I just realized it’s Thursday. Which means I should be blogging here. And, um, it’s after 5.

But in my defense, I’ve been gone most of the day. I’m on vacation, you see, and it’s Spring Break. Today I’ve driven over 100 miles, gone to the bank, Starbucks, and bowling. I’m tired. And there is no brilliance here for blogging. HA

So. I will be back next week. Same Chica Channel. Same Chica Time. Well, actually, earlier in the day. The point is, I have nothing to blog about and so I will be back next Thursday to impart my wisdom and brilliance.

How’s that? In the meantime… I simply MUST play with the new smilies!

I need to do the security upgrade for Wordpress today and fix the smilies so if you come by and it’s all jacked up, I”m probably laying on my back porch sucking down a bottle of Jack Daniels and watching my cats try to eat the birds.

If I was an accountant, I wouldn’t ask a client permission to do a client’s taxes. Nor would I ask to do my job if I were a doctor, lawyer, shoe salesman, or garbage man. So why as a writer, do I feel like I need permission to write?

I have had jobs before, if I waited around for permission, bosses would have passed me by and found that gal (or guy) who would have taken the initiative and do what needed to be done. Same thing in the publishing world.

There’s not going to be someone there to hold your hand and say, “Come on hon, you need to finish that scene.” If you’re lucky you may have a supportive hubby who, when he gets home from work and sees you sitting at the computer, will threaten to call one of your writer friends and tell them you’re playing your 45^th round of Cubis Deluxe or a crit partner who will not put up with your shit excuses and demand you get your damned heroine out of a doggie door, but they can’t make you do your job. They can’t hold your butt to the seat and put your fingers tapping to the keyboard, yet you (meaning ME) feel the need to ask permission to create, need the go-ahead to call yourself a writer.

It is a job, and if your lucky and persevere you can make a living at it, or at the very least supplement your income doing something you love! But for some of us you have to have permission to do it.

If that is what you’re waiting for, someone to give you permission, I hereby declare you (AND I) have my permission to write! GO DO IT!

(more…)

I’ve done Mahira’s and Raine’s and now it’s on to Rhian’s!!

“Madre de Dios! Rocky, what the hell are you doing?”

“Tia Celia, if I am going to get into Juliard, I must practice!” Rocky hops down from the chair he’d been perched on, his sister’s powder pink tutu fluttering around his hips in a way that made me cringe. If his father saw him, he’d take a belt to him.

My brother he had no patience for Rocky. Ever since he got out of jail, all he’s talked about is dancing, ballet, pah! “Rocky, if Maria catches you in her tutu again, she’s going to post a picture on her Myspace! Then the whole world will know!”

“I don’t care.” He pirouettes around, a completely ridiculous contrast of jailhouse tattoos, hairy legs and ballet costume. “I am going to be a prima ballerina.”

Mahira and Rhian……..ya’ll email me your snail mail addresses and I’ll get some autographed cover flats out to you!!! Don’t worry Mik……..I think I’m going to make this ongoing so I’m saving some for next week………

Description is important in writing. Without it, we’d read about characters who live in a void. But description is, like it’s sister POV, an art form. Description shouldn’t lay there on the page. We don’t care what your character is wearing unless of course they’re wearing a tuxedo t-shirt to a black tie affair they weren’t invited to :D then description can be really funny. It’s not all ‘he was tall dark and handsome’ or even ‘he had a brooding look’ it’s about all the little things a character projects in the way he dresses, in the way he moves, in teh look in his (or her) eye. So here we go……..

He had the look of a man who had let life beat him down one too many times, from his weathered, almost colorless face to his faded red hair and faded blue eyes.
I leaned across my desk, a gentle smile on my face. “Mr. Cain, what can I do for you today?”

She was young, fresh faced and full of life, a bit of a tomboy with wind-reddened cheeks that cried for the touch of my knife and tangled blonde hair my fists ached to wrap themselves in. It would be my greatest pleasure to kill her.

And just for Raine…..
I opened the door and instantly regretted letting my friend, Raine, talk me into a blind date. The man standing on my porch was wrong, wrong WRONG, from his boots to his work-roughened hands nervously jangling his keys to faded chambray shirt. Neither his dimples, nor his twinkling brown eyes could save him.
How the hell could Raine forget the only thing I hated more than cowboy hats, was bald men.

I’m not being lazy. Really I’m not.

I honestly had something to get done tonight—so my apologies for repeating a previous post from my blog. But at least it’s one of my favorites!

*** *** ***

“Ken. I’m leaving you.”

Ken glanced up from his reading, his expression wary. “Oh, come on, Barbs. We’ve been through this a million times. You’re not going anywhere, and we both know it.”

“I mean it. This time I’m gone.” Hoisting her pink plastic suitcase up on the bed, she flipped it open and began stuffing it with her size minus-10 clothes. “I’m through being taken for granted. I’m going to be a writer, or mother, or postal worker—some job that will pay me for being taken for granted.”

Sitting stiffly forward, Ken gently folded his vinyl newspaper. “Barbie. You can’t be serious. You can’t leave! We’ve been together since 1959!”

“And you’re still the same lazy beach bum you always were. You never get a job, never get excited, never curse—nothing! It’s MY bed, Ken. MY furniture, MY corvette, MY beach house.” She sniffled, glancing at the thousands of outfits she’d be leaving behind. “If you really cared, you would’ve become anatomically correct DECADES ago! Stiff-fingering gets a little old after a while, y’know.”

“This from a woman who couldn’t bend her legs until 1965! You think it was easy getting to the coochie all those years before then??”

“You are so shallow—it’s a waste of time trying to talk to you. Where’s my Dior stuff? My Manolos?”

“You think I don’t know what this is about? You’ve been screwing that damn steroid-shooting G.I. Joe doll again!”

Barbie smiled wickedly, dangling her laciest Victoria’s Secret in his face. “He isn’t a ‘doll’. He’s an action figure, and I like the kind of action he shows me.”

“Slut!”

(more…)

The other day as I was working on my latest WIP (aka the dragon story), I had written in a new character. She sort of popped out of nowhere. I hadn’t intended for her to rescue my hero from the clutches of the evil dude, but she did.

And then she told me she was an elf. Who could command the dragons.

Or, rather, she told my hero that.

Actually, there was no telling involved whatsoever. She sort of tucked her silky blonde hair behind her ear and he sees it’s pointy.

(It reminds me of that story when Kirstie Alley was in Star Trek II – shut up I used to be a Trekkie – and she was playing Savak, the Vulcan, and she was on a date after filming and they forgot to take her ears off. She tucks her hair behind her ear and the guy is kinda wigged out. I’m sure this is just an urban legend, but I digress…)

Anyway. He can’t stop staring and finally says, “You’re an elf?” She confirms that she is and he tells her he had never seen one before. Because, in case you were wondering, my hero had a sheltered life and has no idea that dragons and elves even exist. She then tells him that “not many live to tell about us” which makes me wonder if she is somewhat of a dark elf.

Okay, so I used to be a MUDer (meaning I used to play MajorMUD online years ago and one of the races was dark elf. Great agility and intelligence, not to mention beauty but just a tad evil. At least that’s my interpretation…ha!) and this is where I get the idea.

And anyway, it makes me wonder what this means because I really have no clue yet. And that was my moment of epiphany. And I totally LOVE when characters talk to me that way and dictate the story.

So when I relate this to my Best Good Friend – who is not a writer – she says to me, “Writers really are insane.”

Yes. We are. And it’s delightful. :)

So over at Erica Orloff’s we were talking about finding photos of characters etc...anyway I had a thought.

Ya’ll name some names or leave links to photos of folks — if it’s a name make sure it’s someone I can find a photo of. I’ll pick one or two and write descriptions! Trust me, it’ll be fun!

And the two I pick get autographed cover flats of HANDS ON.

Been there . . . Done that . . . broke up, spent time apart, and whamo circumstances throw you back together . . .

We all have pet peeves when it comes to what we like or don’t like to read. I have a friend who hates secret baby books. Bodice rippers make some want to rip their hair out. And there are varying degrees of what we like in paranormal, vampires, no vampires, werefolks, no werefolks.

Mine has been the rekindled love. Don’t know why that bothers me exactly. But I kinda feel like it’s almost cheating. You don’t have to “build” the romance from the ground up. You start from a different point in the folks relationship. I always thought it was an easy-out when working on the “Love” part of the story–poor misguided me . . .

HOWEVER, having said that, I have really been thinking about it lately and realized it allows the author more freedom to develope the plot. You don’t have to take those extra chapters of the meet and the cultivation. You can add bits of the why in backstory.

I can see the benefits in boys meets girl, boy looses girl but meets up with girl again and the books begins . . . hmm . . . do I feel a story line coming along?

I really do. I never saw Ricky Bobby and I can guarantee you I won’t waste my money on Blades of Glory.
I don’t think he’s attractive. I don’t think he’s funny.
He makes me roll my eyes! And not in a good way!
But I really really wanted to see this movie. I wanted to see it more than I hated Will Ferrell. I have to tell you that I was really impressed. If you haven’t seen this movie, GO RENT IT NOW. Especially if you are a writer. But it’s about so much more than writing, actually it’s kind of pretty deep.

So my question for you today is what actor in what movie (or tv show) or hey what author surprised you?