FINISHED!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

IT'S DONE!!!!!!!!!!!
BBL is done!!!!!!!!!!!!
Happy Happy Joy Joy! I'm thrilled.

20 Pages

I'm 20 pages from the end of BBL!!!! Woo Hoo!!!

Granted, I've been there for a week or so, but in my defense, there are pressing issues besides my muse vacating the premises unannounced. I do have an out of town guest visiting, and there were a couple of details that needed to be sorted through before I could finish. Now, the details are taken care of, it will change things slightly, but not drastically. My friend is still here, but that's okay, it's a neat change and they have to leave tomorrow. It makes me more appreciative of my writing time. And it makes me wonder how others write with company in their house or always over.

Why Is It?

Why is it that just before the tornado sirens blare, we send our children inside for safety and then we as adults stand outside with cameras and video cameras taking pictures and talking about the possible tornado forming right before our eyes with nasty high winds that did finally at least cool everything down for a while? The sirens wailed and we moseyed in and out again. Watching, waiting, and looking. Now whether this was the tornado we were seeing or just part of the storm - there were at least three layers of clouds moving at varying speeds and directions and the clouds did drop down and kiss the earth. It was beautiful to see.

RAK

R.A.K - Random Acts of Kindness - and this morning I was it's victim. :) My daughter,9, surprised me with breakfast in bed - two waffles fresh from the toaster and a mug of coke. And we sat eating and giggling until responsibility made me take her to school. (pic- computer art by my daughter)

Bound

I'm so excited! I'm pages away from finishing Bound, a short erotica. Woo Hoo!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! It's set in a small coastal town on Lake Michigan.

I know it's a been a while - and there has been time but it has a tendency to get filled up when I'm not looking. There was the week off for an inflamed Achilles tendon and I did get quite a bit of writing done, just not on Bound or Tropical Temptation. My daughter was in a fashion show and in the paper and loved it and has decided that she most definitely wants to be an actress and a model.

HOpefully Bound will be finished today, tomorrow at the latest.

Spring Fling Update!

Spring Fling was last weekend - a very busy, informative, fun weekend. It was a lot of fun, but I'm glad to be home. The food was great - Chicago Style Pizza, Chocolate Reception, Baked Praline French Toast Casserole, - and the room was huge. Sadly, there was no sight-seeing, except the construction workers as we traveled through the city first to get to the hotel and second to get home. So another trip is in order. We did go by the general vicinity of where one of the grad-schools I'm applying to is. I did find out about RT, although I'm sure some of the details were lost, but there was much said about the models.

There were scads of workshops, Q & A Panels, book signings, and opportunities to meet people - and just enjoy the energy that fills a place when so many writers congregate in one space. It was invigorating. Different than the winter retreat , it was excess energy from an external source that spills out from others and into you, when you learn about the craft and the business of writing, and the draw and necessity of writing. It was a Romance Writer's Conference, so just about everyone there wrote either romance or women's fiction, but there were so many sub-genres that it made things extremely interesting. Literacy Chicago was the beneficiary of the silent auction which raised something like 5k or 10k! The Conference closed with a Mardi Gras Gala and Sunday brought a seemingly much longer trip home.

Now excuse me while I make a dent in my too read pile, not that school is out alternating with pushing out as many of my own pages as possible. :)

Chicago!

This coming weekend is the Spring Fling Writer's Conference hosted by Chicago North RWA and I'll be there! Yeah! I"m excited and can't wait to go. I'll be traveling with members of my critique group, so I'll get to catch up on all the news from RT which was last week (schools + finals = no fun at RT for me).

I'm hoping to do a bit of site-seeing while we're there, but I'm not sure, which is fine, since I have a cousin who lives there, that offered us a place to crash and take us site-seeing this summer.

But I'm extremely excited about the conference. This will be my first time at Spring Fling, which is on the north side of Chicago. School is almost done and my worries will be fewer. I will finish something this summer!!!

(photo by Richard Seaman)