cover models - contemp ski romance

First of all, the relaxed, apres-ski kind of guy. Chillin' after a hard day on the slopes. Hot tub later, baby?


And the rock and roller playboy, showing off his chest and six pack abs. Partyyyyyy!



Or maybe the hillbilly ski bum. Not sure.


Or oh hey. The hero who is overcoming adversity and learning to live and love again.

PICTURES (it really had been a long time)

DS2 got his finger stuck in a truck today. So I laughed and got the camera. I was about to help him get it off with water and soap when he managed to pull it out. Sympathetic Mom of the Year Award for me :)




Um. Yeah. "hat"


We're all about the bling.


See? Bling.



And birdies :)

Kids. And then DH wearing out his knees. VIDEO and PICTURES

Gorgeous cardigan from MIL - from last year and she' barely worn it (I don't want it to get dirty!). Anyone want a 2T-ish wool, hand embroidered cardigan?




Mountain climbing again.


DH throwing DD in the air.

PICTURES because it's been a while - DD's birthday

"Eating" cake on her birthday. She was pretty much full from the mac & cheese already.




Reading "Go Dog, Go"


They have the most interesting things in the Dollar Spot at Target.



Stuff from DD's birthday, including stuff for the boys. It was a major haul!

lots of things, incl movies, teeth, and books

The first Pink Panther movie really stinks.

We are watching "Josephine: Ange Gardien: enfin des vacances" for the 5th time. Melodrama and Deus (or Angel) ex machina. Yay. And every other line is, "Oh! Gaspard!" or "Eh! Gaspard!" or just plain "Gaspard!" It's the French version of that angel series with, um, Pa from Little House. With a dwarf, blonde woman as the angel.

DD is sharing her goldfish with her doll :)

Switching to "La Grande Vadrouille" which is better.

And yes, The Toddler watches far too many movies, generally on the computer next to mine and generally way above her comprehension level, and most often in French.

Maybe this kid will speak French? DS1 tries some, but DS2 is pretty stubborn about refusing to try to understand most of the time.

Change of plan. Back to Asterix et Obelix.

I have to go back and get my tooth fixed some more. When I bite down now, my lower teeth shove against the new crown and it aches.

I really want to work out today, too. Maybe this evening. I keep throwing out the spot in my back that pinches the nerve that makes it so I can hardly turn my head. I only went to Curves once last week because of scheduling, but also because my neck was killing me.

I need to get my partial and synopsis out to the agent I met a couple of weeks ago. One more run-through and then I swear I'm going to print it and ship it out. Fingers crossed...

I've been re-reading the second book that I finished a rough draft of. It's pretty good, though I need to work on the pacing and also on the placement of various flashbacks. Do I make the whole thing chronological? Or do I make them flashbacks? Or.... Well, I don't want to leave them out entirely, because the heroine is really badly marked by her childhood and without some knowledge of her past, she's just odd.

Anyway, I should go brush my teeth and get DH up (he stayed up late programming) so I can go to the dentist's.

whee! good, good day.

This morning, we hauled the kids out of bed at o-dark-thirty and drove to Brentwood (the town in Northern CA, not OJ's estate).

I spent all day at a writer's conference thing, organized by my local chapter of the RWA (Romance Writers) and the chapter down there in the Delta area.

DH took the kids hiking up Mount Diablo (mouahahaha!) and stepping in cow paddies and then playing on the swings and slides at the park.

The morning speakers were two authors (one who writes romance) who wrote a book about writing, which seems to have ideas and suggestions and things to think about to plot and re-plot your novel. They were very good and I was excited and energized and seeing my way to understanding and fixing my novel.

And I won their raffle and got to choose to have them critique 10 pages from my novel. DUDE!

Then we had a lunch and a speaker who is a life coach and has a radio show. She was pretty good, but a bit rambly.

After that, they did the drawing for the raffles. I won a couple of magnetic boards for notes, etc that are very cute and I don't know where I am going to put them.

THEN the big win. I had bought ten raffle tickets for $6 and put several in the things i wanted most and one in most of the other prizes and I won a 10-minute pitch session with the literary agent who was about to speak next.

So I was trying to listen to her talk about the market and answer questions about genre and so on while scrambling to outline what I would say. I've never pitched anything before, I don't even have a coherent query letter.

I then didn't follow my outline, and was nervous and babbling. She asked me some questions and suggested a way to make what I said stronger (which I think I have some of, but which I didn't articulate well) and...

GAVE ME A CARD AND ASKED FOR MY FIRST THREE CHAPTERS AND A SYNOPSIS.

Maybe she was doing that for all the people who won the raffle, I have no idea, but O.M.G.

I told her that I had a zillion idea skipping around in my head for shifting some thing in my novel and she said that the offer to read the partial was open-ended. I obviously can't wait so long that she forgets she even came to California or anything, but I am going to give myself this month to see what I can do to the whole thing and make the first three chapters the best three chapters anyone has ever read of anything, ever.

And if anyone wants a full-color bookmark of a romance novel, I have about 20. About 20 postcard ads, too. I'll never go without again!

So we drove home. we stopped most of the way here and ended up at Dos Coyotes, a chain Southwest place that had hard cement floors and is NOISY. DS2 hated his nachos, DS1 liked his burrito. My burrito was fine, but nothing exciting. And now we're home.

I am so tired.

I guess this means I'm a real author, eh?

I was reading my google reader blog feed just now (as I click around one-handed with dd on my lap drinking milk and maybe falling asleep) and came across this, by Robyn DeHart of the Sisterhood of the Jaunty Quills:


"Except when those character voices are for book ideas you have no business thinking about. Here I am diligently working on this book and yet I keep hearing these two characters from a new idea, and they’re having the most intriguing conversations. Now I know for a fact that that book, nor any other, will be any easier to write than the one I’m currently working on. But despite the fact that I know this, I’m able to delude myself. As if my muse is a siren seducing me with tempting morsels of a new and wonderful and shiny idea. It’s like chocolate chip cookies baking, that delicious aroma filling my senses and making my mouth water. That’s what this new idea is doing. I’m dying to write the proposal, dying to brainstorm the whole concept with my writing buds. But I try to keep it aside and focus on the task at hand."

Which is why I have this whole plot and characters for a Renaissance French book running through my head and I keep writing scenes, coming up with stuff as I lie in bed half awake, etc etc and yet I AM SUPPOSED TO BE DOING A FINAL MAJOR OVERHAUL OF MY FIRST VICTORIAN NOVEL SO I CAN START QUERYING. (yes, I put that in caps on purpose. I'm yelling at myself.)