Thursday, April 30, 2009

EGS: Extreme Grocery Shopping


Shopping has become an extreme sport ladies! I kid you not!

I regularly find myself in the express lane… ah ha I can hear you all laughing because there’s usually nothing express like about these lanes and so more fool me. However, I do regularly find myself in these lanes (I’m not too bright, no) and I have discovered a strange phenomenon concerning the elderly and their shopping trolleys. In the last month alone I have had three elderly women ram their trolleys into my behind while waiting in one of these lines. THREE in ONE month! Joking? Oh how I wish.

Now the natural conclusion is to question your ass size. Exactly how big has it gotten? Has it expanded to giant proportions so they can’t help but injure you or are they simply using it for target practice? Now it’s not a tiny behind. It’s not a size eight or zero, I don’t exist on lettuce leaves alone, but it’s not so big that you need a crane to lift me into my car in the car park either. So what exactly IS going on?

Then there’s the question of how to react when someone rams you from behind. Do you throw your hands up, shriek bloody murder and pelt them with chocolate bars and whatever else is on display beside you? Do you pretend that you didn’t just go rocketing forward head first into the questionable looking man in front of you? Or are you like me, Miss Manners steps up the plate and you find yourself (after a glare because, well, THREE in ONE month) pretending that your backside isn’t black and blue? Doormat anyone?

I should probably also clarify that one of these women managed to do it three times in one line. Thrilled I was not.

Perhaps it’s time to go back to hunting and gathering? Swipe the fish from the stream so to speak. Climb a tree. Fight a crocodile. Choices, choices…

Have you found yourself in a similar situation? What did you do? Do you curse your polite upbringing? Do you use it in a book and then kill off the character just because you can? Do you unleash your inner Bogart and morph into their worst enemy? (that last reference is for anyone who has kids who love Harry Potter ;) ).
Photobucket


Friday, April 24, 2009

Rejected!

Say it loud say it proud ladies! Open the champagne and drink to my successful failure! My AMSS query letter and synopsis result came back as a standard R form and while Miss Disappointment has reared her head demanding I wallow I’m resisting. Sure a lot of work went into the MS but the rejection's based on only a QL and synopsis which is unfortunately all that is requested for the first stage of submission to Silhouette Desire in NY and they're probably not my strong point. Of course it could also mean that my writing and ideas are horrendous but I prefer Option A for obvious reasons :-) Still, I completed a MS, submitted and someone in that office read my work (and hated it, lol!) and that's a little success all by itself.

For anyone waiting to hear, it took about two months from submission for the letter to find its way back to me.

On a more positive note I am writing again but only one MS which is hard for me because there’s a competition deadline and if I get stuck or blocked I don’t really have the luxury of switching between stories. We’ll just have to see how this one goes!
Photobucket


Wednesday, April 22, 2009

Writer's Withdrawal


I’m going through writer’s withdrawal. It’s not pretty. It’s worse than the giving up chocolate, and that REALLY says something! Basically I want to write. It’s an urge, a compulsion, a giant pain in my butt! Of course I promised myself I’d “play house” by actually unpacking the darn house but my wanting to write is creating a fantastic show of procrastination few have seen before.

If there was a competition at the moment for who could get the least done in their life while seemingly working constantly the winner of the competition would be me. At least I’m good at something right?

The other thrill in my life at the moment is the realization that I have turned into one of those disgustingly healthy people. Sure, someone practically held a gun to my head to bring it about but it’s happened. People assure me that soon I will LOVE it but at the moment, quite frankly, life on the no alcohol, no chocolate, no caffine, no chocolate, no dairy, no chocolate, no red meat, no CHOCOLATE side of the fence is not that great. People on this side of the fence don’t get to have fun. This side of the fence IS NOT GREENER!!!

Do I sound hysterical?

I probably am.

I managed to find three of the Nora Roberts DVDs for eight buckaroos each (very proud of my find am I) and I have to say I really do like them. The intriguing thing for me is Blue Smoke because I did happen to pick who was behind it at the very beginning (I won’t tell you in case you haven’t seen it) but then they did a flashback where the heroine and the “attacker” have a pretty violent history. One you wouldn’t actually just forget and never think of again until the last second, which just goes to show you that you have to be careful with your plot. It was a nice way to tie up the story and show motive but I really think it needed to be something the would have realistically been less traumatic for the heroine.

There’s a writing competition I have my beady little eye on. I want to enter. It’s a great opportunity but I am surrounded by towers of boxes… hmm… maybe I like the boxes where they are after all. They’ll grow on me right?

I’m off to wrap my fingers up so I can’t type ;)

Have you ever had to kick a habit? Have you found yourself wanting to write or actually writing when you REALLY should be doing something else? Do you have a form of torture on standby when your writing addiction just won’t behave?

Photobucket

Monday, April 13, 2009

Happy Easter


On Saturday I woke up and decided to buy a ferret.

I’m not a particularly impulsive person (as you will soon see) and although I’ll admit to being slightly (only slightly) insane I think
Rachael Johns has to take some credit for putting cute pictures of ferrets on her website :).

Now I have my own menagerie so I turned to Wikipedia just to check current things wouldn’t eat the new thing or vice versa.

Uh huh. So ferrets aren’t particularly toilet trained and you need to have lots of litter boxes that you clean regularly. I immediately have an image of twenty boxes all over the place and of course by the time I finish cleaning all twenty I’ll just have to start all over again. I’m going to assume Paris Hilton had a ferret babysitter. Then there’s the other plus that ferret’s like to get behind things (e.g washing machines) where of course they could die… Let’s just say I’m not great with the death of a beloved pet so I’d have a heart attack every time it left my sight. Then of course there’s the fact that I have birds and ferrets aren’t averse to eating me either…

Bloody fingers anyone?

So no ferret. Maybe someday…

Did I mention I’m on a new diet? I have been for about three weeks now. Why does the word moron suddenly come to mind? It’s for far more than just weight loss and has more rules than the legal system has laws. No sugar. No dairy. No sauces. No nothing. *Sigh* My favourite foods are of course pasta and chocolate... and it’s Easter… WHY!!!

On a random note experts now recognize chocolate as an addiction. Soon there will be people all over the world standing up in meetings to announce: “I’m … and I’m a chocoholic”. *Sigh* The day you have to give up chocolate is a very sad day indeed.


What did you get up to this Easter?


Photobucket

Friday, April 3, 2009

Unorganized Perfectionist

I’m typing this in the dark. That’s right ladies and gentlemen I’m a rebel. Alert the town elders! Actually even though the town elders aren’t with me right now I can practically hear my grandmother’s voice in my head telling me to turn the light on or have my retinas burnt out. Choices, choices…

Unorganised perfectionist. A good friend gave me a notepad with those two words on it. Do you think she was trying to tell me something? You would think it wouldn’t be possible wouldn't you? An unorganized perfectionist. Someone anal should surely have their life together, right? Tell that to the moving boxes (I think they’re breeding).

You’ve probably heard via town crier that Stephenie Meyer was the biggest selling writer in the US in 2008 with 15 million book sales (
Romantic Times). The aim of this fact lesson isn’t to bore you senseless but to point out that the lovely Miss Meyer has taken pity on the rest of the unpublished and confessed to harsh rejection in the same manner as which Janet Evanovich confessed to avoiding the agent who wrote an acceptance with a purple crayon on a bar napkin (as you do).

Now I haven’t actually read Meyer's series or watched the movie (which is a first) so I got to be an outsider for once, I got to observe the media frenzy. The truth is you get swept away with the excitement. I know quite a bit about Stephenie having never read a piece of her work! I find that alone, amazing. Imagine the world knowing all about you without having picked up your book because you are THAT good. I say dream BIG! Build an extra house for your dream if you have to ;)!

Stephenie’s story speaks of intimidation with the whole publishing process and luck (the 'L' word has been proven to be a key ingredient in many big successes) and you can read about it right
HERE.

Hope it buoys you ;) Let me know your thoughts.
Photobucket







© 2013 Lacey Devlin

Twitter Feedburner Facebook

Follow by email:

Photobucket

click me to reveal the contact form

We're currently under construction!

We`re working hard and believe we`ll launch the website in: