I visited Karen Cote’s website—she’s made the visit something entertaining and remarkable.
Take a look here—and then look around her website to see her work and what she’s created.
Thank you to every single one of you who played.
Every entry was excellent. There was no way I could choose ten on my own.
I went to Random.org’s True Random Number Generator, generated ten random numbers, and one of the ten was for a long-time reader here who had requested she not be considered in the drawing.
So I generated one more.
For the ten folks who won: You have won a one-year paid membership to SavvyAuthors.com. You may accept it for yourself, or offer it to a friend. You’ll be receiving an e-mail from me letting you know how to claim your prize. I’ll be using the e-mail you have used in your winning post. If you don’t receive your response from me by tomorrow, you’ll need to e-mail me here, let me know your name and your e-mail address, and the link to your winning entry, and I’ll resend the information.
Winners:
Rob F
Michael
Pam Hauser
Sarah
Charlene
Jenn
Sara Carrero
Alice B.
Dyre
Kathi
I’ve been invisible since Friday because I’ve been working myself to exhaustion putting together something I think is really cool. You folks have been hanging in here with me for a long time, some of you since I started my career. You get first go at this.
After this one time, anything I do like this is going to be announced through my new newsletter first, and will generally offer subscribers the info a few days to a week ahead of everyone else. But this last time, we’ll start here. After this, anything that isn’t writing, new books, snippets, personal stuff, or the occasional curmudgeonly rant will disappear.
(Much to the relief of those of you who are no doubt tired of hearing about the future OneMoreWord Books publishing company, or the affiliate program…) I know. I care. This will go back to being a personal writer’s diary.
But just today, take a look at the free live writing seminar I’m putting together.
I spent my weekend with old and new friends at Technicon, got away from math for a while, and had a wonderful time.
Today I’m back to the taxes, and panicking that my accountant is going to have time to do them once I get all my paperwork finished — I’ve been line-iteming every receipt that came into the house last year (if you’re self-employed, each year yields a trashbag full of receipts that must be gone over for every single deductible item, because the self-employed pay double FICA, and you do everything you can to make sure you aren’t paying more than you have to. The self-employed almost never get refunds; we break even, or we owe.)
I HATE this time of year.
So far today, I did my guest column for Romancing the Blog — it’ll post on the 18th. I’ll link to it then. Will say, however, that I like the way it turned out.
Now, way late, I’m starting into my 2000 words for ISY. After that … well, the headache that took me out of commission after I got my ISY words yesterday is already threatening. This time it’s a weather shift, and my sinuses are going nuts. Unlike a migraine, I can at least work with this sort of headache. It does tend to slow me down, though. I’ll see how things go before making any predictions on anything after the next 2000 words, though.
Woke up at one AM today. Went to sleep at nine PM last night, after having woken up at three AM the night before. Here I am. What the hell?
I’m physically tired, but wide, wide awake. I’ve had four hours of sleep. That’s nowhere near enough. But my mind won’t shut up, so I’m going to write. 2000 words on ISY, more on Hawkspar (didn’t come close to editing seventeen pages of that yesterday. I edited four pages, and to do that I had to write six brand new ones,) work out the first draft of my column for Romancing the Blog, and maybe do a column that someone else’s blog inspired. Hell, if my day starts at this hour, I’ve got all kinds of time.
I was invited to write a guest column for Romancing the Blog. Was asked to submit a photo to be used as my icon.
And I thought this one might be … well …. 
It’s my kindergarten picture, and it has the Mona Lisa smile I gave the bouncy, bossy photographer who wanted me to give him a BIG smile. That was not going to happen. Because right at that moment, you see, I had no front teeth. I love this picture because of what you can’t see.
Wonder if that was Mona Lisa’s secret, too.
Anyway, as regards things you can’t see, or haven’t seen — anyone have a question I haven’t answered that you’d like to see as my guest column? Can’t promise I’ll use your suggestions — if there’s more than one, I’ll have to guarantee that I won’t be using at least half of them. But I figure it never hurts to ask.
Reading this entry from Sheila’s blog, I confess to a moment of jaw-dropping, mind-blowing disbelief.
No. Not at Sheila’s continued, mysterious fascination with George Clooney. My tastes run much more to Vin Diesel and Phillip Seymour Hoffman. (I do not attempt to explain my tastes. I simply report them.)
But no. That one or more of her readers would ask if we were the same person.
She and I have speculated before that we were twins separated at birth. We have lived painfully similar lives; emphasis on the painful part. But …
Sheila does well over a million words a year. I expect her to make a breakthrough to a million words a month at some time in the not too distant future. I do … two books a year. Two. One really broke year, I did four, but those were short, and I was really broke. If Sheila and I were the same person, I would not be perpetually getting stalled and stuck and flummoxed by LAST GIRL DANCING. I would fly through it, because as best I can tell, Sheila has never, ever been simply, totally bollixed on a book. I plod, Sheila soars. I single-task at the (comparatively) stultifying rate of around 300,000 words per year. Sheila explodes with these amazing ideas; talking to her, you get this feeling that new universes are being born, fully formed, behind her eyes at a rate of about one per minute. Me? Not so much.
So, though no one has ever asked me that question, I will answer it. We ain’t the same person. But sonuvaSONUVAbitch — I wish we were.