to sunny Flordia for the next 10 days!

So I think anyone who reads this blog with any sort of regularity knows that I’m basically a half step away from agoraphobia - I really don’t like leaving home/going outside. So leaving home for 10 days is a big step for me!

And last night, of course I started coming up with weird “what if” scenerios. Like:

What if my plane crashes over the everglades (hello, I’m going to Florida) and I don’t die but instead I get eaten by aligators?

The hubster placated me with a story about how I could become queen of the aligators and have an aligator tooth crown and ride on the backs of aligators. If you think about it, his scenerio is really no more bizarre than mine.

Then I came up with:

What if we go to the beach and a shark sees me and says, “boy, that chick can feed us for months” (I don’t look very good in a bathing suit) and they eat me.

This one was more easily countered by the hubster and the fact that I don’t go more than waist deep in the ocean.

Still…there are just so many things that can happen in the big, evil world.

I much prefer home, but I’m still going to have a kick ass vacation!

So here’s the thing about me. If I look outside when it’s sunny, I can get sunburned. This is not good for someone who’s about to spend the next week and a half in Florida!

So, I have my tubes and sticks and bottles of sunscreen all ready to go. I won’t wear anything less than an SPF 30, but here’s the other thing about my unnaturally pale skin - if I have any slightest sunblock on (even SPF 2) I will not get a spot of sun. Nothing=burn, A little bit=I might as well stay inside.

Another painful thing about me though is that I have never ever in my entire life managed to NOT miss a spot while I’m putting on the sunscreen. Yes, I am the queen of having bizarre-o sunburn lines.

So, sun worries aside, I’m just about ready to head off to Florida! I’ve got my lame-o hat and cool sunglasses (I’m hoping they balance each other out). Thanks to this weekends shopping trip I’ve got plenty of shorts and dug through my closet to find tank tops.

I’m ready to spend the next 10 days having fun in the sun! But…couldn’t it be just a bit cooler out?

But as I head off on vacation (I’ll be taking my laptop and I assume my friend has internet access - otherwise I don’t know if I can be her friend anymore - so I’ll be around the interweb) I ask this question: What’s the one thing that you usually forget when you go on vacation?

is at SEx. With plenty of eye candy.

Hope everyone who has a day off if having a great one!

I skipped posting an author interview last week because I was sick, but we’ll get back to it now. This weeks author? Liquid Silver Book author Tracy Sharp. Tracy’s book Repo Chick Blues just received a gold star from JERR, and it has an absolutely kick ass cover!

Onto Tracy’s interview:

Can you roll your tongue? Touch your tongue to your nose? Do any other bizarre tricks with your body?

I can roll my tongue and lift one eyebrow, but any other tricks I can do are not for public consumption!

If you were stuck in the dark with no flashlight( and couldn’t have sex) what would you do?

Talk and sing to myself, but then I do that in the light, too.

Stealing from James Lipton (Inside the Actors Studio), what’s your favorite word? Your least favorite?

I think my favorite word is “serendipity” and my least favorite word is “no”, LOL!

Do you play an instrument? Well? What and for how long?

I play a mean set of spoons. For how long? Until somebody takes them away from me, which usually within about a minute.

If you could win an Olympic medal what sport would it be in?

Snowboarding! So cool!

If you were a tree, what kind would you be? What kind of flower?

If I were a tree? Hmm. I think I’d be a Blue Spruce, because they are sturdy and I love that color of blue. Flower? Daisy. They’re so cheerful and resilient.

Do you believe in the paranormal? Have you ever had any first hand experience?

I do believe in the paranormal. I’ve had premonitions, and have had experiences with ghosts.

If you were a crayon, what color would you be?

Purple! A bright, bold color.

What’s your favorite flavor of ice cream?

Mint chocolate icecream.

If you could be any animal, what would it be?

A wild horse. Free and happy.

If you were a super hero what would your power be? What would you do with it?

I’d like to be an empath, read people’s thoughts and feelings and use my powers to do only good *grin*

Check out Repo Chick Blues here.

I have no pants. Well, I mean I suppose I dod have pants, but only a few pair, and even fewer pairs that I actually like.

See, I’m a bit on the short, round side. It’s impossible to find pants. Along with being short and round (I can’t even worry about length anymore) I have a relitively high waist. So, pants that are advertized as “at waist” are really below my waist, “low rise” pants are “Emma tugs at her pants all day to make sure they stay up” and “ultra low rise” pants are “Emma’s ass is hanging out.”

Well, with the style being “ultra low rise,” it makes it even harder to find pants, damn it!!

Factor in the fact that I’m super cheap and that means Emma has no pants.

So today’s mission, which I have been forced to accept is to go out and find pants. And this mission must succeed. I leave for Florida on Wednesday and I don’t think I want to walk around nekked. That would not be a pretty sight.

So today I go in search of summer pants! Wish me luck!

>

So I am starting to feel human again - well, aside from the fact that occasionally I feel like the monster from Alien when she starts dripping goo from the ceiling. But I’m still taking it easy. Yesterday was my first day back on the computer and I even managed to get a little bit of writing done.

Anyway, yesterday, as I was sitting on the couch, laptop on my lap, tv playing something just for some noise in the background, I looked out my window to see a couple of firemen carrying a big hose across the lawn of the next courtyard over (I live in a big apartment complex and the buildings are arranged in a way that there’s lots of courtyard space, though I can only see the back of one of the buildings that forms the courtyard in question).

Naturally, my curiousity was peaked so I got up and went out to the deck (is it still called a deck if it’s made out of concrete?). I could here fire engines and a few minutes later, no less than a dozen firemen, in full gear, passed by. Hmmm….

Now, were I not sick I realized I probably would have run outside to see what was going on - there were some other gawkers. I hated myself for thinking that.

But then I thought, well, someday it might come in useful for research.

Is that a lame crock or what? What kind of crazy excuse is that? Ugh! But, in my defense, they could have looked like this…

Also, does anyone know a good way to disinfect a laptop? I mean get it un-germy, nothing more technical than that.

Anyone have any fun plans for the weekend? I’m just going to try to get better myself.

Ugh. Again.

This cold/flu/bronchitis thing I’ve got has TOTALLY knocked me on my tush. I’m FINALLY starting to feel slightly back to normal. Though I do still have a wicked cough that’s preventing me from doing a lot of stuff.

I’ve read 10 books since Sunday afternoon!! Great but obviously I haven’t gotten any work done. I’m going to try to remedy that today, but if that doesn’t work, I’ve got Dark Lover on standby (yes, I know, I’m behind the times).

In other news, I’ve been bad on the blogging front the past few days. I haven’t ready ANY. I’ve noticed some new visitors and some new links to me coming through, so just know that I appreciate it and I will be returning the favor shortly.

I’ve been avoiding the laptop so I don’t get it all germy.

Lastly, I think I’ve watched maybe 15 minutes of American Idol in my lifetime, but I did manage to catch the last 5 minutes or so last night and all I have to say is : What in the hell were you thinking America?

I’m pretty sure I have bronchitis. :(

But I suppose I should get back to blogging. I’ll tell you about BEA even though I think it sucked since I got sick there! But anyway…

I got there early on Friday morning with the rest of the volunteers. You pretty much need a detailed map to get around the Washington Convention Center, but eventually I found where I needed to be.

I was volunteering for the General Autographing. So, there’s zillions of booths around the convention center (two floors of it) and a lot of the booths have stuff going on (signings and such) but then during the 3 days of BEA, about 500 authors pass through the General Autographing area. It’s 32 lines for 32 authors signing at any one time.

Each author is there for a half or one hour signing books. For some of the bigger authors (Dave Barry & Ridley Pearson, Edward Kennedy, etc) you need tickets (which are free but they start giving them out at 6am and they go quickly). My job was to watch over the lines and take tickets for the ones that needed it.

Most of the people attending the signings (so the people I saw) were booksellers or librarians, though the occasional author or publisher did pass through.

The first hour I was there I took tickets for the Edward Kennedy signing (he was there with his dogs - Splash and Sunny). Stephen Baldwin was signing (with a weird headband and giant pinky ring), as was Wink Martindale (who looks EXACTLY like he looks on TV).

Walking down the hallway I passed Derek Smalls (from Spinal Tap - real name Harry Shearer)!!

And now lets talk about free books. They’re flowing like crazy at BEA. As I was sick and knew I was going to have to carry everything home on the metro, I went light on the free books, only coming home with a bag full each day (yes, that was light, trust me!) A lot of the books I picked up were ones that looked intriguing but I knew I’d never actually pay $$ for - example - a Prince William Fanfiction!

Sunday, I didn’t work, but managed to pull myself out of bed and head back to the convention center to walk the floor.

It was pretty impressive. As a romance writer though, I was amazed at the lack of romance books advertised. We all know the facts, 50% of mass market fiction books sold are romances - well lets just say romance was NOT 50% of BEA (to be fair, most pubs were focusing on hardback books).

I did have a breif conversation with Diane Whiteside about it at the RWA booth (finally, my own people!) and she said that romance was where the money was so it didn’t really matter what other people thought!

So, there’s my BEA wrap up. It was interesting to talk to a lot of booksellers and librarians and stuff and I met quite a few VERY nice people.

at Torrid Temptations and SEx.

I’m still…

Will hopefully be back to blogging later in the week with a round up of BEA and other stuff. In the mean time, if you need your Emma fix, Tempting Fate releases TODAY from Liquid Silver Books!! (I’m not sure what time their new releases go up so you may have to keep checking back!)