Thirteen Accomplishments for 2009

Since today is New Year’s Eve, I thought I’d take the opportunity to look back at some of the things I’ve accomplished this year. Hopefully, it will put me in mind of what I am capable of accomplishing in 2010.

1. Published my first story – Dining In – with Freya’s Bower. This was a big one. Not so much because the story is big (it isn’t – it’s very short, though I’m getting good feedback on it), but because it represents achieving the actuality of becoming a published author. Pretty good.

2. I learned how to make apple butter from scratch. All the way from going out to the apple orchards to pick the apples and including putting the apple butter up. Which brings me to…

3. I learned to can. This year I have (so far) canned apple butter, pumpkin butter, apple sauce, and chicken stock. We were too late in the season by the time I figured it out to can tomatoes or any of the earlier produce, but I’ll be ready next year!

4. Emily and I started Scorched Sheets. I’m really proud of what we’ve accomplished here – not only on the blog, but also with the serial and the author areas. There’s a lot of content on this site, and I hope y’all enjoy it.

5. I quit nearly all  caffeine. I gave up all caffeinated  soda – and about the only caffeine I get now  is an occasional cup of tea and periodic chocolate infusions. Given my Dr. Pepper habit, this was pretty big.

6. I’ve severely limited/mostly eliminated corn syrup from my diet. I started this process early in the year, weaning myself off soda and switching to sugar-sweetened options for things like salad dressing or condiments (did you know there is corn syrup in nearly all ketchup? Or in mayo? How about your cereal or bread? Your “fat free” half and half?). However, when I found out late this year that what I had always thought were probably migraines were actually cluster headaches, the corn syrup purge began in earnest. It turns out that glucose is a big trigger for cluster headaches, and corn syrup is straight glucose. HFCS is corn syrup with enough fructose added to approximate the proportions of fructose/glucose in honey. Until you start looking for it, you have no idea how many places corn syrup hides.

7. Got back in the gym. I think I’ve finally found a gym that works for me – and one that won’t break the budget. I don’t LIKE to exercise, so I am not someone who is a real gym rat. Finding a gym that helps me cut off my own excuses is a good thing.

8. Collaborated with Emily to produce my second published story – This Fire in the Hearts Afire: December duology from Liquid Silver. I’m really pleased with how the collaboration went, and I’m beyond pleased with the finished product. Plus – hey – second published story. That makes me multi-published. Right?

9. I finished my cover-to-cover, in order, every word read of the Bible. No skipping through Numbers or Judges, no skimming familiar stories. Read the whole thing. And, if you are curious, it was the New International Version.

10. I made my own shampoo. Really. Sadly, I didn’t like it, but I did make it. I could do it again if I had to. Please, Lord, don’t put me in a situation where I have to.

11. I made deliberately more ecologically sound choices. Everything from reusable grocery bags to recycling to composting, we are trying pretty hard to be good stewards for our planet. I can’t say that we are where I’d like to be with regards to our environmental impact, but I would say that we are doing better.

12. I learned new software. Okay, that might not sound like much, but the two main things I learned this year were Office 2007 (which I hate with a passion – the ribbon navigation is like glass in my eyeballs, and the “upgrades” to PowerPoint are maddening) and STATA 11 (a statistics package). STATA was more intuitive than Office 2007. I’m not sure if that is an endorsement of STATA or a condemnation of Office 2007.

13. The BIG one. I finished my dissertation. I still have edits to do – and I’m sure the committee will come back with even more – but it’s done. I have a complete dissertation. It may not be the final version, but it is a complete draft. And that is a VERY big deal.

What are some of the things you’ve accomplished this year? Big or small, all these accomplishments add up.

Collaboration Alert

Emily and I have talked about our collaboration on This Fire, and that collaboration got a mention on Linda Rader’s blog The Sexual Intellectual.

The article talks about different collaboration styles, and the fact that Emily and I blended our styles to make a hybrid that worked for us.

I hope you check out the article, and Linda’s blog. It’s interesting and entertaining.

Thirteen Yuletide Treats Hung by the Chimney with Care

I thought I might do something a little different for a Yuletide list. In our family, the stockings are filled with small little bits and baubles, fun things that don’t necessarily make it onto the visions of sugarplums list. In the interest of sharing our version of the stocking-stuffer, here’s a list of 13 things you are likely to find in your stocking in our house. Though I should clarify that you aren’t likely to get them ALL in your stocking. Just a judicious selection. And only if you are in our house.

1. Almonds. I love almonds. Mom, Dad and I get raw almonds; Munchkin and DH get tamari almonds. I love the sweet/meaty taste of almonds, the satisfying heft in the hand and the belly. Good stuff.

2. Cashews. I like cashews – though not as well as I like almonds. Mom and Dad get raw cashews, we roasted/salted.

3. Clementines. A lovely contrast to the nuts, clementines are the perfect size to fill that awkward toe space in the stocking.

4. Lady apples. Now, truthfully, the last time we did these, the lady apples we got were inedible. We’ll have to be more careful in our choices this time.

5. Dark chocolate almonds. What could be better? Not much. Dark chocolate and almonds. I think that may be the definition of nirvana.

6. Sonic gift cards. Well, not so much for Mom and Dad, but DH and I might get them. Sonic is our go-to fast food burger. Not great for the diet, but good for the soul.

7. In a similar vein – Chick-fil-a gift cards. Munchkin is a big fan of Chick-fil-a, and so am I. Their salads are very good, and the option of the fruit cup for the meals is fantastic. No one else’s fruit options are even close to as good.

8. Various other gift cards. These depend on what is on the wish list for that year. BestBuy, Barnes and Noble, Fictionwise, Target, Home Depot, iTunes, whatever. These aren’t usually big gift cards – $25 is usually the limit. But it’s nice to find that extra little gift.

9. Batteries. Particularly for Munchkin, who may have need of them for some gizmo or other.

10. Gadgets. Kitchen gadgets are big in our house – grapefruit sectioners, strawberry hullers, whatever. Some little gadget that fits in the stocking.

11. Candy. For me, that’ll be dark chocolate. For DH, maybe jelly beans or licorice. For Munchkin, well, not much, because she has lots from her friends, who all seem to want to give her candy or cookies for the holidays. I give people homemade apple or pumpkin butter, we get back store-bought candy. I’m not thinking I’m getting the better end of that deal. I’d rather the cookies.

12. Toys. Munchkin, particularly, gets little gizmos and toys in her stocking – wind up robots or zipline cars, whatever. Sometimes it’s dollar-store jewelry, maybe a set of ink stamps. Some small thing that she’ll enjoy.

13. Lottery tickets. The scratcher kind. This is a staple in our stockings – sure, it’s a sunk cost for the tickets, but it’s so much fun when someone wins something – even if it’s only $2. Munchkin, obviously, does not get lottery tickets. She gets the toys, instead. Seems like a fair trade to me.

So there you have it – 13 things that you might find in one of our stockings.

Happy holidays – whatever holidays you celebrate – and a most awesome New Year.

Enjoy your day, no matter what you are doing.

Excerpt Monday – Getting Personal

Welcome to the special Christmas/New Year Full Reads for Excerpt Monday. This month, in addition to our typical excerpt week, we’re having a week of full stories written by several fabulous EM writers. Excerpt Monday site! or click on the banner above.

Getting Personal is also available as a .pdf.

The cold made Ada long for summer. Pulling her coat tightly around her neck, she wished heartily she had never set out on this fool’s errand. She’d been up early this morning, sitting in a tiny conference room doing look-sees and culling head shots. Happy fucking holidays.

Thirteen hours of ogling hot men should have filled her with appropriately seasonal cheer, but it hadn’t. Instead, she was vaguely horny and had a vicious headache. She needed a quiet drink and a marathon session with her vibrator.

What she got, however, was lost and freezing her tukus off in the sleet.

A discreet sign caught her eye. Hoping for a martini and a phonebook, she ducked through the slightly open door. Instead of a restaurant, she found a gleaming monument to fitness.

Smoked glass windows lined with opaque film displayed artistic black and white shots of well-developed men and toned women. A juice bar hung with garland and fairy lights separated the reception area from the locker rooms on one side while the other sported meticulously maintained weight machines. Immediately in front of her, a wall cut the space and provided a backdrop for the reception desk, empty but for a tiny tree.

The door clicked shut. Her heels sounded loud on the polished wood floor, echoing off the high ceilings. The emptiness of the place weirded her out, but she couldn’t afford to be too cranky: warm and dry took precedence over slightly weird.

A movement caught her eye and Ada turned her head. Fighting to keep her jaw from dropping, she swayed on her stilettos, fighting for balance when her hormones suddenly kicked into overdrive. The slight horniness brought on by scouting models all day flared into full-blown lust.

Continue reading Excerpt Monday – Getting Personal…

Flash! Blog Tour

Hello and welcome to my (bare, silky) leg of the Liquid Silver Books SEx blog Sunday Flash blog tour! We’ve been blizzardy and cold in my part of the country, snowed in and sipping too many holiday beverages, so it’s only natural my Flash for this tour will be holiday-themed. I hope you enjoy this peek at “Christmas at the Manporium” (in-progress, co-written by myself and Elise Logan).

If you’ve arrived at my blog independently, head back to the LSB SEx blog for the beginning of the tour (installment #1 of “Christmas at the Manporium” is posted in comments!) Don’t forget to visit the next flasher on the tour, Juniper Bell - and be sure to read comments wherever you go so you don’t miss any flashy fiction.

And everyone else on tour:

Roscoe James
Juniper Bell
Jeanne Barrack
Dee Carney
Vivian Arend
PG Forte
Jolie Cain
Christa Paige
Alanna Coca

Have a great, safe, entertaining Sunday – see you in comments on the tour.

Thursday Thirteen – Thirteen Classics I Love

This TT is born of a twitter conversation (do a lot of my TTs seem to have that as a genesis?). I don’t remember who all was involved – Shannan P, Jared James, Moriah Jovan, Ginny Glass, Hickepedia and Lori Ella for sure. In any case, we were discussing various pieces of literature and how varied preferences can be. So, I thought I would present to you a list of 13 classics that I love.

1. Machiavelli, The Prince. This is what got me started on this topic. Well, this and Clausewitz, but I don’t love Clausewitz, so Machiavelli it is. I enjoy Machiavelli from the standpoint of fining an argument down to its bare bones. From my standpoint, Machiavelli is the genesis of game theory. If you have a goal of X, you need to consider how to manipulate the other players so that it is in their best interest to make sure you get X. That may not be pretty – and in politics and war, it most likely isn’t – but it’s the basis of game theory, of realpolitik, of… well, political science. It is the ugly nitty-gritty polar opposite of the Utopian ideals, and the two together formulate the basis of political science. So, yeah. I love it.

2. Swift, A Modest Proposal. Oh, the beauty and terror of this tiny little piece of literature. This is the canonical example of taking an argument to its most absurd outlying possibility. It’s pointed, harsh satire, and it’s beautifully done. You wince while reading, but the very sharpness is what makes it so terribly engaging.

3. Homer, The Odyssey. The adventure to end all adventures. I love the scope, the majesty of it. I love the individual stories, the group dynamics, the poetic construction. Sure, there’s a lot you can skim, but the story is magical. In every sense of that term.

4. Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby. I know, I know. No one else likes this one. Fine. But I love the convoluted stylings and the deliberate artifice of it, the surface flash and the image of the eyes. Yes, I know this makes me odd. I don’t care. I like it.

5. Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest. A social satire that revolves around people inventing obligations to get out of obligations, the whole thing is nearly farcical in it’s implementation, while remaining sharp and very clever. It’s a fine line, and Wilde is a master at striking the balance.

6. Voltaire, Candide. Another satire. In this one, Voltaire mocks Utopian idealism with a deft and sarcastic hand. It is a hard-edged critique of what Voltaire sees as a ridiculously naive world view, and his rather more cynical view lays a heavy hand on the piece. Indeed, it is “the best of all possible worlds” if I get to read Candide.

7. Marlowe, Dr. Faustus. This is such an interesting play. Juxtaposing a darkly themed morality play with scenes of ridiculous comedy, it’s a different view of Elizabethan England from Shakespeare. Marlowe is at once more pointedly moralistic and patently ridiculous than Shakespeare. Indeed, for many years the comedy seemed so out of keeping with the harsher aspects of the play that scholars thought they were added later. It’s like a perfect storm of Elizabethan intrigue – religion, ambition, comedy.

8. Beowulf. Monsters! Heroes! Adventure! What more could you want? This is the medieval version of Rambo. And it’s awesome.

9. Shakespeare, Much Ado About Nothing. I love Shakespeare’s comedies in general, and this one in particular. I love the juxtaposition of Claudio and Hero -young and gullible, still soft – with Benedick and Beatrice. Beatrice is one of my all-time favorite heroines, as she is intelligent, strong, and unbowed even at the end. While she realizes her mistakes, she doesn’t break as some of Shakespeare’s heroines do. Similarly, Benedick comes to value Beatrice’s intellect as part of her individuality. A bonus is the Kenneth Branaugh adaptation with an amazing cast (Branaugh, Emma Thompson, Denzel Washington, Kate Beckinsale, Keanu Reeves, Michael Keaton, Robert Sean Leonard).

10. Shakespeare, Hamlet. My favorite Shakespearean tragedy by far. Though it suffers from the Big Misunderstanding which plagues all of literature, the intensity and punch of this play are unequaled. The way he weaves comedy in with the rising tension of the tragedy is sheer artistry. The play-within-a-play could have been heavy and unwieldy, but instead serves to ratchet up the intensity.

11. Wilde, The Canterville Ghost. I read this piece first in an abridged version as a young teen and enjoyed it tremendously. I reread an unabridged version later and fell in love. This was my first Oscar Wilde, and let me to a love affair with Wilde’s work, which is wonderously clever. Wilde has a gift for mixing horror, comedy, satire and drama. Beautiful.

12. Sun Tzu, The Art of War. I favor the Samuel Griffith translation, as it has copious notes and supporting documentation from other Eastern strategists and philosophers. It’s a nice way to see how it fits together.  In any case, Sun Tzu is classic for a reason. His prose is clean, concise, bordering on curt. The information is brilliant and has application far beyond military. It’s truly, absolutely, brilliant.

13. Sheridan, The School for Scandal. This is a fabulously snide and sneaky play. It is as perfectly pitched today as a societal condemnation as it was when it premiered. In case you can’t tell, I love well-done satire, and this one is perfect. If you haven’t seen or read this play, do. Sheridan is underrated, in my opinion, as his construction is clever, his dialogue multi-layered, and the satire is absolutely spot on.

How about you? what do you love? And which of mine do you hate?

Excerpt Monday December

Once a month, a bunch of authors get together and post excerpts from published books, contracted work or works in progress, and link to each other. You=2 0don’t have to be published to participate–just an writer with an excerpt you’d like to share. For more info on how to participate, head over to the Excerpt Monday site! or click on the banner above.

FROM EMILY:

I recently realized our new release, HEARTS AFIRE: DECEMBER, only has an excerpt from Ella Drake’s story. Since you can only read the first chapter of “Firestorm on E’Terra” at the Liquid Silver Books web site, I thought I’d share the first chapter of “This Fire” here during Excerpt Monday December. Enjoy!

Eden Thomas had never given much thought to romantic relationships – until Seth Ripley. But Eden has secrets she won’t tell, and soon Seth’s demands for the truth push Eden into a corner – betray her best friend or watch Seth walk away.

“This Fire”

CHAPTER ONE

Eden checked the clock on her dresser again, sliding the dress over her head and smoothing it into place. She attacked her hair with a dryer and a round brush until the blonde length shone around her face.

A noise from the first floor registered over the roar of the blow dryer. She clicked it off. “Ry? Is that you?”

A deep, masculine chuckle reached her from the stairs. “Expecting someone else?”

“Of course not. I was just checking.” She eyed herself critically in the mirror as he walked in, stunning in his classic tuxedo. While he was practically the poster boy for his profession, Eden felt a bit like a diplomatic hostess in her navy floor-length gown. The gown was a fluid, shimmering material that skimmed her figure closely without clinging. The neckline was a draped sweetheart shape with tiny, wide-set spaghetti straps, and the back was no more than a drape of fabric that left her bare to the base of her spine. The entire effect was enticing, hinting at what lay beneath without revealing too much.

Lipstick. She snagged a little-used tube of crimson and glossed it over her lips. She bared her teeth to check for smudges as her best friend Ryan Edwards, tall, blond and gorgeous, sat on the edge of the mission-style bed.

“Michael is getting pressure to run for District Attorney,” he said.

Eden slowly re-capped her lipstick and made a sympathetic noise. “What does Michael want?”

Continue reading Excerpt Monday December…

Holiday Hottie Blog Tour

Welcome!

Once again we are participating in an LSB blog tour that could result in awesome prizes for you – both for the entire tour and for just this site. If you’re just arriving from Stephanie Adkins‘ site – you probably already know this. If, on the other hand, you are stumbling upon this like me stumbling over my kid’s toys at midnight, you may want to start at Trina Lee’s site.  The short version is – visit the sites, leave comments, be entered to win MOUNTAINS of schwag. Also, there’s an all day chat – link is in the last blog on the tour.

For our little piece of this, we’re going to be giving away a half dozen print books – including Tessa Dare’s Goddess of the Hunt (which is fantastic). We’ll choose a winner at random from all the comments on this post. What are you commenting on? So glad you asked…..

Continue reading Holiday Hottie Blog Tour…

Thursday Thirteen This Fire edition

Thirteen Sentences from “This Fire,” available now at Liquid Silver Books:

Clutching the sheet of paper with its boldly scrawled number, she picked up the phone. She concentrated on taking slow, even breaths. He probably wasn’t home. Firefighters’ schedules were worse than ER doctors. He was probably either on duty or asleep and wouldn’t answer the phone. It rang twice.

“Yeah?” His voice was gritty, dark, and a bit hoarse.

She had woken him. She bit her lip, undecided on whether to speak. She closed her eyes, and a picture of him, sleepy and rumpled, sprawled across the bed to grab the phone popped into her head. The image did alarming things to her pulse. “Seth.”

Holiday Blog Tour Is Coming!

We’re participating in another blog tour – also with other LSB authors. It’s the same gig as last time. Tour the blogs, leave a comment at each, and be automatically entered to win prizes. Like last time, there are tons of prizes, and we will be giving away site prizes in addition to the Tour prizes.

The tour will be this Friday 12/11 from midnight to midnight Eastern time.  Join us! Win stuff!