contests contests contests

the picture has nothing to do with my post but did you know that famous phrase was coined at the university of florida, my alma mater? yeah, a kid in the audience heckling one of the accent program speakers uttered the phrase right before well, they tased him. anyhoo. gatorade and don't tase me bro.there you go.

what I'm wondering is how many people enter writing contests. I myself enter them. right now I'm in 5. lol. that seems like a bunch when I write it but there it is. mainly I enter for the critiques and the opportunity to get my work out there. one contest that I won got me a full submission with the awesome Claire Eddy at Tor. I've heard people say that writing contests were rip offs and wastes of time but I disagree. I'm just wondering about the rest of you out there. what do you think about writing contests?

cookies and a bottle of wine STAT!

have you ever gotten news that was shocking and distressing and thought provoking all at once and then you get more info and it's not quite that bad? this happened to me today and now my body is all hopped up on adrenaline and stuff, which is not a pleasant feeling. I was having a nice day prior to said news too! the news is they sold my hospital. no my hospital but the hospital I work at which sent me over the edge quickly. after texting everyone in the working world about it, my kindly friend Delma gave me solid info and I was okay. or relatively. anyway. now I have that post adrenaline dump feeling and it sucks. I should of gone with my first impulse and eaten cookies and drank the bottle of Two Paddocks Picnic Pinot I have. it's a great wine made even better because it is Sam Neill's wine. but I didn't do that. so I am jumpy as a cat and can't concentrate on anything. yeah, this is what we call a filler post.

something got one of the ducks

well we are down a duck. the other day I went out and one was missing. no blood. no feathers strewn across the yard. nothing. the duck is just GONE. the other ducks aren't lending any clues. so I'm left wondering.
aliens? maybe. I should call Bill Birnes. did you know that guy has a Ph.D and is a lawyer? wow. but this would be right up his alley. the aliens might have just beamed poor Sunshine right up to their craft without so much as a feather left behind.
more than likely one of our neighbors hunting dogs crossed the fence line and "retrieved" a duck. now, that seems reasonable. not pleasant but reasonable. we erected a little fence to keep things like that from re occuring.
Poor Sunshine!

I love you but I'm not in love with you

don't you just loooove how subjective the search for an agent is? it's really fascinating. but I suppose it is just a representation(lol) of how everyone has different tastes. in a way, agents are mind readers and soothsayers. they are gauging what an editor is going to like or not like and then sort through their slush to find just that thing. I don't envy their job. they are eternally dating. they are in search for the manuscript that they fall in love with so they can parade it all around and defend it or build it up when it is taking a hit. I myself hate dating so that is another reason I wouldn't want their job. but they must because each day they put on their date night undies and dig through the slush.  they are optimists. good for them. keep up the good work all of you out there! all that "dating" will pay off.

YAY!!!!

run, don't walk over to Vamp Boyz to check out my boy Sam as the Vamp Boy!!! also check out the past yummy vamp boyz!!

yeah, it's real. we really have this.

Home - Zombie Survival LibGuide - LibGuides @ UF at University of Florida
this is a real  item on the UF libraries web site. needless to say, we didn't have this back in the day. we didn't have a freakin starbucks in the library either. hey, remember when the library was about books and learning. just saying.

fist (first) string Team Awesome!

a friend of mine has two offers from two e pubs. happy dance for her!!!her offers though are contingent on her beefing up (lol) her semi sex scenes.she isn't a big sex scene writer so I know she is kind of sweating it. which brings me to my post today. I think everyone has one hinkey thing that they have trouble writing about. hers is vivid sex scenes or at least one that go beyond he kissed her and then they closed the door.  mine is fight scenes. I know, you can stop laughing now. I'm first string on the Team Awesome Fight Team. I just have trouble doing it though. when I do write them, I end up rewriting several times. I have a difficult time even visualizing fights. watching fights in movies or tv doesn't help much. I just think fights are my one thing. when I had to add fights and battles to Life in Moonlight, it was like doing higher math. And I am dreading it in the sequel. Not so much with the sex scenes. I have nooooo problem with those. I wish my friend and I could make a deal where I wrote her sex scenes and she wrote my fight scenes. do you guys have an item that is tricky to write? what is it?

weird dreams are made of this

I love Tamara de Lempicka. her art is amazing to me. you can tell I like it based on the painting in my banner but I just love it. it seems so other worldly. this one is called the  sleeper I think. which brings me to my point. sometimes I have some of the strangest and most vivid dreams. the kind where I wake up and think it really happened and when I discover it was only a dream, it stays with me all day. that happened last night. I haven't been able to stop thinking about this dream. it was strange. AND SO VIVID. and I have no idea where it came from. they say that dreams are messages from your subconscious that need to come out. I don't know who they are but they say it.anyway, maybe maybe not. maybe it is some unrealized part of me trying to step forward. I don't know. there are lots of those parts.lol. but this is a strange one and I don't know what to do with it.

in search of the Super Shaggy Sandwich

so today I am trying to keep my mind off my submissions and focus on doing productive stuff around here. it all started when I saw a post about the 2010 Sammies award  on the Visit Great Britain site. that propelled me onto a long search of sandwiches. I myself love a good sandwich. I think sandwiches are awesome. when babies at work are short of a higher weight by an ounce or so I say the baby was one sandwich away from the next weight. or if the momma is a little small for her dates, I advise her to hit the sandwiches a little harder. I'm telling you I love sandwiches. I can't eat them any more but I love them. well I can eat a little one but that's another story. anyway, the sandwiches then lead me to the idea of making bread today. this idea was fueled by the King Arthur Flour catalog that came in the mail today. so I get everything out and ready and then check the humidity...70%  and I  have to scrap that idea. no dough will rise in that. so all in all I have wasted a couple of hours and have nothing to show for it. BIGGEST TIME SUCK EVER.
guess I'll go make a sandwich.

hey guess what was on my property today?!?!

yes that's right. this morning on my walkway was a 4 foot frigging python! King Kitty was sitting staring it down. it had curled up in some sort of defensive pose I guess. anyway, I called my brother and he picked it up(much to the cat's chagrin) and put it over the property fence. our neighbors grow aquatic vegetation so maybe the trespasser  will be happy there. but DAMN. A PYTHON?!?! I know they are turning up all over south florida but this isn't south florida and that is the second one I have come across in like a year. the first was very small and my dad hacked it to bits so I really couldn't ID it.
here's the weird thing... at work yesterday we were talking at length about snakes on our property. black snake this rattlesnake that. we must have spent like 30 minutes talking about it and then this morning, one appears in plain sight. kind of cosmic. next time I go to work we're talking about Sam Neill, Alan Rickman or a Papa John's pizza with everything on it. mainly Sam Neill.

another freakin' haunted house

so guess what? we are thinking of buying another house. yeah and it's probably haunted like the one above. the top one. yeah. the one we are looking at is the one above. no the one underneath it. it's a historical house which means high potential for ghosts. my creepymeter was in over drive. how is it that we manage to live in all of these stinkin haunted houses? and guess which room is mine... the one that has not 1 but 4 funny little doors that go to the attic. I think the room was actually part of the rafter system that the current owners finished and made into rooms. but still. I HATE funny little doors to attics. they just spell trouble.we've been looking for houses a long time. one time we were going to look at another old house and I was looking at the pics online and one of the pics had orbs all over the room. screech! I said no stinking way! so we kept looking. sigh. the house and property are beautiful but crap...more ghosts?

thanks Lydia! more awesomesauce!

YAY!and Thanks Lydia Kang at The Word is My Oyster at lydiakang.blogspot.com for giving me the awesomesauce award!!!

so I will pass on MORE awesomesauce to the following:

Kirk Von Der Heydtthealicechonicles.blogspot.com
Scott Baker   scottbakerauthor.blogspot.com
Olivia Carter  oliviacarter.blogspot.com
Lynette Labelle  lynnettelabelle.blogspot.com
Dawn Hullender  dhullender.com
Sharon McPherson  bookishblonde.blogspot.com

go forth and be awesome!!!!

they grow up so fast!

today the ducks made their journey to our pond. it wasn't easy because they had no idea what the pond was or what they were supposed to do. we'd put them in and they'd get out. finally they decided that it was great to be free. the above pic was a few weeks ago when they were still butter yellow color. now they are all white. they're a lot of fun to watch because they function as one unit. where one goes they all go.cute! when we were herding them toward the pond our cat, a glorious Norwegian Forest cat, ran because he thought the ducks were a quacking ,white, blob bent on destruction.

if you only knew the power

doncha just luvvvvv photoshop?  I do. it's kind of like the Force. you can do all sorts of things with images that were  never possible before. IF you learn how to harness its awesome powers. I myself have not learned the ways of the photoshop force. when I was at UF we had a Yoda of photoshop but he was impatient with young ones. he expected you just to know it or feel it and be proficient. he was brilliant but I never caught on. it was too much knowledge for my costuming mind to grasp. I preferred paper and paint or markers or pencils. I am awed by photoshop but that's about it. I guess I will never be able to realize jedi squirrels as seen above. I'll draw them or write about them instead. lol. a story about jedi squirrels.

evil plans = manuscripts

that's right folks. you gotta work on those evil plans non stop, going over them again and again.you have to refine them and revise them until they are as smooth as silk and run like a swiss watch. hey wait, evil plans are like manuscripts!! I think that's a fair comparison. evil geniuses probably feel the same way about their plans as writers feel about their stories. they love them and desperately want them to succeed. and, sometimes evil plans are shared with important people(those out to thwart them) too soon thus dooming them.
hmmm, I never thought about that. the solution for success or a better shot at success is waiting. always wait until the evil plan/ manuscript is ready and don't tell anyone until you are sure it's absolutely ready.

I love my boots my boots and me!

here's what I'm wanting in my life right now. a spiffy new pair of mucking boots. there are some yucky jobs when you live in the country and have animals and I'd love these from the muck boot company. sigh. currently I wear a pair of plain old red boots but these just take the cake. I'd also like some new hips. not slimmer ones but some non arthritic, non hurting ones but I'm more likely to get my boots!

thanks, Cipherqueen!!AWESOMESAUCE IS AWESOME!!!!

Besides being the most eye-catching award out there, it has the best title! But let's try to make this one special- let's make it the most linked award. Even if the people you award it to don't take it and repost, let's link as many people as we know, alright?
http://kim-franklin.blogspot.com
http://www.kristiecook.com
http://brooklynann.blogspot.com
http://talliroland.blogspot.com
http://sierragodfrey.blogspot.com
http://kittiehoward.blogspot.com
http://oliviacarter.blogspot.com
http://www.dhullender.com