Medical mystery

This past Wednesday night, my throat started to feel funny. Thursday, it hurt…by Thursday night, I was questioning whether I’d be able to go to California Dreamin’, the very first Southern California Romance Writers of America conference. Friday morning I ditched working out with my trainer (which would’ve been at 5:45 am), got up and 7 am, and started packing…still wondering whether I should go. In the end, I did.

My throat hurt like hell. I hoped I wasn’t infectious. I checked my temperature both Thursday night and Friday morning, and it was normal.

My friend and roomie Christine, whom I was carpooling to the conference with, said pffft, she wouldn’t miss the conference unless she was outright throwing up.

Alrighty then!

Despite feeling rather like poo, I had a wonderful time. Great workshops, great people. On the way there, Christine commented that she was craving Chinese, so I found a local place with good reviews on Yelp. It was 2.2 miles away. She said, that’s close enough, let’s walk.

Alrighty then.

Did I mention that the place was in a strip mall in the dodgy area of town?

The food turned out to be surprisingly decent – the chicken was all white meat, and the cabbage in the noodles was firm and tasted fresh. The orange sauce was tasty with a very slight kick. Two thumbs up for that.

Of course, then we had to walk back. And it was starting to get dark. And the cops had pulled someone over in our path – at least three cop cars…

I’d worn my Vibrams, but they were my everyday Vibrams, not the ones I have for working out. They’re older, and I don’t normally wear them for power walking. So I had blisters on the bottoms of my feet by the time we god back. We did stop in an AM/PM so I could by cough drops for my throat (they didn’t have lozenges, so I settled for cough drops) and Band-Aids. Christine bought cough medicine and Nyquil because she was getting over a cold. We were partying hard, I tell ya.

We drank maybe half a bottle of wine and went to bed early that night.

Saturday night she had dinner with her soon-to-be editor, so she was all abuzz. I’d picked up a burrito from Rubio’s across the street and eaten it in our room, since I felt like crap. My throat kept swelling so it was hard to swallow (no issues with breathing), and always felt like there was something caught in it. But then she came back from dinner and was all bouncy and we finished off the bottle of wine and opened the second bottle and finished that, and at 9:45 pm she said, “We need more wine.”

“We don’t have any more wine,” I pointed out. So I checked online when the bar closed.

That would be at 10 pm.

We were in our jammies.

So we threw on clothes and raced down and ordered a glass of wine each and some garlic parmesan fries (because with that much wine in us, we weren’t thinking “healthy,” we were thinking “sop up the booze”), and discovered people we knew were still there, including the gorgeous Kate Wood, so we moved over to that table, and we all talked and talked and we ordered a glass each more wine, and finally it was nearly 11 pm and the bar staff probably loathed us, so we paid and left. (Although they forgot to charge us for the second two glasses of wine, which we pointed out to them so they could fix the bill, so maybe they don’t loathe us completely.)

Funny thing: My throat didn’t hurt when I was drinking wine. WHY??? Both days, I had the misfortune to sneeze during a workshop, and it hurt so incredibly much that tears sprang to my eyes and it was all I could do not to cry our in pain.

Sunday was more workshops and lunch, and then a big book signing. I sold out of Waking the Witch, which had been ordered through Barnes & Noble, who admittedly didn’t order very many and I had people disappointed because they would have bought it, so phooey. I brought copies of three other books (two collections and a long short story), and they sold respectably. I still made way more on the others than Waking the Witch, so there was no benefit to going through B&N. Lesson learned.

Meanwhile, because I’d been walking funny due to the blisters on the bottom of my feet, my dressy shoes had rubbed a horrid blister on the back of one ankle. As in, a layer of skin had peeled off. (Sorry…)

And my throat hurt. And my ears hurt. Ugh.

Ken had come to the book signing (he’d been at an SCA event that weekend) and his mom came, too, which was fantastic! On the way home, though, I asked Ken to take me to an urgent care. Advil and cough drops and gargling with warm salt water weren’t helping; I needed bigger guns.

Apparently I was a medical mystery. If I had other symptoms (sniffles, coughing), it would be a virus. Nope, otherwise I felt great. If I had a fever, then it was probably strep. Nope – plus the in-house culture came back negative. So they took a culture to send out, and the doctor said to get proper lozenges and Aleve, and to gargle with salt water. Thanks. I have since learned that Aleve does nothing for me, and that spray stuff for sore throats? I can never seem to hit the back of my throat where it hurts. The lozenges help, but mostly just make my tongue numb.

Monday, I skipped my workout, and had a complete and utter stressy meltdown in the evening. Tuesday, I realized I was feeling better. Wednesday, I felt fantastic: I worked out, got a ton of stuff done. I still took Nyquil, though, because now I was coughing and feeling a wee tiny bit sniffly.

Today the doctor called. I have strep. Hellloooo, antibiotics. I’m contagious until 24 hours after I started taking them (which was 3:30 pm or so today), which means I was Patient Zero at the conference, and have potentially infected everyone else I’ve come into contact with. If you are one of those people, and you get sick, I am deeply, deeply sorry.

I’m taking tomorrow off from working out, too, so I don't infect my trainer (if I haven’t already, eep), but I should be fine after that.

Okay, back to work. I have some brain left….

Note: For the most part I'm staying off Facebook/Twitter/G+ due to deadlines and such, so if you need me, email or call or text, and apologies if it still takes forever to get back to you. Thanks.

Help! [Preposition] Her [Body Part]!

Okay, you wildly creative people, you, I need help.

I need an occupation, a title, and a cover image.

Ah, if only it were that simple. See, I need these things for the third of a series of erotic romantic novellas.

The first one, which is already on sale, is In Her Hands – the heroine is a sculptor and the hero is a model-turned-photographer. The opening scene was a finalist in the Brava Novella Contest a few years ago.

The second one, which I’ve started writing, is On Her Lips – the heroine is a torch singer and the hero is a 1940s-obsessed art gallery/club owner.

When all three are finished and published, I’m going to do an omnibus edition called From Her Heart (or maybe With Her Heart; haven’t decided yet).

The heroine of novella #3 originally was going to be a voice actor (as was the hero), but that made the title too close to On Her Lips (With Her Mouth? On Her Breath?) Plus, what would the cover art look like? (See below.)

I also considered making the heroine of novella #3 a tattoo artist and calling it Under Her Skin, but it’s not quite the same (technically, unless she’s tattooing herself, the title doesn’t exactly work). Since the first two titles are about what she does…

Or maybe I’m overthinking it all. You tell me.

The other issue is the covers. Phaedra designed for me a smoking-hot cover for In Her Hands, but since I’m branding the Andrea Dale titles so they all have a similar feel, I’m looking at redoing it.

Here are the images I’m considering for the first two:

You can probably see how those create an added dilemma for novella #3: tattoo guns aren’t sexy, and finding one on a blue background has proved futile (although I could put one on a blue background. Still, though: Not sexy.). Of course, the cover image could relate to his artistic endeavors.

So not only do I need an artistic occupation that allows a title form of [Preposition] Her [Body Part], I need a striking single object that evokes one of the two characters’ artistic occupations for the cover. The occupation needs to be different from the others and use a different body part than the others.

(And you all thought writing was easy!)

The winner gets a free electronic and print copy of any of the three novellas, plus a thank you in the acknowledgments of the third novella. If there are multiple winners (say, one person comes up with the perfect occupation but I like someone else’s title better), they both get the prizes. Hell, I’m likely to give all of you the ebook just for playing!

And please leave your suggestions here rather than FB/Twitter/G+/email/etc., so I have them all in one place. Thanks, and have fun!

On the road again (almost)

Hey, remember when I said we’d start heading home Thursday night. Hahaha! It’s now 5:50 pm on Friday and Ken’s got the bikes on the trailer and is packing up the rest of our stuff. I’m guessing we won’t make it to Redding tonight. But that’s okay. We’ll get a ways down the road, and tomorrow will be a long-ish day, but I love road-tripping with him and we’ll be home late tomorrow and have kittays to cuddle. I miss my kittays. A neighborhood cat was in Ernie and Pauline’s backyard earlier today and entirely resisted my attempts to molest it.

It’s been a productive few days here. Ken’s been hard at work on the bike with his friend Ernie, and I’ve been hard at work on writing and business stuff. Finished one story and sent it to a first reader, and beta-read a story for her. Conferred with an editor about edits to an accepted story. I’m 2300 words into yet another story. I’ve handled a lot of work email, including prepping for next week’s design binge (two freelance jobs).

And we’ve had a lovely time with Ernie and Pauline, even if I’ve been a bit antisocial what with my hiding in the bedroom and writing. I’ve emerged for supper and a little TV watching (and when we discovered they’d never seen Love Actually, we had to watch that!), and I did manage one lunch out with them. But work is work, you know? These damn deadlines, they never go away! (Oh, yeah, most of them are self-imposed. Man, I really have a boss with a lot of expectations….)

Also, someone has offered to do something very, very wonderful for me, in the spirit of pay-it-forward and karma for the tribe. I can’t say more, but I wanted to mention it here, because I’m stunned to the point of waving my hands around trying not to cry. Thank you. You know who you are. Thank you so much.

Blinking owlishly

This happens after every workshop I take on the Oregon Coast, especially the writing-intensive ones. I emerge, blinking as if coming out of the dark into sunlight, dazed. At first, I have trouble talking to people who aren’t writers – what do non-writers talk about? (Although writers tend to be the type of people who can talk about anything, which I love.) How do non-writers get through the day without the voices in their heads, the characters clamoring for attention, the plot ideas that twist and turn like shiny colored ribbons.

Also, what’s happening in the world, with my friends and family? When I’m  heads-down writing, I lose touch with everything outside of the WMG clubhouse, the Historic Anchor Inn, and a few restaurants in Lincoln City. And the ocean, which fills my senses and refills the creative well I’ve depleted.

I was able to pop on FB a few times, but not for long, so anything that didn’t show up on three or four screens is gone forever. Ditto blogs, although I can get to them (where they patiently wait via GoogleReader).

So my point is, if I owe you an email or a call, I’ll get to it. Soon. Perhaps not today, but soon. If you have exciting news that I may have missed, let me know (and I’ll get back to you…soon).

If you need to get hold of me, email is best. FB messaging worst by a long way. If you’ve pinged me that way recently, it’s probably lost in the crush (and I don’t have reliable Internet access right now, so my FB time will be limited ‘til I get home next week).

With that out of the way…the workshops. I’ve already talked about The Craft and Business of Short Fiction. My story for the Fiction River anthology Unnatural Worlds was bounced when an invited author got their overdue story in, but Kris and Dean think it will work for a 2014 issue (with a fantasy detectives theme) if I don’t sell it before then. So that’s the first announcement of spiffiness.

The second workshop was the annual Anthology Workshop. If you’ve read my SFF short-story collection Written on the Coast, you’ve seen the product of the first six Anthology Workshops. The basic setup is that we write a story ahead of time (this year, for possible inclusion in Unnatural Worlds, edited by John Helfers) and then write a story at the workshop (this year, for possible inclusion in Hex in the City, edited by Kerrie Hughes). We also read everyone else’s, not for a critique (we’re all pro writers), but as if we were editing the anthologies ourselves. Then, Kris, Dean, John, and Kerrie all give their opinion, with the actual editor letting us know if s/he will buy the story or not.

I’m chuffed to say that my story for Unnatural Worlds made the first cut, and my story for Hex in the City will appear in that anthology!   *\o/*

Plus I got to read so many amazing, creative, fantastic stories by some brilliant writers I’m fortunate to call my friends and peers.

And there walks on the beach, in the rain and in the sunshine….

Our original plan was to head home after the final workshop, but Ken has more work to do in Portland on his motorcycle (his friend has a shop), so now we’re looking at leaving Thursday evening. I caught a ride here last night, so I’ve got a few days to get some work done before we go. I’ve got stories to write, business correspondence to catch up on, anthology themes to pitch, a novel to edit, a novella to finish….

The only downside is that I have two commissioned design jobs I need to get done before the California Dreamin’ RWA conference March 15–17, and I’m going to have only a week to do them. Eep! It’s doable, but I’ll be putting in some overtime.  :-)

Speaking of work, I'm off to do it now! But let me know how ya’ll have been doing!

My soul is full of energy

Workshop #1 is over, which was The Business and Craft of Short Fiction. Amazing stuff; for me, this one built on the Short Story Workshop (which I took right before Ken’s accident, after which I didn’t write for months), so it was almost as if it shook free some of the information from the previous workshop. Also, my submitted short story made the first cut for an upcoming Fiction River anthology, so I’m typing this with my fingers crossed! And if it doesn’t fit in (I think there are a couple other similarly themed stories from invited writers), I have a fun story in an already-created world of a novel that’s almost finished, so indie pubbing the story would be a great ad for the novel.

Plus, I had an utterly wonderful time rooming with the beautiful Val, and carpooling back and forth with Terry, Sean, Val, and Rob proved to be hysterical and off-color (and I think that’s largely my fault). And I met some fantastic writers and hung out with old friends, and my soul is full of energy from the intelligent, exciting, and funny conversations we’ve all been having.

The next workshop doesn’t start until Thursday night, so I’ve got a few days to recover and get some stuff done. On my plate is finishing one commissioned short story and writing another story; reading all the manuscripts for the workshop (I think I have 20 to go); a girls’ night with Leslie, Lisa, Chris, and Stephie; rooming with Leslie and all the fun that entails; more walks on the beach (provided the weather holds); and a few other work-related things. Whee!