MMH word count

It’s snowing today in Oklahoma. Right now it’s coming down pretty hard. Not the slow, float to the ground with beautiful swirls kind of snow but the blowing at an angle getting to the ground as fast as it can kind.

To be truthful, I like either kind. It probably stems from when I was a kid. My mom always enjoyed snow. She’d make hot chocolate and snow ice cream every time it snowed.  She’d go out with us and play for as long as we wanted, helping us make snowmen or pulling us on our sled.

When we got cold, she’d warm us up. And when we were ready to go out again, she’d be right there with us. Never did she complain about the messes we made.

Of course, by the time we got to #4, she wasn’t spending as much time running out to play as she did when I was an only child, but even with four or five kids to wipe up after, she didn’t fuss.

My dog, however, doesn’t like the snow. Molly is a fair weather dog. If it’s wet or snowing, she wants to stay inside. For everything. Doesn’t want her feet or her backside getting wet. And yelling Quit it! Quit it! Quit it! Quit it! as fast as we can get the words out of our mouths doesn’t get her to stop yakking or pooping where ever she wants.   

Guess who get to wipe up after her? *sigh*

Any ideas on how to teach a dog to love inclement weather?

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Two Contracts

SOLD!

I’m hallelujah happy dancing!!! 

I got contracts on two of my manuscripts yesterday from The Wild Rose Press, and I’m so excited, I’m about to burst!

Blind Sight and Gypsy are going to have a life of their own! Woot! Woot!

If you’d like, you can read about both of them on my website www.susanshay.net

The manuscripts are finished and ready to start the editing process. The editor is Michelle Lewis, and I’m really looking forward to working with her. I know she believes in an HEA ending because she’s getting married at the end of next month.

Congratulations, Michelle!

My last book, To School a Cowboy, was edited by Rhonda Pender, the company’s owner. Not a little daunting for a first time author <G> but she was wonderful. I couldn’t have asked for an easier woman to work with.

BF Marilyn Pappano read the contract for me (after signing 60 some of them herself over the years, I thought she’d know what to watch out for)  and she said it looked good to her. (Yay!)

Today I’m signing and mailing the puppies back to the company.

Then the work begins, and that will slow down the work on MMH. *sigh* I’m still hoping to finish by the end of March. Keep your fingers crossed for me.

MMH word count ticker:

My ticker!

Look what I got for joining the writing challenge my writers’ group is sponsoring! Is that cool or what? I’m so excited I could just dance. YAAAY!

Now I get to go write my pages for the day. I know. I’m a lucky kid, aren’t I?  

How to download a picture on wordpress

Okay, this is especially for bf marilyn) 

I go down to the browse thingy (the one in gray next to the empty box, which is next to FILE)  and click on it.  If you click on the BROWSE in the blue box next o browse all and upload, you go to that weird place.

That puts the pic where you see the one of M & M girls.

To add another one, I have to publish the first, then go in to edit for another one.

To put it where I want, I click on the picture, then go to edit, cut. Then scroll down where I want it and click paste.

Truth or Fiction?

These are from my friend Mike. I don’t know who sent them to him, but I believe someone did. I don’t think he’s quite old enough to have lived in the 1500’s, but you never know.   

The next time you are washing your hands and complain
because the water temperature isn’t just how you like it, think about how
things used to be. Here are some facts about the 1500’s: 
 
                These are interesting… 
 
                Most people got married in June because they took their
yearly bath in May, and still smelled pretty good by June. However, they
were starting to smell, so brides carried a bouquet of flowers to hide the
body odor. Hence the custom today of carrying a bouquet when getting
married. 
 
                 Baths consisted of a big tub filled with hot water. The
man of the house had the privilege of the nice clean water, then all the
other sons and men, then the women and finally the children. Last of all the
babies. By then the water was so dirty you could actually lose someone in
it. Hence the saying, Don’t throw the baby out with the Bath water.. 
 
                 Houses had thatched roofs-thick straw-piled high, with no
wood underneath. It was the only place for animals to get warm, so all the
cats and other small animals (mice, bugs) lived in the roof. When it rained
it became slippery and sometimes the animals would slip and fall off the
roof. Hence the saying It’s raining cats and dogs. 
 
                 There was nothing to stop things from falling into the
house. This posed a real problem in the bedroom where bugs and other
droppings could mess up your nice clean bed. Hence, a bed with big posts and
a sheet hung over the top afforded some protection. That’s how canopy beds
came into existence. 
 
                 The floor was dirt. Only the wealthy had something other
than dirt. Hence the saying, Dirt poor. The wealthy had slate floors that
would get slippery in the winter when wet, so they spread thresh (straw) on
floor to help keep their footing. As the winter wore on, they added more
thresh until, when you opened the door, it would all start slipping outside.
A piece of wood was placed in the entrance way. Hence the saying a thresh
hold. 
 
               (Getting quite an education, aren’t you?)
 
             In those old days, they cooked in the kitchen with a big
kettle that always hung over the fire. Every day they lit the fire and added
things to the pot. They ate mostly vegetables and did not get much meat.
They would eat the stew for dinner, leaving leftovers in the pot to get cold
overnight and then start over the next day. Sometimes stew had food in it
that had been there for quite a while.  Hence the rhyme, Peas porridge hot,
peas porridge cold, peas porridge in the pot nine days old.. 
 
 
                 Sometimes they could obtain pork, which made them feel
quite special. When visitors came over, they would hang up their bacon to
show off. It was a sign of wealth that a man could bring home the bacon.
They would cut off a little to share with guests and would all sit around
and chew the fat.. 
 
               Those with money had plates made of pewter. Food with high
acid content caused some of the lead to leach onto the food, causing lead
poisoning death. This happened most often with tomatoes, so for the next 400
years or so, tomatoes were considered poisonous. 
 
                 Bread was divided according to status. Workers got the
burnt bottom of the loaf, the family got the middle, and guests got the top,
or the upper crust. 
 
               Lead cups were used to drink ale or whiskey. The combination
would sometimes knock the imbibers out for a couple of days. Someone walking
along the road would take them for dead and prepare them for burial. They were laid
out on the kitchen table for a couple of days and the family would gather
around and eat and drink and wait and see if they would wake up. Hence the
custom of holding a wake. 
 
                 England is old and small and the local folks started
running out of  places to bury people. So they would dig up coffins and
would take the bones to a bone-house, and reuse the grave. When reopening
these coffins, 1 out of 25 coffins were found to have scratch marks on the
inside and they realized they had been burying people alive. So they  would
tie a string on the wrist of the corpse, thread it through the coffin and up
through the ground and tie it to a bell. Someone would have to sit out in
the graveyard all night (the graveyard shift.) to listen for the bell; thus,
someone could be saved by the bell or was considered a dead ringer. 
 
               And that’s the truth…Now, whoever said History was boring! ! ! 
 
                 Educate someone. Share these facts with a friend.

Meanieville

Writers talk a lot about critiques and critiquing. I know. I’ve been critiqued a lot over the years. Sometimes with kindness and sometimes with malice. And I was always able to handle anything thrown my way. Usually with a lot of yelling and threats of bodily harm afterward.

When I first talked someone into a regular critique, it was with bf Meg. We soon nagged bf Marilyn into helping us. She brought a couple of others onboard. (ACK!)

The first sign that a critiquer is going south on you is they stop submitting their work to be critiqued. Must be easier to be mean if you don’t give the other people in the group a chance to be hateful in return.   

In the writers-group-that-shall-not-be-mentioned, we had a wonderful Christian woman who gave me some of the nastiest (and worst) critiques I’ve ever had in my life. Honestly, I valued this woman’s spirituality, but had daydreams of smacking her cross-eyed after every critique session.

Often a new writer will zone in on whatever it is she’s trying to get a handle on. Once the above mentioned woman spent her time tracking down and circling every adverb in each submission. You’d think she read in her Bible, “Thou shalt not put the letters L and Y together lest ye be in danger of hell fire.”

Another woman loves exchanging one word for its synonym. It’s not just me, either. This woman must pull out her Synonym Finder and track down words just so she can mark something on a page. It’s maddening!   

I’ve seen others, who have questionable skills themselves, attack mine even after being told that Marilyn (who, at 60 odd published novels, is the undisputed queen of all things writing and romance) had already done a critique and corrected whatever she’s poking at.

It’s against the rules to argue during a critique. In fact, the critiquee isn’t supposed to talk at all. When the person doing the critique keeps asking questions, though, it’s hard not to. 

For me, the hardest part, when being critiqued by the seeming minions of the devil, is keeping my mouth shut. Very often I’ve wanted to interrupt them with a quote from an old Saturday Night Live show. “Jane, you stupid s**t!” But, naturally, I don’t.

Like I said, it’s against the rules.

Today what hurts most is to watch thin skinned newby writers being pummeled by critiquers skilled in cut down. I can take it. I used to say I could critique with the devil himself to get the chance to learn my craft. (I think I’ve done just that a few times.) But these other writers don’t have a shell. They’d rather quit writing than have to go through meanieville.

It makes me think of the days when one of my sisters would come to me, upset with this teacher or that “friend”. I couldn’t do much but listen and feel bad with her, but I always offered to burn the offender’s house down. That sister knew I was kidding, but it made her feel tons better to have me on her side.

So what’s a person to do? Is there a book somewhere that tells bullies how to quit bullying? Should I offer to turn the offender’s house to ashes? <Evil Grin> Or would it be best to give them the flavor of their own meds? 

  

Judy Knows Knitting!

I took a class last night–well, it was more of a trunk showing and book signing. Louisa Harding, the designer, was in Tulsa at Loops, a great knitting shop in Utica Square.

The class was free, but the books weren’t.

First Louisa told us about her background, how she’d learned to knit from her grandmother when she was six. Then, being artistic–and girlie–when she went to college, she studied to be a clothing designer. Her husband does all the photography in the books, and the pics are so wonderful, I’d almost buy the books for them alone.

Louisa used a phrase I wish I could remember now. Something like, “There’s a little Barbie inside every woman.” It was a way of explaining her totally feminine designs, which are absolutely to die for!

When I got to the class, the first person I saw was Judy Randle, the Tulsa World book editor. (Who’d have guessed an editor at the Tulsa World knitted?)

I gave her a big grin. “Hi Judy! How’re they hanging?” Okay, I didn’t say “How’re they hanging”, but it would have been funny.  

She grinned back at me. “Well, hi!”

I think she might have remembered my face, but not my name, and maybe not how she knew me. I tossed little bits about books into the conversation to help her. Then I said, “There’s only one of you when you visit our writers’ group, and there’s always a bunch of us. I’m Susan Shay.”

She didn’t pretend she’d known all along, which I appreciated.  Judy loved Louisa’s books as much or more than I did, because her stack at check out was even taller than mine!

After I’d paid for my books, I took them to Louisa to sign, and while sitting there, told her about the Dr. Who scarf I’m knitting. And she knew what it was.

I’m always thrilled when someone knows who Dr. Who is. Not because I’m such a big fan, but because I’m going to hate it when my kid’s walking around in this humungous scarf and everyone is saying, “Who did that to you?”

Maybe I can get him to answer. “That’s right. Dr. Who.”

Kind of a “Who’s on first” type conversation.   

BTW: Last spring I wrote a novella called Knitted Together about a woman who inherits a knitting shop in a small town in Texas. The idea was Margaret E. Reid’s (www.margaretereid.com) She’s the person I’m talking about when I refer to bf Meg and an absolutely terriffic writer.  She’s working on one of the novellas, and BF Marilyn Pappano is planning to write the other.

When the other novellas are finished, and the book gets published, we might be able to get Judy to review it for us. After all, Judy knows knitting!  

   

Just a quick post today. I have a funeral, and I’m running late. I was supposed to bake a cake for the funeral dinner, but I was pooped out last night. So this morning, I’m going to go buy one at the store. I should have done that last night instead of buying the box mix.

Anyway, I wanted to make my word count this morning, since I didn’t yesterday morning. *sigh* I think my sleep mode has switched on me just to keep me from making my goals. I didn’t wake up this morning at my usual 4:00 a.m.

I know. Bad stuff. But DH couldn’t go to sleep last night. Can you be too tired to sleep? If so, I think he was. And when he can’t sleep, guess who else can’t sleep.

Maybe I’ll get back on track tomorrow. Keep your fingers crossed.

I’m really excited about a knitting class I’m taking Thursday night. It’s a free class with an English designer. They sent out a list of the names of people signed up for the class, and I saw Judy Randle is in my class. Judy is the book editor at The Tulsa World newspaper. I’ve met her several times, but I doubt she’ll remember me. Interesting woman to chat with, though. And I’m not really surprised to learn she’s a knitter. If it’s the same Judy.

Today’s MMH word count: 1129

Yesterday’s: 140 :-~