Must See TV

I’m not sure when television became so important that I began planning my life around things I want to watch, seeing as how at one point in my adult life I didn’t have cable and never even bothered to turn on my television. Those were the days I listened to lots of music and needed a second job to support my CD habit. But since then I’ve been introduced to hundreds of channels and so many viewing choices that I can’t seem to turn the damned thing off. I know that as I sit there entranced, I’m losing brain cells by the minute but it’s just so addictive. It’s something I’d like to change, but later…

Tonight I’m looking forward to the premier of Being Bobby Brown and the finale of Hit Me Baby One More Time. I can’t wait to see what PM Dawn looks like now.

But before then I’ll be watching Wimbledon and looking forward to seeing Venus Williams v. Maria Sharapova though I already know how that’s gonna turn out. Venus is doing better in this tournament than she has been, but I still see Sharapova taking her.

You should know, though, that before all the TV watching, there has been writing, well grunt work and submission things. I got a story ready to be sent out for a reprint and will slip it in the mail today. I also searched my files for something to submit to an anthology with a deadline of today but I don’t think that’s going to happen. It’s cool though.

Still not getting any sleep. It seems someone has whispered to my daughter that the early bird gets the worm, therefore she comes barreling out of her room at 6 AM every morning and I’m learning how to function on five hours of sleep.

Thanks for stopping by!

The Difference A Day (and a little storytelling) Makes

I didn’t do any better on the sleeping front as the kids were up before six thirty this morning, but I’m not as grumpy as I’ve been. I’m hard at work (well sort of) and dinner is in the Crock Pot so I feel like I’ve got a jump start to the day and I’m not in danger of feeling so bogged down by the time the afternoon gets here.

In the spirit of Operation Organization, I printed out several calls for submissions that I’m interested in and filed them away in a pretty blue “submissions” folder. Later today I will order them by deadlines and see if I already have stories on file that would fit and if I need/want to write some new stuff.

I started looking for old contracts yesterday afternoon thinking it would be good to print out a copy of all my published work and attach a copy of the contract to keep on file but I stumbled upon a ten year old love letter and ended up sitting there reading that instead. See how easily I get sidetracked?

On the writing front, I sat the essays aside and did some more work on an old fiction piece for an erotic anthology last night. I think this is what made the difference in my mood. These are the times I’m immensely happy for the ability to escape this life and slip into a world all my own, created in my mind, scrawled out on paper, when I am surround by my characters, when I am my characters, when I am in control of everything.

And in closing even I, the skeptic, was stunned to hear this news this morning. I bought the book and went to see the movie. I was all caught up in this romance. Damn shame about that, huh?

Ill

I’m not feeling so well. My head aches, I have pain running down the side of my neck, and my chest hurts. I really do wear stress on my sleeve and it’s a real bitch.

It just seems like everything is coming at me all at once and I’m not at all prepared.

I haven’t been sleeping well for a while, waking up all times of the night, and in the mornings I’m tired but restless. And given the most recent attribute to my stress level, none of this will be letting up any time soon.

Busy

This weekend really got away from me. I had plans to get out of the house and it rained both days. But I still had to grocery shop so that consumed one of my two outings in the last forty-eight hours. It’s getting pretty bad.

Then throw in two nights in a row of incidents involving two toddlers, a dirty diaper, frantic bathing and carpet scrubbing and you’ve got a mixture for a nearly insane woman. I’m convinced they plan these things near their bedtime to ensure I’m dead tired at the end of the night and fit for nothing but collapsing on the sofa.

I’m quite busy in my writing life, I’m happy to report. This past week I’ve completed rough drafts for three essays, and turned in a technical writing assignment for my 9 to 5 job. It was a last minute request by my superior, but I was happy for the opportunity and I’m still marveling at the irony of my getting the opportunity to bring my writing life into my world of numbers.

The other day I pitched one of my essays to a new women’s magazine and the editor is interested in seeing the piece once it’s completed. Thing is, I pitched it as a humorous list type thing but after thinking about it and studying the format of the magazine more, I decided my best chances would be if I formatted it more as an essay – a funny one. I think the other two essays would also be good to pitch at some point, but I want to line up other places for backup.

I saw a couple of calls for erotica I might try to write some things for, but no pressure. I actually think I have a rough draft of something fitting for one of them. I may pull it out, clean it up and see how that goes. I’m also working up a business plan type thing for a possible future endeavor but it’s going to take some time and lots of energy and I want to make sure I know what I’m getting into before I go for it.

On the submission front, I tried to submit The Art Of Exposure as a reprint to Scarlet Letters, but it was returned to me shortly after emailing it. I’m not sure if the editor’s address was bad, if the webzine is defunct or if they’re just in hiatus. I have a story there already, What It Looks Like From The Outside (my first serious foray into erotica), but it looks like the site hasn’t been updated since October ’04. If anyone has any info on it, let me know.

Other than fatigue, I’m really okay, excited about the writing and ready to go. Thanks for stopping by!

Blogging is no fun when…

You have to first write it out in longhand because although there are two PC’s and two laptops in the house, you can’t seem to get your hands on one. Granted one is my 9-5 PC and another is an old laptop that I have to back up with a floppy disk but the other two… well, he’s occupying those.

The other laptop (the good one) was sent out for repairs earlier in the week and when it got back today it turned out it was not as repaired as we had thought. So, he’s been working on it all afternoon and evening and apprently it takes both the laptop and the PC to troubleshoot it.

See, that’s what happens when a writer and a computer guy get together. There are a zillion computers in the house and not a one for the writer to work on.

So, here I am on the couch with a tall glass of beer, watching a Sex And The City rerun and scribbling in my favorite legal pad with a PaperMate pen, too tired and frustrated to post a proper entery although there’s lots I’ve wanted to speak about including writing news, adventures in parenting and “the houax” that my husband has cleverly figured out.

Stay tuned for tomorrow’s blog entitled “Knee Deep In…” (If I’m able to snag a computer while he’s not looking, that is)

And this was eventually trasnferred from legal pad to Word Pad to PC (floppy disk fiasco aside).

Blow Out

Things to do before getting stranded on a highway in 90+ degree heat:

-dress appropriately (leave the layers at home and show a little leg so someone will stop and help you)
-have a decent jack in the trunk of the car

and oh yeah, LEARN HOW TO CHANGE A GODDAMNED TIRE!

So, that’s about how my day been’s going, only a little exagarrated. I had to go into the office today for a last minute meeting and about half way there I felt the car starting to shake like crazy. I knew that at least one tire needed to be replaced but had been putting it off since I’m working at home now and don’t really go anywhere. So, I slowed my speed to cut out the shaking. It didn’t work. Finally I’m crawling on the interstate and 35 miles per hour with cars carrying irritated drivers whizzing past me and I’m just hoping to make it to the job site so someone will help me because, ha ha, I never learned to change my own flat. Dammit!

So, I’m standing out in the heat with the nice gentleman who offered to help me and one of the lug/screw things broke completely off! He said that didn’t matter much and he put the donut on and guess what… it’s almost flat! And I don’t know what kind of tire fix it bags they put in cars these days, or in my case, in the mid 90-s, but the poor man was struggling to get the car jacked up. I felt like crap.

But it got fixed and I got to jump in my sauna of a car with no air conditioning and drive home dripping with sweat, but luckily I layered my top so I took off my shirt and rode in a tank top with the windows down and gave the horny truckers a real show.

Geez. It’s the middle of the day and I need a drink. A gigantic drink.

Shout Out To Me

I found this review for Swing! the other day that mentioned my included piece, Burn:

Some of these pieces, like “Burn,” by Tenille Brown, and “Sharing What I Borrow and Coveting What Is Mine,” by Stacy Reed, are cautionary tales, reminders that introducing another person into the bedroom isn’t always just fun and games or as easy as one might hope. In the former, a fictional tale, we see what happens when one half of a married couple falls hard for the woman they’ve invited into their bed for just one night. The story almost veers toward the melodramatic, but is well-written enough not to read like a soap opera. “Sharing What I Borrow…” is an essay about a woman, a man, and a prostitute who happens to have a Ph.D. An introspective piece in which the author reflects on past boyfriends and her sexual history in an attempt to understand her thoughts on open relationships and sexual freedom, it combines this thoughtfulness with sexiness to make an essay that’s all-around provocative.

And I suppose mine was a cautionary tale, but I hope not overly so. I wanted to show a realistic fall out to threesomes, one that wasn’t all orgasmic euphoria. I remember the call for submissions for this particular anthology and what stood out to me the most, what made me really want to submit something was the fact that the editor made it clear that she wanted the book to show all aspects of swinging, not just the sexual act itself. It was what gave me the idea to begin the story after the sex even though the events of the story very much had to do with the threesome itself.

I guess I missed the fall into melodrama by a hair, didn’t I? I’ve got to watch that because even I sometimes see my stories steering in that direction. I do this a lot, apparently, put all this tension and drama in my sex stories. In the few reviews and introductions I have been mentioned in, the authors always referred to my pieces as “the serious side of…” or “tackles the tricky topic of” and I guess it could be a good thing, or it could be a wake up call for me to mix it up a bit. I don’t know why it’s so hard for me to just keep it light. Am I that intense? Hmmm. Something else to think about.

I certainly don’t want my reputation to precede me when submitting to new venues and have people thinking that including my work might be a bit of a downer for the work as a whole.

Well, I said all that to say I love to find reviews like these, just when you think no one is reading…

But in other writing/publishing news, the anthology Glamour Girls: Femme/Femme Erotica that features my story Dressing Desire, is now listed in the Haworth Press online catologue. They have great info on the book there and the table of contents which I love reading because I love seeing those names like M. Christian, Rachel Kramer Bussel and Alison Tyler along with mine. Yay!

And in another writers’ life:

I can only hope to one day feel the pride and satisfaction exuded in this post from Mary Anne. Her career – in academics and in her seamless transition from erotica to literary fiction and her ability to get readers to view all her work as just that – is one that I admire and hold as a model of what I want my career to be. When I’m here fretting about choosing to publish all works erotic, non-fiction, mainstream and literary fiction, under my real name I become inspired by people like she and Kiini. I’m proud to say I’ve had a story rejected by her – Mt. Everest, it was and it went pretty far but didn’t make the final cut. But hey, she’s still on my list as one of the best editors I never had.

Wow, two posts in one day. Maybe I’m getting a hang of this blogging thing.

Martha Would Be So Proud

I was on household chore overload yesterday. After days of not having had time to do laundry (and in a household of four, laundry is necessary) I did three loads in a row and in addition to the three loads of laundry that had already been done and still sat in baskets in various rooms the house, I had a mountain of clothes to fold. I tackled the whites, two heaping loads, and put most of it away. I’ll save the others for tonight when, hopefully I’ll have more energy.

I did a good job of planning my afternoon to allow for time to cooking a good meal consisting of spaghetti that wasn’t thrown together in a hurry and a side salad. The kids ate all their food and half of mine. It still tickles me that my daughter always picks the lettuce and cucumbers out of my salad. I feel so blessed to have kids who will actually eat raw veggies, hell, veggies period.

I also experimented with fashioning my own little creations out of otherwise unwearable stuff in my closet. I cut off two pair of jeans and made some cute Capri pants, which made me regret the pile of jeans I had recently gotten rid of.

My whole day of domesticity of course prompted thoughts and ideas of a new story/novel that I had already been playing with anyway.

Later I settled down, put the kids to bed and enjoyed one of my favorite Sex And The City episodes, the one with Mr. Big’s heart surgery. I thought that episode was so well written and acted and displayed so well that dynamic between he and Carrie. I loved how in his moment of weakness he made himself vulnerable to Carrie only to take it all back after the fever went away, the bastard.

Ahh, such is the strange attraction of us to the unattainable man. What’s up with that, anyway? I mean, doctors had to actually cut the man’s heart open and we walk around with our hearts open (and sometimes bleeding) all the time. Messed up.

If You Write It They Will Come

Sitemeter’s tally for view of this this blog last week came in at seventeen… wowza! So, with a little consistency and dedication people may actually come by to see what you have to say… interesting concept…

I’ve had lots I wanted to blog about, so much that the many different topics began to crowd my brain and I just started jotting them down in one of my notebooks (yeah, old habits die hard) for elaboration at a later date.

So, for now, just a little progress report. I began working on an article yesterday about writing that evolved rather quickly into more of an essay about my daughter. So, I guess it’s geared more now toward a parenting magazine/website as opposed to Writer’s Digest as I had originally planned. Funny how that worked out, even funnier that I wrote something that actually could be published in a parenting magazine but it feels nice to spread my wings and tap into other markets. I’ve been getting pretty comfy there in my little erotic niche.

I’ve written quite a bit on the essay, but of course it’s in long hand and hard to gauge a probable word count. That’s the only thing I hate about my addiction to pens and notebooks. I can’t be all official and come here and report that I wrote 2500 words or ten pages or whatever. Otherwise I think my longhand quirk is kind of cute. Endearing would you say?

I’ll transfer it all over to Word a little later. I’d like to wrap it up and submit it somewhere this week.

I need to compile a list, or if I’m really ambitious, create a database of places I like to query and pieces I’d like to query with. That would make me a little more efficient in my writing life and keep things from getting so chaotic.

I got out of the house for a bit yesterday, shopping for a last minute Father’s Day gift (see how my procrastination spills over into my everyday life?). It was nice mingle with the real world after being stuck indoors for over a month now. Working at home really is a double edged sword… more on that later, perhaps another article?

I had my cousin with me and somehow we got onto the subject of weight and she asked my how I lost mine. It kind of threw me there for a bit because I don’t see her that often and I forget how much puffier I was the last time we hung out. It was a nice boost though since I don’t go anywhere for anyone to see that I’ve lost weight.

I did the best I could with the gift finding, a DVD of a movie he had wanted to see. Of course, then I turned around and forgot to drop the gift in a bag and write out the cards and actually say Happy Father’s Day. Man, I’m lucky he loves me.

So, that’s been my weekend in a nutshell. More later.

Use It Or Lose It

I’m sure better organizational skills would really help me out, clearer thoughts, well thought out and executed plans. Instead I have stacks of spiral notebooks with notes and ideas for stories and novels piling up in my den and over the years have lost numerous ideas and plot sketches to faulty floppy disks and notebooks lost to water damage or destroyed by pets.

It gets me thinking (again) on my ability (or lack thereof) to follow through. Why can’t I finish one thing before I move on to the next? Do I lose interest? Are these things I really want to explore or things that I may want to deal with later and in lieu of losing the idea completely I sprawl it down quickly before it goes away? Is this where I’m monogamously challenged? Do I cheat on my art???

And there doesn’t seem to be an end in site. I’ve recently added to the collection of disheveled thoughts and ponderings several ideas for essays and articles, none of which have been even half way fleshed out but many that maintain my interest. I have some places I want to query and would like to add more to the list like websites and regional magazines but I’ll work on that in the days and weeks to come.

I’m still deciding on a path with the fairy tale inspired story. Right now I’m playing with titles since that’s where the real spark for a story idea comes from and it’s stirred up many ideas. I’m just glad I have all summer as this one story will probably be written and rewritten only for to me to come back to the original.

I’m also working from time to time on the anthology proposal and call for submissions, which brings with it its own little ball of stress. I know it’s just a proposal, a “maybe” project for now, but even so I have to plan for the fallout… either way. Am I going about this the wrong way, asking for submissions first and querying publishers later? What effect will this have on the quality of the submissions? As a writer I don’t recall this ever being a factor in whether I submitted somewhere or not, but others my feel differently. And if it is accepted by a publisher, am I ready to take on such a project? And if it’s not accepted by a publisher, am I passionate enough about the topic to proceed with producing and promoting the project myself?

Things to think about.