I can still recall old Mister Barnslow getting out every morning and nailing a fresh load of tadpoles to the old board of his. Then he’d spin it round and round, like a wheel of fortune, and no matter where it stopped he’d yell out, “Tadpoles! Tadpoles is a winner!” We all thought he was crazy. But then we had some growing up to do.
Hey guys! Just thought I’d take a moment to check in from Nashville.
We arrived Friday morning (I convinced my wonderful husband that driving twelve hours straight with two children under age 4 was a BAD idea–he concurred) and spent the first day with relatives. It was great to be able to kick back and relax with family.
The next night we took a driving tour of downtown Nashville. I’ve decided that I should probably buy a house there. We saw Johnny Cash’s house on the lake and several other lakefront properties that I would swipe up in a moment. I love house hunting for my dream house. Especially ones I can’t afford. 
Guess I’d better start working on those bestselling novels! (And yes, amazingly, I have squeezed in three pages worth of work since I arrived. 
Not a lot, but for a vacation–hey, I’ll take what I can get.)
We drove by the Grand Ole Opry and some of the honky tonks downtown. Wish we could have gone out for a night on the town, but the babies just weren’t up for that. Still, it was fun. It occurred to me that even if I did run into someone famous, I probably wouldn’t recognize them.
Anyway, two blog questions for you. One, are you a house-hunter like me? What’s your dream house like? And two, have you ever met anyone famous? Who was it, and how did it happen?
I think a good product would be “Baby Duck Hat”. It’s a fake baby duck, which you strap on top of your head. Then you go swimming underwater until you find a mommy duck and her babies, and you join them. Then, all of a sudden, you stand up out of the water and roar like Godzilla. Man, those ducks really take off! Also, Baby Duck Hat is good for parties.
I remember that one fateful day when Coach took me aside. I knew what was coming. “You don’t have to tell me,” I said. “I’m off the team, aren’t I?” “Well,” said Coach, “you never were really ON the team. You made that uniform you’re wearing out of rags and towels, and your helmet is a toy space helmet. You show up at practice and then either steal the ball and make us chase you to get it back, or you try to tackle people at inappropriate times.” It was all true what he was saying. And yet, I thought something is brewing inside the head of this Coach. He sees something in me, some kind of raw talent that he can mold. But that’s when I felt the handcuffs go on.
It’s true that every time you hear a bell, an angel gets its wings. But what they don’t tell you is that every time you hear a mouse trap snap, and Angel gets set on fire.
Sometimes when I feel like killing someone, I do a little trick to calm myself down. I’ll go over to the persons house and ring the doorbell. When the person comes to the door, I’m gone, but you know what I’ve left on the porch? A jack-o-lantern with a knife stuck in the side of it’s head with a note that says “You.” After that I usually feel a lot better, and no harm done.
Dad always thought laughter was the best medicine, which I guess is why several of us died of tuberculosis.
Yesterday I spent the bulk of my writing time trying to fix problems in the first half. I had made some wrong turns with the characters’ motivations and I wasn’t able to make forward progress until I fixed those. I think I’m on track now.
A funny story happened yesterday. To understand it, you need some background information. My son, being the darling three-year-old that he is, will often get into trouble and immediately try to back his way out by saying, “But Mommy, I love you.” I’ll respond, “I love you, too, but I love you more when you listen.”
So, I’m saving my daughter from gnawing on power cords, as she is wont to do, and I’m going back into the office to bring my son up to take his bath. There is a short staircase about four steps. My socks slid on the carpeting and I somehow managed to bend my right big toe all the way backwards as I tripped forward and landed on my face. I’m huddled in a heap at the bottom of the stairs, biting my lip and praying to God that I haven’t broken any bones. My son tiptoes over and says, “Mommy, why did you fall down?” I grit out that my sock slipped. He then kisses my good foot and says, “I kiss it and make it better.” I manage to get up and hobble up to the bathroom to start the bathwater. He follows me and says, “Mommy, I love you.”
Me: “I love you, too.”
Him: “I love you more when you don’t fall down.” :loser:
Don’t you just love the way our words come back to haunt us?
P.S.–I will be out on vacation for the next week, but I’m posting up some daily Jack Handey quotes, just for fun. Enjoy!
I was listening to one of the RWA workshops on CD yesterday and I heard Irene Goodman’s talk “An Agent’s Views from the Front Lines.” It was a great workshop, and one of her more interesting tips came from Debbie Macomber. It was about a way of getting your imagination out of a rut.
Sometimes when you’re in the middle of a book, you hit a stalling point. It could be that your conflict isn’t as strong as you thought it was (Oh, me! Pick me!), or possibly you can’t think of a way to solve that particular problem. Debbie Macomber suggests the rule of 20.
You take out a sheet of paper and number it from one to twenty. At the top of the paper, you list your problem. For me, I listed the problem of my marriage of convenience. It wasn’t the heroine’s motivation for getting married…the question was–why HIM? Why the hero? Why couldn’t it be any Joe Schmoe? So I started listing the reasons, as many as I could. This is where the 20 reasons comes in handy.
Once you get past reasons eight and nine, you start getting silly. You start making up the craziest reasons you can think of. 
By the time you’re at reasons fifteen and sixteen, your brain is thinking in a new direction. And by the time you finish the list, your answer is on it. By forcing yourself to think outside of the box (and believe me, you just want that list done!), you’ll find that one of your wackier answers might actually work. :crazyjumping:
Good luck!
I am treating myself to a new web design. Yahoo! 
But in order to make it happen, I have to list the design features I like to help my designer know what I want. I’ve been looking through various author sites, and while there are certain features I like, most of them are plain AWFUL. I can’t believe how many bestselling authors don’t invest in a good website. It looks like Joe Schmoe threw something together in his garage.
I’m hoping to achieve a website with a gorgeous landscape photo surrounding the site. Okay, I don’t know if you guys like it, but I’m kind of partial to the castle on the main page. I may try to incorporate it into the rest of the site. In any case, I’m out on a limb here, begging for help. What are some of your favorite author web sites? What features do you like about them?
I’ve been going through the ones listed on the RWA main page, but I’m sure there are other sites I’m overlooking. Got any good ones to share? Thanks!!
