Thank You for Being a Friend (and the jeans fit)

Spent the day feeling like a crummy writer and hopeless and worthless and all those "-less" adjectives. Thought about hanging up my laptop. Thought about switching hobbies to ... something else. Maybe housework or weed pulling. (Okay. That's a lie.)

THEN...

I was scrolling through my blog roll and came across Joyce DiPastena's September Blog hop and noticed she was giving away a copy of my book Delicious Conversation as a prize and she had scores of entries of ladies *wishing* to win that book. They said things in their entries like, "Who wouldn't want to read about romance and chocolate." Et cetera.

And someone called Judy was the winner. Congratulations, Judy! I hope you enjoy the story!

And suddenly the clouds parted and a ray of sunshine shone through.

There are the ups and downs of writing and getting published and being a creative person. (Not that I'd necessarily ever describe myself that way.) It's probably pretty universal to get bummed when in the querying process. Rejection--not that great for the old ego, right? Seriously, I feel really lucky and blessed to have friends who happen to support me just when I find myself getting down.

Now, to return the compliment, I'd be ungrateful if I didn't give a little plug for my friend Joyce's writing. She has a style all her own, in that she writes Medieval Romance. She's a scholar, and the research that goes into her books is exhaustive and you can just feel the love she has for the period and the characters pulsating off the pages she writes. She includes a bibliography at the end of each book of the sources she researched for the story, and the romance is sweet but still compelling. Love it.

Joyce, thank you. You brought me back from the bummers.

I think I'll go have a gummy Vitamin D berry to celebrate. (Since I'm STILL curbing the sugar, if you don't count the three pieces of cinnamon coffee cake I downed yesterday at the family get together. Family get togethers are my nemesis. But my skinny jeans fit. No, they don't get tapered at the ankle, I am talking the JEANS that fit when my weight is DOWN. So, yeah. Back to the gummies!) And if the writing success (or lack thereof) isn't something to smile about, the skinny jeans are.

Gummies (and What to Ask an Agent)

Aren't gummies the best? It must have all started with Gummy Bears. I remember back in the day at West Side Junior High School when the little store across the street in Dayton had treats we could leave campus and go buy at lunch, if we pooled our money Jamie and I could sometimes afford a bag of the Haribo Gummy Bears from Germany. The only better thing that came out of Germany was Toblerone, and that might have been from Switzerland.

The fact that we were taking German at the time from the wonderful Mrs. Durrant made the Haribo Gummy Bears even more perfect. How could two girls from a tiny village in Idaho have been more cosmopolitan?

Thank you, Haribo.

When I did finally go to Germany about 7 years later, you'd better believe I found myself some Haribo Gummy Bears.

Now they sell them at WalMart, here in my new small town not in Idaho.

They still make me feel so cosmopolitan. So chic. So traveled.
Kids and Grown-Ups Love it So

As do the gummy Vitamin D (raspberry shape) "pills" I take. A spoonful of gummy helps the medicine go down. My doctor mentioned he takes 14000 milligrams at a time of Vitamin D. I don't know if it was an off-hand comment, but I suspect he likes gummies.

So do I.

In the meantime, I'm thinking about getting WAY outside my comfort zone and shopping my MS to an agent. Sometime soon. It will be like letting a cat out of the bag. Once it's out, you can't put it back in. I like the story, and I think everyone in the world will want to read it, and for sure it's going to become a summer Hollywood blockbuster, so I probably might as well get going on it; but it's not exciting to have to venture into the unknown. Well, I guess it's exciting, but not always in a good way.

In my online digging, I came across an excellent post VERY USEFUL FOR ANYONE WHO IS THINKING ABOUT SEEKING REPRESENTATION. It's from literary agent Rachelle Gardner, and she posts about QUESTIONS TO ASK AN AGENT before you sign any contract.

I think I'm going to print this out and keep it by my phone for when (not if) I get "the call."

Sometime I'll blog about the time I got "the call" for my screenplay. Possibly not my most graceful 15 minutes. Dorkarella.

In the meantime, I'll be researching about whether it's possible to overdose on Vitamin D. And doing a little cuisine travel to Deutchland.