Heather's Romance Bistro

Planning To Do Something

2009-08-04T16:57:00.001-07:00

Now that I have a new job and my life is getting settled I’m getting organized. Again. I’m kind of an organization freak. Not a clean freak, mind you. Me and a scrub brush rarely come in contact with each other (just ask my husband, fortunately he is a clean freak so it all works out). But I’m all about organization. I love filing, labeling, keeping things in their proper little designated places. If I were to be honest, I’d say that it’s really a huge ruse to appear to be terribly productive, but I really spend more time organizing and re-organizing than I actually spend on actual projects (i.e. writing).

My organization obsession rolls nicely into my fetish for buying office supplies and desk accessories. Every office I’ve ever occupied had a theme, a color scheme and matching décor and file folders. I simply can’t work in a sterile environment. One of my favorite places for office supplies is See Jane Work. Their stuff is sooo cute. Here’s my latest office plan:

This is a clipboard. Love the pink & green!

Aren’t these awesome? I like expressing my snarkiness at work in understated ways. OK, maybe not so understated.

This is by one of my favorite artists Jenny Holiday. It's based on an old war-time British poster. I'm going to hang it in my office under my framed pastry school diploma. It's still at the framer's so I don't have a picture. It kind of annoys me when people hang their college diplomas unless they're a doctor or lawyer & we seem to have a few of these people at work, so I thought it would be funny to frame my pastry diploma since it has nothing to do with my job. And I was salutatorian & received a medal. I rock!

So the office is covered, but here’s my big dilemma. Where does everyone stand on day planners? Not PDAs, not iPhone apps that organize, good old fashioned pen and paper, Franklin Covey planning system, my carry with me at all times like a security blanket planners. While I love technology, I am a pen and paper girl. I’m an obsessive list maker, mostly so I can cross things off. Is there any better sense of accomplishment? I think not. Deleting something from your Outlook to-do list just isn’t the same. I haven’t had a new planner for a while and I’m totally on the prowl. Do I go with classic black or my signature pink? Does the pink still project the “competent business professional” image I’m shooting for? Do I care? Is the planner you choose more of an outward symbol of competence or a personal fashion statement? I’m not sure. Maybe it can be both.

I’m also wondering if they are truly helpful or just another outlet for my need to shop and procrastinate (or the need to at least appear super busy, even when I’m not). Maybe a day planner is my security blanket. Is that so bad? There are worse vices.

Happy organizing!
Heather

Goodbye Old Friend

2009-05-09T17:39:00.000-07:00

My college sweetheart died this past week, hit-and-run motorcycle accident. I hadn’t spoken to him in over sixteen years. We parted as friends, but over time lost touch with each other. A few weeks ago he friended me on Facebook. It was fun to catch up and find out he was married and had a family now (which I’d assumed as much, it’d been 16 years). But our brief reunion came to an end on Tuesday when other Facebook friends started leaving odd messages of remembrances. It didn’t take long to figure out what happened. He’d been tragically killed at only 41 years old.

It’s been a long time since I’ve seen Joe, and his death has struck me in an odd and unexpected way. I’ve been so depressed, confused and morose lately being unemployed and at loose ends trying to figure out what to do with my life. I’ve been self-absorbed and unhappy, not sure what I want out of life. But then this week happened and as I’ve been reflecting on this other person’s life I’ve realized that he lived life to the fullest and maybe after all this time, Joe wasn’t done teaching me. I was nineteen to twenty-one when we dated and he taught me how drive, how to enjoy green chile, how to two-step, and how to love. Now I think Joe is teaching me to stop moping and take control of my life, to live my life.

I’ve been searching for 9-5 jobs that are of chosen profession ‘cause sadly the bills do need to be paid. I don’t love contract management, but I’m oddly good at it. During the last five months of job searching I’ve also been jotting down my life goals, hopes and dreams, that kind of thing, but not actively doing anything about it. What’s the number one goal/dream? Become a published writer, of course. And I’ve wasted five months when I could be working on my WIP.

Joe had achieved all of life goals I knew about when we were together, and I’m sure there were many others that came along in the years since. But he was a plan it, do it kind of guy, so I image he’s achieved much more than the young man of 23 had dreamed. I don’t know that I’ve achieved many of my goals. I honestly don’t know that I had any concrete life goals in college. I was happy to just roll the dice.

Now I’m closing in on forty, I’ve lost a great friend, and I’ve realized that life is short and we don’t have unlimited time to make our dreams happen. I’m still not a huge long-term planner, but the one goal remains: be a writer. Stop putting it off. Don’t wait until another tragedy jolts me back to reality. It’s time I live the life I want.

I’ll miss you old friend. You’ll always own a piece of my heart.

Love, Heather

Software, Scones and New Storylines

2009-03-18T11:41:00.000-07:00

On the MP3 Player: Soundtrack: The Truth about Cats and Dogs

On the Menu in the Romance Bistro Today:

Chocolate Chip Cookies with Southern Comfort Soaked Dried Cherries

Cranberry Orange Scones

Here was my sous chef for today:

My kitty Leela decided that when I put out the plastic containers for the scones & cookies and laid the cover to my Kitchen Aide mixer inside it all, I was actually building her a nice little bed. She supervised the rest of the baking from her new kitchen table bed.

The past few days I've also been installing new writing software. Technically, I was actually updating software since I had an older demo version that I'd been playing with for a while. I finally took the plunge and ordered Write Way Pro , installed it and uploaded the bits and pieces from several WIPs. I really like this product because while it is complex it isn't unnecessarily complicated. Some writing software I've seen come with manuals longer than the books I want to write. WWP is also written by the husband of published romance writer Lara Adrian. It includes many features and prompts specific to the romance genre. I think it would also be easily adaptable and useful for anyone writing mainstream fiction.

I'm also working on an outline for a new romantic suspense trilogy. I'm very excited about these stories and have gotten all of the details down (in my new WWP folder for future books!). I'm trying to resist jumping from my current WIP to these new books, 'cause that's my fatal flaw: I constantly come up with new ideas and don't finish projects. I won't do that again. I just won't!

Enjoy the scones and cookies! -Heather

Why Must TV Shows Disapoint?

2009-03-16T19:38:00.000-07:00

I was so excited about ABC’s new show “Castle”, starring the adorably delicious Nathan Fillion. The premise seemed promising: a “wildly successful” mystery novelist helps the NYPD solve crimes. What fun! It seemed like a fantasy all mystery writers have. Some law enforcement entity would read our brilliant books, see our brilliance solving crimes, and ask our assistance on important cases.

The pilot worked…sort of. It seemed the city had a copy-cat criminal committing crimes right out of the pages of Castle’s crime novels. Of course the NYPD needed his help solving the crimes, and the feisty, but reluctant lady detective allowed Castle to participate in the case. I could buy this, but when this particular crime is solved at the end of the first episode, I couldn’t figure out how they planned to continue the show week after week.

Now, I can suspend disbelieve as well as anyone. I live in Connecticut and still loved the Gilmore Girls, totally buying the idea that any town in the Nutmeg State even closely resembled Stars Hollow, but that’s another rant for another day. But the creators of “Castle” want me to believe that a writer, even a famous bestselling writer, would be granted special permission by the NYC mayor to trail a police detective, every day, on all of her cases, as research for his next book.

It is common practice for authors to do ride-a-longs with police officers, interview law enforcement officers and gather basic info, but the idea that the guy would have full mayoral-granted access to crime scenes, witness interrogations, and evidence files is just crazy.

Then there is our female detective. Our lone female detective. Where the hell is her partner? Oh wait, our mystery writer is her new partner. Our unarmed, untrained mystery writer who blurts out key data to suspects, questions witnesses and disrupts crime scenes. The really pathetic part about the show is that in an attempt to show the brilliance of our writer, they give him all of the key interrogation questions and “a-ha” moments when solving the case. It certainly doesn’t say much for the trained detective.

I really wanted to like this show. I like movies and TV shows that include writers as the protagonist. It’s like having a fun “in” with the characters. And I have a wicked crush on Nathan Fillion. If you’re not familiar with him, he played Keri Russell’s doctor in the movie “Waitress”, and was Captain Malcolm Reynolds in the Joss Whedon’s TV series “Firefly” and spin-off movie “Serenity.” Unfortunately, his good looks and charm can’t save this show from a ridiculous premise, far fetched police work and writing filled with corny writing clichés.

Guess I'll go buy Firefly on DVD to get my Fillion fix.

What Kind of Cupcake Am I?

2009-03-13T11:40:00.001-07:00

You Are a Vanilla Cupcake

You are very sweet and mellow. You are easy going and easy to like.

You are drawn to those stronger personalities. You get along with powerful people.

You are like a cupcake because you appeal to almost every type of person.

You are friendly and accepting. You bring out other people's best qualities.

What Flavor Cupcake Are You?

The Fine Art of Time Suckage

2009-03-12T13:46:00.000-07:00

Isn't it amazing how little you can accomplish when you have all the time in the world? I technically have all day and night to do whatever my heart desires. I have done nothing. Zero. Zilch. Nada.
I have been reading (guess I could post some reviews). I've been worshiping at the alter of the almighty TV. I've been getting PLENTY of sleep. I've hit the wall. I'm going stir crazy and need to make a change.
I need to pull it together.
I need to focus.
I need to take advantage of this time.
I need to write.

Wish me luck.
Heather

Welcome back to Conard County

2009-03-09T20:41:00.000-07:00

As any avid reader knows, the keeper shelf has limited space and the decision of which books make the cut is painstaking. There are so many stories you've fallen in love with, so many heroes you don't want to lose, so many heroines that have become close friends: so many books, so little shelf space. And when you're a voracious reader of category romance it makes the selection process that much more difficult.

When the selections are made and you take stock of your keeper shelf it always tells a little something about you as reader. OK, it tells a whole lot about you, probably more than you’d like others to know. And when you find 18 books by the same author, in the same Silhouette series, all set in the same town with characters you remember as if they lived next door to you, well…it means you’ve found Conard County.

I first fell in love with Rachel Lee’s Silhouette Intimate Moments series when I began writing back in 2001. Someone suggested that I read “Miss Emmaline and Archangel” and I was hooked. Like a crazy person I spent my days at work scouring online used bookstores to find each and every book set in Conard County, Wyoming. I paid premium prices to get the very best copies I could get my hands on. I was obsessed. I was in love. Both with Rachel Lee as a writer, and with each and every one of her heroes.

These books have everything a perfect category romance should: deeply emotional characters, intense and complex plots, heartbreakingly heroic heroes, and strong heroines who will fight for who and what they love. I’m a sucker for a wounded and tortured hero and, man can Rachel Lee deliver. She knows how to put a man in pain, both physically and emotionally, and still make him push himself to the very limit in order to win the woman he loves. Her characters EARN their happy ending.

The irony of Conard County is that as a reader I constantly long to live there. In reality, would you really want to live any place with so many screwed up people? I mean, if you found out your entire town was run by war veterans suffering from crippling PTSD, ex-cons and other men and women so paralyzed by physical and mental issues they could barely function, would you want to live there? No! You’d probably either move immediately or stage the biggest coupe of local government they’d ever seen.

Rachel Lee’s gift is that she makes it work. She makes you love her characters and root for them, no matter how screwed up they are. Actually, you love them even more because they NEED each other to survive.

So clearly, I’m a fan. I just found out that there is a new website devoted to the entire Conard County series. Woo hoo! If you’ve never read these books, pick one up. It will change your life. I recommend starting at the beginning (Exile’s End), but each is written as a stand alone book and can be read out of sequence.

There are two new books scheduled to be released this year by Silhouette Romantic Suspense: “Protector of One” (April Release available now on eHarlequin.com), and “The Unexpected Hero” will be a July release.

Just of the fun of it, here is a chronological listing of all the Conard County books put out by Silhouette Books:

Exile’s End (Sept. 1992)

Cherokee Thunder (Dec. 1992)

Miss Emmaline and the Archangel (March 1993)

Ironheart (May 1993)

Lost Warriors (Nov. 1993)

Point of No Return (May 1994)

Thunder Mountain (Aug. 1994—Released as a Silhouette Shadows)

A Question of Justice (Jan. 1995)

A Conard County Reckoning (Feb. 1996)

Destination Conard County (Feb. 1996 - This is reissue of “Exile’s End” and “Cherokee Thunder” packaged together)

Nighthawk (May 1997)

Cowboy Comes Home (July 1998)

The Catch of Conard County (Aug. 1998)

A Conard County Homecoming (July 1999 – This is a reissue of “Miss Emmaline and the Archangel” and “Ironheart” packaged together)

Conard County: Boots and Badges (Aug. 1999—Anthology of four new stories)

Involuntary Daddy (Oct. 1999)

The Dream Marine (Oct. 2002)

I’ll Be Home (Nov. 2004)

A Soldier for All Seasons (Nov. 2007)

A Soldier’s Homecoming (July 2008)

Protector of One (April 2009)

The Unexpected Hero (To Be Released July 2009)

My name is Heather and I'm a Facebook Addict

2009-02-16T16:31:00.000-08:00

It seems that everyone my age has a Facebook account, which is notable since I'm an old fart. But how can anyone resist? Catching up with old friends you've lost contact with since junior high, keeping in touch with family members and, well, stalking old boyfriends to find out what kind of girl they eventually married is just too much fun! I admit it, I'm more of a voyeur than an active participant. I'm one of those people who immediately jump on a new "friend's" profile to see what they're doing, if they're married and what their kids look like. I can't get enough of the details of other people's lives. Then it happens. I get instant messaged by a "friend" who can see by my status that I'm online. Shit. Then there is the awkward, "what have you been doing for the last 20 years?" Which turns in to typed small talk and weird questions. For me it includes forced cutesy comments about their kids, and my explaining that no, I don't have kids, and no, I don't plan on having any kids. Until we finally realize that we have nothing in common now and we really can't remember what brought us together back in the day, and someone finally claims they need to go clean out the litter box. As stressful and emotionally draining as these little online encounters are I just can't stop. I'm completely addicted.
I refresh my account 50+ times a day (OK, that may be on the conservative end), irrationally hope for one more new friend, and endlessly search other people's friend lists to see if I've missed anyone new I can reach out to. Really, it's the most social I've been in years. And I guess that is the thrill, and the danger. You feel like you're being social. You feel like you have friends and you're communicating with the outside world, when in reality you're cyber-stalking people who probably wouldn't hand out their contact info to you if they knew you lived down the street. I'm basically a recluse and Facebook makes me feel like I'm connecting with people. Truthfully, I know that's not the case, but that's my story.
Lately I've been tagged to participate in a lot of surveys and "about you notes", most notably the "25 Random Things". I think everyone with a FB account has been tagged no less than 10 times for this one. I was telling a non-FB actual live friend (yes, I have a few, like 2) about these surveys and she asked if I worried about being so public with my personal information. I had to think about it for a minute, and think about answers I've posted, and then laughed out loud. Did I worry that random people, or worse, the possible identity thief, would know that my favorite cereal is Fruity Pebbles? No, my local grocery store had more incriminating info on me in their customer card database. Most of the questions are just for fun, and most of the answers are silly (although for me, mostly true. I'm a silly girl). And yes, I do read other peoples answers too. It's all part of my myth that I have friends, and I know all about them.
With that confession off my chest, I wanted to share one of the "notes" I posted today, "The Bucket List". You know, like the movie. What do you want to do before you die:

1. Have a career as a multi-published romance writer
2. Make the NY Times Bestseller's list
3. Win a RITA (Academy Award for Romance Writing)
4. Travel to England/Scotland/Ireland/France
5. Move back to Colorado and live in my dream house in Evergreen or Golden
6. Win a national cake decorating competition
7. Stay a week in a true 5 Star Hotel, using all the amenities & spa services
8. Do a culinary tour of the best restaurants in NYC and Paris
9. Have dinner with Tony Bourdain (My husband understands that I'm not responsible for what may happen after dinner. Hopefully Tony will understand too)
10. Grow old with my husband in our awesomely strange little world

As you can see, numbers 1-3 are all romance writing goals. I have more minor goals like become a sought after speaker at RWA and other writer's conference, win a Reader's Choice Award (ok, that one isn't so minor), and well let's start with just getting a book published.

I think blogs can be useful to their authors by allowing us to post our goals for the world to see. For me, once it's out there in writing for others to see it seems more tangible, and more necessary for me to follow through. There are my goals. Now what am I going to do about them? Tomorrow--Rewrite chapter 1 of my WIP.

Schedule? What Schedule?

2009-02-10T16:20:00.000-08:00

It looks like I have a few promising job leads that could result in a full-time job pretty quickly. The good part of that statement (aside from the ever popular and necessary paycheck) is that I’ll finally be back to a regular schedule. It’s also time to plan my writing schedule, and make it realistic so I stick to it.

I’ve been pulling out old unfinished manuscripts, potential ideas to develop and jotting notes on the current romance market, trying to find my next project to complete. Even during my down time from writing, I’ve still kept up with industry trends and the lines I’m targeting. My primary focus is Harlequin Intrigue and Superromance. If forced to choose one to build my career, I’ll focus on dark brooding romantic suspense for Intrigue. I love contemporary gothic romance, and the scarred brooding hero. My other passion is highly emotional family romances.

I’m feeing good about my WIP, Darkness Before Dawn, and I’m ready to finally complete it. My hope is that I’ll do a daily check in with my blog just to track how I’m progressing and set goals. Tomorrow I’d like to take advantage of the few days I have left before I (hopefully) return to work and really review my WIP as a whole, and identify holes and problem areas. I also have no idea where it is with word count. And where does that stand? Are we doing the formula or computer word count? I recall that the debate was up in the air a few years ago. I need to check that…

Romance, I can’t quit you!

2009-01-28T18:49:00.000-08:00

Welcome to my new little bistro! This is my second piece of real estate in blogland. I’ve been sharing my crafting and baking side here and now I want to have another outlet. I’ve kept my personal life out of my Sweet Life blog, so here’s my chance to rant, rave and share more personal issues. I don’t anticipate I’ll get many readers here, but I’m doing this one more for me.

About eight years ago I started writing romance, joined Romance Writers of America, attending conferences, pitched books that weren’t finished, finished three novels and got one rejection. Somewhere in the middle of all that I had a little mid-life crisis. I decided I hated my corporate life and wanted to really find my creative side. I loved romance but there wasn't that instant gratification I craved at the time. You rarely get positive feedback and it takes years, if ever, to get the illusive book deal. I needed something fast. Some personal reminder that I was a creative person with talents I could share with others. So I did what any half cocked person on the edge does—I quit my secure lucrative job, dabbled in arts and crafts, started a little business selling felted faux food and went to culinary school. All the while I had countless discussions with friends who would ask, “What makes you really happy?” And the answer was always the same: romance novels. These friends would point out how animated I get when I discuss the romance industry, plotting, genres, writing and my novels. And every time I’d say, “oh, I’m done with that.” And each and every one of them would ask...WHY?

It’s taken me two years and a strange journey of self un-discovery to figure out, hey that is what I want to do! Romance is what I love. I miss RWA and my writing friends. So I’m going to try it again. It still takes me by surprise how excited I get when I read my manuscripts and storylines, and I think, “Hey, these are good. I’d read that!” Even through doing these other activities I’ve never stopped thinking about old plots, what I’d change, what I finally realized wasn’t working, etc. So, in some ways, I’ve never stopped working on my books, I just stopped sitting in front of the computer and banging on keys.

I’m ready. I’m ready to focus and work toward this dream I’ve had for so long. I still plan on keeping my little side business and making felty treats. They are fun and distress me. But I want to refocus the bulk of my personal time to my writing career. So here we go. Cheers to my new blog, finishing my next book, renewing my RWA membership and getting published. Anyone who finds me here at my new home is welcome to come along for the journey.

All the best, Heather