Today's a link round-up kind of day. These usually come on a post-midnight caffeinated high, with a happy clicker finger and a cursor hovering dangerously close to my Stumble Upon button for prolonged periods of time. And because I'm feeling this for my words right nowand can think of little else but returning to them. Here's some fun, ultra-Vortex things I found:
Hourglass Cremation Urns for the discerning grief-stricken relative obsessed with time. Beautifully handcrafted in the USA, it's a special way to involve grandma in that game of Boggle you always shared.The site reads, "Each keepsake is made to hold a small portion of cremains. Many families are choosing to add a small portion of both Mom and Dad or other family members who have passed, perhaps together. Others have asked family members to add their cremains to their husband or wife's hourglass urn." Did they invent a new word? Cremains? Memo to family: I, no doubt, spent the better part of my life squeezing into designer jeans and parking spaces. If you want me to time your meatloaf for eternity, don't make me squeeze through with anyone but say, Hugh Jackman.
Vortex readers know how I love short, romantic films. This one called Signs will cost you twelve minutes but if you can get past the actor's gaping open-mouthed expressions, the warm fuzzy pay off is there. And don't you watch at least that many minutes a day of Billy Mays commericals?
A delicious feast of craptastic, non-Photoshopped book covers awaits you. Deemed the 15 Worst Book Covers Ever, you can't not look, right?
When I head to Washington D.C. this summer, I may have to check out the Multiverse 200 foot long tunnel in the National Gallery of Art. This will, no doubt, be the closest I'll ever come to light speed and time travel, unless I recreate the plot spew of my 2007 RWA editor appointment.
Procrastination is contemplating the WTH series-ending episode of Life on Mars (US version). Procrastination is gathering the perfect hailstone for the freezer. Procrastination is changing the digital Post-it color on the desktop. Procrastination is exploring expensive wind-powered energy plans you'll never use. Procrastination is making a Romance Writer Barbie. Procrastination is writing blog posts. Procrastination is holding the corpse position in yoga until sleep sets in. Procrastination is calling your sister. Procrastination is checking imdb for film flubs. Procrastination is typing a cover page for your printed manuscript. Procrastination is trying to unravel LOST's plot threads.
This is my dear sweet critique partner, Sandra, holding her birthday gift from moi. If only Mattel fully realized the market potential of Romance Writer Barbie. click photo to enlarge
The inspiration came while thumbing through a Redbook last Friday at the hair salon. As it turns out, Barbie and Sandra share more than strawberry blond locks-they share a birthday. Who knew a weekend playing Barbie could be so much fun?
I pared down Barbie's usual fashionista attire to reflect the true fashion-sense of romance writers at work: baggy sweat pants and sloppy shirts. And don't all romance writers have mismatched socks? Oh wait, that's just me. Rounding out Barbie's couture is a lopsided half-ponytail rammed home with the dreaded red editing pencil and a rejection letter in hand. Yet, Barbie is still smiling.
What would Romance Writer Barbie be without accessories? I opted to re-paper the opulent pink and white polka dot chandelier-ed background in favor of a muted pallate of builder beige walls. Barbie is creating art. She has no time for Home-Depot-like pursuits. Set against this backdrop, a framed portrait of the Queen of Romance, Nora Roberts, a plotting board with technicolor Post-Its and a shelf crowded with books like Deb Dixon's Goal, Motivation and Conflict, and Sandra's Wild Rose Press release, Harm's Way. A hairy-chested Tom Selleck photograph in a gilded frame rounds out the decor.
On her desk, which she's told is pink but has yet to confirm, the essentials of her craft: laptop, notepad, coffee, pencils and Sherrilyn Kenyon's Fantasy Lover for inspiration. Though the disproportionate Oreo cookie I found in the dollhouse section of Hobby Lobby would have been the piece de resistance of the romance writer's day, it simply would have been large enough to consume her face. Writers have enough difficulty prying their arses from the chair without adding that kind of baggage.
From the photograph I noticed Barbie has broken free of her plastic ankle shackles and is now standing a bit off-kilter. This frees her to channel every romance writer I've ever known at one time or another.
May she inspire future generations of girls to bookish fantasies of RITA awards, Lifetime movies and NYTimes Bestseller lists!
Vesper has bestowed upon the Vortex the Sisterhood Award, not because I steal her makeup and wear her unmentionables outside my clothing at the first sign of a date coming to pick her up, but because something about navel-gazing philosophy, time travel and countless chest hair references gives her pause. Oh ye of windswept poetry, I am honored you feel a kinship. Thank you!
And to go along with the coveted derriere award, she invited me to play a round of Who-Were-My-Writing-Inspirations? This was an activity I did five years ago when I took a writing class on voice. Instead of following trends and being at the mercy of a publishing market no one can predict with any certainty, we were told the true writer within could be found in the cross-hairs of things we love. Here are the 25 authors who have had the most impact on my writing:
1. Kathleen Woodiwiss 2. Peter Abrams 3. Stephen King 4. Herbert Leiberman 5. LaVyrle Spencer 6. Dwight Swain 7. Victoria Holt 8. Dean Koontz 9. Jude Devereaux 10. Madeline L'Engle 11. Edgar Allan Poe 12. Lois Duncan 13. Robert Heinlein 14. Richard Matheson 15. Daphne du Maurier 16. Nathaniel Hawthorne 17. Agatha Christie 18. Anne Stuart 19. Susan Carroll 20. H.G. Wells 21. Michael Crichton 22. Julie Garwood 23. Kay Hooper 24. Natalie Goldberg 25. Jules Verne
Kind of a gothic, Twilight Zone meets luuuve, right? Who could have guessed that?
Because the Vortex shows no sexism and brotherhoods linked by flowery, bedazzled denim can be rewarding, too, I invite everyone-readers and writers-to leave two seemingly-opposite-sides-of-the-spectrum authors who have inspired you in the comments so that we may snag you in our literary cross-hairs.
because I'm feeling snarky and the 1-2 combo of Lost(Holy Volkswagon on fire, Batman!) and Life on Mars trapped in the 70's is really doing a number on my nostalgia gene. Then I received this super-sweet celebratory card from Pam complete with The General Lee and I had to post it:
from Pam's blog Wednesday: Then, when the nominations were announced and I frantically checked my category, I didn’t see my name there, but I did see somebody familiar—my separated-at-birth friend L.A. Mitchell. Somehow seeing that she had been nominated eased my pain of not. And she’d also better watch out in D.C. because I’m bringing a freaking bullhorn to the ceremony and when she wins, the only thing the crowd is going to hear is me yelling and my bullhorn playing “Dixie”, just like the horn on the General Lee.
The General Lee is now the perfect symbol of our writing journey. It's road-weary and the doors don't always open, but it takes flight on rare and special turns and it'll get us there. Thank you, my friend!
Vesper has bestowed a sisterhood blog award on me and a meme of twenty five authors who've influenced my writing (thank you!!). Though I feel very Daisy Duke to her Elizabeth Barrett Browning in the blogosphere, I shall give it a go on Monday. Until then...
My novel Until Midnight has just been nominated for Romance Writers of America's 2009 Golden Heart Award! Could have been the "Waiting-For-The-Call" t-shirt I'm wearing today. Good mojo there.
Here's the blurb:
Ryan Beck is an agent assassin for The Assembly, a rogue government organization he's grown to despise. His allegiance to their top-secret agenda marked his descent from patriot to criminal and cost him his wife and his honor. He wants out, but must complete one last misison to stay alive: obtain a serum from a ruthless scientist and use it as a bargaining chip for freedom.
Medical researcher Emma Parrish believes the time serum her brilliant but misunderstood father never completed is the holy grail of medicine. The same men who hunted her father want the formula, along with an unforgettable stranger who seems to know the future as completely as the part of herself she shields from the world.
A sniper's bullet reaches Beck's target first and shatters his mission into a reverse maze of deceit and time-altering events. His only chance for escape is to find the moment the deadly chain of events began, somewhere at the cross hairs of loyalty and desire.
~
And on the Vortex Scavenger Hunt, we have a winner! Whoot for Todd and for his love of a frozen Ted Williams. Be sure to pop back here and let us know what you get with your Amazon spending spree.
It wasn't all bunny slopes and hot toddies, but it certainly fits the great vacation category. While Vortex readers were slacking off on the scavenger hunt (ahem), I learned a few gems to pass along lest you be entertaining the thought of a Colorado ski vacation next year:
1. Murphy's Law of Altitude Sickness That stealth, vile little jaunt into illness when your brain freeze-dries and your body squeezes into an 11,000 feet compression chamber will always happen at the worst possible time. Like on the feet of a rich guy that just funded your stay.
2. Powdered Bull When the only fresh snow you encounter on your nine hundred mile mecca accumulates on the back of a tourist bull in Texas, it's God's way of telling you a sled in your backyard would have been sufficient.
3. Banjo Man Nothing beats a serenade outside a ski rental shop. Though the granola-artist plucking his banjo fancies himself a modern-day Merle Haggard/Jack White, his sultry strains mean only one thing: he's circled the drain of viable employment and is now shooting for the Guinness record for most consecutive sour notes. Mr. Urban you are not, sir. 4. Ski beasts....I mean boots. Ski boots. Spicoli did not try them on both feet. His assurance that they were "wicked" was so on-target, he must have known they'd turn on the very feet filling them, leaving bruises, blisters and toenail collateral in their wake. Wicked indeed.
5. FBIs Most Wanted...Solved. Southeast Colorado. Look there. Texans burning up the highways to hit the slopes never go this way. It's a vast conspiracy of isolation known to just about everyone taking a left turn in Dalhart, Texas. Everyone but me. Sleek X-files bullet trains carrying alien serum would have been preferable to the three hundred miles of landscape resembling a pubescent boy's first beard.
6. The helmet should have been the first clue Or perhaps the glossy surface of the 150 foot drop. Cushioning the death-defying reality of tubing down an ice-packed hill, nay...mountain, by nicknaming their lift the "magic carpet" was brilliant. For in Aladdin's world, the vast coinage to take part in the privilege is soon forgotten at a thirty mile per hour backward slide.
7. Lift Lines are directly proportional to the amount of liquid refreshment consumed at the previous meal.
8. Blowing jet-strength hand dryer air into your ski pants is not a legitimate reason for clogging the 30-women-thick-restroom line. My bladder should not have to pay the price for your ski-lift dismount gaffes.
9. With time, everything looks smaller. Except the 72 ounce steak. Since I was ten, the building, the shooting gallery, the motel's rustler wall mural-everything seems to have shrunk but man's desire for 15 minutes of fame. Visitors to Amarillo's Big Texan Steakhouse who eat the mammoth steak, salad, rolls, baked potato, fried shrimp and drink in one hour get their entire $200 meal for free, served with a heaping dish of car-accident-like voyeurism from tourists all over the southern US. Competitive gluttony, now available on webcast.
10. "Texans are stupid" It finally happened. Third time cemented it. In a supermarket checkout line, I aligned myself fully with the Lone Star State. The Coloradan I'd once been heard the ignorant, stereotypical backwash about Texas from a grocery checker-a ribald rant that somehow translated Texas heat to the mental capacity of its citizens and I no longer wanted to be a Colorado native. You see, Ms. King Soopers-checkout woman, God gave Colorado stunning scenery so visitors wouldn't notice the self-righteousness so prevalent in your state. Maybe that was once me, but I doubt it. My birth record reads Houston.
I hope everyone had a fantastic week. I did. It's great to be blogging again. If you're bored and so inclined, I found this clip for a visual aid to my ski vacation. Exiting the lift gracefully is probably the hardest part about learning to ski. Thankfully, I didn't have to use the jet-strength hand dryer once.
and can think of little else but returning to them. Here's some fun, ultra-Vortex things I found:
I'm off to hug my manuscript now. Link away!
