Booing Miss Universe - what is the world coming to?

For reasons too banal to go into I've got the Miss Universe competition prattling away on the TV.

No.

I can't just leave it like that.

I realise I need a rock solid reason for having Miss Universe on the TV during the day. I'm writing you see, and Oprah was about children with Autism, which is a heartbreaking subject, and is distracting me from my M&B heroine enjoying her Cinderella moment. I can ignore Miss Universe (its mostly ads) and keep an eye out for possible heroines. It's a romance writer thing, looking for beautiful faces that match the ones in your imagination and can be labelled heroine. It makes a book so much easier to write if you can stare at a photo and think, "what would you do if..."

So, I'm typing away and on the TV they've got to the point where the final five models answer random questions from the judges - possibly to avoid five declarations of wanting to bring about world peace! The questions are nothing special...
"Is it better to follow your heart or your head?" stuff like that.
But when it came to the turn of Miss USA and the crowd erupts into screaming and booing. I mean its a beauty contest for chrissake. Who heckles Miss Universe? And believe me, I am no fan of beauty pagents.

The girl handled it beautifully, not for a second would you think that thousands of people were jeering at her. I mean what is the world coming to? Next they'll be putting shows on TV where terminally ill people get to pick who get their organs after they die. Now that'd be classy.

Miss Japan won, by the way!

Don't Know What to Blog

Tired, very tired. Eight days, fourteen thousand words on my new MS. I can't keep it up. I haven't spoken to my husband in days, my children are suffering from neglect, the dog isn't speaking to me due to lack of walks, I need to connect with my family and stop hiding behind my laptop!

Have still managed to emerge to watch Big Brother though.

Best Intention - its going to be a book!

I'm rather chuffed to announce that I have signed a contract for Best Intention. It will be coming out both as an e-book and in print, and will be published by Samhain Publishing. The wonderful people who published Running Scared. I haven't had any dates confirmed yet, but I would expect Best Intention to be out as an e-book around May 2008 and in print about Christmas 2008 - yup this publishing thing is sloooow!

I'm excited to be jumping on the publishing-a-book merry-go-round again, relieved that I've signed a contract, Best Intention was A LOT of work, and coming to terms with being a multi-published author. I just never thought I'd be an author at all, and now here I am, with TWO books. I suppose, thinking about it, this is a theme in my life. I never thought I'd be a mother either and now here I am with TWO children. Hey, I never thought I'd be a millionaire and now her I am with... Okay so it doesn't work with everything.

I have eaten a celebrationary Twix, but that's pretty much it so far. Too busy writing At The Diplomat's Bidding. 10,000 words in five days - now if I can just keep it up I'll be done in a couple of weeks!

Taking on waaaay too much...

I promised myself I'd never do this. I'm a Capricorn you see, I set a goal and I work until it is done, this is what makes me happy. I need to achieve A, so I achieve A, then move on to B. As you can see from my word counter on the right, I've written 33,000 words of High Speed and its going well, really well.

But...

But I decided that regardless of financial constraints, I will be attending the Romance Writers conference this year. Up to this point it had been a bit iffy, especially when the (bloody sodding stupid) car died and cost more than a years-worth of nappies to fix. But now I am going for sure. Okay, so, part of the conference is the opportunity to meet and pitch to a Mills and Boon Editor, all the way from their London office. This is a huge opportunity, particularly as I've been cooking an idea for a M&B for the last few months. However, I put it aside and started High Speed. Now I need a completed M&B manuscript for the conference in August.

55,000 words.

And if its going to be worth reading I'm going to have to finish it by mid-July so I have a month or so to edit.

So, I hate it, I utterly hate it, but I'm going to have to abandon A (High Speed), and start B.

Its called At the Diplomat's Bidding, watch how I go on my word counter, and don't expect coherent blogging until late July!

Happy Now...

From my blog entry of the other day, a few of you may have noticed that I was just a touch miffed at the way Mother's Day turned out.

I'm sure you'll all be relieved to hear that hubby has gone above and beyond to redress the balance.

At 5am this morning I was startled awake by the sound of our car reversing out the drive. Ye Gods! Someone is stealing the car. It then occured to me that hubby was nowhere to be seen.

Fine, he couldn't sleep so he went to work early. Not the way I'd deal with insommnia, but whatever floats his boat!

However, twenty minutes later, the car returned. Just as he tried to sneak in the door I appeared demanding to know exactly what he thought he was doing.
"Buying flowers."
"What?"
"Flowers, for our anniversary."

He woke up at 4.30am, realised he didn't have anything for our anniversary, decided to sneak out to the twenty-four hour petrol station, found some white chrysanthmums, saw the newsagent fellow was sorting out his delivery run and talked him in to selling him an anniversary card, then tiptoed back home!

He's the best! I love him so much!

Its not that I'm ungrateful...

I suppose, in hindsight, my expectations were far too high. I mean I'd put in my requests; slippers and a dvd, a trip to the Mall had been made by hubby. Everything seemed to be in place.

The day began badly, at 5am, with all children present, accounted for, demanding porridge, and having howling tantrums when it didn't arrive pronto. There went my lie in with a cup of tea.

Checked my emails, didn't even get a digest from a chat loop - proving that I am completely unloved in cyberspace, and returned to be presented with two cards. Pink in pink envelopes. Very pretty. Duly signed by children in hubby's writing. Lovely.

But no presents.

Apparantly if I want slippers I can go to the Mall and buy them myself.

Exhausted and not in the prettiest of moods I retreated to the spare room (still no tea) where I lay for an hour listening to the kids screaming at each other. Marvellous.

Re-emerge, finally tea. Spend rest of morning dealing with shattered children who got up too early.

Wander outside. Neighbours yappy rat things immediatly starts yapping. Loudly tell neighbour exactly what I think of her yappy rat thing after three years of being polite about it.

Mother arrives for her lunch to find house in chaos and Hubby and I still in pyjamas.

Get dressed. Provide excellent lunch - all of which I bought the day before.

Hubby slopes off for four hour nap.

Spend quality time with mother and children - which is good, no really, I'm not being sarcastic, it was good. I do quite like them.

Hubby gets up in time to watch me cook dinner. Not the standing rib roast with all the trimming, no. Baked beans, scrambled egg and toast. mmmm.

Oh well. Maybe I'll be appreciated next year.

What I really want for Mother's Day is...

Okay, annoyed now. Its the ads, on telly. Mother's Day is upon us and so they're flogging their little hearts out. So far, according to the evil advertisers what we mother's simply cannot do without includes...

1. Neil Diamond's Greatest Hits
2. Crappy gold plated jewellery
3. Doris Day singing. I mean I thought Mother's Day was for thanking your mother not torturing her.
4. Red Rooster family feast - including Sara Lee Cholocate Bavarian - Oh be still my beating heart. Actually it probably would be with all that crap in my arteries.
5. Bunnings - yes just what every mother needs... power tools.
6. Myer - for those of us after up-market slippers and foot-spas, and
7. Target - for those of us after down-market slippers and foot-spas, nylon underwear and worrying home accessories

Marvellous... Can't wait to see what I get!

MINE. MINE. MINE.

I've got a confession to make. Yes, another one. I've been hiding in the pantry eating meringues. Nervously keeping an eye out for my children, and if one appears, swallowing quickly, dusting crumbs and pretending to be hunting for a can of apricots. "Now I knew I had one in here somewhere."

You see this is another of those things about motherhood that they don't tell you. Your ability to sit down and eat something, anything, in peace is gone. Possibly forever. Even carrot and celery sticks.

Highly tuned ears can hear the fridge door even over a screaming match about who cuddles teddy. Little beady eyes zoom in on food within milliseconds of it being unwrapped from cling wrap, or slid sneakily out of a paper bag. Then the pestering begins. Fine, you give them some too, but they gobble it, nothing is savored. So before you've even finished your second mouthful the little starlings are back for more, and more and... well you get the picture.

But not today.

Oh no.

I, with my dignity, was hiding in the pantry. They'd already eaten a gingerbread man each (the big ones with THREE Smarties for buttons), and I was damned if they were going to scoff my meringue as well. Especially as I hadn't got to eat it with my cup of (now cold) tea because they'd had an insatiable desire for vegemite toast which then got fed to the dog. Who, incidentally, got shouted at and sent outside. Poor Ella! Though she did get a schmakos and a cuddle to make up for it!

I love parenthood.

Ten Reasons My Mum's Ace!

My Mum's birthday is the 8 May. Cunningly timed to coincide with Mother's Day, so we don't have to buy two presents. That's how Ace my mum is!

As a Happy Birthday to her I've come up with ten reasons she's wonderful. (No not in place of a real present, I promise!)

1. I'm sick, kids sick, mum's there. AND she has the energy to sit through a three hour Opera after a day of fractious children (including me).
   
2. She likes, no enjoys, lengthy descriptions of situations involving substances her grandchildren produced all by themselves (and I'm not talking playdough here).
3. She totally understands that if I am disagreeing with my husband, then I am completely in the right and he has no idea what I am talking about.
4. She loves me more that either of my sisters. Not that she's ever actually told me that, but I just know its true. I mean how could she possibly not?
   
5. She is totally and utterly 100% behind whatever scheme I've come up with this time.
6. She never ever says "I told you so."
7. So does a convincing job of liking all my husbands/boyfriends. Well so far anyway.
   
8. She whole-heartedly believes I can be anything I want to be, including, model, ballerina, astronaut, mother of three, Nobel prize winner, train driver... Actually, I've always had a bit of a hankering to be a truck driver, even though I need assistance from passers-by to reverse park the 4-wheel drive.
   
9. She can drive a truck, and a tractor, and a ride on lawn-mower, and a Quad-bike...
10. She isn't scared of anything. Well except for spiders. But I mean, who can blame her for that. All those hairy legs, all those staring eyes, eeeew.
    

Samhain Spring Showers Contest

A copy of Running Scared is up for grabs over a Coffee Time Romance. Just follow the link, http://www.coffeetimeromance.com/board/showthread.php?t=1165, read the excerpt, leave a comment and you'll be in the running for a swag of goodies.

Further to Men's Fashion

I would like to point out to all of those who were reduced to helpless laughter over the thought of my rather tall husband wearing a pale lemon jacket with matching shorts and carrying a yellow skateboard when venturing out of the house in search of ladies (long long before he met me), that it could have been a lot lot worse.He could have been wearing yellow lego on his head. This is from fashion week I might add.

WHAM

My High Speed hero is wandering around in his underpants, and he's the sort of guy who can wander around in his underpants. So I was musing as to what outfits he possibly couldn't carry off.

I spent a fairly painful ten minutes going back over outfits that we wore in the 80s. A train of thought that may have been triggered by hubby's admission that he was very into looking like Depeche Mode at that stage.

But what really popped out of my past was the WHAM/Choose Life t-shirt phase. Oh shudder. I must have been fifteen or maybe a bit younger (or a lot younger, ahem!), and had just discovered trends. Never doing anything by halves, I somehow managed to talk my mother into procuring enormous Choose Life t-shirt (my sister got the WHAM one), and I proceeded to live in it for the next six months. Being of poor quality, it went see-through and parted at the seams after all that washing and one day dissapeared (ie, Mum tossed it in the bin when I wasn't looking).

How I loved that t-shirt. How it made me feel trendy, hip, with-it. A groovy gal, if you will. How it makes me shudder now. How I want to break into my parents home, scour the photo albums and remove the evidence. How embarrassing!

sigh!

Writers Block.

Ouch, I've got writers block, and it really, really hurts. It's not something that I normally have a problem with. I'm a Capricorn you see. Generally I set myself a goal, say five hundred words in an evening, and happily tap away until I get there. (We Capricorns are very goal oriented, which combined with our stubborness means we tend to get what we want or go mad trying).


But today I'm not sure where my story goes next, and can go no further until I decide. Do my hero and heroine have a fight and end up kissing, skip the fight and end up kissing, have a fight and he storms off, shake hands and make significant eye contact? Oh I don't know.

Speaking of significant eye contact, we went on a tour of the local fire-station today, and Bugalugs and I were given a private tour by a very dishy fireman. Hubby, who was stuck outside with a cranky and tearful Beanie-baby was not impressed! It was very interesting actually, they had their own gym and bedrooms and widescreen TV, but no firemans pole, they have stairs instead! I think my next hero is going to be a fireman, then I can go back and ask lots more questions!!

Anyway, back to my most recent dilemma.

So hero and heroine are standing on the end of a jetty. He's been smoking a cigarette and she's telling him he is being juvenile and rebelling against his mother. Not surprisingly he doesn't appreciate this (mostly because its true), so a fight is the next logical move, but they've spent a lot of the book so far arguing, and really they can't continue if lurve is going to blossom. They can't kiss becuase it'd be all cigaretty and gross. They can't get down to some hot, nekkid, jetty-love because Jenny Crusie already went there in Welcome to Temptation. So what next?


AH HA! I have it. Rotten boards, jetty collapses, somebody falls in! Broad scope for removal of clothes and scenes involving towels and little else! Hurrah!


You guys have all the answers!

22,891 / 80,000 (27.0%)

High Speed

25% there! High Speed is coming along very nicely.

This is my heroine. Crystal, or Chris to most people. She has one burning desire, to be a Formula One driver, and she is prepared to do anything to get it.

And this is my confused and beleagured hero. Rob Dryden. Former CEO of a lingerie company, he gives up his career to come home and save the floundering family toy company. Now he spends his days surrounded by children, and living in the family mansion, with his mother.

He'd always thought his father's passion for Formula One racing a trifle uncharacteristic. But now he understands exactly why his father so loved the testosterone fuelled sport. Some days he's afraid of drowning in femininity, but screaming engines and the smell of petrol in the air always helps to set the balance right. That is until he meets the team's new driver. Her name is Chris, and she's a girl.

20,670 / 80,000 (25.8%)

I saw an Owl.

In between showers of rain, Ella and I had a quick walk. There was a storm over at Avalon and the sky was lit up with the most amazing light-show. Apart from the distant rumble of thunder it was quiet, not a car or person to be seen.

Pottering along, thinking up spectacular car crashes for Chapter 5 of High Speed, I glanced upward and there, peering down at me was an Owl. Now in my neck of the woods Owls are extremely rare, so I was quite thrilled. However, I once had an Irish lecturer who was scared to death of Owls, she reckoned they were the harbringers of doom. Though I have to add that she was unreasonably proud of the fact that more Irish women go mad than any other group in the world, so perhaps that might be telling me something!

Anyhoo, I saw an Owl, doom has not, as yet, eventuated. Though if it does, you shall all be the first to know!

High Speed

18,108 / 80,000 (21.0%)

Oh heaven!

If it were not for you
It seems that every day would be
A life unfulfilled.
Winter then forever and no smile of spring.

Yes, you guessed right!

BIG BROTHER IS BACK!

Life complete. Might even be able to give up cookie-dough ice cream.

High Speed

Writing again...

17,347 / 80,000 (20.0%)

Myspace

I've ventured into myspace. I hadn't really investigated exactly what myspace was. As far as I could tell it was the domain of teenage American girls and a rich hunting ground for internet predators.

How wrong I was.

For me it is a good tool to network with other writers, and a few readers. Agents, reviewers, publishers, they all have spots in myspace. I had no idea it was so vast. I'm diving right into the Mum&bubs groups, dispensing stories of green mucous and sleepless nights with those who truly appreciate them (instead of those who are bored rigid by my endless ramblings! Sorry all my friends without kids!!).

So far I have twelve friends. Twelve! Who'd have thought I was so popular!

http://www.myspace.com/caitlynnicholas

Am I Really Making Any Difference At All?

"It's not the Howard Government's fault in itself, I mean Mr Howard can't make it rain, I understand that," [Mr Rudd] said.

Ah, such wise words from the leader of the opposition.

Still, it is devastaing news that one of the largest rivers in Australia has run dry. They said they take 75% of the water from it every year. 75%. Well, it's not surprising that it ran dry. Cotton is farmed around the Murray, a crop that is one of the most water hungry known to man. WHY? why are they allowed to do it? Surely the Australian economy will not collapse if they forbid cotton farming on the Murray?

It's all so overwhelming this climate change stuff. Most of the time I sadly wonder what sort of world we shall be leaving to my children and their children. But I also get angry. It seems to me that there is a huge amount of pressure being put on everyday people to save water, be environmental, save energy, that sort of thing.

But, for example, they slip into their reports the fact that households only make up 10% of total energy consumed. Its not that I feel there should be less pressure on households to be frugal with natural resources, its just that I want to know what industry is doing to conserve the 90% of energy they are consuming. Maybe stuff is being done. But I know I'd feel so much more secure if we could see some evidence of the changes they are making.

sigh.

Banished from the Bedroom

Anyone who reads this blog regularly may have noticed that I get sick a lot. The kids bring something that involves sore throats and endless runny noses home, and after a week of them being up in the night and rushing off to the doctor, and sometimes the hospital, I go down like a ton of bricks.

It happened again. But this time I did things differently.

Instead of keeping on going (last time I was so ill I could barely stand up, but there I was, cooking dinner) I gave up. Removed myself from the family, down to the spare room, set myself up with eleven Mills&Boon's, and re arranged the furniture so I could see the TV, and there I have stayed. We've had take-away five times in the last ten days. But I don't care. The cleaners were due and you couldn't see the floor for toys, so instead of rushing about tidying up, I cancelled them. The cats ran out of cat food, they are temporarily eating dog food. Do. Not. Care.

And it's worked.

Hubby isn't sure who this reasonable, coherent, well-rested person is, but he kind of likes her and thinks he vaguely remembers her from when they first met. The kids have chilled out, thrilled to have a mum who is calm, enthusiastic and willing to spend an hour making playdough pizza, and so on. I just wish I'd figured this out earlier.

You have to look after yourself before you look after everyone else.