Another year

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How did another year go by? Apparently time flies when there is writing, sewing, knitting, alpacas, crazy orange cats, friend's babies, conferences, day job, silly grey cats, parental units, books to read, friend to hang with, naps, dancing, flowers and many other cool things. Let there be cake!

Birthday-a-rama

It's birthday season here in Melbourne. Four out of six lulus have their birthdays in August or September and all four of my best friends have their birthdays in September or October. Leos and Virgos and Librans, oh my. This week it was the birthday of the lovely VT and next week, it's moi.

So I am busy cleaning house and planning my very low key birthday bash for tomorrow night. I survived the first week back at work, though have come down with a case of the itchies so I'm thinking that whatever it is that my tolerance to whatever it is that makes me itch (which I think is something at work) has lowered a bit while I was away. Hopefully a few days of Claramax will get me through it.

I was thinking I might buy myself Spore for my birthday but apparently it won't run on Mac Minis (even though my mini is only a month or so old) or some Macbooks even though it would run on a Windows machine with the same specs. Plus it seems to have atrocious DRM. So boo to that. I bought the iPhone version which is fun but doesn't have the stages that really interest me. I think I'm better at games on the iPhone - my male roomies always used to laugh at me on the Nintendo because I move the controller around...on the iPhone, that's a good thing. I was apparently just ahead of my time. And after a bit of time tooling around on it, the girls did seem to be throwing up some interesting ideas for the wip (and giving me a not so good nightmare last night...I'm pretty sure it was story related anyway). I tend to resist computer games because of the time suck factor but maybe some time suck is what they want right now....

Anyway, I am left without a suitable present for myself...I might just have to go shopping and see what catches my eye.

A year in review

Tomorrow is my birthday (yay!). However it seems that, sadly, I am not going to get the call before said birthday, so I've spent another year on the unpubbed roundabout. Things move slowly in publishing and sometimes it feels like you're not getting anywhere. So, in order to remind myself of what's been great in the past year, I thought I'd look back and see exactly what I have done.

In my 35th year I have:

1. Finished my first single title length book (also my first paranormal).

2. Seen U2 in concert again.

3. Helped one of my best friends bring her beautiful baby into the world.


4. Found an agent.

5. Finished my second single title length book (I think that I've probably written around 270-300k this year between actual books and revising and snippets of other things. Not bad with a day job).

6. Done two fabulous online courses with one of my favorite writers and writing teachers, Barbara Samuel.

7. Got to party with another of my beautiful friends, Keri, when she hit the NYT list MULTIPLE times!



8. Finalled in every competition I entered that first ST book in.

9. Celebrated other friends doing cool things like having babies, getting requests, finishing books, selling books, and many, many real estate shenanigans.

10. Finalled in the Golden Heart (TM) twice.

11. Won a few of the comps I finalled in (alas not the GH but I did get to see one of my friends win).

12. Went to RWA nationals for the first time, met some fabulous people, caught up with other fabulous people, had a wonderful time and bought some kickass cowboy boots. Jetlag from hell was small price to pay.

13. Kept the cats happy and paid their vet bills : )

14. Switched to a four day week at work.

15. Met Jenny Crusie, another of my favorite writers at the RWAustralia conference, heard her talk and had a fab Cherry lunch (with the lovely Anne Stuart as a bonus!).

16. Paid homage to the great goddess Letitsuk.

17. Am about to drink pineapple margaritas with friends to celebrate all of the above plus there might be cake. There will be nachos.

Sounds like a pretty cool year to me! The only thing I haven't achieved that I want to (apart from the obvious sell a book thing and convincing Hugh Jackman or Johnny Depp or Nathan Fillion that I am the woman of their dreams) is the losing of a few more kilos. In fact I've slid a little backwards on that and need to refocus if I want to be a fabulous 80 year old (see previous post). But there's still three and a bit months to the end of the actual year, so there's still time.

I'm hoping next year can be even cooler. With added fabulousness. What are my high level goals for the 36th year?

1. Keep writing.
2. Get fitter.
3. Go to RWA national again.
4. Have fun!

Breathing space

So the book has continued to talk, there has also been birthday parties (I'm old!), birthday lunches, mid-week dinners with friends, work and general everything taking longer because of the sore thumb. Which is much better now and down to only a bandaid.
There has also been Melbourne playing a little game we like to call "what the hell will the weather be like today (or in the next five minutes)?". One minute it's beautiful and sunny (30 degrees!! in early spring!!), the next it's cold and blustery. Typical spring, yes but everyone is walking around vaguely tired and grumpy as a result.

Anyway, I got to Friday (my day off), full of good plans to write at least 10 pages. But instead my brain declared it was rest day. So I shopped (the new Fashion Targets Breast Cancer t-shirt - the symbol is gold (I don't wear gold but it's a good cause) and some SK-II to try (just a little trial kit). My skin can be quite sensitive so we'll see how it goes...Cate Blanchett has awesome skin though, so lets hope it works (after all, I'm old). Then I watched S5 of Gilmore Girls. The one which Channel 9 (yes, I'm looking at you, Eddie) showed about 7 episodes of earlier this year and then just stopped (because they can, that's why). It was really good. One bit made me cry : ) So um, that was Friday. Yesterday there was ballet and I'm happy to report it was much improved over the last one. And some Gilmore Girls S3 (there has been a purchasing Gilmore Girls DVDs theme to the month). I got some entries ready for some comps and wrote a few pages. I think this book has a theme! Go me.

But today I have to get back to writing. I've got four specific things that have to happen before the end of the book. Just not sure how I get from a to b to c to d. But I can do it. Then comes revising which the brain is already kind of chatting about in a "you need to put in more about x after y way". Hopefully I'll be done with the first draft by the end of the week. Then some folks can read it and see how much work it really needs. My first long book. Almost done. And that's a good feeling.

PS Apparently when you google cat vomit and australia, my blog comes up. That's what I want to be known for lol. But for leigh ann, I replied to your comment but in case any one else is wondering the Cavalier Bremworth carpet cleaner does a pretty good job.

PPS Next month "Wife for a Week" by Kelly Hunter is out. It's great. Funny, witty, romantic. Go read it.