Melani Blazer

I had the thought of firing off a quickie post to let anyone who stops by to know I’m still here, not buried under my kitchen cabinets or hastened away to the funny farm. But this will be shorter than intended because I so haphazardly clicked on the upgrade button and… it ate time. Can you believe it? Now I gotta run.

Speaking of farm…it is one..maybe a zoo…around here. With all the other crap going on, I’m also bottle feeding two baby squirrels. We’ve had some touch and go moments, because one of them likes to inhale his milk and aspirate it. Quite bad for the lungs, but he seems to have gotten over his lethargic state and is eager and climbing and has a helluva appetite. We have all intentions of letting them go into the wild once they’re old enough. I’m hearing 12 weeks. We’re estimating them between 7-8 weeks old now.

Hubby’s back to classes, the kidlets back to school. Me? Just work as usual. Trying to keep ahead of laundry and finding time to write every…single…day. Because I insist on it.

So that’s me. How you doing?

My husband admonished me for failing to blog. Who knew.

So, what have I done lately that’s not going to bore you to tears? Oh, we visited a pretty cool flea market Sunday morning. Bought two books–remind me to take more money next time because OMG are there venders with very inexpensive paperbacks. I grabbed two authors I’ve heard plenty of buzz about but hadn’t taken the plunge to buy at the bookstore or online. For a buck? Heck yeah I’ll bite. I totally understand and support buying books at USB’s or flea markets. It’s my intention to “try out” these authors and if I like them, you can bet I’ll be looking for their other books. (And talk the books up!)

Anyhoot, it was nice to get out of town and do it “cheaply”. As you might remember, I have no kitchen, and just dealt with felling a huge tree that decided to be a wig for our garage. Seems like all my money is being dropped at local hardware stores. However, I have walls now, the drywall is up (THANKS NEIGHBOR MIKE!!!) and we’re almost ready to sand. Half the crappy floor tiles, okay, maybe a third of them, have been pried, pulled and coerced from the floor. Dear lord, it’s insane.

I’ve been writing, or trying to. Watching Olympics when I can, working, ah, yes, the fun of that day job.

That’s about it. Wish I had more to talk about, but any more excitement might just kill me.

Ciao~

I’ll be sporadic over the next few days…

* AT 914 PM CDT…NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE DOPPLER RADAR INDICATED A SEVERE THUNDERSTORM WITH STRONG ROTATION. THIS SEVERE STORM WAS LOCATED NEAR xxxx…OR 5 MILES NORTHWEST OF xxxx…AND MOVING SOUTHEAST AT 57 MPH.

* LOCATIONS IN THE PATH OF THE SEVERE STORM INCLUDE… (Mel’s house)

THIS IS A PARTICULARLY DANGEROUS SITUATION!!!

IN ADDITION TO THE TORNADO…THIS STORM IS CAPABLE OF PRODUCING DESTRUCTIVE WINDS IN EXCESS OF 80 TO 100 MPH..

Italics my own…

Tree down. On the garage, and kinda the house roof (fell technically between them, but supported by both right now) Doesn’t look like any structural damage other than the electrical box being pulled off the house (bent, not broken, thanks to God Almighty that he left us with power intact). I’m sure a piece of siding will fix that. It could be worse, and I’ve said my prayers in thanks that it wasn’t. I still have no kitchen, (but tonight we ran the hot/cold water lines up to where my sink WILL be…eventually). So, I’ll be busy for a bit doing “other than writing and internet stuff”.

Third August in a row our town has been hit HARD with August storms. Winds at 106mph two years ago. At least 100 tonight. You do know that’s a high category two hurricane? Ain’t it fun?

~Mel, still smiling

Today, I’m at work, lunch hour blogging, how’s that?

I’m a bit envious of all those at RWA, except for those little twitter excerpts I’ve seen about the frigid temps (no, I haven’t caved to temptation, I’ve simply read Angie’s sidebar). While you’re visiting Angie, the Executive Editor at Samhain Publishing, please take a look at what Mandy, Jaci, Shan and I have found while perusing the boxes and files in and around her blog. OMY!!! There’s more to come, too. You wouldn’t believe what else we’ve found, but we’re debating when to unveil it. We’ve got to see how the world reacts to the news about her evilness to see if they can HANDLE THE TRUTH!

Anyway, in between working, being envious of conference goers, writing and digging through Angie’s basement, I’m visiting the workshops some really grand and talented people are putting on this week.

Here’s some people I know and have visited already, but there are many more, and I’m intending on bookmarking them in the least so I can hone my craft, learn and grow as an author. That’s what it’s all about, right?
Jaci Burton- Work shop entitled the Anatomy of Sex. Whoo hoo! Hot topic, indeed, but OMG is she spot on!
Shannon Stacey- Work shop entitled “When only the Right Word Will Do” about punching up those first drafts. Great topic!!!
Emma Wayne Porter She’s hitting the self editing issues, which is SOOOO important, and one of the least FUN parts of writing.
Mandy Roth–is doing a neat bit on covers. She’s such a talent with graphics. I love her stuff!

All three of these hit on really important aspects of the writing craft–and I can’t wait to dig in and see the topics of all the other workshops. I’m sure there’s stuff for all writers, from beginners to the experts. After all, this is a “job” in which you can never stop learning and bettering yourself!

Now, back to Angie’s box of photos, bwahahahahahahahahha

ON SANTA’S NAUGHTY LIST has a cover!!!

This features my Christmas story, WHEN I CLOSE MY EYES, which is an erotic, romantic paranormal story about finding the one who speaks to your heart.

It’ll be available in November, but you can pre-order it NOW!

The kitchen is still….not a kitchen. Since everyone who’s working on it also holds a regular job that’s not necessarily only 8 hrs per day, I understand we’re going to be doing this for awhile.

Saturday? Killed down at the local garage, bs’ing and hanging out with the guys (I tagged along with the hubby, but I consider them my friends too). The Chevelle’s up on the lift, getting a new gas tanks and some suspension work, so there was some fiddling with that. The garage owner has a similar Chevelle (year older, much more radical) and he did a number on his U-joint, so there was much discussion over how and why and then often four or five of them stood around attempting to fix it. Yeah, it got done.

Did anything get done in the house? er, no. Nascar race came on soon after we got home. I wished I could have gone to Chicagoland. It’s a fun track. I think Kyle Busch wants to break every record in one year. Gibbs and Toyota have got to be proud of him. (And Shan’s short-kid, too)

Sunday we got up and decided to head a coupla counties over to see the over-the-water Air show. Cuz you know, we didn’t get enough of the FA18 on July 4th. It was awesome, the weather was perfect, a great breeze, crisp visibility (I never realized how clearly you can make out the Chicagoland skyline from there) and of course, some excellent performers. Nothing got done in the kitchen again, but hey, the show was free save gas and optional $6 parking, so….not a bad way to spend a Sunday.

Now the hubby’s gotten himself selected for jury duty, despite being taken off work for ripped ligaments in his shoulder. Which means, of course, he can’t work on the kitchen by himself anyway, at least anything that’d require use of his right arm. (He’s been measuring and computing, marking studs, mocking out where electrical boxes and switches will go, just basics, but hey, it’s all gotta get done, right?)

Sigh, and I’m trying to write. I’m really loving the story I’m doing. I forgot how much I love writing a NASCAR themed story. Some (a lot) of the characters from Trophy Girl are in this one, but I’m not finding the heat level as the last one. Hope that doesn’t disappoint too many people. Sometimes forcing sex on the characters would ruin the story. This is one in which I believe that. Their issues and challenges are way beyond lust, though don’t get me wrong, there’s plenty of wishful thinking…

Off to do something useful, like type in the 30+ handwritten pages I’ve done. At least my wrist has gotten a workout!

Actually, it began over a month ago when plans fell into place to remodel the kitchen. We hadn’t planned on it, at least in 2008, but here we are.

Today, the remainder of the cabinets (I’d lost upper cabinets and have been living out of rubbermaid totes for the last month or so) went buh-bye. That means my sink did to. As did many outlets.
Oh, and drywall, yeah, we’ve got exposed studs, capped off has and water piping and…that’s about it, along one wall of the kitchen.

It’s going to make it interesting to survive. I’ll see if I can take a pic or two or three and post the progress. On the hope and prayer that progress is made VERY, VERY soon.

I’m off to shop vac up the dust and take any/all exposed dishes to the bathtub for a wash, er, bath.

Oh, oh! I’ve no stove either, btw…and it appears I’ll have to unplug the fridge in order to run the microwave. Welcome to hell.

Well, soon as I wrote the title I was reminded the F18 fly-by for our Fourth of July parade was truly one of the highlights of the weekend. It was a good one, by all regards, even the near misses and inability to sleep due to 96 hrs of nonstop fireworks. Even I bought a zillion bottle rockets, but 4am? Please.

For the third time, I wrote a scene into a corner from which there was no escape. At 2/3rd into a story, you cannot make resolution even more impossible (okay, you can, but in this case, it’d take another 40K to resolve it, unless you want something completely contrite and will make even ME wanna throw it against the wall.). Anyhoot, I wrote, I deleted, I backed up, wrote, deleted and last night I finally didn’t even reread what I’d written, just scrapped it all (still on paper) and started from a different point.

Guess what? My characters didn’t have a blow out and say irreparable things to one another but I still managed to have a both say things they didn’t want to. Oh, they meant them, but it was neither the time or place.

I picked up a newspaper on Sunday at my mother in laws and on the back, it had one of those “Dear ___” columns. The letter was admonishing this advice columnist for encouraging confrontations. The columnist replied very aptly, stating that confrontation was often the word other people suggested, and she would use conversation, discussion and confrontation interchangeably. Arguably, there’s a difference, but I realized I was being too harsh in my writing. I didn’t need them to be cruel to one another to say what they felt, they could do it more subtly, and in the end, realized it made a big difference and hopefully hit a more emotional tone.

Now…to get them OVER this–compounded by all the other things preventing that lovely little HEA, and things will be good. But I thought 14 handwritten pages for one night was really rocking. YAY!

Can I shoot off one bottle rocket to celebrate?

This is been hashed and rehashed and probably little more than a bunch of hash, but I’ve been hard pressed to find a blog topic that wasn’t just journal entries of my less than exciting life lately. Still in the middle of kitchen work–which has multiplied into more work. Then there’s my normal “fun at the day job” saga, which has moments of soap opera drama. It’s summer, we’re doing outside things, have a stray cat who adopted us and of course, me trying to write in the down time. (go ahead, laugh at me)…

What I wanted to compare, after stepping back a few days and then studying it with a realistic approach, was how a pair of movies were marketed and how that affects the reaction and/or appeal. My husband (love you, honey) really helped me realize the truth to this via a very unscientific approach. And I’ve said out loud several times since… if these were books, things would be so different…
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