Matchstick Impaired Irish Girl

I'm supposed to be working on a WIP... any WIP... but I'm at one of 'those' points... you know the ones I mean, where those of us still seeking representation are like 'but what if that OTHER WIP is the one that someone will love... but I'm closer to being finished with THIS WIP... but really, THAT WIP is tighter and will need less revisions'... and since we don't have an agent to smack our bum and tell us which one they think is the hot tamale, we wemble. Any who, instead of working on a WIP, I'm sipping scotch (Balvenie Double Wood 12 Yr, for anyone interested) and writing up this post, which I promise will be pretty funny. At least, I'm still laughing, and if I can laugh about it, you ought to :)

Firstly, Happy St Patrick's Day! Which I celebrate simply out of tradition, since the real history is just a tad terrifying and not something I would really support. But I'll take any excuse to eat cabbage and nip scotch (I hardly drink) so here I am, celebrating the tradition, if not the actual root of the tradition.

That was the 'Irish Girl' part of the post... now for the matchstick impaired part. To start, you have to understand that I'm virtually fearless... except for fire. Now to clarify further, um, I love campfires, roasting marshmallows, fire places, and burning sage. I've even had fires in the teepee. However, 'loose' fire... not so much. I'm pretty much catatonically paralyzed by fear when it comes to like, house fires, forest fires etc. The only genuine faint I've ever managed involved setting the stove on fire. And it took me years to live down the rice cake in the toaster oven incident... but I digress, and you get the picture.

Soooo I decided to light a candle the other night. It was one of those yummy Yankee Candle candles. A vanilla one. This is something I do a lot. I mean, it's a CANDLE. Well, anyway, I went and got the box of matches (Amish handmade ones, no less) and returned to the living room where the candle was sitting atop our nifty fake-fire electric fireplace. First match, strike, strike, strike, nothing. I used up all of the gritty sulfur stuff, no flame. Second match, same deal (so much for 'handmade' being better) so I pulled out match number three. Now by this time, I was annoyed, the cats were lined up staring at me, trying to figure out why I wasn't on the couch any more and the forensics show I was watching was explaining how the butter knife that someone stabbed through some woman's eye didn't actually kill her, so I wasn't paying that much attention to match number three. After all, one and two already gave me the shaft.

Since I wasn't looking, I failed to realize that lucky number three lit up brighter than the Griswold's Christmas tree. Until the flaming tip flew by my face on it's way south, anyway. The entire match head didn't break off. Oh, no, just the sulfur part. It sailed up, then down, smashing into my thigh, because I had my hip all popped out with a little attitude. Yeah, so I was wearing stretch pants (you know you own a pair) that I bought like three years ago at American Eagle for about two dollars. You know, those stretch pants that are made of fake long john material. All the girls were wearing them for a while (mine have never left the house because my momma taught me better than to wear my jammies in public) and since mine are a couple of years old, they've attained that really soft skim of fiber that pants get when they reach that 'perfectly broken in' stage. Well, they HAD that soft skim of fiber. The right leg is bald now.

Yep, as soon as that burning sulfur got in the same zip code as my well-worn stretch pants, my right leg went up like the fourth of July. I made that breakdown Sally Fields had in Steel Magnolias look like a tea party. Seriously. Course, it's sort of hard to run from your own leg. I didn't get all that far. Just far enough to hit the front of my grandmother's ancient yellow recliner. Being, well, ancient, it can't take a great deal, so when I crashed into the thing, it rocked back, and I REALLY crashed. My butt stayed in the seat for about a tenth of a second. Just long enough for the chair to go over backwards and flip my flaming carcass into the stair banister, where I landed in an extinguished pile. You have to love furniture that's smarter than you are. Left to my own wits I would have staggered about squealing like a bad remake of the Towering Inferno. As it is, I came out with nothing but a very smooth pant leg and high blood pressure. And I did get the candle lit, dammit. And it smelled great. Even got rid of the singed stretch pants scent that was lingering in the air. So there you have it. I'm totally matchstick impaired. I mean, some girls have them and freeze to death in doorways. I have them and light my britches on fire. At least I won't freeze to death any time soon.

And with that, I shall leave you. I'm sure there's a WIP I can torture lying around somewhere... Happy writing all!

Contest and Housesitting... and Probably Some Random Blather...

I'm housesitting at the moment. It's just over the weekend, not a big deal. And yet, something about the fact that I left home Thursday morning and haven't gone back yet is having an odd effect on me. I feel like I've never left work or something. It doesn't help that I'm in the last third of the first draft of Thornbriar and that vile-tempered Red Chief keeps trying to run roughshod over the retelling. God help me if the characters could ever actually show up in physical form and have at each other...

One of my temporary fur children. Can you feel her terror over having been left in my charge?
















Next order of business... a CONTEST!!! My friend Christi (remember Christi? Smart gal I'm always stealing smart ideas from? That's the one :) sent me a link to a contest over at Brenda Drake's Head over and check it out. I'm uber stoked. Even more because as you'll remember, I'm nearing the point in which Evernow will be given a SPOT ON THE SHELF *cue high drama music* In fact, as soon as I've gotten Thornbriar finished, I'm going to take a break from querying, more like than not, and focus on editing Thornbriar as well as AGMG which I haven't forgotten about although it's been a while since I worked on it. But I digress. Check out the contest, join in if you've got something eligible. It'll be the first time that I've ever put that much of Evernow up on my own blog (I have been part of a few other contests involving openings and such) and I'm a little nervous about what everyone is going to think. Even if you aren't in the contest, swing by and give me your opinion!

And for the blather... am I the only, ahem, mature girl out there who still watches anime? I've got a number of friends who read manga (I'm still getting the hang of it) and I love light novels like D Vampire Hunter and Trinity Blood. But more and more, I'm dabbling in anime. It can get mighty weird, mighty quick, so I'm picky, but I just found Black Blood Brothers and spent all night with one episode after another playing while I was writing. Now I'm drooling for the light novels on which the anime was based.
Pretty soon I'm going to have a room full of light novels and their subsequent animes...

Bloggy-Type Awards!

So I just got a comment from Kristina over at KayKay's Corner letting me know that she was awarding me two blog awards! *takes a moment to feel special* I'm not the only one either. So head over there and check out the other winners. Blog-hop and take a gander (you're not the only one to use that word Kristina :) at everyone's entries in the Catch Me If You Can Blogfest! Officially, it's over, but hey, everyone loves feedback, even after the fact. Thanks so much Kristina!

So, to accept these awards, I must:

Thank and link back to the person who awarded you this award.
Share 7 things about yourself.
Award 15 or so recently discovered great bloggers.
Contact these bloggers and tell them about the award.

Here goes!

7 Things about me:


1: I am an identical twin. I know, one of me is almost too much for reality, but hey, the other girl is virtually normal, so that helps.

2: I have a very high tolerance for physical pain. In fact, I have 9 hours worth of tattooing on my back, and I both ate a cheeseburger and fell asleep during the various sittings. I wish I could handle the near-misses with agents in a similar fashion, as opposed the Sicilian hair-rending that seems to overtake me every time I get a request for a full, and really encouraging feedback, followed by a 'not quite for me'... *rends hair*

3: I never had an imaginary friend, but I went imaginary places... I still go to imaginary places... I just write down the trips now and try to sell them...

4: I have spent hours asleep on my horse. No joking. My father was a sailor who could sleep on a rock in the middle of the ocean. I got his genes.

5: I also got my dad's 'can't spell sheat' genes... this hinders me greatly in my writing endeavors...

6: I hated school so much that when I randomly said once (in about fourth grade) that 'I'd quite school except that I know you'll go to jail and I don't want you in jail' to my mother, she LET ME BELIEVE THAT IT WAS ILLEGAL TO QUITE SCHOOL. Seriously, I was out of high school before I realized I was wrong! But I'm glad she did it.

7: I have dyscalculia, which is like dyslexia for numbers. To this day, I transpose them and anything numeric is an utter nightmare to deal with.



Who I'm awarding! Um, there's a lot of great new bloggers I've met, but I don't have time to award everyone because horses are screaming at me...



Trisha Leaver

Angela Scott

Kristina Fugate

Nicole Ducleroir

Gina Blechman


Okay, I know it's not fifteen but it's all I can manage right now... horses are still screaming and I'm a dork on the computer...