Things have been a bit chaotic around here :-) I wanted to get the free book winner announced before we have to head out in a couple of hours to the Irish Dance recital. If I have time, I'll put up a full Chaos report. Otherwise, I'll do it tonight. But as a little teaser the kidlets didn't have the reaction I'd thought!
Here are your random numbers:
38 Timestamp: 2008-04-20 18:04:23 UTC
This week's free book winner is windycindy. She won with a comment on the post, Chaos is coming! Windycindy, please pick a book from the list here and email me your selection with your snail address. You can find my email via the contact link on my website. And even if you've won a book or coupons in the past, please include your mailing address. Thanks!
Last week's winner limecello chose Fiance For the Night. That was my very first book. Sure wish I could go back and rewrite knowing what I know now!
My friend and fellow continuity author, Shirley Jump, tagged me. I usually don't have time for these, but since all I was going to post about was my excitement over getting Chaos tonight I figured I'd give it a shot. Don't want to bore you all!
This one is about random things. Since I'm pretty random, I thought this would be easier than some of the other ones I've seen. Here are the rules:
Tagging Rules: a. Link to the person who tagged you. b. Post the rules on your blog. c. Write six random things about yourself. d. Tag six random people at the end of your post by linking to their blogs. e. Let each person know they have been tagged by leaving a comment at their blog. f. Let your tagger know when your entry is up.
Here are my six Random Thoughts:
1. I think donuts are the perfect breakfast food. If they have chocolate and sprinkles even better. Add fruit to the plate and you've got three of the food groups! The kidlets agree with me.
2. I'm not big on buying myself things (unless I need something specific for a reason or it involves climbing or skiing) but I love to shop for other people. Whether I'm buying gifts or a friend asks for help putting together a new wardrobe, I could shop all day, not eat a thing and not get tired!
3. I was on the field during The Play. It was the Big Game between Stanford and Cal with four seconds left. My freshman year. I played clarinet in the Stanford Band (aka LSJUMB). We were standing near the field waiting for the game to be over so we could play. The clock ticked down, the play was over and we'd won! We started celebrating by storming the field. We weren't the only ones either. We just happened to be in Cal's end zone. One problem, the game kept going. And the rest, as they say, is history.
4. I haven't met many celebrities, but I did meet Hayden Christensen at Circus, Circus in Reno, Nevada (you can read about it in my July '05 archive) and Robbie Williams at a Kentucky Fried Chicken in London back in summer 1996. I was introduced to him as a girl from San Francisco who had no idea who he was. Robbie was very nice and posed for pictures with me. Other people saw us, realized who he was and came over. One of the people I was with sent me a Take That cd when I returned home and I figured out I had heard one of their songs on the radio.
The very first song I ever used as I wrote a book came off that cd and it was sung by Robbie! It was for my second book If the Ring Fits... and this is it.
5. Even though I'm getting a dog tonight, I'm a total cat lady. Though I'm not single and don't wear white turtlenecks (though I wear blue ones!), I wear clogs.
6. I'm not a big TV watcher, but I couldn't live without music.
I've been praying Friday would arrive. Hubby has been in New York all week. I'm counting the hours until his plane touches down. Right now I've got 13 1/2 hours to go. Needless to say, it's been a difficult week.
I'm feeling a little better thanks to the Neti Pot I purchased the other day. I know it sounds weird to be pouring water in one side of your nose to have it come out the other, but it works. Using this has been my only relief this week. I've even managed pages on the new book! If you want to read more about the Neti Pot, here's an article from the New York Times.
I also found out last night that Chaos will be coming on Saturday, not Sunday! I'm going to run to Costco this morning and buy her a doggy bed.
I'm still not feeling great so want to conserve my writing for the proposal. It's due on the 28th and I'm way behind from being sick!
Here's a montage of clips from romantic movies set to one of my favorite songs. Enjoy!
If you want to know what clips were used, hit the menu button, copy the url address and pay a visit to YouTube. The person who made it listed all of the movies in order of appearance.
There were several clips I had no idea what they were, but would like to watch now. One of them is Mary Bryant. What about you? Where these familiar or were some new to you?
I write for Harlequin Mills & Boon. The Mills & Boon office is located in Richmond which is outside of London. 2008 marks the 100 year anniversary, the centenary, of the company. To celebrate, there have been special flashes on books, Dear Readers letters to mark the occasion and various events.
If you'd like to see a range of M & B romance covers over the decade's check out their facebook photo albums.
Chaos had her stitches removed and is doing great. The vet asked the woman of all her dogs why she was giving this dog away. My heart just broke. You see, Chaos belongs to the rescue coordinator. She's giving her dog to us because she thinks Chaos would be happier living with a family. After talking to us about the rescue available, she thought we'd be a great fit for her own dog, who loves attention, but now has to vie with three other dogs. That's true love, don't you think?
To make my life easier, she offered to gather all the supplies we'd need and bring them with her and Chaos. She's going to drive the doggy to us. That way she can see where Chaos will be living. All we need to do is set a time.
And we're not so far away that we can't visit or leave Chaos with her when we travel. I think we get the better end of the bargain, but she's happy for her beloved Chaos.
The kidlets still don't know. Someone sort of spilled the beans this weekend, but both Tom and I were quick to say "No!" to the question about getting a dog. I later called him to explain. He'd figured it out on his own. The kids have been asking questions about Chaos for weeks now. Rose was peppering me about her yesterday.
A few more days. That's all we have to wait. Fingers crossed the secret remains, well, a secret!
Anything coming up in your life that you're looking forward to?
Not being able to do much when my head was all stuffy gave me some time to visit and play at my favorite time wasters. I hadn't been to a few in a while. I stopped by Free Rice and Websudoku, but didn't stay long. Both of those required thinking. So I headed to YouTube where I hit the jackpot!
I found the perfect song for my heroine's character and the first song for the book's soundtrack that I use when I'm writing. Even better, Pride and Prejudice clips are set to the music. How perfect is that?
With that in mind, I tried to picture what she looked like. I came up with that, too. Scarlett Johansson!
So even though I didn't get a lot of pages written, this will help me. Listening to the songs are a quick way to put me into the story so I can start writing right away.
I still haven't figured out who will be the inspiration for my hero. He's a web developer. Irish descent. Dark hair with green eyes. Have any suggestions for me?
I added my backlist to the books you can win. I was hoping to come up with some new prizes, but getting sick got in the way. Hopefully by May, I'll come up with a new idea or two for giveaways. I'll also be in charge of the contest at The Wedding Planners in June, the month my book is out, so I'd like to come up with a big prize for that one, too. If you have any ideas, post them in comments or email them to me!
Here are your random numbers:
6 Timestamp: 2008-04-13 17:15:15 UTC
For a program that's supposed to be random, it sure seems to like the lower numbers lately!
This week's free book winner is limecello. She won with a comment on the post, Better Late Than Never! Limecello, please pick a book from the list here and email me your selection with your snail address. You can find my email via the contact link on my website. And even if you've won a book or coupons in the past please include your mailing address. Thanks!
Last week's winner Sarita Leone chose Santa Brought a Son. Hope you enjoy it!
I'm taking it easy today though Im hoping to get some pages done. Writing still has been hard for me. I will be teaching my class tonight. Sunday's class only runs through the end of April so I don't want to miss any if I don't have to.
On the kitty front, the medicine seems to be making a difference. Spirit is opening her eye a little now. Before she always kept it closed! Thanks for all your well wishes!
Today marks the official start to Little League season in our area. This will be Finn's third year playing. He's very excited. I may have posted this youtube video before, but it's perfect for today!
I also wanted to tell you that Shirley Jump is giving away a great prize this month on the Wedding Planners blog. She'll pick the winner from those who post comments so head over there and check it out!
Have a good Saturday! Hope the sun is shining where you are. It looks like it'll be a beautiful day in the Pacific Northwest.
I read an article on Death by Blogging at Sarita's blog yesterday. I knew blogs were popular, but I had no idea people were making a living, well, blogging. That just boggles my mind. Anyway, it got me thinking about blogs and how people find them.
I use google a lot. I've found some great sites that I wouldn't have normally discovered if I hadn't followed links. I decided to see check how people ended up here. I went to my sitemeter account and checked the search terms used by the last 100 visitors to my blog. (That's all I can track.) Here they are:
Melissa McClone (2) Ben Barnes smoking Annelise Robey Jane Rotrosen Agency Mothers Addicted to Irish Dance Filthy Fifty Workouts (2) Melissa 7 Clubsport Flashpass Harlequin Special Treat Crossfit Michael Crossfit Good for Climbers? Disney Princess rain gear "broken arms" blogspot family
Interesting. Only two people were looking for me. One was looking for my agent. The others, especially the Crossfiters were probably surprised when they ended up on a romance writers blog!
How did you find the blogs you read? Do you google and follow links?
And has everyone discovered Google Reader? As usual with anything technology related, I was late to the party, but Marianne and Dru explained how it worked and I love it! So much so I want to add more blogs to it. Any suggestions?
I couldn't take it any longer so I went to the doctor's this morning. They put me on antibiotics. I'm hoping this works. Not sure how much more I can take!
I got an update on Chaos. She is recovering nicely. All she wants to do is play though and that's not allowed due to her stitches. The vet also ran a bunch of tests just to make sure she's healthy and everything came back normal!
Not much else to say. It's pretty boring when lying on the couch or bed tires me out!
Given the imminent arrival of Chaos, I decided to see what the cats' reaction would be to a dog. I held onto Angus' collar and brought him into the cat's sanctuary, aka as our bedroom.
To my surprise, nothing happened.
Spirit didn't move until Angus took a step toward her. Then she only raised her head and looked at him. Rocket continued lying in the laundry basket.
I brought Angus a little closer. Spirit held her ground, but hissed. When I brought Angus toward Rocket, he had the same reaction as Spirit. Hissing, that was all. I was so worried they might run! Huge sigh of relief.
Poor Angus though. I think he thought he'd found new friends to play with. Of course, what he really wanted to do was make a bee-line for the bathroom where the cat food was!
Here's a clip with some really cute cat pictures. I like the song, too.
Liz Fielding is the guest blogger at The Wedding Planners today and she's giving away a signed copy of her current release, The Bride's Baby. You have to read the excerpt and answer a question in the comment section. Easy!
Spirit, my cat, has a problem with her left eye. It's taken me a couple of weeks to get her an appointment with an animal eye doctor so that's where we're headed this morning. I'm no better than I was this weekend, but she needs me so I'm going. It looks as if my little one may be coming down with what I have, too. Not good.
I really wanted to get this done today! Looks like I made it.
Here are your random numbers:
3 Timestamp: 2008-04-08 05:04:08 UTC
This week's free book winner is Sarita Leone. She won with a comment on the post, Thanks! Her comment mentions purple as being her lucky underwear color! Sarita, please pick a book from the list here and email me your selection with your snail address. You can find my email via the contact link on my website. And even if you've won a book or coupons in the past please include your mailing address. I no longer have anyone's address. Thanks!
Last week's winner Limecello chose The Passion of Simon Blackwell. I'll get out a bunch of the books I need to still send as soon as I'm feeling better. But those two winners still have not emailed me their addresses!
Time to call it a night. My kitty, Spirit, has to see the eye doctor tomorrow. I don't really feel like driving her there, but I think she'd do better with me rather than hubby so I want to get as much sleep as I can and hopefully feel better!
Sorry I never posted the winner of the free book. I'm still sick and feeling too bad to do it now. I'll hopefully be feeling better later and canl get to it. I couldn't teach my class last night and I cancelled my class today. A weekend in bed and I'm worse. I hope this isn't turning into a sinus infection already!
Angus arrived yesterday for a week stay. The kids have been having lots of fun with him. He's keeping me company today.
Thank goodness I decided not to take the kids skiing yesterday. The head cold from hell hit yesterday morning, about the time we would have been taking our second run of the day.
I hadn't been feeling all that great on Thursday, but had no idea it would get this bad, this fast. I spent almost all of Friday in bed except for taking the kidlets to Burgerville for lunch and running by Hollywood Video to let them each pick a movie for the weekend (Game Plan, Underdog, Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium). I did manage to get all the laundry folded with the kids help. Not exactly the day off from school any of us thought it would be.
We have company coming for dinner tonight so I need to recover quickly. The house needs to be cleaned, groceries bought, you get the idea. I wonder if it's too late to chug Airborne. I'm sucking on cold-eeze as I write this.
Hubby asked me if I was milking it, being a hypochondriac. Yeah right, as if I can force all this stuff out of my nose and eyes at will. Give me a break. But it led me to this quiz.
You Are 24% Hypochondriac
You can deal well with being sick - even if your symptoms are a little scary.
You're occasionally prone to worry about your health, but only when you have pretty strange symptoms.
I've mentioned before how much I love Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice. The book, the movies, everything about it. My current project has the heroine and hero discussing the movies so I hopped over to You Tube to watch a few clips and be inspired. I haven't done that, hanging out at You Tube, in awhile due to giving up time wasters for Lent, so I had a bit of fun. And even though I wasted time watching all these, I had already written all my pages done for the day so it was okay.
Here are a few things I found you might enjoy.
The actual Pride and Prejudice trailer:
Lion's pride trailer:
Pirates of the Caribbean trailer:
A Hairspray trailer:
The BBC version trailer:
Beauty & the Beast trailer:
I'm not sure what this is, but I had to share it:
In case you couldn't figure it out, the stalker Ken doll in the red jacket is Mr. Darcy.
If you've read this blog at all, you are familiar with the usual suspects: me, hubby, kidlets, cats (Rocket, Spirit, Smalls) and surrogate dog (Angus). Well, soon there will be a new addition...Chaos.
You might think our life is chaotic enough without adding more chaos to it. True, but this Chaos is different and if her name is anything to go by, she will fit in just fine.
Meet Chaos. She's a two year old Norwegian Elkhound. We fell for the breed that night at the fairgrounds. It was love at first sight for us when we met the dog herself. And then after spending time with her, we couldn't imagine a better dog. Everything we wanted, everything we hoped for, we found with Chaos!
We left on our spring break vacation the day after we met her and the entire trip, she kept coming up in discussion. More than once while we were doing something, it felt as if something were missing and we all realized it was her. Hubby and I exchanged cards for our anniversary yesterday, but finding out we could get Chaos was the best gift we could have given each other and our family.
We won't get her right away. She was spayed yesterday so needs time to heal. The timing should work out well. We're dogsitting Angus from Sunday to Sunday so it wouldn't be the best time to introduce Chaos to our household. She needs things to be normal when she comes for the first time.
Needless to say, I was so excited last night, it was hard to sleep. I'm dragging a little today, but I don't care. Happiness trumps tiredness hands down.
We haven't told the kids yet. Everyday I get asked about Chaos. Yesterday, Rose asked if Chaos had her operation yet. If they knew she was coming to live with us, it would be non-stop questions until she arrived. I can only take so much so I'm going to wait until it's a little closer to give them the news or we might just surprise them. We haven't decided yet. Any thoughts on that?
Also, we'll be entering a whole new world with Chaos and want to be the best family we can for her. Does anyone have any doggy suggestions for me? Also any suggestions on introducing her to the three cats would be appreciated!
I've been busy writing! Hard to believe, I know, but the plan is working. I'm only one page behind where I should be. I managed four pages yesterday. Not bad for a manic Monday, but hubby was a total dear and did the driving yesterday afternoon so I could write.
What else has been going on around here besides laundry?
Well, my talented webmistress, Barb, just updated my website for my June release. Here's an excerpt if you're interested in taking a peek at SOS Marry Me. There's also some info on the News and Fun Stuff page, though if you read this blog, I'm sure you've heard it all before!
I also wanted to tell you about a new contest you should enter. Long and Short Reviews blog is giving away a book each day in April. Pretty cool! All you have to do is post a comment on the book you want to win. The only catch? You have to post the day the book is reviewed. Be sure bookmark the blog and check in daily!
On today's agenda, I'll be climbing at the rock gym and writing! What about you?
