WAGERED TO THE DUKE by Karen Lingefelt



The Truth About Georgiana, written in 2005, had a secondary character for whom I never intended to write a book.  Her name was Kate Baxter, and she was the hero’s sister.  She wore spectacles, enjoyed playing the pianoforte, and expressed opinions that everyone else preferred she keep to herself.  In the original version of Georgiana, Kate was betrothed at the end of the book to a timid widower old enough to be her father.  Early last year, as I gave Georgiana a final polishing before submitting it for publication, I had a sudden, inexplicable hankering to write a story for Kate.  It was almost as if she was screaming for her own story.  

So I started writing something in which she was still betrothed to the widower, waiting for his one-year mourning period to end.  Apparently she was still determined to go through with it, but then along came the widower’s long lost son who was much closer to her age.
  

I’d written several chapters when I received the revisions and edits for Georgiana’s book, in which the editor singled out Kate and wanted to know why she was so willing to settle for a much older widower?  Kate was in her late twenties, which in Regency England was the equivalent of pushing forty, so maybe she thought this was the best she could do.  But surely she could do better?  Since I didn’t like what I’d written thus far on her story, this was like a gift from the heavens—or at least the editor—so I removed any hint of Kate’s betrothal or supposed interest in the widower from Georgiana’s story.  It never happened!  This allowed me to start over from scratch and do whatever I wanted with her.
  

I’d always wanted to write a “road romance” as well as one where the hero won the heroine in a wager and here was my chance to do one or the other.  I decided to stick a bar of chocolate into the jar of peanut butter and do both.  I resolved to complete this book before the end of 2012.
   

At the Tampa Area Romance Authors, or TARA, we have what’s known as the Book Challenge.  At the start of each year, the participant pays $10.00 for each book she or he intends to write that year.  It can be a book already started from a previous year, but the whole point is to finish writing the book by the following December.
   

If you finish the book by the December deadline, your name goes into a drawing at the TARA holiday party.  Whoever wins the drawing receives half the money in the Book Challenge pot, with the other half going to TARA.  I won in 2006 with the manuscript that later became Pride and Promises.
 

Usually we have “mini-challenges” within the Book Challenge.  The most popular of these is called the 100 x 100:  The goal is to write 100 words a day for 100 days, which gets one in the habit of writing every day.
   

When I took part in the 100 x 100 back in 2008, I turned it into the 1,000 x 100.  I wanted to see if I could write a book in 100 days, and to do that I had to turn out a word count of approximately 1,000 words a day.  I crashed and burned on Day 88.
    

But in 2012, when our Book Challenge launched its annual 100 x 100 challenge, I resolved to write the whole book in those 100 days.  And I did, using my1,000 x 100 formula.  The first draft of Wagered to the Duke was written in 87 days, from May 1 to July 26, 2012, with a total word count of 93,297 that was pared down in the revision process that began a month later after Baby Bear started a new school year.
 

And I won the Book Challenge again in December!
 

I love the cover of this book.  Even though the story is set in Regency England, the cover has a sort of 1930’s screwball comedy look to it that fits the overall tone of the book.  Think Cary Grant and Katharine Hepburn.  Or Cary Grant and Irene Dunne.  Or Cary Grant and Myrna Loy.  Or Cary Grant and—well, you fill in the blank.  And the artist, Harris Channing, took great care to give Kate green eyes. 

 

En route to a dreary governess position, Katherine Baxter meets a frightened young woman whose brother wagered and lost her to a Scottish duke traveling to London, where Kate longs to go and be reunited with her own brother. Craving the adventure she’s never had, Kate brazenly takes the girl’s place but must hide her growing attraction to the dashing duke she can never hope to have.

Nathan Fraser, Duke of Loring, has no need for the plain, bespectacled woman he won at cards, for he plans to choose his bride from a bevy of beauties at a London ball. But when an enemy from his past threatens to claim the prize, Nathan’s honor forces him to keep this headstrong lass under his protection. As they travel incognito on a rollicking odyssey as husband and wife, the high-spirited Kate proves to be more trouble than he gambled for, yet Nathan risks all to win her heart while losing his own.

Buy here or here.   

PRIDE AND PROMISES by Karen Lingefelt

Who’s up for some “fun facts” about my newest Regency Historical? 

Pride and Promises was written in 2006.  It was the first book I wrote on a laptop, which Mr. Lucky gave to me the previous Christmas. 

I saved my work in a folder marked “UR5” for “Unpublished Regency No. 5.” I was about a third of the way through the book when I decided the story wasn’t working at all, so I dumped the whole thing and started over. 

But before I started over, I wrote a 5-page (approx. 1,400 words) synopsis for the story as part of a Tampa Area Romance Authors (TARA) critique workshop.  Usually I can’t write a synopsis till after the book is written, but in this case, I forced myself.  It took me all of one day, about eight hours, to write it.  To this day it remains the only book where I wrote a complete synopsis of the story before the book itself was written.  I really need to make that a regular habit!   

In submitting the synopsis to the aforementioned workshop, I had to come up with a working title besides “UR5” so I called it Malcolm in the Midden.  While there was never a scene where he found himself stuck in a dungheap, he does find himself tangled in quite a mess, figuratively speaking.  A fellow writer critiquing the synopsis suggested Malcolm in a Muddle, which I had to admit was a slight improvement. 

I underwent some stressful life events while writing this book:  Mr. Lucky was deployed to the Middle East, while our firstborn moved away from home, leaving just me and Baby Bear.  And there was other doo-doo flung by doo-doo flingers who didn’t think I had enough doo-doo already.  Yet all of this was nothing compared to what I endured while writing PR1, or Published Regency No. 1. I continued writing, and managed to complete the book before Mr. Lucky returned home.

 

The book went on to win the 2006 TARA Book Challenge, in which participants feed $10.00 into a kitty at the start of the year for every book they plan to write that year.  Completed manuscripts are brought to the TARA holiday party the following December, with the authors’ names entered into a drawing.  Whoever wins collects half of the pot, with the other half going to TARA.  I won $200.00. 

Several years later, the book, now titled Pride and Promises, was a finalist in the 2009 TARA Contest. 

Three years later, it’s finally published!             

Malcolm has to be one of my favorite heroes.  He first appeared as a secondary character in Confessions of a Lady Ruined, in which he was shot and wounded by a bungling sniper who mistook him for the hero of that book.  He played a larger role in The Truth About Georgiana as the title heroine’s older brother who was abducted and briefly held captive, only to observe afterward, brandy in hand, that if misfortunes happen in threes, then all that remained for him after being shot and abducted was marriage.   

That finally got him the starring role in Pride and Promises.

Buy here.  

In Which Mr. Lucky Becomes a Rival Blogger

Mr. Lucky has started his own blog that mainly chronicles his ongoing efforts to lose weight.  His other topics include photography tips (he was a photographer while in the military) and his own 21st century take on George Washington's Rules of Civility. 

In the meantime, he's been going back to college on the 9/11 GI Bill.  He had to write an essay for one of his classes which I would've loved to put on my own blog as it fits so well with what I usually write about here; but since he's started his own blog, I will cross-post it instead:    

my daily belly: Pizza, My Favorite Food

Read it and tell me if it doesn't sound like something that could be on my blog, only from his point of view.  The irony is if he hadn't eaten all that pizza, his blog would probably be called something besides My Daily Belly.

BTW, he blogs under a different name than Mr. Lucky and refers to me by the name of a well known supermodel, which might be complimentary if only she wasn't a supermodel from the last century. 

I gotta love this man.  Belly and all.     

THE TRUTH ABOUT GEORGIANA by Karen Lingefelt

Another lighthearted romantic comedy set in Regency England.

She can cause scandal just by opening her mouth, whether to say something shocking or steal a kiss from a handsome stranger.  To Georgiana Hayward’s horror, her despairing family betroths her to a marquess who’s hardly England’s most eligible bachelor, but is certainly the oldest.  Worse, his dashing nephew and outraged heir, Anthony Baxter, is the man she brazenly kissed and secretly desires, but to win him she must remain betrothed to his uncle, and start behaving properly.  
 
A stickler for propriety, Anthony opposes this harebrained match due to decorum, panicked relatives, and especially Georgiana’s kiss that’s put a chink in his armor.  When his efforts to dissuade the notorious hellion leave him frustrated, amused, and falling in love with a woman no one else dares to know, Anthony must shed his dented, cumbersome armor and risk a scandal of his own to claim the heart of this wild vixen.  

Buy here:  http://www.bookstrand.com/the-truth-about-georgiana

Out of the seventeen books I’ve written since I first started writing, The Truth About Georgiana is one of my absolute favorites, while Georgiana herself is one of my favorite heroines.   

In an era when women seldom misbehave or say what they really think for fear of being shunned by good society, Georgiana does both, at great peril to herself, her reputation, and her future.  By contrast, the book’s hero, Anthony Baxter, adheres to the rigid rules of society so as to protect himself, his reputation, and his own future—which isn’t really the future he wants.  

But as in any aspect of life, to get what you really want always requires you to take a risk of some sort.  To gain anything, you will always stand to lose something else.  You need only decide if what you hope to gain is worth what you might lose.  This is a lesson the book’s hero, Anthony Baxter, learns from Georgiana herself.

The Truth About Georgiana is the last book I ever wrote on a desktop computer, before Mr. Lucky bought me a laptop so he could spend more time on the computer.  What happened in my life while writing this book?  I served as Vice President of the Tampa Area Romance Authors.  Our firstborn was hospitalized with pneumonia.  We also built a brand new house and moved into it, only to endure some of the usual brand new house glitches:  The dishwasher flooded the kitchen the first time we used it, and the bathtub leaked into my office next door.  I’d be sitting at the computer and suddenly notice that the carpet beneath my feet was feeling cold and squishy and wet.  Everything had to be pulled up and out, and the carpet and padding had to be replaced.   

Alas, that was not the last time we had to do it.  But not all house floods are caused by Baby Bear!

CONFESSIONS OF A LADY RUINED by Karen Lingefelt

I never dreamed I’d say this twice in one year . . . but I am published again!

This is another romantic comedy set in Regency England:

Julia Bassett can’t bear living in the household of the handsome lord who once charmed and then ruined her—especially while he prowls London’s ballrooms for a wife! Forced to act as his sister’s chaperone, Julia will do anything to be sent packing—even if it means engaging in the same scandalous behavior that years earlier got her banished to the country and separated from this dashing earl she still secretly loves.

Colin Everett, Earl of Danforth, enjoys seeing how far Julia will go to jeopardize her position—even to brazenly seducing him. He regrets breaking her heart so long ago, and now he’d like to win her back. But when several attempts are made on his life, he must find out if this bold vixen is seeking love…or vengeance.

Can Colin and Julia learn to trust each other—and their own hearts?



CONFESSIONS OF A LADY RUINED is one of those “second chance at love” stories—a tale of two people who fell in love years earlier, only to be separated by mutual misunderstandings and the machinations of scheming, manipulative relatives. (Yes, a lot of M words there.) Those misunderstandings and machinations are still in force when Colin and Julia meet again, but this time they have—here comes another M word—the maturity and hindsight to face and ultimately fight those obstacles.

As a result, Julia is one of my oldest romance heroines at age twenty-seven, which may seem not so old by today’s standards, but in the year 1815, she was practically today’s forty, with almost no hope of ever marrying.

Yet in Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, Elizabeth Bennet’s best friend, Charlotte Lucas, was also twenty-seven years old, and thus considered herself very lucky to land the cringeworthy Mr. Collins. At her age, Charlotte didn’t think she could afford to be picky.

Julia Bassett, however, refuses to surrender to convention, in spite of her seemingly advanced age and status as a lady ruined.

Julia does not give up. And that’s why she’s one of my favorite heroines.

Buy it here: http://www.bookstrand.com/confessions-of-a-lady-ruined

BRIDE IN HIDING by Karen Lingefelt

I am published again!

While Bride in Hiding is my second book to be published, it’s the tenth book out of the seventeen which, by my reckoning, I have written in my lifetime. (Nearly half of those books will never see the light of day unless the temperature in hell drops even lower.) That number doesn’t include books started and then abandoned for whatever reason.

I have heard authors say that they link certain books they’ve written to events in their lives; that such-and-such a book was the one they were writing when they were pregnant with their first or tenth child, or when their husband was laid off, or when their house disappeared into a sinkhole.

For instance, I’d just started writing True Pretenses when our daughter Fiona passed away, only three days after I’d completed Chapter Two, where I left Kit standing on the doorstep of Serena’s cottage, staring at the door and wondering if his next voyage would be to Australia. He stood out there shivering on that doorstep for many months before I finally brought myself to start work on Chapter Three.

Bride in Hiding is the book I was writing when I sold True Pretenses. I even remember what chapter was I was working on at the time—Chapter Twelve. It was accepted for publication on the very same day our firstborn graduated.

That was an unusually good day for me.

She thought hiding in plain sight would be the perfect plan—but alas! Susannah Kirk hopes to escape an unwanted marriage by posing as a lady’s companion in the bridegroom’s ancestral home. Surely it’s the last place anyone would look for her—but as Susannah’s luck would have it, a surprise visitor from London isn’t just anyone. He’s Trevor Dalton, one of her reclusive lady’s grandsons—and he may or may not be the very rogue she’s trying to flee.

After learning his wastrel cousin plans to satisfy gambling debts by taking a bride he’s never met, Trevor races to Derbyshire to avert scandal. But his efforts are hampered at every turn by his grandmother’s strong-willed, mysterious companion. Suspicious as well as charmed, he’s determined to uncover Susannah’s secrets—even if he has to seduce them out of her...and risk losing his heart.

Available now: http://www.bookstrand.com/bride-in-hiding

What I Loved Best About the Royal Wedding

Surprisingly, it wasn’t her gown or his uniform or the two balcony kisses, though I certainly took immense delight in all those elements. No, in the end, I have to admit that what I loved most was simply the overall happiness, the much-needed joy, however fleeting, that the Royal Wedding brought to so many people around the world.

Yes, I’m one of those who cared and couldn’t get enough of it. (I feel the complete opposite about the Charlie Sheen saga.) But I’ve heard others wonder how anyone could possibly care about it with all the horrors plaguing the world lately. They think the Royal Wedding should not matter.

I’m acutely aware of the wars, the earthquakes, the tornados, the wildfires, the economy, the gas prices, the ominous sense that civilization as we know it is circling a giant drain threatening to suck us all into the dark sewers of hell. I’ve definitely had more than enough of these terrible things. Yet I dare not ignore them, as that could mean the difference between going down that drain or keeping a grip, however tenuous, on the rim of the bowl.

But if I can’t ignore the bad news, then why should I ignore the good? Indeed, why would I want to? The Royal Wedding is a rare bright spot, a single beam of light shining through the otherwise fathomless dark. How can I not go toward that light?

Many see the Royal Wedding as a waste of money, a frivolous sideshow that serves no purpose except to needlessly glorify a small group of undeserving people, who got where they are thanks to ancestors who ransacked castles, stole land, and chopped off heads. Valid point taken.

But at its core—its heart—are two young people willing to join hands and go forward not so much with hope, but with faith that a better, brighter future awaits, and is theirs for the forging if only they seize the opportunity to do so. Who gets married with the idea that it’s not going to do anyone any good, or even make any sort of difference? Ordinary people get married every day, but this is a time when high-profile nuptials like William and Catherine’s offer a welcome reminder to everyone.

I love the Royal Wedding for much the same reason I enjoy romance novels. They’re positive. They lift the heart. And in a world where so much is negative, where so many hearts and spirits hang heavy, why shouldn’t we turn to whatever it takes to lift them—and so motivated, ultimately lift ourselves out of the drain and safely over the rim of that bowl?

Taken at face value, it certainly seems as if the Royal Wedding doesn’t matter in a world awash with strife and sadness. But when one considers how many hearts and spirits it’s raised in a way nothing else has lately, it’s hard to deny that it does, in fact, matter a lot.

My Other Claim to Fame: Born in Forks, Washington

I am not a vampire, but I was born half a century ago in the very tiny town of Forks, Washington.

We moved to Port Angeles, an hour’s drive away, when I was still an infant; but my paternal grandmother remained in Forks, where she owned and operated the town’s only theater through at least five decades and nine U.S. presidents. It poured rain just about every time we visited her. To this day, I honestly have no idea which way is east or west in Forks, because I don’t recall ever seeing the sun out there. No wonder it became a very popular hangout for vampires!

Growing up in Port Angeles, I enjoyed, or at least in adolescence suffered, the less than stellar distinction of being just about the only person in my high school class born in dreary, piddly, puddly old Forks.

I dreamed of becoming a famous writer, the kind whose fans would descend like a plague of locusts upon little Forks, Washington, where they would make pilgrimages to the hospital where I was born (the doctor who brought me into the world was a refugee from the Hungarian Revolution of 1956, to which I attribute my penchant for cooking and enjoying huge quantities of goulash). They would visit the charming little house where I used to visit my grandmother. And they would pose for photos in front of the theater where I first saw Gone With the Wind at the age of eight, when I would’ve much preferred to stay at home with the younger siblings and their babysitter to watch Heidi on TV—or come back to Forks the following weekend to see Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.

Maybe Forks would name a street after me. Or do like Myrtle Beach, SC did with Vanna White, and post a sign at the city limits proclaiming itself the birthplace of author Karen Lingefelt. Or do like Salzburg, Austria did with Mozart, and sell chocolates and cookie tins with my picture on them.

Ah, but my caffeine-fueled, feverish imagination didn’t stop there. Before True Pretenses, I wrote a series of books that chronicled seven generations of a fictional European royal family. I used to think how cool it would be if the series ever got published and became so wildly popular, that people planning their European vacations would try to book flights and bus tours and hotels in this make-believe kingdom that existed nowhere but in my head. How gleefully I would laugh all the way to the bank!

Obviously such hilarity never ensued. But I was reminded of all this recently when my father sent me an e-mail which, with his permission, I have excerpted here:

As you know Forks has become a destination place because of this "Twilight Saga." There are stores there and in Port Angeles, (and maybe Port Townsend) that cater to the enthusiasts. In Forks you see tourists having their pictures taken in front of anything described in the first book. One moron (24 years old) got himself stranded on James Island at LaPush because he wanted to see one of the love nest "sites" described there in the book. The Coast Guard picked him off with a helicopter.

Anyway, I guess all this hoopla makes you an original Twilight Child seeing as how you were born in this now-famous place! I know you've considered Forks as a sort of backwater town. But it has now evolved and you can say: ".........Forks? Oh.......yeah, I was born there."


Alas, when reality bites, it bites with the fangs of a vampire, for ’twas not to be Karen Lingefelt of True Pretenses fame who put Forks on the map, but another author, Stephenie Meyer of Twilight fame.

But I think it’s just as well. The idea of chocolates with my likeness on the wrappers is embarrassing, and I’d hate to think a fan of mine who wanted to see the ravine where Lausanne crashed her car, would get stuck down there and have to be plucked out by a Coast Guard helicopter and treated for exposure. Lausanne survived—but what if the fan hadn’t?

I sometimes wonder what my grandmother, who passed away in 2000, would think of the whole Twilight thing—but not as much as I wonder what she would think of the whole True Pretenses thing.

Except for Chapter 15, I think she would have been thrilled to pieces.

Another Week Without My Laptop

My laptop acquired a virus from somewhere. Mr. Lucky tried to remove it without success, and suggested that it might have been (though he also acknowledged it might not have been) prevented had I installed Windows updates.

Every night when I shut the computer down, Windows has updates to install. He said those were different updates, and pointed out a little yellow shield in the lower right corner of the screen. Whenever it shows up, I’m supposed to click on it to install updates. But I hadn’t been doing that, because whenever I shut the computer down each night—

“That doesn’t matter,” he said for tenth time. I still needed to click on that yellow badge.

So the laptop spent nearly a week in the shop being nuked by geeks geekier than my husband. I had no Internet. No contact with the outside world. I tried watching the news channels on TV, but it’s hard to just sit there and try to absorb all that stuff. I can do an hour of the evening news and that’s it. I don’t watch a lot of TV, anyway—it stays off during the day, as I would rather listen to music.

We eventually got the laptop back, but it was still glitchy, so Mr. Lucky decided to install a new hard drive. Last time he did that on a computer of which I was a frequent user (before Baby Bear was born), I lost all the Word documents of all the books I’d written prior to that time, and to this day I only have hard copies of them.

This time, I had everything backed up on the flash drive. Even True Pretenses is still on there.

He spent a whole day working on my computer, even though he had a cold and hadn’t been sleeping well, and I’m now back in business. I felt guilty about the expense, but then I feel guilty about any expense, while he keeps telling me not to worry about it.

I told him he’s a prince, and that I would put in a good word for him. I might even bake him a cake, which must be done this weekend anyway, because one of my other princes, our firstborn Crown Prince, has a birthday on Sunday.

I nearly lost my mind not having a computer for a whole week. No, I take that back—I did lose my mind.

I actually did some housework for a change.

A Midnight Visit from the Police, OR: Let's Scare Karen to Death, OR--Just a Thanksgiving Tale

If your husband happens to be out late one night on a job, and a police car pulls up in front of your house past midnight but you didn’t even call 911, what are you supposed to think?

If you’re like me, you’ll think the very worst and go into Maximum Panic Mode.

I went to bed around 11:30 pm the night before Thanksgiving, only to be jolted awake less than an hour later by our two barking beagles. My first thought was they were calling out to a neighbor taking their own dog for a midnight stroll, but when the barking persisted, I had to get up and investigate—especially since I was afraid they would wake up the Crown Prince (who was staying with us for the holiday) and Baby Bear.

I carefully lifted a slat in the blinds covering the living room window and peered out. Terror slashed through me as I saw a police car parked right in front of our house. The silhouette of a very tall officer stood at the foot of the driveway, feet apart, facing our house, looking very much as if he were trying to ascertain if anyone was home. There were no cars parked in our driveway, and all the lights were off.

I could only think of one reason for him to be out there. My critique partner, Jean, who writes romantic suspense, has described this very scenario in a few of her books, and it usually includes dialogue along the lines of, “We’re very sorry to inform you . . . we need you to come with us so you can identify—”

NO-OOOHHH!!!

The cop remained standing at the end of the driveway, arms akimbo. Why didn’t he come up and ring the doorbell and put me out of my—or rather, plunge me into further misery? Perhaps I should go out there to meet him. “Excuse me, sir, would you mind telling me why you’re in front of my house? You’re making my dogs bark and you’re scaring the hell out of me.”

If only he didn’t look like Gort standing outside the flying saucer. I could almost hear the menacing theme music from the theremin.

But I wasn’t dressed to meet anyone save Mr. Lucky, so I ran back to the bedroom to throw some clothes on. Whimpering and trembling all over, my heart hammering, I returned to the living room window and . . . Gort and the police car were gone.

Now what? Was he on his way back to the station because he thought there was no one home except for the dogs? But he hadn’t rung the bell. At least I hadn’t heard the doorbell; maybe I was still asleep when he rang it and that’s what started the dogs barking.

I didn’t know what to do. Should I call up 911?

“What’s your emergency?” the dispatcher would ask.

“Well, I don’t know that it’s an emergency,” I would say in a tremulous voice broken with panicked sobs, “but my husband is out right now and I just saw a cop parked in front of my house like maybe he was here to—” Scratch that.

Instead I called Mr. Lucky’s cell phone. To my dismay, all I got was voice mail.

By now I was totally freaking. I tried his work place. Maybe he was still there, or maybe someone else there would tell me something . . . or would they?

One of his co-workers answered the phone, and to my everlasting relief, Mr. Lucky was there, safe and sound. His cell phone, he said, was out in the car. But he couldn’t explain anymore than I could why that cop might have been outside our house. The sprinklers hadn’t been running, so it couldn’t be because we were watering on the wrong night.

I was about to go back to bed when the dogs started barking again. I returned to the living room window and—GORT WAS BACK!

At least he remained inside his car, but now what? Was this part of a stakeout? Were we under surveillance? But for what?

I wondered what would happen if I just went out there to ask. Would I get shot? Thrown across the trunk of his squad car and handcuffed? Or be chided with a mere, “Ma’am, get back inside your dwelling, please, and stay there until further notice.”

At least if he came after me like Gort on Patricia Neal, there were no folding chairs in the driveway for me to stumble over and get tangled up in, and no conveniently placed partition for me to trap myself against, instead of just dodging around it and running like hell.

I didn’t want to go out the front door for fear the overexcited beagles would shoot past me and escape. So I turned on all the exterior lights and came out through the garage.

Fortunately, he turned out to be more like Klaatu than Gort.

He met me in the driveway, and politely explained. A neighbor called to complain of a barking dog. I’d heard this same dog several houses over as I fell asleep. But the neighbor seemed to think it was coming from my house. My dogs had been inside all evening, and only started barking when the cop showed up. After determining there was no barking dog outside my house, he’d moved on to see if he could find it elsewhere in the neighborhood, but by that time the owner had apparently wised up and brought his yappy little mutt inside.

The cop then returned to my address to make his report that the complaint was unfounded and our house appeared secure. He remarked that my dogs were actually doing their job very well, and apologized for scaring the bejabbers out of me. He was very nice and professional, and I’m just relieved that my initial fears were as unfounded as the neighbor’s complaint.

Plus, this gave me something to be grateful for on Thanksgiving.

I'll Believe Anything Except Reality

Recently, I saw the latest film adaptation of the Jules Verne classic, Journey to the Center of the Earth, starring Brendan Fraser. While it didn’t blow me away, I also didn’t feel it was an hour and a half wasted. It was a vast improvement over a made-for-TV version I saw many years ago, that reeked of “pilot for a TV series that was never picked up” and stole two hours of my life I’ll never get back.

WARNING: Movie spoilers ahead, in case you haven’t seen it but it’s your lifelong dream to one day do so.

While I know the whole “Hollow Earth” idea is just a lot of hooey, I still like the idea of a world within a world. I thought it rather cool that they went in by way of Iceland, and came out via Italy. I didn’t question the speed and ease of their long descent, whether T-rex skulls are seaworthy, or if there should have been issues with gravity once they arrived at earth’s center. I was willing to suspend disbelief and go along with the giant fossilized mushrooms, the flat rocks floating in mid-air like an asteroid field, and the glow-in-the-dark birds sent to help the humans in Disneyesque fashion. And what movie about a lost world within our own real world is complete without the usual rampaging dinosaurs?

I was content to swallow every bite of this fantastic buffet of make-believe, except for one little scene in which they stretched things too far even for my wild imagination: Brendan and his leading lady get thrown out of a runaway mine cart and land flat on their backs—only to stand up, dust themselves off, and walk away.

It was one of those moments where I had to shout at the TV, “Oh, come on!” They should have been killed, or at the very least spent the rest of the movie in body casts and traction.

I have a similar reaction to the 2005 version of King Kong. I love that movie. I could believe the idea of a remote island in the farthest reaches of the South Seas, where a tiny civilization of people were forced to build a seaside fortress to protect themselves from the giant predatory beasts roaming the rest of the island. I was sold on the notion of the giant ape, the giant mosquitoes, the giant centipedes, the giant everything. I was willing to overlook the men’s superhuman ability to dodge and outrun the stampeding dinosaurs while toting heavy photographic equipment, though I would’ve just ducked into the nearest nook or cranny and let the beasts pass.

Yes, movie fans, I happily gulped it down, every outrageous morsel, till they returned to New York and Kong got to enjoy a playful, heartwarming few moments sliding around an ice-covered pond with Naomi Watts.

This is Mr. Lucky’s least favorite part of the movie. “Oh, come on!” he yells. “Do you know how thick that ice would have to be—and how deep that pond would have to be for ice that thick—to hold the weight of that ape?”

He does have a point. The ice never so much as cracked beneath the weight of the giant ape. Yet a single volley from an army tank blew it to splinters, and Kong was off and running to the Empire State Building, blonde girl literally in hand.

And that’s where I usually get pulled out of the story. Shouldn’t it be so windy at the top of the Empire State Building, that she can barely stand up? And since it is made quite obvious to the viewer that they’re in New York in the dead of winter, one can only imagine the wind chill factor: Shouldn’t she be freezing to death in that skimpy, sleeveless white gown?

I try to explain that away by assuring myself it must be very warm and cozy clenched inside Kong’s fist. But what about when he puts her down to bat at the planes? Or when he finally falls?

Why am I so willing to accept the more fantastic elements of a story, while yelling, “Oh, come on!” at the more mundane, every day elements—the situations I’m more likely to experience than fleeing dinosaurs or falling almost four thousand miles down a cave in three minutes while carrying on a conversation with my fellow fallers?

One final thought on Journey: As I watched it, I found myself contemplating the idea that Lewis Carroll and Jules Verne were two different writers with two different voices, who each wrote a story with the same basic premise: A human ventures down a hole to find a completely different world.

It must have been those giant mushrooms.

Writers: Ever Googled Your Characters' Names?

I did recently—not that I expected to find a few of them now have their own websites and blogs; nor was I looking to IM them (“Please check all the bars for my Muse, then both of you report to my current WIP immediately.”) I was planning to blog a particular subject that required me to use an alias instead of someone’s real name. And since I’ve written many books with many characters, I thought why not engage in some desperately cheap and shameless self-promotion by using one of my heroines’ names?

But considering the somewhat delicate nature of the proposed blog topic—it could potentially cause embarrassment to a person who really does have that name—I thought I’d better Google the first and last names of some of my heroines to see who could be affected.

As it turns out, with the exception of female characters born into a fictional European royal family that starred in earlier novels now crammed under my bed—where I believe they will remain until they turn to compost (the novels, not the princesses)—all my girls are out there.

I was especially shocked to find both Natalie and Athena have posted racy pictures of themselves online. Well, maybe not Natalie so much—when I was working with her, she was always being haunted and bitten on the butt by past embarrassments and indiscretions, and I don’t doubt she continues to be dogged to this day; but I always thought Athena was too goody-goody gracious to stumble into such antics. Sheesh, you think you know somebody . . . Until now I would’ve trusted that woman with my kid, my house key, maybe even my PIN number . . . but alas, my opinion of her has just been flushed down the toilet. And to add insult to injury, it’s now backed up, because unlike Athena’s high and mighty royal throne, mine is just a low-flow.

I finally Googled the name of her husband’s grandmother, who was born Lausanne Davin. That particular first/last name combo didn’t pop up anywhere. And yes, she was born in and named after the Swiss city on Lake Geneva. I’ve heard “Geneva” used as a girl’s name, and I always thought “Lausanne” would be just as pretty a name, so that’s how she got her name. And while she will always be one of my favorite heroines of my own creation, the books in which she appeared absolutely sucked and will never see the light of day again. She was one of my lab mice who endured many explosions of smoke in different colors while I learned how to write something resembling a novel. In those novels and in her file I might have a ton of dirt on her, while on the World Wide Web, she’s so clean she squeaks—and being a lab mouse has nothing to do with it.

But that’s about to change once I use her in my next blog entry.

In Which Karen Jumps Mr. Lucky's Claim

Remember when Mr. Lucky found a computer work center at the side of the road and brought it home? Initially he thought it would be ideal for me, but it wouldn’t fit in my office--formerly the Crown Prince’s bedchamber located just off the family room. (For all the gory and literally soaking wet details on how that became my office, click here.) So Mr. Lucky installed it in his own office--a somewhat more secluded room located in the same hallway as Baby Bear’s lair and private waterpark aka the bathroom—and gave me the table he’d been using for his desktop.

This arrangement worked well for a while, until several months later when Mr. Lucky treated himself to a brand new flat screen TV for Christmas. The phone company was here all day installing gadgets and wiring to make the acquisition worthwhile, and when Mr. Lucky said their package came with free HBO and a zillion other channels that played the same two-star movies ad nauseam while saving the good stuff for their occasional promotional weekends, I knew wild horses couldn’t drag him into his office again. No force in heaven or on earth can fight the power of free HBO over my husband.

Sure enough, he took his laptop and has since built himself a formidable nest at the best end of the sofa. Papers pile up on the end table in the corner between sofa and love seat. While I haven’t actually seen him do it, I am quite sure that when he runs out of space on the end table, he takes his arm and slides it part way across the table, sending a pile of junk on the far side over the edge and giving himself a few inches of new space to fill up.

From the nest, he had a straight shot of less than half a dozen paces to the door of my office. Even with the door closed while I worked, I had this eerie sense of him camping right outside with an ice chest, sleeping bag and oversized umbrella, as if he were waiting for Hannah Montana tickets to go on sale.

My writing suffered. I started agitating to take over his office. Doing so would give me better insulation from the constant drivel of 10 Ways to Break Up in 30 Days with a 40 Year Old Virgin droning right outside my door 24/7; plus I’d be right across the hall from Baby Bear’s lair and better able to monitor him.

“I wouldn’t always be running in front of the TV and blocking your view to stop the kid from flooding the house again,” I argued. (I could always hear Bear turning on the tub from my office, while Mr. Lucky would remain in his nest with water sloshing up to his chin before he finally noticed something amiss—usually when sparks flew out of the back of the waterlogged TV and blew it out.)

But Mr. Lucky’s answer was always, “No!” He had every intention of going back in there . . . someday. After the holidays . . . then it was after he got his W-2’s . . . then Baby Bear got a cold and had to stay home from school on the very day Mr. Lucky said he planned to do the taxes . . . after Baby Bear goes back to school . . . oops, now Mr. Lucky caught Baby Bear’s cold, but as soon as he recovered, he’d go back . . . now spring break was coming and Baby Bear would be home for a whole week, so now Mr. Lucky had to wait until after spring break to go back to his office.

That's when I yelled, “No!” I wanted that office, and I wanted it before spring break, even if I had to move his stuff out of there myself. When he bellowed I would do no such thing, I challenged him to try and peel himself off that sofa and stop me.

In the end, I did indeed do such a thing, and he didn’t try to stop me. I now have triple the workspace with plenty of drawers. I’m only two steps away from Baby Bear Country, and when the door is open, I can see the kitchen and catch unauthorized foraging. I’m writing more, submitting more (it helps to be in the same room as the printer, even with a wireless remote hookup), and am feeling much happier and more productive.

Most amazing of all, I even moved all my books and bookcases (to his credit, Mr. Lucky did help with the bookcases)—and after I declared on this blog that no force in heaven or on earth—save an act of God or Baby Bear—would ever make me do it again.

Obviously, that was before I learned the power of free HBO can have its own effects on me, too.

The Laptop is fixed--and all is Write with the World

The repair shop called last Thursday with the news that the replacement screen had come in for my laptop. So we brought them the laptop, and in an unusual burst of optimism, I thought they could replace it right there on the spot.

But no, the clerk said, “It should be ready this evening or sometime tomorrow.”

That’s what I get for trying to see the glass as half full. I keep telling all you perky and peppy, cheery and chirpy Pollyannas there’s something to be said for pessimism. It saves you so much disappointment.

It wasn’t ready by that evening. Nor was it ready the next day, and I started going through severe withdrawal. I couldn’t write. Everything I had was on the laptop. And while it was backed up on zip drive, what could I do with Mr. Zippy? Mr. Lucky’s desktop no longer had a word processing program, because several months ago, the desktop crashed and everything on it was lost. Even my website. Oh, it’s still there, if you click on the link. But Mr. Lucky says he’ll have to rebuild it from scratch before I can post any updates to it. He never backed it up and has no record of the exact colors, etc.

AARRGH!!!

Miraculously, I could still do e-mail and surf the Internet on the desktop. At least now I had a guilt-free good excuse to goof off at all my favorite goof-off sites.

On Saturday afternoon I came home from TARA, freshly motivated to do some serious writing. But the computer repair shop still hadn’t called, and they were closed on Sundays. I was started to get frazzled. I felt as if I were missing a vital body part.

Monday was my birthday, and Mr. Lucky took me to lunch at my favorite restaurant, The Olive Garden. We didn’t tell them it was my birthday, because I didn’t want the entire staff coming out and crowding around our booth to bang pots and sing songs or anything else that would call attention to me and the new ring around my trunk.

Afterward, Mr. Lucky suggested swinging by the computer repair shop to see if my laptop was ready, since it seemed they were never going to call. Sure enough, it was all set. Whereas the old screen was no-glare, the new one is shiny. I was worried I’d see my reflection in it every time I opened it, but my fears were unfounded. Once it boots up, it looks no different than the no-glare.

And I started writing again. And writing. Writing!

Getting it back was the best part of my birthday. Well, maybe next to The Olive Garden’s Black Tie Mousse Cake.

My Laptop Screen Burns Out

I am a neurotic fiend about closing my laptop if I think I’m going to be away from it for more than 15-20 minutes. Part of the reason for this is to make it less attractive to the marauding Baby Bear, who on at least one occasion flipped Mr. Lucky’s open laptop to the floor.

My laptop is three years old and one of my prized possessions, so I treat it as I would a piece of fine crystal or delicate porcelain. It’s never even been out of the house except when I took it to a TARA writers’ retreat in Sarasota last year. I usually work at a desk, but occasionally I’ll unplug the laptop from the AC adapter and sit in an armchair with it.

That’s exactly what I did on Thursday when I made my last blog entry, and the screen started flashing and flickering in a very annoying manner. It stopped when I set it back on the desk and plugged it back in. Mr. Lucky surmised it might be the battery. Yet he replaced it only three months ago.

At 5:30 pm, I left the laptop and locked my office (again, to keep out Baby Bear who’s always ransacking Mr. Lucky’s). I cooked dinner, we ate the dinner, watched the news and a couple of Seinfeld reruns followed by Survivor (some of those people would never last in the military); then at 9 pm I returned to my office.

To my dismay, I’d left my laptop wide open for over three hours—something I never did—and the screen was black.

I tapped buttons, closed the lid and opened it again; I even rebooted it—but no picture lit up the screen. Not even the computer geekery of Mr. Lucky could bring it back to life. The screen was kaput.

Of course, I was convinced this happened because I left it open all that time—never mind Mr. Lucky leaves his own laptop agape 24/7. He declared it was going to happen no matter what, and it was probably just as well that it fizzled out when it did. Had it done so when I was in the middle of writing something, I might have lost the work, since I couldn’t see anything to save it.

Which brings us to the inevitable awkward moment all writers have at one time or another: “You do have everything backed up, don’t you?” he asked, in a tone of voice that clearly indicated he already knew the answer was, “Of course not, because I’m a lazy procrastinating idiot who never learns.”

Only the current WIP wasn't backed up, but all was not lost if it was, in fact—well, lost. I’ve only written four chapters and a “sucknopsis” as Anne-Marie so aptly puts it; my critique partner has seen three of them as well as the sucknopsis, and her corrected copies were still in my e-mail folder (I never clean out my e-mail folder, either). At worst I’d have to rewrite Chapter 4 off the top of my head.

I’ve had to rewrite whole chapters off the top of my head before. It’s no fun, though it still beats cleaning soap scum off the shower tiles.

The next day, Mr. Lucky took it to a computer repair place where he’s done business before, and they determined it needed new bulbs, yet it would be cheaper just to replace the whole screen.

Until the new screen arrives, he’s hooked up his desktop monitor to my laptop. Watching him do this nearly freaked me out. He opened my laptop flat—I’ve never opened my laptop flat before—and I almost screamed as if he were King Solomon about to rip my baby in half. (I know what my problem is—I don’t have enough chocolate in my diet.)

“It’s designed to do that,” he assured me.

Yes, but why? I can only think of one reason to open your laptop flat, and that’s so you can hook it up to a desktop monitor because your laptop screen burned out after you carelessly left it open for more than three hours. Mr. Lucky: "FOR THE LAST TIME--" (in his dreams) "--THAT'S NOT WHY IT BURNED OUT!"

Either way, those computer geeks think of everything, don't they?

Since the problem was only the screen, no work was lost. But having been chastened by this event (which is not to say I've finally learned the importance of always backing up work), I promptly added the WIP to the zip drive.

Mr. Lucky's final piece of sage advice? "Don't try moving all of this to your armchair."

He thinks of everything, too--except securing his own keep against the incursions of a certain Bear.

I Don't Mind the Snow, Except . . .

Georgiana usually liked the snow.

She liked how the snowflakes fluttered like bits of lace torn from the gowns of angels amid an odd hush, as if the snow were a thick white blanket muffling the world’s noises.

She liked the way the snow shone through the windows at midday, lighting up the room brighter than any chandelier. And she especially liked it when the sun came out and set the snow all aglitter, sparkling like a frosty fairyland of diamonds.

The above is an excerpt from one of my unpublished Regency historicals. Like Georgiana, those are things I like about the snow. And I like it as long as I don’t have to be in a car, whether as driver or passenger. I also like it as long as the power doesn’t go out. That’s where my heroine and I part company. Georgiana didn’t have electricity, but she still liked the snow—usually.

When I turn on the news in the evening and see what the snow is doing to other parts of the country, I’m glad to live in Florida. I’m glad I don’t have to bundle up Baby Bear like Mrs. Parker did to Randy in A Christmas Story, then worry that he’s going to take everything off once he’s outside. And I’m glad I don’t have to nag Mr. Lucky to shovel the front walk or get the snow tires put on before the first flurries fly.

I have a hang-up about the latter. I grew up in Washington State, where my father owned a service station in my hometown—this was back in the days before they morphed into self-service pumps and convenience stores. At the first flutter of a snowflake, everyone in town would mob my father’s business, wanting their snow tires put on that very day.

I learned from that. After I grew up and was on my own, I never wanted to be caught in the snow without the snow tires on and the engine winterized. When I was in the Air Force stationed at Fairchild Air Force Base in Spokane, WA, I took my Chevy in to be winterized the first weekend of November, even though there was still no sign of snow, because I wanted to avoid the rush. Indeed, the manager told me that on the first snowfall the previous winter, they were so swamped with customers wanting their snow tires mounted that same day, that the employees didn’t even realize there were local news cameras present, making a story out of the chaos. They didn't know till they went home that night and saw themselves on TV.

I was reminiscing about this the other day when Mr. Lucky looked at me funny and said, “Snow tires?”

Except for the three years he spent in Germany while in the Air Force, my husband has never lived anywhere above 40 degrees latitude north. Apparently he knows about chains, but not snow tires. And that’s not all: I learned the first winter of our marriage (in Germany) that he knew next to nothing about scraping ice off a windshield.

I've made up a lot of stuff about Georgiana, but I swear to you, I am not making this up about Mr. Lucky.

He didn’t scrape--he chipped, one flake of frost at a time. Maybe he thought the scraper would scratch the windshield. I couldn’t believe my eyes, and had never been so annoyed with him before. “For crying out loud, it’s not an ice chipper,” I told him. “It’s an ice scraper. GIMME THAT!” I could scrape the ice off every window of the car in less than three minutes; he was going to take three hours just for the driver’s side of the windshield. But he wouldn’t let me have the scraper. He insisted on doing it in his own way, and ordered me to sit in the car and wait. And sit. And wait. And seethe. And—I popped out of the car again and tackled him. “Give that to me and let me do it!”

Honestly. The way he was doing it, why even bother? Why didn’t we just wait for spring to come and melt everything away? I finally managed to wrest the ice scraper away from him, and I showed him the Northern way of doing it. (I may also have told him this was another reason the South lost, because you can't scrape an icy windshield with cotton and a lot of arrogance--just ask Rhett Butler.)

Mr. Lucky's explanation today for not wanting to let me have the scraper? “It’s a man thing.”

And like my heroine, there’s one last thing I don’t like about the snow:

But Georgiana didn’t like it when it kept people from venturing out of doors. Especially when three days went by before Anthony came calling again. The snow that had fallen upon his first visit had turned into lumpy, grayish-brown slush that reminded her of a bad batch of mashed turnips.

I don’t miss the slush, either.

New Year's Resolutions

January is the time of year when Mr. Lucky goes out to walk the dogs as usual, only to find he barely has room to maneuver because of all the hordes of humanity out there jogging, walking, cycling and rollerblading.

Then he goes to the gym for his daily workout, only to discover membership has suddenly quadrupled, and now he has to wait in line to use any of the equipment.

But he remains patient, for he knows by the end of January, those crowds will have thinned out and come February, everything will be back to normal. The streets will be desolate and the gym so deserted, he can go there and dance in his underwear, lip-syncing to Bob Seger’s “Old Time Rock and Roll” while using one of the barbells as a pretend microphone, and no one will ever know.

When will people learn what he and I have long since figured out—that it takes more than hanging up a brand new calendar and opening one’s annual greetings from the IRS to keep resolutions?

For my part, I need rewards, threats, and blackmail.

Like the time a few years ago when I had trouble getting started on a new book. Julie Leto said if I didn’t write the first three chapters by a certain date, that I would have to apply for a job at Wal-Mart. I wrote those chapters by the specified deadline, and to this day I remain off Mr. Walton’s payroll.

On the other hand, when I was in my twenties I smoked, and every January I made the same futile resolution to quit, but to no avail. Only after Mr. Lucky, an avowed non-smoker, indicated an interest in marrying me, did I finally have the needed impetus to quit. And I didn’t need patches or Chantix or twelve-step programs, or to be strapped into a chair and my eyelids forced open like Alex DeLarge in A Clockwork Orange while I was subjected to a slideshow of blackened, cancer-ravaged lungs.

All I needed was the promise of True Love and Happily Ever After.

New Year’s Resolutions? Ppfft! If I relied only on that new calendar and greetings from the IRS, then I’d still be single, smoking, and working at Wal-Mart.

And I would still be just as snarky as I am here, if only because it would take more than a mere resolution to cure me of that.

I Had 100 Days To Write A Book . . .

Back in September, TARA launched the 100 x 100 challenge—to write at least 100 words a day for 100 days, with the ultimate goal being to finish the book in time for our holiday party.

I started out well as evinced here, even though I didn’t like the story I was writing—this is not a book of the heart, but a book from the bowels—and on most days I wrote over 1,000 words, occasionally topping 2,000.

But alas, I did not finish it. Over the Thanksgiving holiday, I was hit with a nasty bronchial ailment that took out all engines and instruments, and I spun down in flames before finally crashing and burning on Day 88.

Yet in those 88 days, I wrote 93,603 words. As the book is supposed to be a Regency historical romance (with as much emphasis as you can pile on supposed), the targeted word count was between 90-95,000 words. So even though I didn’t finish the story, I did prove to myself that at least in theory, I can write a full length book in 100 days—but only if I know where the story is going. In this case, who knows. I’ve been stumbling around in the dark with it, tripping over writer’s blocks and falling into plot holes, or I might well have finished it by now.

This book has a very bright future under my bed. To borrow a phrase from the Queen of England, for me 2008 was an annus horribilus in terms of my writing.

Meanwhile, I’m still coughing out what little remains of my innards, yet I don’t seem to have lost any weight. Let that be my penalty.

Karen Gets a New Workspace!

It all started when Mr. Lucky came home from work after midnight, and woke me up with his exuberant ravings about a desk—a computer work center, to be exact—that he found on the side of the road and brought home to join our happy little family unit.

You'd think he'd found a pot of gold.

This is a habit of his that goes back many years, to when he was an impoverished bachelor who relied on the roadside dumps of other people’s unwanted possessions to furnish his pad. When we decided to wed back in 1987, I brought to our marriage money and refinement, while he came with an elaborate stereo system that cost him several months’ pay, and a second-hand sofa he’d rescued from certain abandonment on the side of a desolate highway.

He knew, with the unerring instinct of one who has spent a lifetime scavenging among other people’s junk, that if he waited until daylight to go back for the computer work center, it would be gone. Indeed, as he loaded it into the back of our minivan at the ghastly hour of midnight, someone popped out of their house down the street with the air of one not looking to see what was going on, but with the intention of grabbing the CWC for themselves. I didn’t ask how he could tell the difference, fearing it might have something to do with the absence vs presentation of a shotgun—or maybe it’s just another instinct peculiar to scavengers.

Mr. Lucky initially thought of letting me have the CWC, as I don’t really have a desk anymore, since he bought me a laptop for Christmas 2005. I really do use it on my lap, usually while sitting in a small leather recliner in my office. The downside is I lack the efficient, disciplined workspace I used to have when using a desktop—when I had a solid flat surface for a notepad, reference books, and the all important, most sacred vessel for my coffee. Sometimes I wonder if this hasn’t had an adverse effect on my recent productivity, or lack of it. I’ve been using rickety folding tray tables, and allowing clutter to pile all around the leather recliner till it now looks as if I’m sitting in a giant bird’s nest.

I agreed with him that an upgrade to my work area might be an excellent idea, before I stood up from that recliner one day to find an egg or two on the seat.

Alas, the CWC was immediately a serious contender for the title of “Biggest and Most Unwieldy Piece of Furniture in the House.” As a corner unit, there was no way it would fit in my office unless we shuffled at least a few of the five fully loaded bookcases in that room.

No. Fricking. Way. Maybe for a million dollars, but until the check clears, no—way! Only two other things could induce me to move those books again: An Act of God, or an Act of Baby Bear.

Mr. Lucky proposed taking it for himself, and letting me have the simple writing table (48” x 30”) that he’s been using for his desktop as well as his own laptop, which is for his business. This was more than agreeable to me, as we could make it fit in my office without disturbing so much as a single bookcase.

We decided to put it under the window, in place of a pair of old, two-drawer nightstands I’d been using as file cabinets (i.e., pack rat storage) since we bought new furniture for the master bedroom. This was a great opportunity to throw out junk which, seriously, I hadn’t looked at since putting it in the drawers. It was a lot of work, but it beat moving books and bookcases.

Most frightening were the manuscripts of books written before True Pretenses—and the earliest drafts of the latter, boasting the header, “Untitled Regency WIP.” It was like looking at my sixth grade school pictures--ewww! No, I didn’t throw them out (like I did with the sixth grade school pictures), but transferred them to one of those heavy duty plastic storage bins.

Meanwhile, Mr. Lucky spent most of yesterday kicking up a lot of dust and rearranging his own office to make his newly acquired CWC fit. I don’t know how he did it, but he made it work, and we had everything in place by the time Baby Bear came home from school.

I now have a desk, with space for my children’s photos and even the recently acquired boom box.

We’re only missing one thing now: A suitable chair! I can’t very well use the leather recliner; I need a real desk chair.

“Don’t worry, we’ll get you one,” Mr. Lucky reassured me. “Next time I go out, I’ll keep my eyes peeled for any desk chairs abandoned at the side of the road.”

I Will Not Be Called a Braggy Pants This Week

At TARA, we started the 100 x 100 challenge on September 3rd. The object is to write at least 100 words each day for 100 days, with the ultimate goal of completing That Damned Manuscript in time for our annual holiday party in December. As noted in my previous blog entry, I have to write at least 1,000 words every day if I hope to complete TDM by that time.

One hundred words is really nothing. I rarely write fewer words than that when posting on the various forums and message boards where I’ve been known to goof off when I should be writing a book. I’ve written more than a hundred words here already.

Here is my progress for the first week:

Day 1- 2,444 words. YAY!

Day 2 - 1,629 words. I am the Word Goddess!

Day 3 – 1,741 words. It’s true what Mr. Lucky once told me many years ago, when he first fell in love with me. Yes, I am hot stuff.

Day 4 – 418 words. What can I say? It was Saturday, and obviously I get more done when Baby Bear is in school.

Day 5 – 100 words. And that’s an estimate. I went back over what I’d written so far, and started tinkering, and before I knew it, I was cutting stuff and completely lost track of the initial word count. I know I wrote at least 100 new words, possibly as many as two hundred, but I can’t swear to it. It didn’t help that my eleven year old and forty-three year old were fighting over the TV most of the day.

Day 6 – 282 words. By now I was officially in full-fledged “this story isn’t going to work” mode—the same mode that’s led to so many previous false starts this year. Having just e-mailed the first chapter to my critique partner, Jean, I felt I was now committed to writing this book all the way through—but I didn’t know where to go from here. At this point, the story could be easily resolved in Chapter 2. Not to mention there was zero chemistry between the hero and heroine. And I got no sympathy at all from Drill Sergeant Phyllis, who said, “If you had an amazing word count EVERY day, we’d just call you a braggy pants.”

Alas, the Word Goddess is but a mere mortal, who has to pick up other people’s stinky socks and unwad them before tossing them into the washer.

I was so frustrated and panicked by this morning—Day 7—that I actually resorted to the unthinkable: I cleaned the house!

Maybe it was the fumes from the Tidy Bowl cleaner, or maybe it was when I hit my head on the chandelier and had ghastly visions of chucking the whole writing thing and applying for one of those career opportunities at Wal-Mart, but somehow the solution came to me, and by this afternoon I was rewriting Chapter 2 and feeling as if this story might be crazy enough to work.

Day 7 – 1,314 words. Not bad.

Only 79,000 words to go.