Ah, the complexities of the canine mind! Check out the hilarity at
http://hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.com/2010/11/dogs-dont-understand-basic-concepts.html

Just got back from a wonderful snow trip with my family (yes, we had to drive 3 1/2 hours to see the white stuff, and are now back home in 65-degree weather....those of you who live in the snowed-under Northeast can commence throwing ice-balls at any time.)

Aside from climbing snow hills with the kids, and skiing with more abandon than you might expect from a woman of my age, I loved the quiet hush of the snow-and-pine-covered hills, and the amazingly bright stars that twinkled all the way down to the horizon. We could even see the faint white haze of the Milky Way.

On the drive home, my six-year-old said, "I wish the whole world could be covered with snow!" And the twelve-year-old answered, "If the whole world were covered with snow, humans would never have evolved to be the hairless, upright, intelligent creatures we are.  We'd all be fur-covered quadrupeds."  The six-year-old pondered that info for a moment, then said, "THAT would be cool!"    

Encouraging / inspiring words for romance writers from La Jane:

 “The person, be it gentleman or lady, who has not pleasure in a good novel, must be intolerably stupid.”

 “We have all a better guide in ourselves, if we would attend to it, than any other person can be.”

 “All the privilege I claim for my own sex . . . is that of loving longest, when existence or when hope is gone.”

 “Next to being married, a girl likes to be crossed in love a little now and then.”

"She had been forced into prudence in her youth, she learned romance as she grew older."

 "There is safety in reserve, but no attraction. One cannot love a reserved person." 

And for those of you sick of the snow, this reminder of the alternative:

"What dreadful hot weather we have! It keeps me in a continual state of inelegance."

Don't know who you are, Hyperbole and a Half, but I love you!  First Kenny Loggins ruins Christmas, and now this hilarious wonderfulness!!  I will say no more...just go check it out.

I was cruising nanowrimo.org today, and happened up these wonderful revision tips from the always wonderful Lemony Snicket:

"Thirteen Tips On Revision:


1. Put the book aside and listen, for the first time, to your insecurities. Do not pay attention to what they say but to where they are pointing. They are wrong that you need to burn down the house but they might be right about starting in the basement.


2. Approach the manuscript ruthlessly, like it is a beloved and difficult friend who has asked to hear what they're doing wrong. The misdeeds do not cancel out the love, nor vice versa.


4. Cut short and cut long. Change a limp image and discover the entire needs to be cut. Polish a flabby scene and learn it needs to be deleted. If everyone stays on the lifeboat it will sink and no one will be saved. There are hardly any novels that are too short.


5. Stand and pace. Feel the liberation of having dragged hobbled furniture from your room to lay out on the sidewalk for someone else's benefit.


6. This is the third draft of this set of tips. Hopefully they are now more useful to the reader.”

–Lemony Snicket

Not the World Wrestling Federation, the Ruby Slippered Sisterhood's WINTER WRITING FESTIVAL! Lots of us have banded together to make powerful writing progress during January and February. YOU determine how you earn points for the challenge, so you can add saying "Dang, I wish I'd known about this earlier!" to your list of ways to get points (repeat as necessary to catch up!). If you haven't heard the details yet, go to rsswwf.com/about

Today is the Festival's first Check-In Friday, so stop by the regular Ruby blog and leave a comment for a chance to win some fab prizes, including a $15 iTunes gift card, books by Autumn Jordon and Liz Talley, a critique by multi-Golden-Heart winner Laurie Kellogg, or a copy of Janet Evanovich's How I Write! 

Yippee!!! The lovely UPS man just delivered an ARC of my friend Darynda Jones' FIRST GRAVE ON THE RIGHT, due out any minute now from St. Martin's.  I got to read the first chapter a few months ago, and have been SALIVATING to read the rest!  Funny, sexy, edgy, wonderful! Agents and publishers fought like demons over this one and for good reason.  

 It's going to be big Big BIG!!! WOOT, Darynda!!

Yes, folks, today is the launch day for the new First Annual Ruby Slippered Sisterhood Winter Writing Festival!!  It's a set-your-own-goals writing challenge that goes until the end of February--a great way to stay PRODUCTIVE through the bleakest part of winter. 

Go to the Ruby blog to declare your goals, and/or click on the light blue Participant icon above to register on the official Festival website.   

One of my few girly indulgences: handmade botanical-scented soaps. Just finished my festive Clove Cinnamon bar and went for Lemon Verbena (has the words Vervaine Citron engraved on the bar--tres glamoreuse--smells light and sweet and lemony). Got out of the bath feeling luxuriantly fragrant...and my six year old sniffed the air and said, "Why do I smell Pez?" Sigh.

Yup, resistance was futile.  I just read a book for the first time on my spankin'-new Kindle 3, and I loved it!  (Didn't hurt that the book was the wonderful, funny THE WAY TO TEXAS by Liz Talley).  Sat down meaning to read just a snippet, and didn't stop til I reached the very last page.  Really didn't miss the scent of paper, the heft of the pages in my hand, the back cover blurb. And, oh, the downloading is so EASY! I'll still be buying plenty of paper books, but I have a feeling my new little friend and I will be spending lots of time together.  (Cut to montage of me and Kindle running towards each other through a field of sunlit wildflowers.)   

The very cool special website the wonderful Liz Bemis created for the Ruby Slippered Sisterhood's Winter Writing Festival has gone live!  You can find it by clicking the light blue box with the red shoe at the Ruby site.  

Welcome, 2011!  To all my writer friends: I wish you the happiest, most creative, most productive year ever!  I'm eager to complete revisions to  A MOST IMPROPER GENTLEMAN and to clean up the back-forty of THE DEVIL MAY CARE....and to continue work on the sequels to both.  Luckily, the Ruby Slippered Sisterhood's Winter Writing Festival opens on January 10 to keep me on track.  Check out the Ruby blog for details!