Tuesday, May 30, 2006

The Theme for Today: Heat

I hate summer. Truly hate it. Hate it with a passion. My idea of heaven is 72 degrees year round. Today the high in Ohio is supposed to hit 95.

In May.

Someone shoot me. Of course, my air conditioning works well and I have no reason to leave the house. I have groceries, the kitten is weaned, there's a bottle of wine already chilling for the mscelina happy hour at 4 p.m.--I should be happy, right?

Nope.

Deadline tomorrow for the erotica sequel. Yep, that would be heat as well. It's much harder to write hot sex scenes because you have to. ( A prostitution analogy comes to mind here, but I'll bypass it in favor of continuing my rant.) After all, sex is sex, right? It doesn't have to be ....creative.

ROFLMAO!

I wish. Your normal, run-of-the-mill everyday sex isn't hot enough for the fatnasy erotica market. It has to be....more out of the box (oops! bad analogy!) .... er.... over the top (not much better) ...er... inclined to drive the point home (damnit!) .... er .... that this is a fantasy and therefore not the same kind of sex you get from someone you pick up in a bar unless you're really, really lucky. And, of course, since mine is based on greco-Roman mythology (and believe me the myths remain intact and true to their sources) I'm dealing with gods. Think about it: how many different ways can an immortal come up with to enhance the sexual act? Way too many, evidently.

On a cooler note, I have cranked out 11k already today. If I'm not interrupted, I might be able to finish this thing and get it out.

On another hot note, I have an auction this week. That means hours of (you guessed it) standing in the heat and increasing my rare book inventory. Oh well! Who knows? Maybe I'll find a first edition of Tom Sawyer signed by Mark Twain so that I can retire to Alaska and finish up my books.

Ah.....pipe dreams.

Saturday, May 27, 2006

God's Sense of Humor Part II

You know, I think God may have a sense of humor after all.

I have a huge bed. It's one of those massive faux-Oriental king-sized beds with a six-foot headboard and drawers and storage underneath. I love my bed--it's comfortable, I can stretch out in it, and if I shut the drawer I can keep the cats out of the bedroom.

Except for two. My cat Pixie just had a litter of kittens, of which only one survived. I named her Asphodel (yeah, you'd be using these names too if you had to keep creating new ones every day) and she and her mother live in the bedroom until the kitten is big enough to fend for herself. Every once in a while I let the bigger cats in to get them acquainted.

So, at any rate, one of the big cats swatted at the kitten. I lunged for the cat, not even thinking about how high up I was, the featherbed slipped sideways and I landed hard on the floor.

Hard.

To cap matters off, I hit my ankle on the corner of the marble-topped pedestal I use as a bedside table and cracked it off. The first thing I see when I lift my head is the kitten staring at me with a look on her face like "Why in the hell did you do that, you stupid human?" I was asking myself the same thing.

So why do I think this is indicative of the divine sense of humor? Let me put it to you this way: I don't think I've ever been this colorful in my life. There are, at the moment, seven different colors on my ankle, which is swollen and really really ugly. That doesn't even mention my shoulder and hip. We are not pleased with this turn of events, mostly because tonight I am in a wedding.

No, not mine.

I am (blech!) a bridesmaid. Sleeveless dress, hits just about the ankle, with strappy little high heeled shoes.........

Someone shoot me, please. Maybe God will think that's funny too.

Friday, May 26, 2006

Curiouser and Curiouser

Explain this to me, damnit.

No, really.

I have been working on Asphodel for TWENTYish years. (okay, okay, only working really hard for three) I am STILL revising the damn thing. Yesterday, I rewrote/revised/edited 18 chapters of the first books.

In mscelinaland, that's approximately 350 pages, by the way.

Goddess' Revenge I wrote in two days. Two days. In Isabelle Spurrier's land (nice psuedonym, eh? It's all because I hate the head football coach at South Carolina....He Who Shall Remain Nameless) that's approximately 50 pages.

Asphodel is still on the market--back on the market I should say. Goddess' Revenge is sold.

All I could say when I opened the email was "Are you fucking kidding me?" I think I said it about five times. Then, of course, I couldn't download all the little attachments with the contract, etc. So I had to write back like a dumbass and ask the editor-in-chief to resend them.

They still didn't work.

I forwarded the email from my Hotmail account to my AOL business account and lo and behold! Downloads successful! So I get the files opened, and start to fill in the contract. I think it was then that it hit me, that I'd actually sold something I had written. This was a legal and binding contract (which it says in big black letters) that would allow me to exchange my warped, skewed (but still faithful to the original source) Greek mythology for legal tender.

Can I just say WOW? Very exhilirating.

But this is what I need explained: is it possible that maybe, just maybe, I worked on Asphodel too much? It's a question to ponder... I'm posting the first half of the first book for the Dragon's Den this afternoon. I'm sure if it sucks, they'll let me know. They always do.


Oh, and just to make it more interesting, the first thing I did after opening the email of congratulations (on my cell phone) was go to a dentist's appointment. *sigh* Every great day has to involve needles in my jaw at some point.

Tuesday, May 16, 2006

God's Sense of Humor, pt. 1

So you've heard me claim that God hasn't much of a sense of humor, right? I take it back. Within a few minutes of posting my last blog entry, I came down sick. Not just spring cold sick either. A bone-chilling, joint-aching, fever-ridden case of full-blown flu. Even on my laptop, it's impossible to huddle under ten quilts and type at the same time. I'm feeling just well enough to crank out this blog and do some hand corrections on Darkshifters at the moment.

More indications of the Divine Comedy? Let's see--it's rained for 8 days consecutively...only 32 more to go until the ark has to be done. My job which was supposed to be 2 days a week--no more--has suddenly blossomed into a five day a week behemoth. My brother actually used a polysyallbic term in a conversation last night (granted, the term was 'bondsman' but who am I to quibble?) which I'm reasonably positive has never happened before.

Oh, and President Bush has a *plan* for stopping illegal immigration.

Whatever.

Let's not forget gas at 3 bucks a gallon, for no damn good reason save enriching the oil companies.

Hopefully, God will soon consider it funny to allow me to make my deadlines. I'm on the point of promising to attempt the jitterbug on the top of a semi on 1-75 if he'll just cooperate. (Even fever-gripped, that's about the funniest image I can come up with.)

Saturday, May 13, 2006

Deadlines Blow

Ever feel like you've bitten off more than you can chew? I've bitten off more than I can conceivably eat. Everything always rolls in at the same time (haven't you noticed?) . In the next two weeks, I have deadlines approaching on Asphodel, Darkshifters, and a little erotica e-book I wrote for fun.

Bad enough that I have to do major rewrites on all three projects, but even worse that they all occur simultaneously. I figure if I work 20 hours a day I might get two of them completed by the end of the month.

As a writer, my greatest skill is volume. I can produce upwards of 10k words per day if I am undisturbed and the Muse stays out of the vodka. Asphodel is already 7 books, almost 2 million words and still going--my three year project. Darkshifters/Coils is two books, 350k words; I've been working on it since October. Goddess' Revenge is 20k--an erotica novella with a sequel. I've been working on it for two weeks. If you add in the numerous short stories, etc., that puts me at approximately 4 million words in 3 years. Scary.

Not all of those words are good words, however. As one of the members of our writers' group (Now no longer with us) mentioned on a first draft: "...No editor worth his/her salt would ever consider something with this many adverbs..." (The asshole, who is unpublished, had no clue I was already working iwth an agent and even less clue about the state of my writing. He helpfully directed me to a website for 'amateur' or 'novice' writers so I could 'learn' my craft. The website was criminally misspelled.) My rewriting process is painful for me. Nine times of ten I find myself rereading the story, double-checking its flow and storyline, instead of checking the grammar against one of my numerous college textbooks. The tenth time, I wince.

Typos.

I hate typos. They always manage to be pretty funny, however, like something from "Gone With The Wind." I's going to consider this carefully. If I were writing dialect, that would be brilliant. From a sage, however, that's pretty fucking retarded. Ah, the complexities of language! Perhaps someday I'll manage to type something letter-perfect from the beginning. Until such time, however, I'm destined to cringe at every little typo.

Can't afford typos at the moment. I have too much to get done. I'll let you know if I survive it.

Sunday, May 07, 2006

Easily Offended? Don't Read This.

You know, sometimes I wonder if God really has a sense of humor. Yeah, yeah I know--the aardvark is alleged proof of the Almighty's comedic skills but let's get serious for a second:

Huh? The war in Iraq? Not that fucking serious, moron. This is my blog so it's about me.

Do you think that maybe, just freaking maybe, someone will give me a damn break? Just for comic relief, say, or to raise funds for the homeless? Maybe even as a charity? SOMETHING.

Okay, explain this to me: my younger brother (we'll call him..........er................Stan) is the executor of my mother's estate--mostly because he lives in the same town. He moved into her house (which I had no problem with). Then I get this phone call. Here's the conversation.

"Hey, Celina, what are you doing?"
"Dying, how about you?"
"Are you busy this week?"

(nota bene: any conversation with "Are you busy this week" as the second conversational gambit is probably not going to turn out well.)

"Yes. Very busy."
"Oh. Doing what?"
Celina sighs. "What in the hell do you want, Stan?"
"The estate goes to probate on Thursday and I haven't inventoried the storage units yet."

(Pause for screaming and cussing. Allow me to point out that not only can he not SPELL executor, but is obviously incapable of looking up the definition as well)

"Stan, you live in the fucking town. Tell me: is it so damn hard to write down 'TV'??? It's only two fucking letters - "t" and "v"."

Needless to say, I have to go do it, as I've done the house and the second house in Florida already. Allow me to also point out that this conversation took place while I was driving back from the exact place that I have to return to in the morning. Neither of my brothers have helped with the whole process, which leaves me a little bitchy about the situation. Personally, I blame God--the Christian God, naturally, since according to his self-righteous followers everything is actually MY fault. Also, since God doesn't have a sense of humor about anything save torturing me (spare me the selfish comments, pal) then I have no compunction about amusing myself.

I charged a round-trip ticket on my older brother's credit card to get there. Since Dana isn't participating in this orgy of laziness save to complain and critique, he can bite my ass. While I'm there, I'm going to *accidentally* scrape my keys along Stan's car, Visine his dog, and possibly think about spilling something really foul-smelling on the carpet in his bedroom.

After all, if God is laughing then I can laugh too. Take that.