Doing what frozen things do in summer...

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I can't believe it's July. I'm looking forward to a family roadtrip to Colorado next week and then I'll be headed to the Romance Writers of America (RWA) convention in San Antonio!  It'll be my first RWA and I'm so excited to see what all the fuss is about!  

I've been such a bad blogger here but there hasn't been much to update. I've been writing, editing and writing more. My beautiful debut novel is being polished ever so lovingly and I'm trying to use this time before publication to cram as many words into other projects as I can. If you don't see updates here on the site, please make sure you follow me on Twitter as this is like my formal living room, with the plastic covers on the couches and the old-fashioned silver tea set that needs a good polish - it only gets used for important events.  Twitter is like the basement man cave, where I click on the big screen, invite tons of friends over, let their kids get hopped up on juice and Cheetos and we just shoot the bull  and whip up margaritas on a Saturday night.  You may prefer one environment over the other, which is cool.

Or Pinterest! Pinterest is like... the kitchen. Everyone always ends up in the kitchen. There's always something to look at and talk about in there. 

And then there's Facebook. If you haven't heard, it's a difficult place to be right now, especially if you want your friends and followers to actually see your posts, since Facebook is controlling what pages you see on your timeline. Continuing my (rather uninspired) metaphor, Facebook is like the laundry room. Completely necessary but not super convenient for the hostess or the guests.

So follow me in all the places, and you'll soon see a newsletter signup. It's my goal to do that this summer. After RWA and before school starting and in between book drafts.  It'll happen! I promise!

Check in with me from time to time and hopefully I'll have the Big Book News that everyone is waiting for soon!

Happy 2014! The Year of...?

ImageI love New Year's Day. For the past eight years, we've celebrated New Year's Eve with a rockin' party with our good friends ("rockin'" = chili, hot dogs, pajamas, cookies, ok... wine.) Then after midnight, everyone goes home, I sweep up the crumbs and throw away the paper plates and go to bed, waking on New Year's Day with a full heart and a clean house.  

For nearly twenty years, I also would start a new calendar on New Year's Day. What better way to start a new year? So full of promise, possibility? A clean slate, literally. Pages and pages of potential parties, trips and tasks, just waiting to be filled in.

Just thinking about it is making me warm inside.

Except this year...  There is no fresh calendar. No clean pages. No blank squares.  Because 2013 was the year I went digital.

After years of mocking  and derision and dumbfounded looks from friends, colleagues and spouse, I stopped writing things down. On old fashioned paper.  With crude implements of plastic and ink.

It's all in a slim pink box now that I pretty much have to keep on me AT ALL TIMES. I am a slave to the phone and the calendar, the alarms, all the bells and whistles that keep me eternally on call for... something. Everything.

But...I still write things down. As I stated on Facebook yesterday, I keep track of all the books I read in a journal. Made of paper. Using crude implements of plastic and ink. That's not to say Goodreads isn't a useful site, but for me, there's something so important about reading a book, that I have to physically record it.  I keep a Christmas notebook as well. I record gifts given, cards received.  Again, things that need to be memorialized in a tangible way.  Notes of phone conversations, the most ethereal form of communication, litter my desk. Grocery lists are made most every week, on an actual piece of paper.  (Fear not - I do throw these away once the shopping trip is completed.  Although inexplicably I have kept written records of dinners cooked from 2006 to 2010, a history of a time when getting dinner on the table every night, with two children under four, was a feat worthy of a history book.)

As you can probably tell, going to a digital calendar was a pretty big deal for me. I don't think this is a generational thing, either. I see plenty of college students still clinging to paper planners.  There's something about the physical that grounds us.  Holds us to a moment, or a goal.  When our whole life seems lightning fast and uncontrollable, we still have this thing. This book. And it is real. And it confirms that we are doing what we are supposed to be doing. Or it tells us, "hey goofy, get back on track. There's a whole list of to-do's that do not have a check mark next to them."

So I sit on New Year's Day. My planner is next to me. I have bought no new calendar but I have journal pages, for things that I want to still keep solid and real. Things like  a list of books I have read. A packing list for my vacation.  The new addresses of old friends.

2013 was a big year for me. It was the year I went digital... sort of.  I imagine that most people, even when they find themselves in the midst of big changes still find that some things stay the same.  We give up paper calendars... we're still scribbling in a notebook.  We lose twenty pounds... we still battle with holiday sweets.  We sign contracts for multi-book deals... we still find ourselves in pajamas at our computers, living the life of an introverted, insecure writer. 

I may not have a shiny and new paper calendar, but 2014 is still full of possibility.  I know 2014 is going to be full of big, huge, sparkly stuff and probably a lot of pajamas and to-do lists.  And I can't wait.

The Cat! It's Out of the Bag!

 

“If you wrote something for which someone sent you a check, if you cashed the check and it didn't bounce, and if you then paid the light bill with the money, I consider you talented.”

― Stephen King

Aw, thanks Steve! (Can I call Stephen King "Steve?" No? How about, "Mr. King, sir?")

I'm very pleased to announce that on Halloween I signed a contract for THREE (3) (trois, tres, drei) books with Entangled Publishing! The series will follow the women of a Dallas-based crisis management firm, as they manage their clients' scandals and start a few of their own. I call it "Olivia Pope dates JR Ewing."

I will publish updates here, on my Twitter, and on my Facebook (follow me on all of those, and Pinterest, too) as they become available. Heck, check out your local horizon, I may even hire one of those planes that circle around football games with giant banners trailing behind them.

I'm going to go cash a check now. Cross your fingers it doesn't bounce.

xoxo, Lindsay