Desperately Seeking Reading

Don't let the title of this post fool you. I read plenty, and not just the random stuff that I edit for work, but real fiction. This, of course, not only includes published books, but my own work (over and over and over and over and over and...) and the work of my critique partners. So, yeah, lots of fiction.

However, in terms of the non-work (i.e., non-editing and non-critiquing) reading, I have strayed from the YA genre as of late. I've been reading all kinds of books, but none of them seem to be the standard YA that I love and adore.

Not really sure what happened there. But, seriously, it's been a while. Welcome to my YA drought.

Okay, no, I know what happened. I was given books by several people that I either need to share with others who I will see over the holidays, or I've just had them on my shelf for so long that I'm starting to feel guilty that I haven't given them back. So, trying to clean off the shelves, so to speak. 

Anyway, so in my personal pining, I just wanted to share with you what I *want* to read, especially over the holidays or as soon as we get back from the holidays.

The Hunger Games trilogy by Suzanne Collins. Nope, haven't read a one of 'em yet. I know. I must be the last vestige of lameness around. It'll happen. My nephew owns book one at the least (*ahem* bought it for him last Christmas *ahem*), and possibly more, so we'll see if I can speed my way through at least the first one.

UPDATE: I just discovered that the entire trilogy is available through the Kindle Lending Library for free. Granted, you can't "borrow" more than one book per month, but, heck, how awesome is that?!?

Fallen, Torment, and Passion by Lauren Kate. Maybe I'm just a sucker for a cover, but I can't tell you how much I want to read these books. Over the summer, I almost picked up the first one from the library, until I remembered the five book reviews I had promised out in the next several months, and couldn't justify it. Really, all I want is to curl up with them on my Kindle. Want to hear something ridiculous? My local library only has #2 in ebook format. I have no idea why.

Paranormalcy, Supernaturally, and Endlessly by Kiersten White. Yup, really want to read these, too. And, yes, I know that Endlessly isn't out yet. I don't care! You know, a few months ago I hosted a give-away, and ended up sending out a copy of Paranormalcy to one of the winners. Oh, that hurt, when I SOO want to read it, too. *sigh*

Okay, enough for my whining about what I want to read. Now I just need to do it. I really think that come the new year I'll be able to read more along these lines. Here's hoping, anyway. :)


What do you want to read right now? What are you reading? Is there anything you've been dying to read but haven't been able to get your hands on it?

Back from the Brink

Oh, boy, folks, have I had a crazy few weeks. Grab a cuppa coffee/tea/wine/beverage of your choice and let me tell you all about it.

So I needed a mini break of blogging because I hadn't quite figured out how to manage my writing, my "new" job, family, life, and blogging all at the same time. I think I've figured it out now, so we're gonna try a trial of me blogging on Tuesdays and Saturdays for a while, and see how it works. Please bear with me as I reintegrate myself into the blogosphere.

This is your brain on editing.
Any questions?

Then there was the writing. In late October not only was I trying to manage some pretty intense revision on my novel (currently listed on my WIPs page as FIGHTING FATE, though I plan to change the title to IN FLAMES). I wanted to get a full round of revision finished before NaNoWriMo started, while also juggling my NaNo prep. That took a LOT out of me, and I edited until my brains turned into liquid goo. Seriously. It was messy.

My own personal NaNo shield

On November first, having finished that round of editing, I was happy to accept my NaNo fate. I greeted it with a warm, strong handshake. And on the fateful afternoon of November 1st, I had an extra meeting with my boss, wherein he asked me to work overtime in preparation for our display at an upcoming conference (I work for a small, specialty academic publisher). And in my inner ear, I heard my NaNo plans go *squish*. My boss and I negotiated trading the days in early November for days around Thanksgiving, so not all was lost, but it put some stress on my NaNo plans nonetheless.

As of November 12th, one-third of the way through the month, I had only written about 14K over the course of 4 authentic writing days. Ouch.

On the morning on November 13th, as I'm leaving my house to pick up a friend, I grab my phone to let her know I'm coming, and see that I have a missed text message from my boss--who, I might add, never sends me text messages. It said, more or less, that he was in the hospital, post-surgery after having had a heart attack. Everything okay. Call to talk about conference prep. SERIOUSLY. My boss is in the intensive care unit on a Sunday morning and wants to talk about conference prep. Now, granted, the conference started on the 17th. My boss isn't really all that Type-A, but we did still have a lot of work to do, and that essentially took the editorial side of our house from 3 to 2 employees doing the bulk of the work (we have a few work-study students, but regular employees, we are three). So now add more overtime work to my schedule over the next three days, making the first day of the conference (Nov 17th) day 5 for writing. Not a good sign.

See how the Jell-O powder gets all goopy with a little water?

Not to mention that on the 17th and the 18th I was about as worthless a writer as an uncooked box of Jell-O, from working 10hour days three days in a row, and the emotional turmoil of talking to my boss on the phone while he was doped on morphine and falling asleep. Yup, powdery Jell-O.

Somehow, though, I managed to pull a few days writing between 5-6K. Don't ask me how. Perhaps some superhuman feats of strength that even kryptonite couldn't squelch. Who knows? But I have to attribute at least a little of my success to Hart Johnson and her stupendous idea for hour-long sprint-writing sessions. I think those were ultimately my saving grace. Coordinated over Facebook, I would periodically join Hart, among others, on these sprints, and both the time and the community support helped a ton.

And, imagine, through all of that, I actually won!

Granted, according to my word verification, I only have 50,002 words, but I don't care! I'm 2 words over what they need (although, according to my Scrivener file, I have 50,019), and that's what matters.

Anyway, now it's December. A little over two weeks until the holiday break comes, which will entail lots of time with family, friends, and fruitcake. I'm already celebrating by eating too many sweets and listening to Christmas music while I cook and bake. And, dangit all, I am MAKING these cookies if it kills me. I just have to find some sweet rice flour first...

Be seeing you around the blogosphere!

#NaNoWriMo KickOff and Update

You know what today is :) The first of November is a celebrated holiday in my house. Er, well, it is for me.

Especially since the month of October ate me up. Work's a little insane, meaning I've had to bring projects home over the weekend and work on things in the evenings, too. I work for a small, academic publisher, and we're gearing up for a conference that starts in about 2 weeks. So now's the last push to get these projects finished and printed before the conference. Which means overtime. Which means more money, sure, but it also means less writing time.

My hope is to make it through to about the 15th or so, then attempt to reenter the blogging community. I think it's possible.

In the meantime, I'll be NaNo-ing again. Starting at about the time this blog post goes up. If you'd like to add me as your buddy on the NaNo site, my user ID is Rosie-C.

Good luck with NaNo this year, everyone. I'll see you soon :)

A Pseudo-Hiatus

Hi folks.

This picture will never die
because it says so many things.

You may have noticed my absence last week. I almost wrote a post about the week that swallowed my soul (because, really, it did) and then spit me back out, but I didn't think you wanted to read all about my worries and woes. So I kept it to myself.

Unfortunately, I'm still in recovery. While I love blogging, and miss you all terribly, some things have to give. So I'm taking a pseudo-hiatus for a little while.

What does that mean? Well, it means I will be blogging irregularly—probably once a week—through the end of October. I have a few blog posts promised for various reasons, and those will happen. But I'm not sure I can handle more than that.

To Campaigners in my groups, I owe you an apology. I didn't realize how hectic things were right now, and I probably shouldn't have signed up. I will still come visit you (if I haven't already), but I can't be the active Campaigner that I had hoped to be.

So, the bottom line is that I'll be around, just not as much as I'd like. Here's hoping things settle down a little more by November, so I can NaNoWriMo again!

*hugs*

Getting Back in the Swing

Boy, oh boy, does taking a month off put a dent in ones momentum. Getting it back has been quite a process, and, well, it's not back yet. This counts for writing, editing, and blogging.

So I'm working on weekly goals. One of my crit partners and I are trading weekly goals and trying to motivate the other to stick to them. I've gotten through some of them, although my reading goals are falling behind—which is bad, since they're ARCs and I have deadlines to meet.

This may be the most versatile picture
I've ever taken :)

I don't know how people with real 40hr/wk jobs juggle writing, editing, blogging, reading, family, friends, life, and sanity. I just don't. I'm struggling right now because my job upped my hours to 25 per week. That's nothing, right? And yet I can't seem to get in the hours they want while also getting the writing-job requirements fulfilled at the same time.

It's probably because I've just started. This is week two. Add to this my month hiatus from everything.

But... but... shiny new writing office should make everything better, right?

*sigh*

Any suggestions on how to get back in the writing groove? Other than just to do it? Because, really, I'm trying. It's just so SLOW!

What I'm Reading

Right now I am enjoying the art of book-juggling. This isn't something I normally flourish at, but each thing I'm reading differs so much from the others that it's working.

Plus, I'm really behind on my GoodReads Reading Challenge, and I need to get a few books added to my total pretty soon.

So...

Power Ballads by Will Boast
Written by a college friend of mine (I'm boasting about Boast), Boast's collection of short stories is the winner of the Iowa Short Fiction Award. I'll save my thoughts for later, but I'm enjoying this quite a lot.
Review and Interview with Boast coming week of September 12.

Watching Willow Watts by Talli Roland

What a fun, lighthearted read. I'm only about a quarter through it, but I'm having trouble tearing myself from it. Of course, I knew I would, after my experience reading The Hating Game, and I couldn't wait to start this. Again, saving my thoughts for later.

Review coming September 14.

Monarch by Michelle Davidson Argyle

Okay, this one I'm actually reading for the second time. My first read was too fast. It's like when I eat chocolate chip scones—I know I love them, but I eat them so fast I don't really taste them. Well, I read Monarch so fast the first time that I just got the impression of loving it, but not enough thoughts to actually write a review. So, reading it a second time. And you know what? I'm loving it just as much even though I already know what's going to happen.

Review and Interview with Argyle coming in early October.

Entwined by Heather Dixon

This was recommended to me by another blogger. So far, not bad. I can't say I'm loving it. I have my reservations. I'll think about writing a review of it when I've finished.

I have to say, though, I do love the cover.

The Book Thief by Markus Zusak

Admittedly, I'm not reading this very fast.  Those of you who have read it know it's another WWII story, and I have difficulty reading these. Even through the poetic language and the youthful perspective, the weight of the basic content drags on my psyche. So I read a little here and a little there, and eventually I'll finish it. I'm enjoying it, but it has to be interspersed with these other books of semi-lighter content.




What are you reading? Any recommendations?

Back to the Blogo-World

Dearest Bloggy Buddies,
Thank you for your patience on my hiatus. It has been a stressful month of packing, moving, homelessness, moving, and unpacking again. But, at the end of the day, we're in our new house, and I have my own shiny new writing office!

Also, my cats are a lot happier now that we're not trying to live in a Motel 6.

You'll be seeing more of me, both here and around the blogosphere. It may take a couple of weeks, but I'll make the rounds. I have a new writing/working/blogging schedule that should work out pretty well.

Stop by on Friday as I get back into full swing.

Any news from the last month that I've missed? Fill me in!

Life 180

Image courtesy of Housecret.com

Ever feel like everything in your life got turned on its metaphorical ear?

Our mini-vacation plans just fell through, so we don't get to go to Colorado next week. We're compensating by taking a weekend trip, but it's not quite the same.

We're moving out of this apartment in less than a month. Then we're "homeless" for a week. Then we move again into our new apartment. Yuck.

I'm under doctor's orders not to take my normal migraine medication anymore. Today makes day three of a migraine (it's probably about a 3-4/10 on the pain scale this morning, which is the only reason I can look at my computer screen), which is why some of you haven't heard from me in a while, especially if you comments on Monday's post.

My job's keeping me hopping, with several upcoming deadlines and a dissatisfied client passed on to me.

My muse took an extended summer vacation, apparently—without giving me notice, I might add—and I haven't written in a few weeks except for editing.

So, if you couldn't guess, I'm rather stressed.

What's the point of all this?

I need to take a blogging break. I need to get my life back in check and organized. So I won't be posting again until the middle of August. I'm not sure what date, yet—it will all depend on how smoothly the move goes and if I can get some of these work projects under control.

You might see me around from time to time, but I won't be posting.


Thanks for understanding, folks.

Holidays, Moving Trauma, and July

First, if you're a yankee, Happy 4th. If not, I hope your Monday's going well. May we all eat well and enjoy the day. I, poor patriot that I am, don't even know if the city's setting off fireworks tonight or if they did it last night. We have, however, hears all the fireworks they're setting off at the nearby lakes since Wednesday.

*bad segue*

Moving is stressing me out. In fact, anything with a brown cardboard box is stressing me out. It started on Thursday when my boss called me. Now, for the record, I work for a small, niche publisher at my university that puts out books related to Eastern Europe, Central Asia, and Russia (former Soviet Block). I work in editorial, preparing manuscripts for print, occasionally dealing directly with the printer in lieu of my boss. So when he called and asked me help do the beginning-of-the-fiscal-year inventory, I can't say I was thrilled. And I sure wasn't ambivalent. But I agreed because the "team" is a little short-staffed right now (long story, but temporary), and my boss was kind enough to hire me through the summer when I'm leaving the university as a student.

Courtesy of Future Perfect Publishing.
Our stacks don't look that neat.

Friday, July 1. Seven hours of doing inventory. This did not include the back room full of boxes of books. This did not include going to the warehouse to calculate our holdings over there. Nope. This involved me standing on a step stool, reading off three digits from the book's ISBN, counting the number of books on the shelf, and reporting the number to my cohort with a clipboard, who then checked off the number on a spreadsheet. Oh, and at four, we moved on to some "donated" boxes of our books (another long story) that then involved finding each ISBN (not as clearly marked as they are on the shelf) and adding +1 to the total. *sigh* I didn't get home until 6:30.

Saturday was moving day for some good friends, so I went to help. I hadn't planned to originally, but I'm glad I did, because when I got there, it was the couple and one other person, trying to load the couple's life into a 10ft Uhaul. A couple more people joined the team over time, but we never had more than six active players. Three Uhaul trips and some "3D Tetris", as my friend coined it.

So we're in July. Soon comes August. My husband and I officially have 4 weeks until our lease ends and 5 weeks until our new lease begins. We have to box up our lives and figure out where to store it all for a week. Can we say, not fun? I'm thinking the easiest thing at this point is to rent a POD, but one-month's rental costs more than one-month's rent for my apartment (the old one, anyway), and I don't think that's reasonable. We're looking into other options, such as short-term storage, keeping various boxes in friends' garages, etc.

Seriously, boxes are stressing me out right now.

I'm trying to keep my head above water in terms of managing blogging, writing, working, and general family duties. I suppose this is nothing different, but I don't have a set schedule for myself, and I can't really create one when we'll be packing and scrounging up a place store everything.

Anyway, happy 4th again. We're grilling in the backyard.

What are you doing this fine Monday, July 4? 
Do you have any create space ideas for me for a week's worth of homelessness?
Any ideas on what I can do to make the boxes less scary? :)

The Migraine Saga

My husband loves a good rain storm. He's from Arizona, from desert where trees have green bark and the skies come in multi-hued tones. But there's no weather except for the monsoon season, which lasts about a month in July and August. Otherwise, the weather forecaster on the local news has a pretty sweet gig.

For me, though, weather means instant disaster. Changes in pressure result in massive migraines. This has been me on and off for the past several days.

I'm not looking for sympathy. I'm just stating the facts.

Here's the problem: all I wanted to do on Monday was write, but I couldn't move. For half the day I didn't even want to open my eyes. I was so close to being done with my latest revision of Fighting Fate that the sweet flavor mingled on my tongue with the bitterness of personal defeat.

Yup, there's no good, rational reason for it, but I felt defeated. Defeated by my own head, the same location from which all the great ideas for my fiction stem (or "where all the great ideas of my fiction stem from"—you be the judge).

On the bright side, I was 98% pain-free on Tuesday. Admittedly, I write my posts early, and it's actually Tuesday night as I write this, so I have no idea how my Wednesday will shape up. If you leave comments and you don't hear back from me at all, the odds aren't in my favor.

I'm tried of taking my medication for the migraines and am now searching for alternatives. I'm getting a Reiki treatment, I'm looking into acupuncture. Really, I'll take anything that doesn't involve putting more chemicals in my body. I'm not anti-med, but the Triptans I take drug me out so that, even when the pain is gone, I'm not functional. I resemble a drooling zombie, except that I still have refreshingly pink flesh and don't want to eat brains. I just want to smack the crap out of MINE.

So, oh blogity friends, any advice? I'm so far investigating Reiki, acupuncture, and renewing my commitment to yoga and meditation. But, seriously, anyone know of any home remedies?

The Return

I've managed to find my way back after my sabbatical and have lots of updates for you.

First, if you check out my BuNoWriMo counters to the right, you'll see that I've had great success in the writing department. If I can finish my latest draft of Fighting Fate and get 10K on Seer, I will have written 50K in June. I'm keeping my fingers and toes crossed, but I think it's possible.

If you'd like to see the first 250 words (well, more like 280) of Seer, it will be posted on Carol Rigg's blog sometime today. Go over, help critique, make comments, or just read and tell me how awesome (or horrible) it is :)

Now that I've had some time away, I feel rejuvenated in the blogging department. In addition to having several fun blog posting ideas in my brain (see below for a few examples), I've also reorganized my Google Reader to help me visit my peeps more often. I'm still working on catching up with all my new followers from A-to-Z, so bear with me. The blogging front, though, looks quite promising.

In the next couple of weeks, I have some exciting things planned.

• On Friday, I'll be participating in the Getting to Know Your Characters Blogfest, hosted by Elizabeth Mueller and Jeannie Campbell. 
• On Sunday, Sasha Conte is hosting the Blogfest... Interrupted.
• On Monday, stop by to read my review of Veiling in Shadows by fellow blogger Al Russell. 
• Coming sometime in the month of July I will post my review of A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan. I've joined the Goodreads bookclub for it, and can't wait to dig in. 
• I'm also planning (tentatively) a review of the Millennium series by Stieg Larsson. The popularity of these books drove me to read them, and as I've developed as a writer and read other comments about them on Goodreads, I have discovered lots of things I want to say about them. 

I also have ideas for non-review posts, so stay tuned.

Finally, I returned from my trip to find this in my mailbox:

EEK! I'm so excited. My first ARC. I'm participating in Michelle Davidson Argyle's book tour to celebrate the release of Monarch in September. I can't wait to dig into this one, either.

Oh, and the reunion? It was great. We had fun seeing all kinds of family, and getting outside a bit. Here's a tidbit, straight from the land of corn :)

How have you been? Any fun things to share? What have you read lately, or what do you have lined up next?

PS--Today is my hubby's and my 9th wedding anniversary. I love you, J!

Sabbatical

So much for being back to regular posting...

Ever notice how your mojo slows down? Even when you find the muses again, it feels like you're wading through chocolate pudding (both in the sense of slowing down and in the oh-man-I-just-want-to-eat-chocolate sense)?

How do you deal with these situations?

My plan right now is to recharge by unplugging for a while. That's right. I'm going somewhere untouched by the internet (though it does have satellite TV). Partially, it's a family reunion, but that will be over by the weekend.

My husband and I have decided to stay longer for a self-induced work retreat. He's polishing his dissertation at the moment, and went up to visit this part of the family a few weeks ago--with stellar success. So now, he wants to try and regain that momentum, and I need to get some with my writing and my freelance editing working.

All that being said, I will be on sabbatical from the blogosphere starting today until around the 22nd. Hopefully the time off will help me recharge my blogging batteries, get a jumpstart and/or finish the first part of my BuNo challenge, and get some significant hourly time in to make some summer moola.

See y'all in a couple of weeks.

Meme-Time

I've been tagged in a meme by Wendy over at Fabulosity Nouveau. It seems there are a bunch of them floating around right now. This one looks fun, so, here we go :)

If you could go back in time and relive one moment, what would it be?

Huh. Good question. Does this mean re-experience or being able to change the moment? Am I thinking about this too much?

Pyramid of the Moon
Courtesy of Wiki Commons

Okay, as a straight re-experience, I would say the boat ride my husband and I took through the canals in Mexico City on our honeymoon. If I could change the moment, I would go back to the day before and wear more sunscreen at the Pyramids at Tenochtitlan so that I wouldn't look like a crazy lobster on that boat ride :)

If you could go back in time and change one thing, what would it be?

Changing my major from creative writing to political science. Then again, that little change had lots of repercussions on my life, like living abroad, that I'm not sure I want to give up.

Willow Rosenburg / Alyson Hannigan
Courtesy of Buffy Wikia

What movie/tv character do you most resemble in personality?

Willow in early seasons of Buffy the Vampire Slayer--passionate about her friends and loved ones, sensitive and easily heart-broken, and prone to serious geek-out moments.

If you could push one person off a cliff and get away with it, who would it be?

What a horrible question? If I have an answer for this, I'm not making it public on my blog *shifty*

Name one habit you want to change in yourself.

Laziness. I really think this is a habit. We get comfortable in routine. After my father died in 2008, I didn't do ANYTHING. I watched lots of TV. I sat on my butt. And it's been really hard to break those habits since then.

Describe yourself in one word.

Confused? :)

Describe the person who named you in this meme in one word.

Spunky!

Why do you blog? Answer in one sentence.

I love being a part of an amazing, supportive community of writers and readers who want to encourage and help each other from the goodness of their souls.

PS--Thank you :)

Who am I tagging? 

Reece Hanzon
Charity Bradford
Natasha Hanova

Whether to be Weathered by the Weather

So, my planned post will be postponed for a few days while I recover from the chaos that happened in my town last night.

A total of *five* tornado sirens went off between 5PM and midnight on Wednesday night. Hurricane-strength wind and rain ripped through our inland community. Funnel clouds were spotted in several counties. One touched down and destroyed a trailer park south of town.

Here are some pictures of what happened at our house.

This tree probably topped out around 40 feet. Last night the roots snapped and the tree collapsed. We're super lucky that it felt the exact way it did, because it could have taken out any of four houses and several cars on the street. Honestly, it could have collapsed through my bedroom ceiling.

But it did block the entire street. Traffic had to be rerouted through several different streets in our neighborhood due to all the trees and limbs that came down. At 7:30, though, the crew had already arrived to survey the situation.

Some perspective on how big the stump is.

And here's the other tree that snapped in half and fell on our roof. Luckily it didn't hurt anything (I don't think), and it landed mainly on the roof of our porch. It could have been much worse.



So, I hope the weather has been nicer to you than it has been to us recently. Have any scary weather stories to share?

Scores, Strings, and A Crazy Little Thing Called Memberships

First, remember to sign up for the What's the Score Blogfest for June 1st. List songs you'd like to be in the soundtrack to your WIP, and win prizes just for participating. Click above or on the right for more details.




_____________________

Jessica Bell is organizing the promotion for her upcoming release, STRING BRIDGE. Think you might be interested in getting an ARC and posting a review? Being involved in the Amazon Chart rush? Her Blog Tour? Hope over to Jessica's blog and sign up.

If you missed the trailer:

_____________________

For those of you new to my life and woes, there's something you need to know:

I'm a recovering linguist.

This means several things for my writing. First, when I write, I have to focus A LOT on the voice, because I'm still trying to purse the academicese from my writing. Keeping my prose clean of the dry, scientific, observational sentence structures is tough. Seriously.

Another remnant of my linguist days are my society memberships. I'm a member of LSA, SLS, and  AATSEEL. I even freelance as an editor for the publisher of the journal associated with SLS. I'm in deep, folks... at least until I have to renew again in the winter. Then I can let those memberships laps.

But thinking about those has got me thinking about memberships in writerly organizations, and I don't know which are the best for a budding writer on a limited budget. For example, SCBWI is $85 for the first year. I'm sure it's worth it, but that figure about makes me want to faint. Membership in LSA was only $20! I could stay a linguist for four more years and still be able to buy lunch.

Okay, I'm done complaining.  SCBWI offers lots of great services and perks to members. The question is: do I belong there?

Really, that's the problem. I don't know where I belong. I could join SCBWI, but my work straddles YA and adult. Would SCBWI be a good fit for me? What about RWA (at $110)? I don't really consider myself a romance author, though there are strong tones of romance. How about SFWA? Well, a quick look at their website indicates that I'm not eligible, anyway.


So, help me out. What societies are out there for a writer trying to make her way? If you're a member, do you feel you get your money's worth from the dues? How do you make the most of your memberships?

Changes, Constants, and the Big Announcement

Anyone know what happened to Blogger over the past few days? I suppose that’s what I get for delaying my announcement.

So, as some of your may know, I just finished my time in graduate school. Hurray! I’ve decided to move on to other things—like writing (plus a part-time gig)—to while away the hours. For a while it didn’t look possible, but my husband was offered a pretty nice new job with his shiny new PhD. We’ll be moving in August, though just across town. My life is full of changes right now, though they’re all for the better.

But I’ve got one consistent thing in my life… okay, yeah, I’ve got TONS of them, considering we’re not moving to South Dakota or Peru or something. But, when it comes to the relevance of this blog, I have something that’s strongly consistent.

The blog itself.

May 31st marks my one-year blogiversary!

And you know me. I HAVE to celebrate. What does that mean?

BLOGFEST :)

To celebrate, I’m hosting the What’s the Score Blogfest.

On June 1st, post any number of songs, artists, composers, posers, who/whatever that you might want to include in the soundtrack to your WIP. YOU’RE IN CHARGE! You make the soundtrack the way you want it.

Don’t have a WIP? Is your WIP’s soundtrack personal and not something you want to share? No problem! Take your favorite book, or the book your reading right now, or a book you remember well, and make a soundtrack for it.

Want to enter? The Linky List is at the bottom of the page.

Are you thinking, “Meh. Too much work?” Can I add a little incentive?

No celebration is complete without prizes, right?

Prizes:

• Every person who participates is automatically entered to win either a $20 AMAZON GIFT CARD.
• Every person who participates is automatically entered to win a BOOK OF HIS/HER CHOICE from Amazon.
• Anyone who WANTS to have their name added to win either a CHAPTER CRITIQUE or a QUERY CRITIQUE, just let me know in a comment ON THIS POST.

Odds of winning?

Honestly, I have no idea, and I’m horrible at statistics, so I can’t really answer that.

HOWEVER, would you like a better chance to win?

• +1 participating
• +2 current follower (as of 5/13/11) / +1 new follower
• +1 for Tweeting (max. 3; include @rosieanabelle in your Tweet)
• +1 for Facebook post (please provide a link)
• +3 for adding the graphic to your sidebar (please provide a link)
• +5 for posting about it (please provide a link)

That’s a total maximum of 15 points. Talk about increasing your odds!

Well, I hope the announcement was worth the wait, especially with Blogger being funny. Hope to see you on June 1!

Whew!

This past week has flown by, and unfortunately, I'm just now starting to get my life back together. My husband's parents and my mother stayed with us for several days, and we don't exactly have a large house. Add to that graduation festivities (for my hubs, not me), a new job offer, and then lots of Irish jigs that spontaneously came out of my feet, and, well, it all equals one tired Rosie.

So, with that in mind, the Big Announcement will occur on Friday. Monday is the Laughter is the Best Medicine Blogfest, hosted by Leigh T. Moore and Lydia Kang. Then Wednesday I will announce all those awesome awards.

In other news, I just saw that Lindsey Leavitt's new book, THE ROYAL TREATMENT, was released over the weekend. It's the sequel to PRINCESS FOR HIRE, which I had the honor to win from her blog last summer. It's a great, totally fun MG story.

The other thing I learned from Lindsey's blog this morning is that a bookfair has been set up by BN. ANYTHING you buy this week from BN, if you use the code #10486058 at ANY Barnes and Noble store or at bn.com, 10% of your purchase will go towards The United Way of Western Alabama for tornado relief. If we raise $2500, that percentage goes up to 15%.

Help spread the word, and go buy a book.

Catch you on Friday for the Big Announcement. :)

Happy Flunk Day

Hi folks.

Facebook is a wonderful thing. I woke up this morning and found from the official Knox College page that it's Flunk Day.

What is Flunk Day, you ask? Well, I pulled this from the Knox College website:

"Flunk Day. A campus-wide surprise party marks the arrival of spring for Knox students. The party's date, and even the identities of its organizers, is kept secret until the early morning, when the entire campus is awakened by the shouts of students running through campus and the ringing of the Old Main bell. All classes are cancelled--and exam dates and paper deadlines postponed--for a day of music, games, food, and fun."

Courtesy of Knox.edu

Flunk Day was such a treat to look forward to when I was an undergrad *cough*  years ago. I still look forward to it now. Granted, I don't get to play on the moonwalk thing (it's early and I can't think of the right words), or play in the senior-faculty softball game, or dance to the DJ at 8 AM, but I still make sure I can take off some time to enjoy myself.

So, today, after my Welsh oral exam and a little bit of work, I'm coming home, relaxing, and I'm going to give myself some extra time to write.

How can you celebrate Flunk Day today? What can you do that's just for you?

The Delusional Doom Blogfest

Thanks for Hart at Confessions of a Watery Tart for hosting today's blogfest. As soon as I saw her post about it, I wanted to participate. Here are the rules/options:

You can do ANY (or all) of the following:

Predict your own death

Predict someone ELSES death

Write your own obituary

Write someone ELSES obituary

Plot a murder of someone sorely asking for it, step by step

So, without further ado, I give you my entry of delusional doom, a prediction of my own death. Writing this took time, since this is outside of my normal genre. I hope you enjoy it.

**WARNING** This gets a tad violent. It's not gory, just violent. Read at your own risk.

*     *     *     *     *

When I leave grad school this semester, I will go work at the local JoAnn Fabrics in whatever town my husband and I find ourselves. I love sewing and crocheting, enjoy sewing and quilting, have dabbled in scrapbooking and stamping, can reupholster a chair and make a slip cover. Why wouldn't they want me? And, spree, if they need me to figure out something linguistic for fun, I'm good for that, too.

So I'll work there for a couple of months. Learn the store. Get comfortable. Make friends. Overstock my yarn collection to extreme proportions until my husband buys my yarn its own house.

Until one day. I stand in the second aisle, replacing the Easter collection with gnomes and ducks and other spring lawn decor. My boss turns past the hand-painted watering cans, followed by another woman in a green JoAnn's shirt. She will become my arch nemesis—we'll call her Mandy Brown. She gets transferred from her store across town. She's also a fiber arts diva, and a linguist to boot.

She says, "Have you heard the the one about the linguistics professor who was trying to explain basic phonology to a class of sophomores?"

I stare at her. Damn it! She was funny too? "No."

"He wanted to explain voiced and voiceless consonants, so he starts by saying, 'Let's consider the b-ness and the p-ness of the consonants'."

I choke, cough, and turn back to my shelf stocking. I don't want my boss to see me laughing at such a horrible joke.

The first night she's there, two women—post-retirement sisters who only work a couple of hours per week for the discount—are murdered in the break room as they close the store. The manager finds them the next morning, bludgeoned with a bolt of broadcloth, stabbed with size 000 crochet hooks. The police come. The police leave. The police leave the case unsolved, practically untouched. The looked on their faces make it clear that they're not interested in a couple of sewing grannies.

Toward the end of her first week, we close the store together. As I start walking toward the back to grab my personal items, she says to me, "Better watch your back." I don't respond because I don't know how. Is she threatening me? I watch her over my shoulder as I walk away. She picked up a pair of thin, metal knitting needles and weighed them in her hand before the door to the break room swung shut. I snap on the light and wonder who decided to decorate the break room with the little ceramic gnomes.

I go in the next day to find Mandy has covered someone else's shift. I do my best to avoid her through my time. I hide between the sheets (of fabric), behind the buttons, under the weather-specific garden items. But everywhere I hid, she found me. Where did we stock the the extra sheers for the cutting table? Did we have any more of the purple lamé spandex? When would the next shipment of 18 gauge modeling wire be coming in? I give up hiding and chose the spotlight instead—the cash register.

And who closed again? Mandy and I. As the only other remaining employee waves goodnight, I stand alone at the register. Scissors? Modeling wire? Yesterday Mandy weighed the knitting needles in her hand? Maybe I'm next, following in the frightening fate of the sisters. It all seems like she has it in for me. I'm the only other linguistic knitting novelty. I'm her only competition to be the store's linguistic bauble, stocked next to the charms at the end of the jewelry isle.

I just can't figure out why she wants the purple lamé spandex.

So I go about closing up the store: lights, locks, leftover remnants. As I'm heading back to the break room to collect my things, Mandy appears next to me. She's looking at the door to the break room. "Watch your back," she says.

No, I decide. I won't let her intimidate me. I straighten my shoulders and walk directly into the break room. The door swings shut behind me. A giggle echoes.

My hands are grasped behind me, and feel the wire wrapping around my wrists. Something else binds my legs from knees to ankles. I'm shoved in the chest with something the weight of my overfed cat, and I fall to the floor. I hear the crack of my head against the cement before I feel it. The cat continues to sit on my stomach. Something stabs me in the chest. I scream.

Light floods the room, and the commotion ceases. I'm greeted by the creepy, deranged expression painted across the face of a gnome. It's tiny ceramic hands grip the orange handled scissors plunged into my chest.

A knitting needle flies, striking the gnome in the neck and sliding through it like it was meant to be there. Another needle flies, and I realize it's struck the gnome tugging at the purple lamé spandex wrapped around my legs. I turn to the source, and see Mandy in the doorway. She throws several more needles, disabling other garden goodies which are already frozen in the light.

With the danger under control, she drops to my side. "I've called 911."

What can I say? I'm predicting my own death here. We all know it won't matter.

"Where's a linguist's favorite place to shop?" she asks me.

"Where?"

She smacks her lips together. Being on the verge of death, it takes me a moment to remember the International Phonetic Alphabet. And what's the symbol for the bilabial click, a sound as common as t or d in Botswana? Well, it's a circle with a dot in the center. Make it red, and you have a Target logo.

What really kills me? It's not the massive head injury. It's not even the scissors in my chest. It's the obscene amount of cough-laughing I do from the worst joke I've ever heard.

And that, my friends, is how I will die.

_____________________
Be sure to check out the rest of the entries!

An Award :)

First, if you haven't heard yet or you're still on the fence, please join me and Charity for the HONE YOUR SKILLS Blogfest on March 16th. It's a chance to try your hand at a short story, get feedback from fellow writer-bloggers, and encouragement to try and publish it. We'd love to have you, so just click the link above or on the sidebar to join.
_____________________________________

Last week, I was given an award from Allan Russell at Publish or Perish AND from Michelle at Perfecting the Craft...

UPDATE: I also just received this award from Kristina at KayKay's Corner. Man, am I feeling the love or WHAT?

Kristina also gave me this award:

Thank you so much, Al, Michelle, and Kristina!

For those of you who don't know Al, he is the author of Veiled in Shadows, the beautiful cover of which is staring at me from the top of my to-read pile. Then again, maybe I'm just a sucker for the big blue eye :)

(On a side note, stop by on Monday for a guest post by Al.)

According to the rules of the award, I should tell you seven things about myself and then pass it on. Here's a random assortment of things you may not yet know about me. I'll limit myself to non-writing things this time. For other random Rosie facts, you can check out these other posts: from here, here (the the truth behind it), here, and one more.

1. As a recovering linguist, I'm a language junkie. I'm not fluent in any language (I sometimes contend that I'm not even fluent in English), though my husband likes to argue this point with me. Anyway, over the few decades of my life, I've studied (in no particular order) Spanish, French, German, Russian, Polish, Macedonian, and Welsh officially. If I have a dictionary, I can usually read Czech, Slovak, Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian, Bulgarian, and Ukrainian well enough. I also know lots of random syntax facts about Icelandic, Mandarin Chinese, Korean, and Dogon (my friend is currently working on a Dogon grammar).
2. I'm a graduate student in my last semester of coursework. There exists about a 2% chance that I will write a dissertation (with a 3% margin of error).
3. If I were ever to write a dissertation, I would write it on Polish syntax and the reflexive particle się. (I promise, it's a little more interesting than Wikipedia makes it out to be.) Last summer I got to meet Norbert Hornstein, whose most recent syntactic framework is called MOVE! (yes, with the exclamation point), and talk to him about my ideas using his framework. We argued a lot. We disagreed even more. It was fun and discouraging.
4. My graduate employment consisted of teaching Russian for only one year. I have never worked so hard. I taught in the 2007–2008 school year. Many of my former students were freshmen that year, and so are seniors now. I occasionally run into them on campus, and sometimes they even invite me out for a drink to catch up. :)
5. My current GA employment is working as the Managing Editor of the for Journal of Slavic Linguistics for Slavica Publishers. I prepare journals and books for publication. In addition to the journal, which I have worked on since 2006, I am currently preparing a book on Macedonian. It should be finish in the next month and be published by summer.
6. I have never published anything regarding linguistics. I've only edited other people's work. This doesn't bother me, though my colleagues think it should.
7. I had no intention of this turning into a Rosie's-grad-school-life post. Just to mix it up, I'll tell you that I got new glasses last week. They've got the Transitions lenses, too. I can't begin to tell you how excited they make me :)

Okay, now for passing on the love.

Carol at ArtziCarol Ramblings
Jan at Crazy Jane
Sallee at The Highly Educated Housewife
Medeia at Sharif Writes
Charity at My Writing Journey
Dezmond at Hollywood Spy

Thanks again to Al, Michelle, and Kristina for the award. :) Have a great Wednesday!