Don't fall over backwards, but I'm actually posting. Getting the urge to fiddle with the blog and website again...and yeah, before I got everything turned over to the current design, too.

Spent a good deal of today (my supposedly resting day, hah) researching sugar sculptures of the Georgian era. Yes, sugar sculptures are exactly what they sound like, and I need one for a scene in The Wild Rover so I did a bit of poking in that regard. Some of those things could get way over the top -- which is why I like them. Hey, every once in a while, the upper crust had the urge to commission a replica of their house and gardens or the dinner table (fully set, of course) entirely out of sugar. The Georgians weren't that different from us in that regard, now, were they? Not that I stack sugar cubes in the shape of a raised ranch or anything like that.

Today's lesson: do not try and create part of the menu for a grand dinner party for your historical while between breakfast and lunch. Because then one's thought process becomes entirely "foodfoodfoodfoodfoodfoodfoodfoodfoodfoodfoodfoodfood" which does not jibe with the image of one's undies-clad form in the Lane Bryant dressing room mirror. Though the clearance sale they currently have is well worth it.

After having to reinstall AOL on the desktop, one of the first things I did was make sure my playlist was still intact. It was. Humungous sigh of relief from me.

Some writers can't work without a picture of someone who reminds them of their characters. For me, it's music. Simon from Orphans in the Storm is Five For Fighting's "Superman." His father, Roderick, an important secondary character, didn't gel until I figured out he was Tim McGraw's "Live Like You Were Dying." When I was writing My Outcast Heart Dalby and Tabetha's theme was "Lost in You" by Chris Gaines (aka Garth Brooks) with "It Don't Matter to the Sun" for the angsty parts.

Hearing any of those songs now is like a visit from an old friend, and assembling "soundtracks" for upcoming projects helps set the mood. At present, for a project I'll begin in January, I have James Blunt's "Goodbye My Lover" and "God Give Me Stregnth" by Elvis Costello...for the heroine. Add in Aqualung's "Brighter Than Sunshine" and perhaps a few others I have yet to find. I even have vague ideas about incorporating The Verve Pipe's "The Freshmen" into a story someday, but that's for another day. (But really, wouldn't it be perfect for a tortured hero in Georgian England?)

James Blunt's "http://mp.aol.com/video.index.adp?pmmsid=1130890&referer=http%3A//music.aol.com/artist/five-for-fighting/202346/main&mode=1" plays in my head when Drew from my current WIP, The Wild Rover sees the heroine, Trista, for the very first time. "Unwritten" by Natasha Bedingfield is Trista's personal theme song.
How musical is your muse?

Drive-by blogging for a while here, as real life is holding me hostage.

Since becoming more involved in family health care, I find myself packing a lot of bags -- the bag that goes with me to visit my father in the nursing home or hospital, and now the one that carries his blanket for his dialysis sessions. I always include one of my writing notebooks and at least one book, and either Romantic Times or Romance Writers Report.

It would be easy to not-read in the middle of all of these changes, even easier to not-write, but I have to. If I don't keep at it now, it won't be important, and it is. So even if it's one page or one paragraph at a time, reading or writing, it's forward motion. It's doing something. It's a rest or a reach or a moment to dip a toe into the wonder of another time and place.

Current read is Philippa Gregory's Wideacre. Historical, yes, and in a favorite era of mine, Georgian England. Not a romance, but there is the overriding passion of the heroine (though in a romance, she'd make a great villain) Beatrice, for the land, her estate, Wideacre. No bones about it, she is twisted, amoral and evil through and through -- and fascinating.

Gregory makes us understand why Beatrice does the awful, unthinkable things she does (no spoilers, read it yourself) and though that doesn't make any of her choices right, I have found myself talking back to the book (yes, I talk to books) and telling myself "you do know you're rooting for the villain." Fascinating reading, and I have the next two related books rubberbanded together to prevent peeking.

Well, most peeking. I had to know who the protagonist of book two was. Should be a very intriguing trip on that one as well.