A few people in my online chapter are talking about burnout.

Luckily for them, they’re getting back into the swing of things after being burnt out. Unfortunately for me, they’ve introduced me to a new problem. (Yes, I’m a bit of a hypochondriac, what of it?)

I’m afraid I’m pretty darn close to suffering from burnout. And though this doesn’t effect the burnout fairy one bit, I don’t have time for burnout.

But I think I deserve to be burnt:

November 2005: A Walk on the Wild Side (WCPT)
Jan 2006: Baby, It’s Cold Outside, part of Winter Wishes (WCPT)
Feb 2006: One Hout Hour (Venus)
March 2006: Little Red (WCPT)
April 2006: Spring Break Fling, part of Spring Flings (WCPT)
May/June 2006: Futuristic for Venus (assuming they buy it), This would be the 4 month window LSB usually takes to have books out.

Oct 2006: Unnamed story in Fall Fires.

In all of this, I also have one story currently under consideration at Venus, 1 at WCPT and 3 at Hq.

Add to that the futuristic for VP isn’t actually finished, the LSB story needs 2 sequels to complete the trilogy, the VP story under consideration has a sequel I’d like to write, and 2 of the stories under consideration at Hq aren’t actually finished.

Can I please be burned out and take some time off?

*Sigh* Maybe after the writing marathon I’m hosting for the next two weeks.

Have you ever been burned out? What did you do to get over it? How do you combat it in the first place?

Title: Jane Millionaire

Author: Janice Lynn

Year published: 2005

Why did you get this book? It was the American Title winner and I wanted to see how that all worked out, plus I sat next to Janice on the plane coming back from RWA Nationals in Reno.

Did you like the cover? Yes, love the cover.

Did you enjoy the book? At first I thought it was going to be a struggle for me to finish the book. I read it over several days and that’s very rare for me. Usually I have to finish a book in one sitting. But once I actually got into the book - about 1/3 of the way through I really enjoyed it and read the rest in one sitting.

I’m not really a fan of reality television so I’m probably not the ideal audience for the book. My guess is if you like The Bachelor et al, you’ll enjoy this book. It’s much better than many other books I’ve read with a reality show theme.

It’s got lots of twists and turns (sometimes seemingly random) like a reality TV show so I thought that was interesting.

Was the author new to you & would you read her again? Obviously new to me (new to everyone) and I’d definately read her again.

Are you keeping or passing on? Definately keeping for now. Is it a book I’d move with me (that’s how I rate REAL keepers)? I don’t know that I’d ever really want to revisit the realitiy TV aspect but I liked the characters. I think it’d be close to the top of the “move” list after the Keepers are boxed up.

Anything else? I’ve never experienced this before, but especially at the beginning (that first third) the formatting was really bothering me. There wasn’t enough white space on the page or something. And reading through paragraphs of text I kept coming across places where I though there should have been a paragraph break.

I think that was part of the reason the first part was hard for me to get through. I think even just flipping through the book you can tell that later on there’s more white space later in the book.

Weird, huh?

If finished my first book for Angie’s TBR challenge! I’ll be reviewing Jane Millionaire in the next few days.

This Thursday is our annual planning meeting for my local RWA chapter. Since I’m the co-Program Director that means that I have to make sense of all of the notes I’ve made myself regarding speakers and topics. That’s taking more time then I would have thought.

Damn my lacking organizational skills.

Also, next week starts the Jump Start Jam (which I am hosting) at RWAOL. It’s a two week writing marathon so that should get me in gear to finish my futuristic.

And with a little luck the I’ll be able to plot the third fate story during week to of the JSJ.

My futuristic is totally not going in the direction I’d intended it to so I’m not really sure what’s going to happen there. Plus, I’ve been writing total crap the past few weeks. I mean it really sucks. I wouldn’t be too surprised to find the words “pebbled nubbins” somewhere in that drivel, that’s how bad it’s been.

But I continue to move forward so that’s something. This is the first book I’m writing with an actual real deadline. And even though my self-imposed deadline is way before the real deadline, and I am on schedule to reach that one, it’s still a different writing experience.

So, what’s up with you?

My super awesome CP Kendra’s first full length book came out on Sunday.

What’s worse than being dead? For Ancient Aztec Warrior, Cenyaolt, it’s being cursed.
Once an Aztec Prince, now a servant to the lord of the underworld, Cenyaolt wants nothing more than to complete his ninth level of hell and rid himself of his father’s 500 year-old vendetta. But when the gods conspire to return him to Earth for the final task– the one that will end his torment–he lands straight in the arms of an ivory-skinned goddess. Will he be able to give up eternal peace for love?

Will she continue denying her abilities even if they’ll stop five hundred years of suffering?

It’s available now from Triskellion. Click on the pic below to be taken directly there.

I’ve resisted the sudoku craze for a long time now. The hubster’s been playing pretty regularly for several months now. For those of you that don’t know the game sudoku, it’s a logic game where you have a square 9 down and 9 across and you have to fit the numbers in only using them once per row/column and 3×3 block.

Nah, not me, I said. I’ll stick to the crossword puzzle.

But then I got him a book of sudoku puzzles for Xmas. He turned right to the “Challenging section” and easily solved one. He then declared the book too easy for him.

Anyway, this book sat unused, starting at me until the other day I picked it up just to see if I had the patience to do one.

Damn it.

I didn’t have the patience to do one. I had the patience to do a dozen!

What is it about this stupid ass game that makes people obsessed? Any other players out there? I haven’t made it past “easy” (already mastering “very easy”). While you answer my question I’ll just play one more game…

Got my contract and now I can tell you - I sold a novella to Liquid Silver Books!

Now, I know that doesn’t sound like much, but it’s the first of a trilogy so hopefully they’ll want the other two also (you know, once I edit one and write the other).

The soty is called Tempting Fate and it’s the first in a series about the Moirai sisters (aka The Three Fates).

This is Chloe’s (Clothos’s) Story. Here’s a bit of a blurb to wet your appetite. It’s the blurb I used in my query and it’s actually not very good so I’m surprised it garnered any interest at all.

Clothos Moirai, Chloe, is tired of spending all her time on Mount
Olympus. She’s ready for a vacation to the one place she’s never
been. Earth.

But when Chloe shows up at the Inn he’s running, they’ll both find
that Tempting Fate has never been so good.

They say to expect about four months for publication so I’m looking at May-ish I’d guess.

It’s Friday the 13th so I figure I’m entitled.

Actually, I’m delcaring (it’s my blog, I can declare as much as I want) it “positive blogging” Friday the 13th! So, if you have yet to blog today, make it a happy one. No ranting allowed, we’re in enough trouble already with it being Friday the 13th. And it’s scary foggy in my world today.

Anyway, on to the goodness.

The other day I started getting a bunch of emails from my RWA chapter friends congratulating me for being #1 on WCP’s bestseller list. I was confused as I wasn’t on the Torrid bestseller list and wouldn’t be on the regular WCP list.

Then I found out they were talking about Fictionwise. I’m the Number 1 Whiskey Creek Bestseller for the last 20 days (and I don’t think I’ve even been on there that long)!

I have no idea what that means, but it sounds exciting.

AND, I’m the #9 Bestseller in the Fictionwise Erotica category. We’ll ignore the fact that it’s an Erotic ROMANCE, I’m freaking #9. Out of…a lot! I’m enough of a number success whore to take being in the wrong catagory if it gets me in the top 10.

I’m a little late blogging this morning.

Why?

I got up late?

Why?

My damn next door neighbor had his bass thumping until freaking 4:45 in the morning!?!?! How do I know this? Yeah, I was up.

Why?

‘Cause of the damn thumping.

I can put up with it during the day. My brain works fast enough that I can drown it out even though sometimes he turns it up loud enough to shake my desk (I’m pretty sure his stereo shares a wall with my office). He works from 2-10 so if I move my laptop to the couch with me until 1:30 I don’t have so many problems.

But 4:45?!?!

And to further exacerbate the problem both my husband and I hate confrontation. Yes, we’re the kind of people that will lay in bed stewing rather than actually knock on the guys door and ask him to turn down the bass (oh, and I hear no music, it’s just the thumping). The Hubster started to get up at about 3 last night to go knock on the door but as soon as he opened the door the thumping stopped.

It started again about 5 minutes later.

So, today, after I’m sure he’s gone at 2:00 I’m going to slip a nice note under the door and hope that he doesn’t retaliate by turning up the bass even more.

After that, it’s war.

I’ve been feeling a little - meh - the past few days.

I don’t know if it’s that I’m finally coming down from the holiday high or something else but I just don’t feel - right.

My daily lists are filled with things to do but looking at my calendar, it’s strangely empty. Maybe that’s part of the problem. There are tons of things I should do but nothing that absolutely has to be done urgently.

I have no deadlines except for self imposed ones and really the next thing on my calendar that actually involves leaving the house is next Thursday.

Maybe that’s my problem. I do love being a hermit, but it’s much more fun when I’m actually avoiding things, not when there’s actually nothing to do.

Unfortunatly it’s looking rather rainy today so I can’t even go take a walk.

Oh well, with a little bit of luck, and not too much procrastination, I should get a good deal of writing done.

Oh, and my “secret” is that I got offered a contract for another story, BUT I’m not going to say what and who until I have the contract in my hot little hands.

Off to find some lunch now…

Sorry, still no official good news to share (and beleive me I’m quite anxious to share).

Anyway, because of my hypothetical good news, I took a good hard look at one of my stories last night. This story has worried me since the beginning because I think there’s too much emotion.

Or at least too much emotion for what I’m writing. Does that make any sense at all?

See, my heroine is a Fate so part of her job is to, well, cut the strands of life. She basically kills people. BUT, a good chunk of them go onto a better place - she knows this yet she still struggles with it.

Enter Mr. Hero. His daughter died.

I think you can see my problem now. I just don’t know if I should be dealing with the death of a child, I know it pushes a lot of peoples “No Way” buttons. But since it is a paranormal, I don’t know if I get a little bit of wiggle room or not.

The whole “daughter” issue runs kind of parallel to my story, purposely, because I don’t want to have to go into those emotions.

But then I’m not sure if I’m kind of shafting…something, by ignoring it.

I don’t know, what are you’re feelings? Do I get a little bit of room to move since it’s a paranormal?

You know me, I write romance, I gaurentee a happy ending!