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.

A Movie-ing Experience

I have truly not meant to not blog, but real life caught me in a frenzy. Hospital stuff, nursing home stuff, trying to write through it all.

Decided to go for some cinematherapy a week or so ago and visited Blockbuster with a friend. Didn't end up getting anything. Was looking for something along the lines of The Last Picture Show or Suddenly, Last Summer No such luck. Lots of teen comedies, horror flicks, etc. Maybe I was looking in the wrong place, or maybe it was just a bad day. I would've settled for yet another viewing of The Lords of Flatbush

I love that movie. Love, love, love it. Love it so much I hunted down a tie in novel, and boy did the novel stink, but I loved visiting the characters and their world again. Love the scenes on the roof with Stallone and the pigeons. Love Henry Winkler's proto-Fonz (and still to this day think Happy Days would have done better, at least for me, sticking with the more dramatic focus of the first season; Chuck Cunningham, come home. All is forgiven.) Love the way Perry King guesses wrongly that Susan Blakely's character has "purple eyes." Love the diner booth and the kerfluffle over the clerk showing Stallone's fiancee a too-expensive ring. Love the misplaced apostrophe in the lettering on the jackets. I have stayed up late, risen early, and moved schedules around to watch it. Definetly a movie to own, and I will cherish it (when I find a copy) as much as I do my beloved copy of the Robin Wright Penn version of Moll Flanders.

DH is working the dinner shift tonight, so I will have ample time to pop in the DVD of Four Weddings and a Funeral (he is allergic to Hugh Grant movies, unless Hugh Grant dies in the war, and then it is automatically a good movie.)Yes, the funeral is one of my favorite scenes, as I am all about the angst. I like it that way. Would I want Four Funerals and a Wedding? Hmm, that might be a book idea for the future, but I'll take the movie as is. Though Love, Actually, is a close runner-up for favorite British comedy if only for the Bill Nighy factor. But I own Weddings. Though I have to share a squee over finding out his partner is actress Diana Quick, who played Julia in another all time favorite of mine, Brideshead Revisited.

No surprise that being a romance writer, I like love stories, and emphasis on characters. If it's got a British Isles setting and/or is set in a historical era, all the better. Remains of the Day is about my all time favorite. Though it doesn't have an HEA ending, and would have been completely ruined if it did (don't stone me!) it had a right ending. The last scene, of the now-middle aged lovers sitting on a bench, watching the street lights come on and talking about what remains of the day (and their lives, in subtext) tugs at my heart.

Not that I would leave a historical romance h/h sitting on the bench at the end of the book, but in the middle? Well, sure. But then they find a way to make it work. That would be something for sure.

Not that I want to leave

Me again.

After being immersed in the good bad and ugly of real life, yesterday was the first real work day at writing since things began this current turn, and I have to say I surpirsed myself with the flying fingers. So The Wild Rover is on once more. Feels good to be back.

Also have to brag about my two newest releases, the romantic historical short stories "Tommy" and "Queen of the Ocean" now available from Eaglesong Books.

Love my covers, and the quotes from fellow e-author Gwynn Morgan absolutely floored me. I am very, very pleased indeed.