Be Jolly By Golly Blogfest!

Happy holidays writer friends! I hope you have all had a good week. Mine has been a very busy week of holiday parties and many dashings about trying to get all of my shopping done.  Not quite finished, but hopefully I will be soon. 

So, this is my first blogfest! I am super excited. Thanks Jen and Melissa for the great idea. All of the participants were asked to provide a Christmas recipe and also pics of their Christmas tree. Check out Jen and Melissa's blogs to see the other cool participants!

I searched for some Christmas drink recipes, and couldn't find any that I really liked, though I did find some ridiculously awesome names.  Can I interest anyone in a Christmas Elf's Revenge, Sex Under the Christmas Tree, or Christmas Nipple?  I decided I wanted a red drink (of course) and I like fruity martini type things, and then I got really pie-in-the-sky and wondered if there was some cool drink out there named for writers.  Well, I didn't find one, so I made one up.  Here it is:

The Writer's Christmas Stress Reliever

Ingredients:

- 2 ounces Absolut Vanilla

- 2 ounces cherry syrup
- 2 ounces pomegranate juice

- Spritz of lime
- Fresh raspberries to garnish


Directions:


- Mix all liquid ingredients in a shaker with ice
- Shake
- Pour into a fabulous martini glass
- Throw a bunch of raspberries in
- Drink and relax

Now, here are pics of my Christmas tree.  I must confess that these were from last year, but my camera has been on the fritz and I haven't taken pics yet this year. Thus, my beautiful Tangerine kitty is in this picture. He died earlier this year so we will miss him this Christmas. Mocha the very cooperative pony is also starring in my pics.

So, I also went a little OC on Google images last night because I wanted to find more cool pics to include. But, what's Christmas if things don't get a little over the top? To me, Christmas is about the magic. Not only is the whole Santa thing terrific and fantastical, but it's the one time of year when everyone really comes together and tries harder to get along and think of other people.  The whole season is infused with specialness. So, my pics are all about the wonder of the holidays. Starting with castles, naturally.

**Photos removed since peeps have been getting sued for posting photos on blogs**

 

I will not post again til after Christmas, but I will be visiting everyone's blogs!! Have a lovely and awesome holiday, blog friends! Drink lots of eggnog! Eat lots of yummy food! Give and gets lots of presents! Be thankful you can do all these things! Feel the magic!



Delicious vintage blog makeover!

Whilst perusing my fellow bloggers' sites this weekend I came across a cool template, which led me to ShabbyBlogs where they have all this amazing free stuff!  I love vintagey themed things, and they have it galore over there.  So, I chose a Christmas background for this month and I'm already trying to decide what I'll change it to in January.  They also have cool blinky buttons, which you'll see I've sprinkled liberally through my sidebar... the one at the top is actually a set of quotes I have up in my bedroom, so I was stoked to see it available for my blogging home.

Anyways, editing updates: I sort of finished my major rewrite last night.  By sort of I mean that I got all the way through to the end, connecting all of the new scenes I wrote so that everything is integrated with no gaping hole plots.  But one thing I realized I had to do was remove a lot of pages from the end - I had about a 45 page wrap up after the final climatic scene, and that just won't work.  So, I slashed ruthlessly down to 20 pages, which is still sort of a lot, but it works.  Now, I just want to go back and plump a little here and there earlier in the book to bring my word count back up.

Speaking of makeovers, I've also decided I want to change the name of my novel, because I don't think it's snazzy enough.  I spent some time last night making a list of keywords for my book and some possible new titles.  I also wrote a brand new query letter in like five minutes, which is amazing for me (usually I agonize about it for several hours).  So, I guess I kind of did a total novel makeover, with lots of juicy new scenes, a new name and a new query.  I'm going to wait until after the holidays, and then it's round three of querying!

So, writer friends, how are your projects going?  Are you writing?  Editing?  Querying?  Waiting for your book to be published?  What are your writing resolutions for the new year?

Winter is here!

It is freezing in Florida.  So says the native Floridian who's never lived through a 'real' winter.  Seriously though, it makes me very unhappy when it doesn't get above 40 degrees in the middle of the day and in the morning when I have to feed my equine friends it is 20 degrees.  Yuck.  And we don't get any nifty snow or anything.  Those of you that have survived colder temperatures are welcome to chastise me :)

On to writerly stuff, I have received a delightful award from the super cool Joann Swanson!!  Thanks, Joann!  Joann is one of the Killer Chicks, and I haunt her personal blog and the Killer blog on an extremely frequent basis.  Both blogs have really great writerly topics and plus Joann's has ravens (or are they crows?) which I love.

So, award recipients are asked to share 7 things about themselves.  My last sharing was random stuff, so this time I decided to do a theme on my writing life.  Here goes:

1) I started writing at such an early age I can't remember, but it was roughly 5 or 6.  I wrote a poem about a white Christmas pony, which was specifically designed to manipulate my parents. It was unsuccessful.
2) The first novel I started writing was when I was about 12.  It was also about horses.  I never finished it.
3) The third (I think) novel I started writing was when I was about 14 or 15.  It was high fantasy, because I was big in my Tolkien/Tad Williams/Dragonlance phase.  It was pretty unoriginal but I got to about 150 pages I think. 
4) I started a bunch of other books and wrote a lot of random poems (one was about being pissed off at traffic and eating peaches in my car) while in my teens.
5) Life intervened!  I became a young mother and didn't do much writing as I spent my early twenties chasing after a very rambunctious and completely awesome kid who I'm proud to call my son.  He is almost nine now and reads 300 page middle grade novels.  Yes, I'm totally bragging.  He rocks.
6) My current WIP starting percolating in my brain a really long time ago.  Like 7 or 8 years.  I finally started writing it about 2 years ago, finished the first draft about 10 months ago, and have been editing and getting rejected by agents ever since.
7) I've started the second book in the series, as well as a couple other future projects which I switch to when I get bored or need a break from my main WIP.

I guess that was sort of a timeline really... anyhow, here are the new recipients of the Versatile Blogger Award - they all have lovely blogs which I encourage you to stalk:

Nomes at inkcrush
Lisa at Read, Write, Repeat
Maria at Read, Write, Romance
David at The Cosmic Laire
Ivy at The Happy Whisk
Writing Nut at Writing in a Nutshell
 
For those of you that didn't see my last post, I was in a tizzy about this really cool agent auction over at Miss Snark's First Victim.  People got to post their first 250 words and be critiqued by fellow writers and agents, and then the agents bid for pages, and it was super fun and informative.  Would anyone be interested in doing a similar thing here, posting your first 250 words and getting feedback from everybody?  Obviously there won't be any agents so it won't be as exciting, but I thought the feedback could be helpful.  Let me know your vote!
 
Finally, I just wanted to apologize ahead of time if I am not visiting everyone's blogs as much in the next couple weeks or so.  I have been insanely busy at work, and even though I met my deadline that I was sweating about last week, I am consistently finding myself in a zombie-like state upon arrival at home and probably will be like that until the end of the year since this is our busiest time. 
 
Stay warm writer friends!!  Use the mind numbing cold to drift on new planes of thought and have inspired feverish writing sessions!

Oh my gosh do you want to read something totally addictive?

I am at work right now taking a lunch break (crazy right?) and absolutely had to share the fun I was having... over at Miss Snark's First Victim, there is an auction going on between 13 agents over a number of book excerpts.  The chic that runs this blog had a contest for writers without agents to submit their first 250 pages and then the agents bid on them (how many pages they'll read).  Bidding started today and the competition is fierce!!  I read all of the submissions over the weekend, so it's really fascinating to see the ones that are getting battled over and the ones that aren't... I must say my favorite ones are getting crazy bids, though some that I didn't think were that great are too!  Super intriguing, check it out! 

Exhaustion, Christmas and Writerly Stuff

Oh, what a week my blog-friends. I worked from 8 am to 7 pm Monday through Thursday without taking a lunch break or anything... the good news is I made my deadline, though I was a total zombie. I actually left work at 4:50 on Friday, and it was like "Oh, daylight, and I'm leaving. Totally bizarre." I had a massive earache going on at the beginning of the week, too, so I survived on Tylenol and episodes of Weeds, which is my new favorite TV show. Not a lick of writing took place, which was a bummer.

So, this weekend I've been trying to recover. Yesterday was busy because I was running errands in town and then at the local winter festival with my son for a few hours. Today I did some major house cleaning because it had gotten completely OC, and then early this evening we dragged out all the Christmas stuff. Santa and his elves have officially laid siege on my house. It is now full of holiday goodness. However, while decorating I noticed the curious/evil gleam in Literary Kitty's eyes as she crouched by the Christmas village, quietly observing this strange ritual of the humans. Think: Jurassic Park when the velociraptors narrow their eyes as they watch their prey. Her eyes were gleaming with devious feline plans involving the torture and assassination of various Christmas ornaments and carefully wrapped gifts.

Now, I am going somewhere writerly with this, I promise. Earlier I was spritzing and vacuuming and washing dishes. Heck, I even contemplated mopping pretty seriously for about five minutes, but then decided to eat pie and write instead (it's the thought that counts, right?). I started thinking, getting ready to clean the house is like getting ready to start a writing project. Sometimes it seems too huge of a task, too overwhelming. There are a million things swirling about in my brain. So, for either task, I break it down into steps. When writing, I actually write down these steps, like a to-do list. For instance, when I was starting my most recent major edit, I did a little brainstorming about what I was going to change, and then ideas started popping and I felt overloaded. So I typed up a quick list of the new scenes I was going to write, and where I was going to work them in and how I was going to connect with or add to existing scenes.

Once I have my list, then I have to pick a place to start. For me, this isn't always a chronological progression through the story. Sometimes I'll go ahead and write those scenes that are clawing at the inside of my brain. Later I'll go back and write the connecting pieces. The important part for me is to make a decision, and then take action. I can’t let myself get overwhelmed by the whole ordeal, I just pick a room in the house/scene of the novel and go for it!

So, how do you guys go about starting projects? What keeps you from getting overwhelmed?

Sunny California Anyone?

To what do I refer?  World Fantasy Convention 2011!!!

October 27 - 30 in San Diego.  Guest writer, Neil Gaiman (Stardust, Coraline, lots of others).  In attendance, Charlaine Harris, author of the books that the HBO series True Blood is based off of.  And lots of other authors, publishers, agents, etc.  And also - me! 

Check it out here!

Only 850 tickets available!  They haven't updated their attendance list for over a month, but it was already about a quarter full then.  Hope to see some blogging friends there!

P.S. - this concludes my blogging activities until the weekend as I am currently working 11 hours straight each day at work to meet a deadline.  TTFN!

In the wee hours of the day after Thanksgiving...

Okay, well I started writing this in the wee hours of the day after Thanksgiving, but at about 2 am I gave up. All of my creative juices of the evening went into making a new blog titlebar picture or whatever you call it. I used pictures I've taken (well, one was taken by my husband) on different travels about the globe. Except for the sunset pic, that was from our front yard. Now that I've spent all the time making it, I can't decide whether I really like it or not, so if it comes down in a few days you'll know which side of the argument prevailed.

Anyways, I hope everyone had a lovely and delicious Thanksgiving. I did (my Tofurkey was scrumptious as usual). Speaking of giving thanks, I was honored and delighted to receive the Honest Scrap Award from Colene Murphy at The Journey! Thanks, Colene! I started out this blog with the intent of writing a completely honest account of my adventures in writing and trying to get an agent, and I'm glad that I'm doing my job. Colene's blog is super awesome. I haunt it with regularity. And if you need more reasons to visit, I put a link below to a hilarious Harry Potter interview she posted.  Check it out!

So, the award rules state that I am to share 10 things about myself. Here goes:

1) I like to talk about myself. I don't think I am overly narcissistic (for a writer), but I'm just an open book and like to share my stories (again, writer).
2) I live on five acres in the country with two horses, a pony, a dog and three cats, two children, and one husband. My neighbor has cows and a vineyard (interesting combo, right?).
3) My 'real' job (the full-time one that pays the bills) is for an educational non-profit corp. I'm a manager, and seriously hope I am not like Michael Scott in real life (like I was for Halloween).
4) None of my coworkers know how serious I am about writing. I amuse myself with the thought that it's my secret life.
5) I'm kind of like Garfield. I love food and sleeping. I don't cook much, but I like to eat the delicious things my husband makes, and could go nuts in Fresh Market or Whole Foods. I've never even been in a Whole Foods, but I am waiting for them to bring one to my city.
6) I used to bleach my hair blonde, and then accidently went pink for a weekend while I was changing to red, which lasted for a while, and then eventually I went back to my natural brown. Black hair has always been my favorite, but I've never been brave enough to go there.
7) I'm a major crier. I cry when I'm happy, sad, angry, or when something just makes me emotional (something beautiful, triumphant, sweet). Seeing other people cry makes me cry. Sometimes I really annoy myself with it.
8) One day, I'd like to become really involved in some sort of global project. I'm passionate about protecting the environment, and stopping animal cruelty, and women's rights. My degree in Sociology, while pretty much useless in my day job, added a lot of fuel to my save-the-world fire.
9) I am a certified equine sports massage therapist. When I was in my teens, I used to compete with my horses, and flew out to Colorado to learn how to massage them. I actually had quite a few paying clients at one point. I haven't done it in years, though I still get the occasional request.
10) When I was 15, I started working at this awesome cafe run by hippies and earned the nicknames 'Lex-Ann' and 'Lexicon'. I find the Lexicon one amusing since I am a writer and considered fitting that into my blog title, but then figured I wasn't really quite fantastic enough of a word smith to get away with it (I should be; but since we’re still being honest and stuff…).

So, now that you know 10 random things about me, I'd like to pass on this lovely award to five fellow bloggers that I think have honest and delightful blogs full of great writery stuff:

Lola Sharp at Sharp Pen/Dull Sword
Jai Joshi at Jai Joshi's Tulsi Tree
Melissa at Through the Looking Glass
Donea Lea at Queen of Procrastination
Shallee McArthur at Life, the Universe, and Writing

Check out their blogs, they rock!

Now, as a bonus for everyone, here are a few things that caught my attention on my blogging adventures this week. The Rejectionist is having a New Year's Pre-Resolution Uncontest, and she also had a hilarious Harry Potter music video that had me LMAO. For more on Harry Potter, check out this interview on Colene's blog. More LMAO. And, to wrap things up on an educational note, here's a really good post on query letters by the ever-awesome Nate Bransford. A cool way to look at writing them if you are in the mood to revamp yours.