I Just Don’t Know …

Ok, y’all. Sometimes I just don’t know how realistic I’m being. I have the fairly prestigious day job. (At work, I frequently quote Bridget Jones: Yes, I’m very busy and important; what do you want?) I have the bulk of the legal responsibility for a corporation with 6000 employees, 41,000 clients, and a sh!tload of family, friends, and interested parties.

I give it my freaking all, all day at work. Then I come home and I try to write stories about interesting people having interesting inter-personal relationships. But, crap. I don’t know if I truly have anything to say, or if anyone really cares to read my little scribbles.

Tonight I am indulging in the time-honored tradition of the overwrought pity-party. Maybe tomorrow I’ll buck up, stiffen my upper lip, and carry on.

Then again, maybe not. And it won’t make much difference either way.

Friday Foto: Colin Firth

Seriously, how could anyone not love this man?

Thursday Thought: Charles Kuralt

“In the South, the breeze blows softer… neighbors are friendlier, and more talkative. (By contrast with the Yankee, the Southerner never uses one word when ten or twenty will do)… This is a different place. Our way of thinking is different, as are our ways of seeing, laughing, singing, eating, meeting and parting. Our walk is different, as the old song goes, our talk and our names.”

-Charles Kuralt in Southerners: Portrait of a People

Damn Yankee Computer

Well, I’ve got a bit of a problem. You may have heard me mention that I am writing two books simultaneously, a Southern snarky chicklit and another Georgian-era historical. I’m coping fairly well with it — being schizophrenic has its benefits — but I’ve found I do best by typing the modern story into my computer, and writing out the historical longhand, with my favorite, very expensive, fountain pen.

And therein lies the problem. I now have several thousand lovely historical-romance words in my cute little striped journal, which I carry with me everywhere. But how am I going to get all those words into my computer, where I can edit, revise, and (someday) email them off to an agent of editor?

I figured I would just have to tippy-tap-type them, til one of the computer guys at my day job skittered into the light long enough to mutter “Dragon Dictation” before returning to the nether regions from whence he came.

When I googled it, lo and behold, Dragon Dictation looked like the answer to my prayers. I can just read my WIP out loud, and Dragon will type it up for me. Oh, sure, there will be things to straighten out with the keyboard, but what a timesaver it will be!

Uh, well, no.

I think Dragon Dictation is the last battle in the Unfortunate War Between the States. (You Yankees refer to that unpleasantness as the Civil War, but according to my family’s stories, there wasn’t much civil about it.)

I can just see Sherman and his aides, sitting around a campfire outside Macon, as the General says, “even this here March Thru Georgia will look tame compared to what my boys at Dragon are gonna do to these Rebels’ speech patterns!”

I spent the better part of an evening in a fruitless attempt to train the Yankee heart of my iPad to comprehend the gracious inflections of Southern speech, to no avail.

After hours of work, here’s my best result, on a single sentence from my historical –

Typed: The Duke must have seen them enter the room, for he soon appeared in the doorway, accompanied by Martin.

Simple. Easy-peasy, rice-and-cheesy, right?

Dragon’s Version: The deck must’ve seen them intraplant very soon you’re Peardon the Norway accompanied by Mark.

Um, ok, tell them to hold off on inscribing that Rita Award for a while. Technical difficulties.

Damn Yankee computer.

The Alphabet Game — C What I Think!

C, C, what begins with C? C is for Cookie, that’s good enough for me . . .

Today we’re playing the alphabet game here in RomanceMama Land! My dear friend, Jillian Chantal, is not only one of the most talented and prolific writers I know, she is my absolute heroine when it comes to blogging. Day in, day out, when I am staring at a computer screen, whimpering, “But what can I say?” Jillian is in there faithfully and consistently writing witty, informative blog posts. If you don’t follow her, go to www.jillianchantal.com and correct that problem right now. I’ll wait here.

Ok, you’re back. So, today I’m picking up on one of Jillian’s recent blog posts, wherein Liv Rancourt assigned her a letter of the alphabet, and Jillian had to discuss ten things she loves, all beginning with that letter. Italy, Inuit, Independence — our Jillian rocked the letter I’s world.

Luckily for me, Jillian assigned me a much easier letter — the classic, convenient, comprehensible letter “C.” So, below you will find my favorites — and yes, a certain Oscar-winning British actor does figure prominently in my “C-list.” I’m sure you’re shocked at that.

If you wanna play the alphabet game, as handed down from Shay Fabbro to Liv Rancourt to Jillian Chantal and now to moi’s own self, just post a comment. I’ll send you a randomly selected letter and we’ll see how creative you can be with it!

And now with no further ado, let’s C my list!

Constitution – Look, in the day job, I am a lawyer (and a damn fine one, too, if I may say so!) My career has been spent in criminal and family law, and now I have the pleasure of being General Counsel to a local educational agency. If one must have a job (so middle class, don’t you agree?), mine is about as good as it gets. I get to spend my time thinking about important questions like Freedom of Speech, Due Process, and all those other goodies we as Americans take for granted. The Constitution of the United States is an amazing document. If you don’t know what it contains, you should. There are people all over the planet taking incredible steps, at great personal risk, to obtain those rights. Don’t ever forget that.

Champagne – Enough with the seriousness, though. Champagne is what angels drink. When I worked at a private law firm several years ago, one of the partners won a major big trial, and he celebrated by buying all the employees a bottle of Dom Perignon. The real stuff. As old Dom himself said, it was the equivalent of drinking stars. Some people would refuse to drink the cheap stuff after experiencing such glory, but not me. I’ll take all the champagne you’ll give me, anytime. Like they say — always keep a bottle of champagne in the fridge in case you have something to celebrate. And sometimes, you just need to celebrate having a bottle of champagne in the fridge. Not only that, but my first novel, PROOF OF LOVE, was published last year by Champagne Books. How cool is that?

Chick lit – No, chick lit is not dead. As long as women enjoy light-hearted stories about the crazy world we live in and how a spunky heroine deals with the chaos on her way to finding Mr. Right (or Mr. Right Now), there will be chick lit. And now that e-readers let you go stealth with your reading material, I think a few guys will be enjoying the adventures of Bridget Jones and her spiritual descendants.

Cupcakes – Ok, seriously. What is not to like? They are cute, they are sugary, they are just enough to be a treat without making you feel like a glutton. Truly, cupcakes are nature’s perfect food.

Carbohydrates – And since we are talking food, let’s get one thing straight. I will not be listing chocolate in this little exercise. I may have to turn in my official membership card for the female gender, but I am not that enamored of chocolate. I mean, I like it. But I don’t crave it. What do I crave? CARBO’s, baby! I’m talking pasta, bread, potatoes ….
I love ‘em all. Sweets are not my downfall, but these hips don’t lie — I have tucked away some carbs in my time.

Charm Bracelet – Like many of you, I got a charm bracelet when I was a little girl. But unlike many of you, I have held onto mine, and I have added to it through the years. I started with a little silver church, a flute, and a “happy birthday” charm. Now, these (ahem, clearing my throat) years later, I have just about everything I’ve ever done on my charm bracelet. A sweater, because I knit. A Fiestaware pitcher, because I collect Fiesta. A sardine can from Monterrey. A Jerusalem Cross from Jerusalem. Handcuffs — no, get your mind out of the gutter. They were a memento of my time as a probation officer. If you ever have a few hours free, let me know, and I will tell you the history of each and every one of my several dozen charms.

Comic Books – I had an older brother — well, I still have him, but we don’t live in the same time zone anymore. We were incredibly close growing up, though. And he was the king of the comic books — Superman, Batman, Thor, The Fantastic Four, Wonder Woman, of course. But also the more obscure ones — Tales from the Crypt, Golden Classics, and Sgt. Rock. My favorite, oddly enough, was Sgt. Rock, not because I liked the army stories so much, but because whenever Sarge was fighting the Nazis in France, he would team up with Mlle. Marie, the famous Resistance Fighter. (Poor benighted redneck children that we were, we called her “Mill Marie.”) Even in my pre-feminism days, I loved that Mill Marie was a kick-ass heroine, who could out-fight, out-think, and out-class all the guys. Whilst wearing seamed fishnets, stiletto pumps, and blood-red lipstick, no less. I still want to grow up and be Mill Marie.

Church – Oh y’all know I was raised backwoods, hard-shell, Fundamentalist Southern Baptist. Give the Baptists a child til she’s seven, and for the rest of her life, she will get scared if she comes home to an empty house, certain that everyone got raptured and somehow she got left by mistake. (True. Several of us in the Baptist Student Union at my college reported the same fear.) I can sing every verse of Amazing Grace and Just As I Am, I know the books of the Bible by memory, and can tell you exactly who did what with whom in the Lake Yale Youth Camp Rose Garden in Summer, 1979. And I still won’t watch The Exorcist.

Crown – Oh, the dear Queen. I love the Royal Family. I get a little weepy every Fourth of July over how really ugly we were to poor George, and I think we could have worked the whole thing out with a bit more understanding. I mean, taxation with representation isn’t working out so well for us, either. I read everything I can get my hands on about every royal from Boadicea down to Kate Middleton. (Except for Camilla. Hate the bitch. And seriously, they aren’t going to let her ever wear the Queen Mum’s crown, are they?)

Colin – Oh, Mr. Firth. Yes, I will run away and be your love slave. No problem. Now, y’all, I have watched some women’s talk shows. I read The Secret. I took my fair share of Cosmo Quizzes. And Oprah says you can have anything you want, if you just make up your mind on the one thing you want and you live expectantly, waiting for the universe to fulfill your desire. So I am here to tell you — I am expecting to see Colin Firth, at my front door, tickets for our getaway to England in hand. And it is going to happen. It is. Oprah doesn’t lie.

That’s the C list for me, my loves. And a great big thank you to Jillian for not giving me Q, X, or U.

Interest in Pinterest?

If there is one thing Ol’ RomanceMama is always on board for, it is wasting time. Many would say that I have taken concept of timewasting to an art form, but I beg to differ. At least for the most part. You see, what looks — and often feels — like wasting time is really nothing more nor less than good ol’ Muse Nourishment.

Sometimes your Muse just needs a bit of free time, so she can wander lazily through the garden, sniffing a fragrant blossom here, rooting out a weed or two there. Gardening, in this metaphysical sense, is the best thing your muse can do to recharge her little creative batteries.

Which, my darlings, leads us to the subject of the day — the latest, and to my mind, greatest, of the social networks: PINTEREST.

Now, you may be kind of like I was with twitter — I didn’t know anything about it, but I knew I didn’t need it. A total timesuck, I called it. A cheap and shoddy replication of Facebook, with less content. Yeah, well, I was wrong about that, wasn’t I? So when faced with trying Pinterest, I gave in gracefully and gave it a shot.

Kiddos, I am here to tell you — if you, like me, are one of those visual type people to get inspiration from images, run — don’t walk — to the nearest computer and open yourself up a pinterest account.

What is it, you ask? Well, remember that bulletin board you had over your bed when you were in high school? Take that, network it with all your friends’ bulletin boards, and give it the ability to instantly download images from the entire World Wide Web. In short, it is a corkboard on speed, with none of the morning-after trembles.

I have filled my Pinterest boards with pix of the hot British actors upon whom my heroes are based, lovely historical fashions and decor to flesh out the worlds they inhabit, and a heaping helping of snarky quotes and sayings, just because I am the world’s biggest fan of snarkiness. And not only that, all the people I follow on Pinterest pin the same kind of wonderful stuff on their boards, so I can browse through it at my leisure.

When poor Bridget, my muse, starts feeling like her creative well has run dry, I give her a few minutes to play in the Pinterest garden. Yes, I have to limit it — too much of anything, despite what Mae West said, can be a problem.

But with a judicious use of Pinterest, Bridget starts running on all her creative cylinders, and a happy, productive muse means the daily word count stays where it ought to be.

So, y’all wander over to Pinterest and check it out. I’m on there as Arabella Stokes — if you like attractive British actors, pretty period costumes and sarcastic humor, follow me. And if you don’t like them, why are you reading my blog in the first place????

Happy Mother’s Day

Southern Icon: Azalea Indica Formosa

Thursday Thought: For Those Who Look Down on Genre Fiction

“Write all kinds of books, hesitating at no subject however trivial or however vast.” Virginia Woolf

O.M.G. It’s Real.

If you know anything at all about your old friend RomanceMama, you know that she is one incurable bibliophile. (You also know that she loves to refer to herself in the 3d person, but let’s focus, shall we?)

I grew up reading. Books, magazines, whatever came to hand. If my daddy made me put away my book at the table, I would read the ketchup bottle. All I need is words in a row, and I am set.

But books – ah, books! Simply my favoritest thing in the whole wide world. Ask me to choose between books and chocolate, books and Ruffles chips, books and boiled peanuts (caviar of the South) and I will, without a second thought, go with books.

So it was an exceptionally emotional moment this week when the UPS man stopped here at Malfunction Junction to deliver a box with my most precious possession in it – a real, hard copy bound volume of my first published book, PROOF OF LOVE !

I am still prone to getting all misty eyed, just thinking about it. I actually wrote down my story about the dear Duke and Duchess, got it published, and CAN HOLD MY BOOK IN MY OWN TWO PAWS!!!

Do you realize what that means to me? I’m getting all verklempt, just thinking about it.

So, if you have been thinking “Gee, I’d really love to read Romancemama’s book, but I don’t have an ereader, you are now officially out of excuses. You must head on over (do not pass Go, do not collect two hundred dollars) to Amazon and buy my book.

You’ll love it!