productive morning

This morning I have:
-Sent "Sudden Death" to Glimmer Train Stories. I ended up just making it a regular submission as opposed to a contest entry. Sure, the contest would have paid more, had I won, and there is a certain amount of prestige in being an "award winning author," but ... hmm. Now that I think about it, I don't know why I didn't enter it into the contest. Actually, I still can. Their website says you can submit the same story as a regular submission and a contest entry if it qualifies for both. Maybe I'll mosey on over and do that.
-Sent "Rules of Engagement" to Realms of Fantasy. I swear, these people are going to get sick of me. They send me a rejection and I turn around and send them another story right back. Same with Asimov's and Fantasy and Science Fiction. If I swing the bat enough times, I'll hit the ball sooner or later.
-Sent "The Brethren" to Book of Dark Wisdom. Actually, I'll be doing this tomorrow evening, as their website says they're not open for submissions until February 1st, but I got the story ready to go today.
-Printed a draft of "the four wizard book." I really need to come up with a better working title. I need to bust a move on this so I can actually start querying it. It's not going to write itself, dammit. It's really rough, but it's got potential.
-After I log off, I'm heading to the gym.

It's mornings like this that make me miss working evenings. Though, if I want to be honest with myself, when I worked evenings I wouldn't even be out of bed yet and so I wouldn't have been so productive. I just miss not waking up to an alarm.

Back from the Quad

Ken's grandmother's funeral was today. There isn't really too much to say about it other than Ken's family buries people completely different than mine does. My father's side, anyway. His family is Catholic, and so there was an hour-long funeral mass at the church as well as a graveside service (which was actually in a mausoleum because of the weather). When we buried my paternal grandmother a few years ago, we only had a graveside service. The whole thing took twenty minutes. Then we went to a local church to eat lunch. If someone younger dies, we have a visitation at the funeral home the night before ... but my father's side isn't religious at all, so they don't have church services. I don't think I've attended a funeral for my mother's side yet, so I don't know what they would do. I think they'd probably have a church service.

Oh, there was one notable occurrence: in the mausoleum, there were several vaults that had been purchased, and instead of a "Purchased for future need" plaque, they had a name, date of birth, and a blank date of death. I'm not entirely certain I'd put my name on a tomb before I had to. Talk about looking your own mortality in the eye. It gave me the creeps.

On the writing front, I received a rejection from Realms of Fantasy today for "Sudden Death." You know what this means--I get to buy my poker game now! Woooohoooo! Oh, yeah, I get to send if off again, though not exactly sure to whom. I had toyed with entering it into Glimmer Train's Very Short Fiction Award contest--the winner gets a big chunk 'o change--but it'll basically take it out of circulation until May 1st, which is the stated response time. I have a few days to decide.

new addiction

Actually, it's more of a renewed addiction: OPI's Lincoln Park After Dark nail polish. It's a wonderful shade of purple that is so dark it's almost black. I'd call it Eggplant. They've got a new shade, Lincoln Park At Midnight, that is exactly the same except with a little bit of shimmer. Yeah, it's a little bit goth and a little bit dangerous, and I like it. It's just how I roll.

Working on a new story. I don't want to say much about it yet ... but I might have some good news soon. Maybe. I don't want to jinx myself.

Speaking of no news, my mail lady is still delivering only bills, magazines, and junk mail. No rejections and no acceptances. How the hell am I supposed to buy World Series of Poker 2007 for the XBox 360 if I don't hear anything? Bah!

Sad news: Ken's grandmother passed away yesterday. She was in the nursing home, and we all knew it was coming, but still. Death sucks. (I love that I'm a writer and can't be any more eloquent than that. Yeah, that's sarcasm.) So another trip to the Quad Cities, which will make three trips in a little over a month.

Going to go do cycling at the gym tonight, and tomorrow I'm going to try to do Yoga Booty Ballet at home. It depends on travel plans. This extra ten pounds I've found has got to go.

BEARS WIN!!!! COLTS WIN!!!!

Enough said.

Night out

Last night a few girlfriends and I headed out to Soma Ultralounge for a night of drunken debauchery. It was a good time, except that we were there relatively early (from around 9-11) and they hadn't started to play decent dance music yet, so I didn't get my groove on nearly as much as I wanted to. Bah. I haven't had a night out at the bars with the girls in ... jeez ... a long time. I'm such an old married woman.

Today Ken is in Indy getting his geek on with a friend of his--there's some sort of gaming tournament over there--and so I'm home alone. First, I'm going to do some grocery shopping, and then I'm going to watch The Devil Wears Prada and Walk the Line while I eat tomato soup and grilled cheese. I might even bake a cake. I won't, however, do any laundry. I'll do that while watching the Bears and Colts win their respective football games tomorrow.

Golden Globes

I had toyed with the idea of live blogging the Golden Globes tonight, but frankly, I'm too busy watching it to do that. For me, the GG's are fun to watch for two reasons: 1. by the end of the night everyone is drunk, and 2. lip-reading the audience members. A few years ago I swear I saw that chick from Weeds say "what a bitch" about Meryl Streep. Snarkiness at its finest!

Yeah, so this means I'm not getting a lot of writing done tonight. Tomorrow, three things: work, gym, write. In that order. Oh, and I'll probably eat, too, but that's not important.

Ick

Today we just got back from the Quad Cities. Ken's mom had an episode yesterday where her potassium dropped critically low. Her heart actually stopped a few times, and they had to perform emergency surgery to install a pacemaker. Scary stuff. Perhaps it's inevitable--everyone time I see an ICU unit I think of my dad and all the crap he endured. (His surgical history is a blog entry onto itself. One day when I'm feeling more spunky or more melancoly I'll go into it.) She went home today with a prescription for potassium and instructions not to drive or raise her arm above her head for four weeks. Why did her potassium drop so low? Every nurse I asked shrugged her shoulders, and I never did see a doctor. Stupid healthcare system. Working in healthcare makes being a patient/family member of a patient even more frustrating. I know basically how the system works and so it really pisses me off when I don't see it done right. End of rant.

Mark Your Calendars!!!

I surfed over to Amazon.com just now and discovered Pandora's Closet has a listing! For those of you who may have forgotten, that's the anthology my short story is going to appear in. I just happen to have a link for it here, so you can skip on over and reserve your copy now. I'm so frickin' jazzed about this, can you tell? I'm going to try to have a book-signing at a local bookstore when it comes out--I have some boisterous co-workers that have promised to buy copies and make a scene, so I won't feel completely like a poser.

On a sobering note, no rejections or acceptances today. This week, in addition to working on stories and books, I'm going to work on agent queries and a new synopsis for my trilogy/duology. Lots of stuff to keep me busy. Yeah, yeah, I've fallen short of my New Year's resolutions--I did finish a short story last week, but it's a rough draft and not ready for submission--but I have definitely been writing more consistently, and that's the main goal, anyway. For some reason I just feel like I'm going to sell more stories this year. Eternally optimistic, that's me.

goodies

As you may remember, I'm rewarding myself each time I get another rejection. It's a way to keep my spirits up, my head above water, etc. etc. etc. Here's some of the things on my list of rejection goodies:
1. The 2007 World Series of Poker game for XBox 360
2. A manicure
3. A pedicure
4. A computer program to let me design kick-ass stationary, address labels, business cards, etc. If any of you out there in blog-land has any suggestions for one, I'd love to hear 'em
5. The Bare Escentuals starter foundation kit--what can I say? I'm a sucker for a good infomercial, and I'm always looking for better make-up.
Of course, there's always the ubiquitous books and movies I want to add to my collection. There's nothing like a good carrot to get you back in front of the laptop.

As you can see, I've updated the WOW and my most recent reads. I'm working on The Lies of Locke Lamora now, and so far it's pretty good. Private is a YA book about a sophomore in high school that goes to--you guessed it--a private boarding school. Popularity angst and all that. I read it mostly because I wanted to reassure myself that my writing is as good as what's out there, and that the book I'm working on is indeed a YA book. I've been reassured on both counts. Plus, I got sucked into it at the bookstore. Go, Kate Brian and team.

disappointment

Tonight after work Ken and I went into town to go to a pancake house for dinner. On a wet, rainy, cold, miserable day, there's nothing better than breakfast food--maybe an omelet and some pancakes--with some nice hot chocolate. But when we got there--dun-dun-dun--the place was CLOSED!! Bah! Our second choice was a diner that we go to every few months but that was more driving that we wanted to do, and the third choice was IHOP which is on campus and who wants to deal with that mess? Mostly it was just having our dreams of fluffy omelets and apple pancakes dashed that killed the mood for us. So we came home and had cereal. I had hot Grape-nuts, but it wasn't the same.

I have tomorrow off--I work the weekend--so I'm hoping to get one short-story done tomorrow. I sort of cheated, because it's a story I had already started that I'm revamping, but still. It'll be a story done this week.

Happy New Year, peeps!

Hope everyone out there in blog-land is hangover-free and well-rested today. Me, not so much. I'm not hungover from my New Year's Eve revelries, but I am tired. Last night Ken and I went to a friend's house (the couple we had a date with a few weeks ago) and had a low-key evening of board games and pool. That is, it was low-key until the ball dropped at midnight and we broke out the champagne. The husband, "R", and I got a little rowdy while "A" and my husband tried to reign us in. I defy you to locate a more spirited game of Uno Attack than the one we had. I slept it off pretty well, though.

After we woke up and got some food in our bellies, Ken and I shopped like people possessed. We bought discounted Christmas wrapping paper and gift bags, Christmas cards, a small Christmas tree, towels for the kitchen, and living room furniture. As in, we bought two love seats and two recliners. As in, we spent an hour-and-a-half picking out fabrics. It'll be delivered in around eight weeks. It goes without saying that I'll post pics once it arrives. I'm really pretty stoked about it.

Changing gears, here's a listing of my New Year's Resolutions:
1. Exercise every day, even if it's just for ten minutes
2. Write every day, even if it's just for a half-hour
3. Complete a first draft of a short-story every week
4. Complete a first draft of my YA book by my birthday (February 19). Yeah, yeah, this is the same frickin' book I've been workin' on for months. I know, I know.
5. Submit a story to a market each week

Yeah, they're lofty goals, but I look at it this way: meeting 50% of each of them is still working towards my ultimate goals (getting back in shape and becoming a professional writer) and if I meet 100% of all of them I'll be kicking major ass.