own award, and since I have this week off from work, I present without further ado, the Chamberlynn Bloggies!

I created the Magical Blog Award, for blogs which I find inspiring or insightful or pretty or addictive, or all of the above. There are no rules or strings attached to this award. You can pass it along if you wish, to as many people as you wish. We all like to feel the love!

I don’t have any cool graphics programs, so I made this in Microsoft Paint with photos I took. The pic was taken during my honeymoon.

Here are the recipients of the first Chamberlynn Bloggies:

Beth Sanderson at The Writing Spectacle
Lynda Young at WIP It
Abby Minard at Above Water
Melissa Cunningham at A Writer’s Reality
Colene Murphy at The Journey
Jennifer Hillier at Jennifer Hillier
Rachna Chhabria at Rachna’s Scriptorium
Jen Daiker at Unedited
Karen Amanda Hooper at Eternal Moonshine of a Daydreaming Mind

And, since I got several requests for this, here's a bonus/subject for laughter?  for everyone - me as Michael Scott for Halloween.

Halloween, pumpkins, football - oh, and rejection

So, this weekend I got the quickest rejection thus far... this chic had some super powered form rejection skills.  I submitted a query late Friday night and when I got up Saturday morning, already turned down.  Now, granted, this agency only asked for a query letter and no sample pages, so she didn't have a lot to read.  But impressive for a Friday night.  Maybe they've created a robot that can automatically respond to queries... AI for agents.  He he he...

On a more happy note, Halloween is coming up. Don't you just love Halloween? I never end up getting a cool costume, but if I did, I'd be Hit Girl from the movie Kick Ass - eleven-year-old assassin with a foul mouth.

On other Halloween related topics, we bought our first pumpkin the other day... my son picked out a cool orange and white speckled one.  Also, yesterday I took him to his first football game and here's a secret - it was actually my first, too.  Living in a big university town it's kind of weird I've never been, but I could just never get at all interested in football.  After seeing the game, I'm still not interested in it, but I did have fun just being in the stadium surrounded by such excitement.   Phrases like 'line of scrimmage' flying about the crisp October air. 

Here are a couple pics I just took.  Enjoy!

Maximus

Random Thursday

Not much new to share, other than I sent out a couple more queries last night. And I got lots of compliments on my not-quite-black Purple Rain nail polish at work today, especially since I rarely paint my nails.

I've added some links to my website and the blog... as I distract myself from waiting to hear back from agents I'll undoubtedly scour some more writing sites and keep adding to it.

Last but not least, I thought I'd upload a few pics that I've taken recently, because my blog seems to lack nice pictures. Sometime soon I'll have to start playing around with creating a book trailer for Eternal Memory and can post some of the pics I'm considering using. Fun!

The first hydrangeas I've grown (my favorite flower)

Literary Kitty, the purring prima donna known as Aislinn

Live Oak tree - being from the South, I'm obsessed with them

More pics from NY

I meant to put these up yesterday but my computer was being super slow...



A beautiful view of the mountains from a viewing tower near Woodstock which we reached after a two mile uphill hike...



The lovely Harmony House...

New York

Last year for my birthday in July, my husband and I went to New York to research my novel (and for fun). Many elements of my stories (certain places, characters, plots) just kind of present themselves to me. For some reason, I always knew that Eternal Memory was to be set in New York, both in NYC and the Catskills. I even tried to talk myself out of it, thinking New York City was too overdone and cliched, but such inspirations just can't be easily supplanted.

So, we spent the day in the city, which was fabulous and I admit I fell in love with it, though I was not planning on it (for the same reasons of it being sort of the usual cliche response to NYC). Then we drove up to the mountains, first visiting some family and then on to a gorgeous bed and breakfast near Woodstock. To my great surprise and delight, I discovered that one of the owners was named Eva, like the main character in my book. Further, she had beautiful long, black, curly hair like my heroine! If there was ever a sign from the powers that be, this certainly seemed to be one. It was pretty surreal. We had an awesome stay with Eva and Jacquie at Harmony House, and on the morning of my birthday, I had perhaps the best breakfast of my life. Sitting on a large deck among the trees, it was so picturesque and peaceful I could have stayed there forever.

The really interesting part is, I discovered while exploring the area that Upstate New York actually has quite a vibrant community of Wiccans and witchcraft, which is a main theme of my book. The whole trip left me reeling from the synchronicity of having picked New York as the setting, completely without knowing that it actually was just perfect for my novel. Intuition is a beautiful thing.