Eggzactly

Fiorella spent most of yesterday wrestling with chapter seven of Princess Redlander, the follow-up to Kinkaid House aka Honeysuckle Dreams, nee Princess of Bosque Bend,  which means that today she's going to have to pick up the house, call the plumber, buy groceries, pay bills, fork mulch, dig up stones, and everything else she didn't do yesterday.  How do other writers manage?  Especially those with children? 

Fio remembers a wonderful storybook she read in the second grade about a female rabbit who aspired to Easter Bunnydom.  The way she managed her egg-delivering career was by teaching her twenty children to do all the family chores themselves. 

Somehow it never worked that way for Fiorella.  And she just had three children.

Hair Today, Gone Tomorrow

According to Hollywood, tattoos and light beards are in, but hairy chests are out. In fact, except for minimal underarm shadows, men are as hairless below the neck as the day they were born. Romance covers, of course, follow the trend. And, going by the photos certain authors post on FaceBook, male models are also bathing in olive oil.

As usual, Fiorella is counter-culture. Jase, her hero in Princess of Bosque Bend aka Honeysuckle Dreams, now Kinkaid House, is a big, hulking Esau.  Enjoy!

Multi-tasker

Fio has to pat herself on the back because she's a never-say-die kinda gal.  Sure, she has her ups and downs--and those downs can be twenty miles deep--but she's usually so sunny as to be irritating.  And she's always loaded with ideas--again, irritatingly so.  Those gallons of bath water she stored on the balcony last year in anticipation of the drought of the century this year are still there, probably breeding the killer bacteria of the century. 

Yeah, Fio is always into something and has a notebook full of back-up assignments to boot.  Right now she's racing to finish the final run-through of the former Princess of Bosque Bend, running laundry upstairs, and pondering how to handle this blog while she's incapacitated after the hip surgery on Wednesday.

Please wish her well.  On all counts.

At Last!

The divine Liza called on Monday and told Fiorella that PRINCESS OF BOSQUE BEND is good to go--except that it needs a new title--a darker, stronger one.  After a brief mourning period, Fio called on her RWA chapter, friends, and family for help.  Among the latter, it was like she had run a comedy contest--yes, Fio comes from witty genes.  Friends and chaptermates gave more able suggestions, all of which Fio has run by Liza, but no winners yet.  Tomorrow she's going to skim the ms yet again and try to pick up a resonating word or phrase.

And she thought writing the book was hard!

The Dog Ate My Homework

Fio's having a a tough time of it.  She told the divine Liza that she'd send PRINCESS OF BOSQUE BEND in this weekend, the Lord be willin' an' the creeks don' rise.  Well, apparently the Lord WASN'T willing and we KNOW the creeks rose, so Fio is running late.  That last chapter isn't moving along as quickly as she thought it would, and she'll need a full day after that for  proofreading.

Maybe it would help if Fiorella had ever learned how to type properly.  Yeah, it's one finger on her right hand the and two on her left.  She can actually rev up to fifty words a minute, but, needless to say, strange things happen when she mis-aims.  Computers have all those auxiliary keys that can do such weird and wonderful things.

In her case, more weird than wonderful. 

Equivalencies

Tail, mouth, and nose make up for dogs not having hands.

The wagging tail represents a waving hand, of course, and Sonya uses her mouth to carry around rawhide bones and grab my wrist to turn my attention to whatever she considers more important than revising Princess of Bosque Bend.  The nose is an all-purpose tool, used not only for nudging rawhide bones between couch cushions, into a trough she has dug outside in the yard, or under my leg while I am involved in said revising, but also for smearing up my computer screen when she is, again, trying to get my attention.

Even as I write this, Sonya is probably wondering why I have two utterly redundant upper body appendages while she has four sturdy limbs to take her anywhere she wants to go.

 Poor Mommy.  No tail, a useless mouth, and such a tiny nose.

Brain of Fire

Fiorella had trouble sleeping last night so she drew a hot bath for herself, selected an old favorite from the window ledge next to the tub, and wallowed in romance till her bath water cooled.

 Hearts of Fire is a historical set in the eleventh century, but Anita Mills' story is timeless--boy meets girl, they sorta like each other but sorta don't, he saves her butt and she saves his, they yearn after each other but he's promised to another, they become lovers and she runs off and marries someone else when she gets pregnant, etcetera on to the happy ending.  Sounds goosey when summarized like that, but the way the story is told makes it not only believable, but compelling.  Fiorella can only hope that while her body was wallowing in the tub, her brain was soaking up  voice, style, and technique.

Princess of Bosque Bend awaits.
 

Dog, Refocusing, Writing

Sonia has just now discovered the joy of a flexible vinyl ball that's a little too big for her jaws, allowing it to continuously escape her as if it has a life of its own. And Mama prefers Puppy experience the joy of a flexible vinyl ball rather than her recently-discovered joy of tearing up the corner of the Persian carpet in the den.
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After the excitement of the anniversary celebration and Older Son's visit, Casa Fiorella is settling into routine again. Having marked off everything on her old list, Fiorella has written out a new one, with stars beside the priorities.  Her primary focus today will be working on Princess of Bosque Bend for the divine Liza--and, she hopes, for you.

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At her last romance writers' meeting, Fiorella learned that publishing is wide open now--indie, self, e-.  To think that she wasted all that time, effort, and money in building up her street cred with contests  when, if she had just waited a couple of years, she could have gone straight to the people.  On the other hand, working with agent Liza D has strengthened her story, and Liza knows the highways and byways of the publishing world, which Fio does not. 

Driven to Desperation

My name is Fiorella.  I am a computer addict, currently going through withdrawal.

Fio's Dell laptop (my precious, my precious) went down on the afternoon of her birthday, just as Son was sitting down on the couch to help her with Facebook a la Jane Myers Perrine's sage advice.  Husband hacked Fio into his computer so she could keep up with her blog, but she'll have to wait till she gets her machine back  from Click Computer to catch up on her email.

And then there's her manuscripts--what can she do if she's not writing on Princess of Bosque Bend and Princess Redlander?

Housework?


Oh no, Say it isn't so!

Technique

While Fiorella's first five revised chapters of PRINCESS OF BOSQUE BEND are off in New Yawk City being checked out by agent Liza Dawson (cue celestical choir), Fio has been progressing on its sequel, PRINCESS REDLANDER.  Got six good chapters, about 25,000 words, of that sucker in the bag. 

Fio aims at 90,000 words when she's writing a romance, and she works in thirds.  The first third of the story introduces the characters and the situations, and PRINCESS RED is almost to that point.  The second third mixes everything up--it's the complications section.  The third section, of course, resolves everything. 

Happily ever after.

Good News All the Way Around

It's been a semana buena en la casa de Fiorella. Su hijo menor has a job, a real live job, and his art is being showcased by un amigo of his. And the knee replacement surgery de su hijo mayor went very well--he's undergoing physical therapy as we speak. Meanwhile Fiorella is talking to a real live New York agent about Princess of Bosque Bend.

The nexus was the birthday del padre de la Fiorella en Lunes, and having Nephew Aaron's cumpleanos en Martes augmented it.

Gracias al buen Dios, muchas gracias. Merci, grazie, danke shoen, spaseeba, shyeh shyeh.

Okay, Fio took a flyer on this one so any corrections to her linguistic prowess are welcomed.

Weighing Priorities

Everyone in RWA knows that one shouldn't enter a manuscript in a writing contest till it's finished, but Fio thought it wouldn't matter if she broke the rule one little, teeny-weeny time. As you know, the improbable happen--the partial, Princess Redlander, finished third behind its prequel, Princess of Bosque Bend, in The Emily. But what you don't know is that Fiorella now has an agent interested who is reading P of BB and wants to see Princess Red.

So Fio's had to fess up and beg for a few days to get the first six chapters of Princess Red in readable form. It will take a couple more months of concentrated effort to write the rest of the story.

Guess we'll have to postpone Sonya's housebreaking.