Check out this post at the Ruby Slippered Sisterhood! The most upbeat and empowering pity party ever!

 

 

 

 

 

 

And if you were wondering whether it's a good idea to answer back publicly to negative reviews, check this out:

http://booksandpals.blogspot.com/2011/03/greek-seaman-jacqueline-howett.html?showComment=1301337546917

And now we will all remember to be gracious to all our critics. Amen. 

 

 

I'd just like to point out that my bracket for dabwaha is now tied for 742nd place. That's...um, not too bad, is it?

On the bright side, Courtney Milan's excellent TRIAL BY DESIRE is still in the running, which is a nice consolation prize for being overlooked in the Ritas.

Sports will break your heart, man.  

 

The 2011 Golden Heart and Rita finalists have been named! You can see the full list over at rwa.org. We had a wild party over at the Rubies, with over 1200 shrieking, whooping comments from excited folks waiting for (or celebrating) the calls. Congrats to all the finalists!! We had **TWELVE** Rubies and SEVEN Unsinkables repeat--though it's kinda a Venn diagram thing, since some of those folks are Unsinkable Rubies. I'm so proud of all of them, and of frequent visitor to the Ruby blog, Arlene Hittle, who's part of the Class of 2011!

There were some names I didn't see on the list that I would have liked to see up there--but next year will come!

Same with the Ritas. I was beyond delighted to see my favorite book of 2010 honored: Joanna Bourne's fabulous FORBIDDEN ROSE!!!  And so good to see Sherry Thomas up there, too, for HIS AT NIGHT.

But I'm shaking my head over some omissions: no Meljean Brook for THE IRON DUKE???? No Courtney Milan for PROOF BY SEDUCTION??? No Meredith Duran for WICKED BECOMES YOU??? No Jeannie Lin for BUTTERFLY SWORDS???

Them's the breaks, I guess. I still love all you guys!!!! 

New Golden Heart finalists: join us over at rubyslipperedsisterhood.comon Monday for a big welcome and lots of wise words about how to make the most of this opportunity from the finalists from 2009 and 2011.

We'll also have have a Consolation Day on Tuesday, for those who didn't final and who need a shoulder to cry on...plus lots of chocolate, and lots of PRIZES!!!  

 

Not quite 6 a.m. California time--pitch black, cold, and raining--but I'm here in my jammies, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed...well, bushy-haired, anyway.

No news yet for anybody, not even Australia!!!! Even so, the Ruby blog already has over 70 comments...join us for the party, and prizes, all day today: rubyslipperedsisterhood.com. 

I DO have to go to work today (argh!!!), and should probably take this moment to shower before all the CRAZY CRAZY CRAZY starts...but I can't quite bear to tear myself away from the computer. (Besides, did I mention it's COLD?) 

Good luck to all today!! 

I'm trying to stop being too keyed up to sleep....it's still March 24 here in California, but where it counts, it's already March 25, and the day for RWA calls to go out to Rita and Golden Heart finalists!!!

I've got so many people I'm rooting for!!!!!

I think I'd go out of my skin if not for the company of my wonderful Rubies!! If you need some handholding, or somebody to hoot and holler with, come join our Cyber-Party at the rubyslipperedsisterhood.com, where we'll be live-blogging breaking news as writers around the world get those wonderful phone calls.

Plus there'll be prizes!!! Lots and lots of cool stuff!!! And, of course, cyber-champagne and chocolate.  

 

 

The wait to learn the names of the 2011 Golden Heart finalists is almost over!!! Just 48 more hours. 

I'm thinking Carol Ritter already has that list in her hand (eep!!). And this year I know one of the Board members who'll be making phone calls: Treasurer Diane Kelly, who's a member of the Ruby Slippered Sisterhood. (When exactly are Board members given their lists of finalists to call? Does Carol email the lists at dawn on the 25th, or do they have them already...and how the heck do they keep the secret even for a minute???)

Well, good luck all my writer friends and loved ones!!! I'm rooting for you all!!!! (And am stockpiling both chocolate and champagne.)  Can't wait!! 

 

 

I'm blogging today over at the Rubies about how far the Golden Heart finalists of 2010 have come in the past year! Join us as we begin our countdown to the announcement of Golden Heart finalists for *2011*!!!

Dabwaha 2011 is in full swing, and it's mahvellous...and you can trust me on that, because now I even know what the acronym stands for: Dear Author Bitchery Writing Awards for Hellagood Authors. It's March Madness for Romance!!

While I'm still pretty confused about all the "brackets" business (it brings up Math Anxiety I haven't experienced since junior high school) I know how to vote, dammit, and so do you. It moves fast--two sets of eight head-to-head votes each day, one in the morning, one at night. So what if you haven't read all the books...I bet you've got some faves on there from 2010. And listening to romance authors trying to find their inner Kobe Bryant and trash talk each other is a hoot.

Sadly, the organizers seem to have bunched all the historicals together (probably deliberate, I suppose) so Courtney Milan's TRIAL BY DESIRE has already bumped off Sherry Thomas's HIS AT NIGHT (do you see me pouting? they were both great books and should both be in the final rounds!!). My top pick for the whole year--Joanna Bourne's FORBIDDEN ROSE will probably be going head to head with TRIAL BY DESIRE  any day now, and then the winner of that will have to triumph over Loretta Chase's LAST NIGHT'S SCANDAL, which I also thought was terrific. I'm also rooting for Meljean Brook's THE IRON DUKE and Suzanne Collins's MOCKINGJAY. 

If you're actually the sort who effectively picks winners, you have a shot at winning a shiny new iPad!! So get yourself over to dabwaha.com ASAP.  And vote early and often for THE FORBIDDEN ROSE. Because it's the RIGHT thing to do. 

Have I mentioned I'm doing NaNoEdMo? It's National Novel Editing Month, and you can still take part if you hie yourself over to nanoedmo.net. I learned about it myself while having lunch with NaNoWriMo founder Chris Baty after the February San Francisco Area RWA meeting. NaNoEdMo isn't run by the folks who run NaNoWriMo, and it's still a much smaller, less glossy thing, but it does operate with their blessing. You commit to revising a novel for 50 hours during the month of March. I'm about a third of the way through my hours, with quite a bit more than a third of the month already gone. But I WILL catch up!

The Ruby Slippered Sisterhood is partying today over at Barbara Bey's Publishers Weekly blog, Beyond Her Book...we're giving away one of SIX e-readers up for grabs. Jump over for a chance to win!!

According to my Kindle, I'm 91% through my re-reading of Persuasion, and Anne has just heard Mrs. Musgrove and Mrs. Croft agree that young couples shouldn't be forbidden to marry just because they're poor:

Anne felt its application to herself, felt it in a nervous thrill all over her; and at the same moment that her eyes instinctively glanced towards the distant table, Captain Wentworth's pen ceased to move, his head was raised, pausing, listening, and he turned round the next instant to give a look, one quick, conscious look at her.  

Reading those words, I sighed, or maybe it was a gasp--and my husband, who was in the other room, called out, "Are you okay?"

He thought I was sobbing. But I wasn't sobbing. I'm saving the sobbing for the scene where Anne reads the letter Captain Wentworth is about to write to her.

Love you, Jane! *sniffle*

 

In diametrical opposition to my horror-retro-fashion post of yesterday, today I'm posting a gorgeous, haunting image from quite a bit further back in time: a self-portrait daguerrotype from October, 1839--one of the first photographic portraits of a human being ever made.

I stumbled upon it while searching for eighteenth century portraits, and only found it because a blogger who usually covers the eighteenth century felt moved last winter to post it (though it's several decades out of her usual domain).

The man in the image is Robert Cornelius, a pioneering photographer and chemist from Philadelphia, who was working on chemical refinements to the newly-invented daguerrotype process.  He made the image of himself in natural sunlight, standing in the street outside his family's store. 

I love how modern and human and immediate the image seems, though it's nearly two centuries old. And I love his frank stare into the camera, the look of deep concentration, the tousled hair, and the way his hand is blurred in motion--a man in the midst of work.  (And it doesn't hurt that he's handsome enough to be a romance novel hero. *Sigh*.)  

Men in waistcoats, neck cloths, and Hessian boots delight me, but not all historical costuming is...um, quite the same!  Both horror and hilarity await here.

Remember how I told you my little sister (and beloved CP) Eileen Ramsay WON THE EMILY?!!! Well, the juggernaut continues!!!  She just found out she's a finalist in the Marlene!!!!!  You'll be able to see the news soon here.  WOOOOOOT!!!!!!!!

Makes the wait for Golden Heart announcements just that much more heart-pounding!!! 

Oh...and the extra cool part: the final judge in her category is the fabulous Leah Hultenschmidt, who awarded me the Golden Heart in 2010!!