Death of a Laptop...

Rest in peace, Petunia. Know that I don't blame you at all for leaving on your own terms one week before I head off for the conference. You probably saw the flood of productivity that always comes from these things and knew it wasn't in you any longer. You were well loved, first by your original owner, Vicki, and now by me. Between the two of us, we pounded your keys, ran your mouse and toted you near and far. You served us well.

I'm not saying I won't miss you at the conference, though Melva probably will be glad there aren't any keys for me to tap in the wee hours of the morning. I wonder if she'll be able to hear pen scratching on paper. Either way, it won't be the same.

You were a good laptop. You let me play Sims1 again when I needed it most, and I appreciate your trying to run Sims2 both for myself and for Vicki, and we understand that it was beyond your time.

Looking back, that should have been a sign; you were trying to tell me something. I shrugged it off when the A drive shut down. After all, who uses floppies anymore? I thought you were trying to be more current for my sake. When the modem pooped out, well, no worries. I can still get online from the desktop, and you were mainly for writing anyway. The black screen of death, however, there's no mistaking that.

I appreciate that you let me see my desktop wallpaper one last time. You must have known it would ease the transition. I have to admit that the future without you looks a bit scary, and yes, it does mean that any key pounding must be done with the desktop.

Most likely, it won't come as a surprise that I'll be looking for another laptop soon. You'd want it that way, I'm sure. It won't be the same, though. Oh sure, there'll be a better video card, and there may be wi-fi, but whoever the new laptop is, and whenever they join the family, there will never be another Petunia. You live on in memory and the data recovery disk. Rest in peace.

They say you never forget the first time...


I don't remember how old I was, or exactly where we were, but I do remember it was a town-hall kind of building and my mother did volunteer work with the League of Women Voters. I couldn't have been more than six, because I think it was a weekday. To this day, I can't remember what Mom was doing there, but I do remember watching with rapt fascination as oodles of pages rolled out of a machine...and those pages...were...not...white. Green! Blue! Yellow! Purple! Pink! Actual typewritten words churned out of those clunky, noisy machines, and all of those words went on colored paper. That, dear readers, was the day I fell in love with printables.

Don't ask me what those papers were for. It was probably some sort of manual or directory and I really don't want to spoil the illusion. All I knew was that I had a desperate hunger deep down in my soul for them. I wanted at least one printed page on each color. What would I do with it? Dunno. Need it.

Which is still my gut reaction when confronted with a new pretty paper today. Or when I have something of import to print on it. As it was this week when I printed the first new batches of business cards and bookmarks sent to me by my graphic designer, Kathleen. I have a nagging urge to run out into the street and hand them out to passersby. Though considering the storm we're currently having here in CT, that would probably be a vain and cold proposition. Plus the printables would get soggy.

I will try and stick images up on Photobucket later, but for now I'll settle for squealing like a 60's teenager at a Beatles concert over how totally awesome it is to see my face with "author of..." and two new covers under my first one. Yeah. Respect! Now to go make the submission rounds so I can get yet more.

Big errandy weekend, so today had to be something of very little brain; office decluttering. In which Anna uncovers scads of old notebooks (and by scads I mean seven if we can count one made up of graph paper and one that is actually a legal pad)with only some of the pages written on.

I heeded the call of adventure, sorted through the pages that had ink on them and figured out what I wanted to keep (which got either transcribed or filed) and rip out, shred and dispose of what I didn't. There is this dark reddish fuzzy thing on the floor that they tell me is called "carpet." Does everyone have this "carpet" stuff under their notebook stacks? The cat seems to like to sharpen her claws in it.

Some of the stuff I found in the old notebooks was surprisingly good, some surprisingly not, some flat out weird, but it was a good journey on the whole. Plus now I have seven (six if I don't count the graph paper one, but then again I need it for Sims house planning) newish notebooks in which to doodle, vent, freewrite or whatever strikes my fancy at the moment. They are all in a pile where I can grab them when I need a blank notebook.

Which is different from a blank book. I will spend money on beautiful blank books and those I hoard with fierce protective instincts, for years if I have to, until I get exactly the right idea to go in exactly the right book. So don't be surprised if, when gifted with a gorgeous blank book, I shower it with profuse thanks and then stick it directly in the blank book bookcase. The spiral notebooks/legal pads, though, I can grab anytime.

Genre-lly Speaking

I've been madly in love with historical romance since I read my first one, The Kadin, by Bertrice Small, when I was eleven years old. The story of the Scottish noblewoman betrayed and sold into slavery in the Ottoman Empire, and managed to triumph over all -- and find the love of a lifetime to boot, yeah, that was it. I was hooked. Okay, I was a bit young, but it was the drama and the history that kept me filching books from my mother's stash, and I knew that was what I wanted to write for the rest of my life.

Looking back now, I remember the big bags of books my Aunt Lucy (mom's sister) brought my mom on every visit. Lots of seminal (no pun intended) books of the genre passed through my innocent hands, and while I admired the beautiful covers by artists such as Elaine Gignilliat, Robert McGinnis and my all time favorite, Elaine Duillo and even made up my own story ideas to go with them, it wasn't until I read The Kadin that I actually cracked a cover. Early Rogers, Deveraux, Woodiwiss and more would have to wait a while for me to discover them, but they would come in time.

Fast forward to college. Karen, another gal in my dorm, once tracked me down with Valerie Sherwood's Lovesong and in the most serious tone I'd ever heard her use, told me I had to read this. As with The Kadin, I think that was an appointment. Fast forward a few more years and I am standing in the chill wind of a not yet spring day, pay phone glued to my ear because I will wait however long it takes for the owner of the local independent bookstore to search her shelves and see if there is a copy of Francine Rivers' Redeeming Love because I had to have it right then. Okay, I couldn't actually pick it up for a few more days but if I knew it was waiting behind the counter for me, I could sleep easy.

I used to comb the weekly flea market at a local mall for new treasures, big, thick historicals by old favorites or new discoveries, set in any number of places and times. I'm a big advocate of buying new, whenever I can, but at that point in my life, flea market was what I could do. As long as there was a dashing hero with chinks in his alpha-armor, and a strong, intelligent, beautiful heroine who was his ultimate match, I was --and am-- a happy camper. US Civil War? Okay. Sixteenth century Spain? By all means. Medieval France? You got it. Australia back when it was New South Wales? Got that covered. Tudor court intrigue? Vikings? Pirates? Crusaders? Yes, yes, yes, yes.

Most books weren't in a series then. Sure, there were the occasional second go-rounds for an exceptional couple or a particularly outstanding couple's daughter or son would have a story, but it wasn't the norm as it is now. I find I enjoyed connected books more then than I do now, maybe because they were the exception rather than the rule.

Even with all these variations, there was one thing above all that kept me coming back for more, kept me thinking that someday I would have my name on one of those covers -- the central love story. The one hero and one heroine who were each other's match, a love worthy of legend.

Fittingly enough, I have Melissa Etheridge's "I'm The Only One" playing as I write this entry, and I think that fits why I love the historical romance genre as much as I do.

I had one of those author firsts on this past Friday night -- I was the guest author at a friend's book club. Not a romance book club. Not an e-book book club (are there any of those?) but a regular book club. A room full of people who actually bought and read my book, which is one of the ultimate scary things for a first time novelist.

While I did ask for whom this was a first e-book (everybody) I did not ask if My Outcast Heart was anybody's first romance novel (Though several members did speak of enjoying Nora Roberts/JD Robb and Diana Gabaldon, and I know one gal is a big romance reader.) The method of reading was pretty much evenly distributed between printing out to read hardcopy (often in bed) and reading from the computer screen. One person did ask where to find more e-books, so that was fun. Another asked if MOH would ever be in print. I said someday; I like both formats.

Lots of really good questions abounded when we got to the Q&A portion of the evening. Nobody uttered a phrase that rhymes with "cod is dripper" which made me very happy, and everyone who was offered a promotional postcard for my upcoming
novel byte, "Never Too Late," gladly accepted (and if you were there and didn't get one, drop me an email and I'll send one out.) A few even asked for recommendations of other reads, which I was happy to give.

All in all, a lovely evening of extremely minor celebrity (but I could very easily get used to it) and a wonderful reminder that readers are magnificent people. I would most definetly do this again.