Quote of the Week

"I found that the men and women who got to the top were those who did the jobs they had in hand, with everything they had of energy and enthusiasm and hard work."

--Harry S. Truman

Thursday Thought: People-ese

Totally random and I'm not even sure where this came from, but when this happens, I figure I'd share. Just so you all can really meet the real, oh-so-random, me.

So people from France are French.
People from England are English.
People from Spain are Spanish or Spaniards.
Peeps from Italy = Italians.
Greece = Greek.
Norway = Norwegian.
Canada = Canadians.
America = Americans.


But why is it that in most Asian countries people are some kind of -ese?
JapanESE
ChinESE
TaiwanESE
BurmESE
VietnamESE

That's not to say there aren't countries where people are not an -ese. Thai, Laotion, Cambodian, Indonesian, etc.

Like I said. Totally random. Doesn't mean anything. Just a thought.

Wowza!

So normally, Wednesday would mean that it is time for a wip update. But, yanno, I wasn't really feeling in the updatey mood. Could be because I feel like I've done NOTHING for the last week. We had too much family time over the weekend. Or maybe just because I have something MORE EXCITING to talk about than how many words I attempted to write. (The number is so pathetically low, I don't even want to get into finding an excuse.)

Anyway, many of you know my awesome friend ElanaJ. She's supportive to other writers, between her personal blog and the QueryTracker stuff she does, it seems Elana always has answers. And now behold: a bunch of those answers are coming in e-book form! W-O-W!

From the Query to the Call is an awesome resource on, well, everything from writing a fantabulous query to fielding all those calls from agents who are fighting to represent you (the situation we ALL want to be in!). The e-book will be available later this month, so keep an eye out! I'll have some more insight on the book later this week, but I wanted to make sure that if you didn't already know about it... you do NOW!

Oh, yeah. You can become a Facebook Fan of the book HERE.

SEPTEMBER 14, kids. Pick it up!

When I Grow Up

I'm going to be a rock star. I'm going to be a newscaster.
I'm going to win the lottery.

I'm going to be a writer was not actually on my list.

Writing was always just something I did and it never occurred to me it could be THE something I did. Funny enough, I realized I answered the "When I Grow Up" question in my VERY FIRST BLOG POST ever. So I'm not going to get into it again.

My question pertains to characters, actually. In my head, I know everything that's happened in most of my character's lives up until their written story begins. That part is unfolding right before my eyes and I'm just there to capture it. Record it. A play-by-play of these characters' lives from when they want to begin sharing their story to when I get to write THE END.

But I've found that I have a hard time leaving my characters alone. I want to know what happens next to these people. To me, they are completely real and I've suddenly become vested in their lives. Mind you, if I wrote horror and just killed everyone off at the end of every novel this could be a pretty moot discussion point, but I don't.

My characters are of the angst-ridden high school variety. Life doesn't end when high school does.

I feel like the stories aren't over when I've finished them. I feel like every single one of my books already has a sequel waiting to be told because my characters' lives aren't over yet!

Does anyone else have this problem, or is it just me? Am I so lame as to become completely obsessed with my characters to the point that ALL of them need full novel-length backstories and sequels (even if they never get written)?

Quote of the Week

"One must not always think so much about what one should do, but rather what one should be. Our works do not ennoble us; but we must ennoble our works."

--Meister Eckhart

Yes, I Know

I have totally been slacking on the blog posts. After last week, I spent the weekend trying to catch up on life, had enough time to find us a good quote for the week, then got SLAMMED with work and more real life stuff! SUCK. (See last Friday's post if you can't remember what I'm talking about.)

As I said, yes, I know I've totally been slacking. I was just getting into the routine of having posts all written over the weekend and then scheduled to post throughout the week. Uh, yeah. Clearly that didn't work out.

So now things are finally settling down.

And..... squeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee look at what the husband found for me:

I know, bad picture and I should not nearly be this excited for another expense (committing to the first car payment of our married life) but that is me. And my new (to me) car. YAAAAAAAAAAAAYYYYYYYY. Finally! We have a car from this century. Yep, my old car was a '96. The husband's a '92.

Okay, so now that a good chunk of real life stress as worked itself out, back to revisions in the ms, critting and maybe some sleep.

Have a great weekend everyone!