Lost Cause

I'll never catch up. Never. There's no way. This last trip to Tennessee has knocked me smooth off-schedule on everything that I have backed up for the next few months.

Did I mention that I sued my brother?

I've had the absolute worst week, tortured with a migraine that so far has lasted six days. I got NO writing done save for jotting down notes for plot developments; I got NO edits done, NO contracts out, NO internet work, and NO emails.

I had 76 unanswered emails and all of them (well, except for my daily horoscope) have to do with business. I think I'd be a much happier writer if real life would just leave me the heck alone! I mean all I WANT to do is sit in my study and work!

Never works out that way. Today, I redid my antique shop (it was getting a little boring) and now I'm combining an internet publicity blitz (book comes out Thursday--doh! kind of crept up on me) and rewriting my anthology story and PRAYING that edits for something else don't come in anytime soon. It's hard to do rewrites after you slit your wrists.

*sigh* On a more positive note, my decision to remain a non-Buckeye fan was reinforced this weekend when the students at OSU promptly proved that their parents were wasting their money by setting couches on fire all over campus in celebration of the win over Texas. Over THREE HUNDRED fires.

Come on already, you idiots. Couches are for sitting, not for burning! What's wrong with celebrating a win the way we do in Tennessee? Get drunk and talk about the upcoming run of the table~don't torch furniture to prove a point! Holy hell---if you don't know how expensive COUCHES are then you obviously don't need to be in college.

Morons.

Get away from my couch with that lighter. I don't hate your team; I just feel no need to root for them. *grin* After all: why associate myself with a group of fans whose collective IQ is about 20?

Go Vols. Oh, and by the way---for the record: Florida sucks. The only good Gator is a pair of shoes....or maybe a fritter.

Latest Elven Demise

I just had to share this one. As you know, I've been killing off Elves for about 1.5 million pages now, but I thought this Elf death was hellaciously funny.

Okay, so the Elf (one I REALLY don't like but haven't been able to kill in 7 books) trips and FALLS off of a tree branch and breaks his skinny little neck.

MWAHAHAHAHAHA! Remember--anyone who can sell a story about a cross-dressing dwarf can make the world buy into a clumsy Elf.

Liesen. RIP. September 1, 2006.

Good Days

Some days are just better than others. You wake up and think to yourself, before your eyes are even open, *Wow. Today's going to be a good day.*

I kind of felt that way when I woke up this morning. Granted, I didn't want to wake up. But, for a change, the cats were all quiet and contented, the beat of the rain against the window was soothing, and I basked in a feeling of warm contentment.

Then I realized why.

Football! Yep! College football is BACK! Today is the day when my team is still undefeated and the hopes for the season are high. We can beat anyone~~and will. *grin* (and for all you Florida fans, I'm listening to *Rocky Top* at the moment and just waiting for you guys to get to Neyland Station. mwahahahaha)

Of course, the downside is that I'm not in Knoxville, cheerfully boiling brats in beer to get ready for tailgating tomorrow. Noooooooo.....I'm in Ohio. One of my other personalities (the one that pays bills) tends bar for every Ohio State football (except the one I'm getting dragged to next month) so today is cook food for the party day.

But in Ohio.

Let me tell you a bit about the bar. It's an old school neighborhood bar, open since literally the day after Prohibition ended. It's got those old-fashioned glass-doored coolers set into polished oak doors and a clientele that's almost as old during the day. I love the old regulars. Some of them had their first beers in the bar when they were sixteen and we were still fighting WWII. Their stories are great--so great that I've been compiling them and working on a story about them called "The Sunday Morning Regulars." It is, make mo mistake, a dyed-in-the-wool Ohio State Buckeye bar.

Period.

Only now there's a bartender who's a single spot of orange behind the bar, the transplanted Tennessee Volunteer who argues football stats with fellows old enough to be her grandpa. That's about the only time I yell *Bullshit!* at an old codger waving a ceegar and talking about the good old days of Woody Hayes. Some of them probably went to school with Knute Rockne.

At any rate, there's also a younger, really hardcore crowd too. The owner is in his fifties, his son just turned 30, and of course there's me. *grin* I can find a football fan at the funeral parlor and they show up to squawk at me about my allegiances. The trick is to blend the two without a pair of dentures getting knocked across the room.

But get this: apparently the bar has been getting phone calls. *Hey! Is that chick from UT tending bar there during the Ohio State game?*

*Celina is tending bar for every Ohio State game.*

*Cool! Are you doing anything special for the game?*

*We're running drink specials and having a tailgating party.*

*Do I have to make reservations?*

Power. Aint't it grand?

So today I'm preparing food for 50 and tomorrow is the first Ohio State game. I hope it goes well. I even pass a sparing thought that maybe, just maybe, I might root for the Buckeyes tomorrow. But then, at 5:30, everything changes.

Tennessee versus California on ESPN--two top 25 teams knocking heads in Neyland Stadium.

Rocky Top, you'll always be
Home sweet home to me.
Good old Rocky Top
Rocky Top Tennessee.
Rocky Top Tennessee.

Reality Intrudes

I can't find a rhythm. I can't keep an even keel. Everything, once again, is thrown into chaos by phone calls from Tennessee. Allow me to state for the record here that my younger brother is the primo idiot of the South. Jackass.

It boils down to me having to make another trip to Tennessee. Usually if I take a trip to Tennessee at this time of year I end up in Neyland Stadium watching a game. Not this time....noooooooo.....I get to be tortured by having to stay in Clarksville. Are you fucking kidding me? Jesus.

I will promise you this, however--when I get down there I am going to kick my brother's ass. Hard. Moron.

It would be much easier to keep to my writing schedule if I could just write---for some reason, that doesn't seem to be happening. I have so much to do at the moment that writing becomes a low priority. Blogging doesn't count; I spend no more than ten minutes a day on it and it helps to open up my mind. Oh well. At least back home I can use all those sleepless nights to get some work done. It wouldn't be so bad if I didn't hate going back there so darn much. That and I have to fly -- the DH can't get time off from work - so I'll be trapped without a car the whole frigging time.

*sigh* Someone shoot me.

Episode II--Attack of the Cats

Yep. You guessed it. Begun, the curtain wars have.

Not content with shredding human flesh and cat toys, the kitten (aka the antichrist) has instigated war against all of the curtains in the house. Yesterday, I put up my new silk moire curtains in the bedroom. Last night, I took them down. I'm considering pasting newspaper over the windows.

Stupid cats.

Last weekend, I got an antique piano. It sits downstairs against the wall, and never has fewer than five cats lounging on it. This morning at 2 a.m. I was awakened by noises even Beethoven could have heard. It appears that Muggle, my escape artist cat, has not only learned to open shut doors, cabinets, the fridge, the freezer, and dresser drawers but now has added *lifting piano tops* to his formidable skills. He promptly demonstrated said ability by walking across the keys.

Four times.

Currently, the battle for the cat treats is ongoing. So far, the only cat who has any chance of getting a treat is Impy.

He's asleep.

The others are pestering me. I have waaaaaaaaaaaaaaay too much to do today to be stuck in the middle of a George Lucas-esque epic battle. I'll either have to dissect these little bastards with a lightsaber or go to the bar to write.

Hmmmmmm......*grin*

Selling Out

It's totally not fair.

I've sold out. I've compromised my artisitic ideals and have agreed to write a story that I have absolutely no interest in the subject matter. It's total bullshit, but I couldn't help myself. I want to keep the ball rolling and get more stories out there, but if I have to write something more *commercial* in order to get my other, more original stories accepted is it worth it? I mean, granted publishing is a business, but isn't it better to set trends than to blindly follow them?

I have no idea. The ideas I had are apparently quite wrong.

It's a shame to get disillusioned at my age. I always thought that as a fiction writer I could follow the dictates of my imagination. Apparently, my imagination is too *out there* for a commercial public. I mean, what the hell? I write what I would like to READ--and I'm not THAT weird in my reading choices.

*sigh*

*goes off to research more werewolf bullshit*

The Weirdass Parade

Okay, we all know that bartenders see people in their absolutely worst condition. Last night I was treated to a never ending revolution of Lancaster's oddball population.

First, there was the wannabe comedian.

No, I'm serious. That is his goal. He was depressed because his comedy act didn't go well at the coffee house open mike night. I understood why when he told me that his act consisted of reading excerpts of "Foreign Affairs" and then commenting on them. His key phrase last night, apparently, was 'cognitive dissonance.' It was with a remarkable amount of restraint that I informed him that in Southeastern Ohio, people are not likely to laugh at a routine that they have to translate.

He punished me for this comment by sitting at the bar until close and practicing his routine to himself. To everyone else in the bar, he looked like your average psycho talking to himself, but I distinctly heard the phrase 'cognitive dissonance' an average of 40 times an hour for 3 hours.

Then, there were the carnies. The local fair is being held in a northern town of our county and the carnies are allowed to park their RVs at the fairgrounds which are across the street from my bar. No problem. However, I had one come in last night and say without preamble, "I'm looking for my roommate."

Blank look. "Okay. If it's not these guys then I don't have him." (There were two others in the bar, including the cognitively dissonant comedian)"What's his name?"

"I don't know."

"You don't know your roommate's name?"

"He goes by a nickname."

With difficulty, the eye roll was restrained. "Which is --?"

"O.J."

Allow me to submit for the record that *O.J.* is not necessarily a reassuring nickname.

The thought process went as follows: carnie, staying at the fairgrounds, drinking at a bar, and NOT the one across the street. I picked up the phone, called the closest bar, and managed to find a carney named O.J. sitting at the bar drunk.

Go figure.

Then, my favorite late night regular came in. This gentleman is probably about fifty, an African American factory worker who looks like he could play football for the Packers at the drop of a hat. He's quiet, keeps to himself, and tips me very well -- plus we've had a five-month-long argument about football that we both enjoy. At any rate, at 2 a.m. a gay couple came into the bar to buy carryout beer -- with one staggering and the other obviously the long-suffering DD. All of a sudden, the drunk one staggers up to the regular and slurs, "I rememberrrrrrr you. You saved my life a few weeksh ago --"

Funny enough save for what happened next: he leaned over and kissed the guy on the cheek. Mike (the regular) was so surprised I thought he'd fall off his barstool. He probably would have then killed the guy, but I burst into uncontrollable laughter behind the bar and it distracted him. The DD hustled his boyfriend and 12 pack of Bud out the door, and I went into the walkin cooler and laughed until I cried.

So, the moral of this story is? Whoever it was I pissed off last night during Happy Hour, who went home and called every drunk he knows to come and torture Celina at the Fairview -- Jesus Christ I'm sorry! Whatever I did I'll never do it again! I PROMISE! Please don't ever do that to me again -- my delicate nerves can't take it.

I'm way too cognitively dissonant for that.

Isabelle's Contest

Hmmm.....I see some new people. Don't forget, those of you directed to this blog by Isabelle Spurrier, the brat of erotica, that you must comment on the blog to be eligible for the contest. Unlike Isabelle, who tends to like flattery, I have no problem with you saying what you really think. It's very easy to get offended if you read this blog.

Consider that fair warning.

On the other hand, it's also fairly easy to be entertained. Enjoy!

Kitten Torture 101

Okay, we all know the kitten is whacked. Seriously whacked. I mean, she likes to swim. Now I'm convinced that my whole *Kitten is the antichrist* entry from a while back is more accurate than I care to admit. She's developed a new regimen of human torture and is getting quite experienced at it.

For example, she now expresses love with love bites. Cute, right? Not at freaking 5 am it isn't! Every night, I am awakened by the sensation of tiny teeth piercing my skin in the dark. *Purr, purr, purr, chomp, chomp, chomp.* Barring throwing the little thing at the wall (which has crossed my mind) there really isn't a way to break her of the habit.

Her favorite sleeping place? The laptop--when I'm working on it. The mouse pad -- when I'm working on the desktop. The bathtub ---empty, full, or not. The cutting board when she thinks I'm not looking.

THE WASHING MACHINE. Barely avoided a nasty series of events there.

So now here I am trying to meet these vicious deadlines, and I have a kitten swinging from my ankle. Literally. I'm sitting in a chair with my legs crossed and she is swinging from the claws and teeth embedded into sweats, socks, and skin.

Nice kitty. Does this mean that Armageddon is going to happen in the kitchen?

Oh, and by the way, I like this template better. Pink is SOOOOOOOOO not me. *grin*

A Hell of a Time to Quit Smoking

I am a bona fide moron.

I haven't smoked in two weeks. Most of that was being sick, granted, but I was holding out hope that I was finally over the last three cigarettes a day thing. Hope springs eternal, or so they say.

Bullshit. That fond wish lasted until yesterday. Until yesterday, I had a life. Until yesterday, I had open spaces on my schedule. Until yesterday, the craving hadn't hit me yet. Everything was grand until I checked my email.

Then I almost passed out.

Not only did I get rid of the new erotica series, BUT I sold Asphodel. Do you realize what that means? It means I am GETTING PAID TO KILL ELVES!!!!!

As soon as that thought hit my mind, my fingers twitched. I darted a look at my schedule. I have 15k to write by Friday. I work Wednesday night. Now I have to reformat not one, not two, but EIGHT 150k plus books from Wordperfect to Microsoft Word -- via Wordpad -- and save them to .rtf files. Then I have to make my rounds on the readers' loops, do some promotional work, maintain my websites, get some editing work done, work on Darkshifters....

My fingers twitched again.

That means I'll have to forgo sleep, chugging endless pots of coffee and curtailing my social life in an effort to meet all these deadlines! That means I'll be even MORE sleep deprived than usual by Saturday. That means my mood will deteriorate even further.

Twitch. Twitch.

Wow!~ I have to update my websites and get ready to plot out a new, bigger promotional strategy. I wonder how many of the readers from the loops I already frequent will make the switch to non-erotic high fantasy? Is it possible? Man! I'm going to have to KILL myself to get enough word of mouth interest out there!

TWITCH.

I frowned. There was no beer in the fridge. The cats were already gnawing on my shoes, hoping they would miraculously transform into Little Friskies. The dust bunnies floating across my hardwood floor were large enough to challenge the Doom Bunny for supremacy. Obviously, I would have to plan my strategy carefully or I'd never survive the week. The dustbunnies were easily handled: I called someone to come clean my house. The beer and cat food, however, posed a more serious problem.

I would have to leave the house. Although I could survive off of pizza, I wasn't certain that it was a habit I needed to encourage among the cats. So, I grimaced, threw on my shoes, and got into the car.

TWITCH! TWITCH!

Question: why are there always cigarettes next to the checkout lane in grocery stores? That's so not fair! Standing in line with a case of Rolling Rock and a twenty five pound bag of Little Friskies and a twelve pack of canned food, the cigarettes were calling to me like sirens on the rocks.

TEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEWITCH!

Sigh.

Oh well. At least the nicotine enabled me to meet my first deadline. I'm off to try and hit the second one.

Random Trains of Thought

Okay now that the gloating is over, reality sets in. Doesn't that suck? I get to change my bio now---I am a professional writer. Someone has BOUGHT my book. How do I know? Customer review.

She liked it. *grin*

At any rate, now that the first one is out it's time to turn my attention to the next ones. Just that quickly---isn't that odd? I have about 60k to get the Shequanti series done and maybe half of that to get Darkshifters done. I also started a new project---*sigh* --- a paranormal piece without either Elves or sex in it. Of course, I thought it was a short story but it's starting to look a little long. Duh. On top of that, I am putting the finishing touches on the pirate story and I think there's a FNW tonight.

Yay! I can write again!

In other news, apparently the kitten can swim. Two of the last three days she's ended up in the bathtub and she's very angry when she gets taken out. Damnedest thing I've ever seen---she smells perpetually like shampoo now. None of her relatives like swimming. Hell, they don't like baths. Perhaps the feline gods have relented enough to grant me one cat that won't throw fits when it's weekly bath time.

Gripe of the day: people who vaunt their professionalism but then aren't professional enough to take criticism. Hint of the day: dude, I do my best not to start a critique with "This sucks." However, it would behoove you to LISTEN to what I say instead of tooting your own horn and hoping it drowns out my words.

Jackass.

Gripe of the week: hypocrisy. Hint of the week: If you preface a comment with "My best friend is *insert minority* so I -- " then you usually don't get it at all. If you blast someone without knowing their background and life situation, you stand a good chance of gnawing on your foot for hours. This seems to have been a mantra in celinaland this week---I've had two or three run ins with the omniscient.

*sigh* I remember when I was omniscient. Fortunately, I reached my tenth birthday and realized I really wasn't.

Not so good news: apparently there is a possiblity that the artifical disc will be recalled. Er.....how exactly do I turn mine in for a refund? What do I get in its place? And who pays for it? I guarantee you there will be serious hell to pay in Ohio if I find out I have to have further surgery and a fusion. SOMEBODY will pay....in more ways than one.

News flash from the good side: Friends are awesome! Whether online or in real life, friends totally rock! I realized that last night when answering questions at my release party (my fingers are still sore) -- wow, do I have a great support group set up among my fellow writers. What makes it even better? It's even more fun to be supportive of them--

Midnight and Mysticism

There are specific days I will remember all my life. The days that my daughters were born. The day I got my first lead role in a union show. The day that my first script was produced. The day I got married. The day I quit being married. The day my mother died.

And today.

Today will rank as one of those days. Today, my first story is released. Oh, there will be other days like today (at least three that I know of) but today is the first. Today I get to call myself a *published* author for the first time. Wow.

Oh, sure, I've had short stories and poems published before. For free. Starting today *grin* I get paid.

Wow.

Granted, the increase to my checking account will be minimal. The increase to my self-esteem has the potential to be substantial. The purported risks to the same are even higher. Scary. Is that any reason for me to still be awake at 1:33 am EST?

Probably.

What happens if they hate it? What happens if the reviews SUCK? What happens if I read it and find a typo? *GASP!* Oh, horrors! What shall I do?

Get drunk. Duh.

As I sit here in my study looking out the window, the dimly reflected light of the stars illuminates a southern Ohio night. The trees are silhouettes of ebony against a sky of black and the constellations dance slowly overhead. I fix this picture in my mind and know that I will remember it for the rest of my life. The silence....the warm sultriness....the faintest smell of the sunflowers that line up against my fence like sentinels in a cemetery...and I realize that this is the last time I can sit here in my own private world where my words affect only me and the poor unfortunates that are trapped in the Dragon's Den with me. At some point today, those words will reach someone else, someone I don't know, someone who knows nothing more about me than the words I place for them on the page and the characters I bore for them to love or hate. Wow. That's almost humbling.

Then again, this is me. Screw humility. HURRAY! All of you naysayers out there who've scoffed at me with your condescension and your snarky comments and your snide nitpicking---go to HELL! MWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

I won! Pfffffffttttt to every slush pile I ever occupied.

Whew!

Wow. What a couple of days! It's getting a little wild around here. There's lots of promo chats, readers' loops, and general nerves twitching around these here parts....well, and a little irritation too. You know me: I have to be irritated about SOMETHING. Today I'm annoyed because I don't have time to write.

Damnit.

However, I am having a lot of fun chatting and pretending like I'm not about to pee myself with nerves. I don't think anyone believes me.

To top it all off, I'm still freaking sick. You'd think after a couple of hundred bucks, a course of antibiotics with pills the size of leeches, and cough syrup that tastes like the ass of a two-week-old donkey corpse that I'd feel better. But.....NO; I still feel like crap. The parental unit wants me to go back to the doctor -- HA! I see no need to enrich a geek when he didn't help me the FIRST time.

At any rate, other than that life in celinaland is pretty good. Tomorrow is the big day. *deep breath* The chances of me getting any sleep tonight are slim to non existent. The chances of me having VODKA, on the other hand, are QUITE good. *deeper breath* This is MUCH scarier than I thought it would be.