Yesterday, my son’s first grade class took a field trip to the pumpkin patch. I volunteered to help out, and took my younger son with me so he didn’t feel slighted that he was without pumpkin and field trip. LOL. Since it’s nearing the end of pumpkin season, the owner said the children could take whatever pumpkin they wanted as long as they could carry it. Let me tell you, it’s pretty funny watching a group of first graders try to lug huge pumpkins back to the bus.

Of course, since I was there, guess who got stuck carrying my son’s pumpkins? Yep. You guessed it. Me. At the time I didn’t mind, but today, my arms are so sore! I should go weigh those suckers and find out how much weight I was carrying in each arm.

The next few days are going to be hectic. My son’s preschool halloween party is tomorrow and I’m the party mom for it, so I’ll be spending today baking, putting goody bags together, and cutting out a gazillion shapes from construction paper for the construction paper ’shape’ scarecrows I was planning for their craft. I always say I’m not going to go overboard…but then I somehow forget that. :)

Monday is halloween, of course, and my other son’s first grade halloween party, where, yes, once again, I’ve volunteered to help. So, more of the same over the weekend for me.

And nope, I still haven’t done any writing….

My 4 1/2-year-old son woke up this morning crying. He said he had a bad dream. When I asked him what it was about, he said, “I had the moon and it made me sad.”

In my head I have this image of my son holding the moon and it reminds me of that Eric Carle book (the man who authored/illustrated ‘The Very Hungry Caterpillar’), Papa Please Get the Moon for Me. I have no idea why this would make my son sad, but it was obvious that it upset him quite a bit.

For some reason, as my son got older, he developed a fear of the dark. Many times in bed, he whispers to me about shadows…and how he sees monsters, and I constantly have to reassure him that monsters are pretend, and that mom and dad will always be there for him.

But sometimes, I have this uneasy feeling that one day my boy is gonna whisper, “I see dead people.” Weird.

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I added some new tunes to my player:

Josh Gracin’s “Stay With Me (Brass Bed)”
Gary Allan’s “The Best I Ever Had”
Michael Buble’s “Home”
And I left the Steven Curtis Chapman ones up.

Currently, these are some of my favorite songs. Go ahead, give ‘em a listen. You know you want to.

I just couldn’t help myself. Check out the cool new music player in my sidebar. And, yes, I know I should’ve been writing!

But, I wasn’t…So, I uploaded a few of the songs from my current WIP’s “Soundtrack”:

1. Howie Day’s Collide: I have no idea what other songs he sings, but I like the sound of this one and it fits the overall feeling my characters have of their worlds colliding beyond their control.

2. Steven Curtis Chapman’s Soldier: This one comes from the “We Were Soldiers” soundtrack (the movie with Mel Gibson), and it’s for my hero.

3. Steven Curtis Chapman’s When Love Takes You In: This is the song I mentioned in my Resonation post, and I couldn’t resist letting you all have a chance to hear it. It’s so beautiful, it makes me want to cry every time I hear it. I love it. And I also love Steven Curtis Chapman’s voice…it’s kind of what I imagine Tucker (the hero from my last ms, THIS DARK PLACE) sounding like when he sings.

What do you think? Of the player and the songs?

Enjoy!

It’s gone. Somewhere. And I can’t seem to find it.

I’m frustrated by my lack of progress with my WIP. Frustrated with myself for letting myself get frustrated when I swore that I was going to take my writing much more seriously…and make some serious ‘kick-butt’ progress with this ms.

I think it’s the ending that’s giving me fits. Not the very ending, but the resolution of the suspense….and how to get my characters out of the prison cell they’ve been thrown in. I kind of know where I’m going, but I can’t seem to put my butt in the chair and get it written. Maybe I need to leave the ending alone for now, go back to the beginning and start working on my second draft. It beats doing absolutely nothing.

Well, not nothing. I played around with my blog a little. :) Added the nifty little weather plugin and now I’m debating about whether or not I want to add a little music plugin. Decisions, decisions….but none of them writing related. Grr!

I think I need a serious kick in the butt. Anybody up to the task?

I don’t know if it is the rain that is bringing them out or what, but the other day my son comes running in from outside and says “Mom! There’s this huge spider outside!” I come outside to check, thinking he just might be pulling my leg, but no….there it is, crawling along the ground…the ugliest spider I have ever seen in my entire life. Now, it wasn’t as huge as some of the tarantulas I’ve seen on TV, nor as furry….but it was black, with a brown furry head — and it was gross, gross gross!

I watched the thing crawl away from the house and willed it to never come back. But guess what. It has friends. And I’ve seen ‘em….and now, I don’t want to leave my house!

Okay, reason tells me that they’ve always been around, but in all the six years I’ve lived here, I’ve never seen one before. I was happy in my ignorant bliss! Why did these dang tarantulas have to ruin it! Now, I find myself worrying about tarantulas in my house…I’m afraid to look in the dark corners and under the bed. And, I had a dream this morning about a tarantula dropping from the ceiling and landing on my face.

Yes, I have a serious case of paranoia.

I’ve been listening to a lot of music lately. I mean, I usually have it on in the background, but recently I’ve really been listening…letting the words wrap around my heart, the melody, the instrumentals.

Music has always been an important part of my life. When I was nine and first saw a highschooler playing the violin at our elementary school. I went home that same day and begged my parents to let me learn the violin. It called to me like nothing ever had and I knew I had to play it.

There’s a certain wonder when you put the bow to the string, when you feel the resonation of the sound as it passes through the body of the violin, and the vibration of the strings under your fingertips. I know that sounds strange, but I truly believe in the healing power of music, whether you’re creating it or listening to it.

Vivaldi’s “The Four Seasons” is one of my favorite classical pieces. I mean, talk about an amazing composer! Using only instruments, he takes listeners on a journey through the changing seasons…from booming thunder, to chirping birds, to snowfall….it’s all there in that composition if you listen with your heart.

And lately, I’ve been hearing some amazing country songs. I can’t help but gush about Josh Gracin’s “Stay With Me (Brass Bed)”. Anyone else heard this song? Love, love, love it….the tone, the music, the words…everything. Oh! And Gary Allan’s“Best I Ever Had” is another song that just hits ‘ya in the heart.

The hero of my current WIP wrestles with some major home issues. He wants a home — a place to really belong — even though he tells himself he doesn’t need one. His theme song has become Steven Curtis Chapman’s “When Love Takes You In”. I’ll leave you with the first verse/chorus of this amazing song:

I know you’ve heard the stories
But they all sound too good to be true
You’ve heard about a place called home
But there doesn’t seem to be one for you
So one more night you cry yourself to sleep
And drift off to a distant dream

Where love takes you in and everything changes
A miracle starts with the beat of a heart
When love takes you home and says you belong here
The loneliness ends and a new life begins
When love takes you in

My youngest has been giving me a rough time lately. I’d like to say it’s a phaze he’s going through and it’ll pass…but unfortunately, I have the feeling that’s not the case. He just marches to the beat of his own drum, even if it means plowing over everyone else.

So, the other day, I’m sitting at my kitchen table feeling tense and frustrated and downright exhausted. I lean back in my chair and mutter, “What I wouldn’t give for a jacuzzi tub and a glass of champagne right now.”

((Right now since we’re renting, we don’t even have a bathtub, just a shower. And the little baby tub we’ve held onto from when my boys were small — they’ve since graduated to taking showers. So, when I dream of moving into the house we’re building I dream of a fantastic bathroom.))

Anyway, I look across the table at my husband to see how he’s reacting to my ‘calgon, take me away, moment’.

One corner of his mouth tips into a mischevious smile, and he replies: “The best I can do is a tiny tub and a Pepsi lime.”

It struck my funny bone, and I started laughing….and you know what? I felt SO much better. Sometimes love is all about knowing the right thing to say. :)

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Oh! I finally figured out those darn clickable smileys! Thanks, Lynn, for letting me ‘borrow’ your source code. With that, and a little bit of my own “doh!” initiative, I was able to get them working. See, you helped me and ‘ya didn’t even know it.

Answer: A ghost laughing his head off.

Joke courtesy of my 6-year old

So, since I only have time for a super short post today….what are your favorite laugh out loud romances? OR favorite authors whose books never fail to make you laugh?

I’ll have to think on it and give you my answer later.

Last week I participated in an awesome Q&A led by author Lori Wilde over on the eHarlequin boards regarding theme. Specifically, how to make sure you are proving your theme in every scene. Can we say total enlightenment?

Here’s why:
I’ve never been a big planner, plotter, or outliner. It doesn’t seem to work for me, and I’ve often found it to be a total time waster. I have to just dig into my story and write and figure it out as I go along. BUT, by having a concrete theme BEFORE you begin writing, you don’t need to plot, but your story will already have a direction. Make sense?

First thing I learned about picking a theme, your lead character should determine your theme. Lori talked about ‘closed’ themes vs. ‘open’ themes. For example, in my current WIP, I had figured fairly early on that I wanted the story to be about forgiveness (this is considered an open theme, by the way, because it is very broad). The reason being that my heroine blames the hero for an event in her past and needs to learn to forgive him. But then, Lori also mentioned that to really get to the heart of a story, you should find a way to work both your characters growth into the same theme. Which, of course, confused me. Again.

But not for long. Lori opened my eyes about how you could define forgiveness into a closed theme and give the story greater strength and direction, tying both character motivations together into the one theme! Yay! So, here’s what I got: If I define forgiveness in terms of a closed theme, I could say the theme is “letting go of the past leads to happiness”. Therefore, my heroine needs to learn to let go of her need to blame the hero, and he has to let go of his need to control (and forgive whatever made him so controlling!). See? See how forgiveness now works for both of them! I feel like doing cartwheels. LOL.

Lori had a lot more great stuff to say on theme….and if you’re interested, I suggest you head on over to the Q&A archives on eHarlequin and check it out. I can’t wait to dig deeper into my characters and make sure each scene is proving my theme!

My 4 1/2 year old cracks me up. He also scares me. Really.

The other day I picked him up from preschool. I was a few minutes early, and they were still getting their stickers. They have this system, you get two stickers a day for following the rules, and once you have five stickers, you can pick a treasure from the little treasure box. However, (and this is a new rule for this year), if you don’t get both stickers on a day when your sticker count adds up to five, you can’t pick a treasure…you have to wait until next time.

Well, I’ve noticed that every once in a while my son has a bad day at school where he just decides to ignore the rules. He had one of these the other day. So, he puts his stickers under his name, counts them–5, yay! I get a treasure–but he didn’t get both stickers for that day, so the teacher tells him he can’t get a treasure.

Nothing gets to my son more than someone who tells him he can’t do something. So, naturally, he starts to throw a fit. They try to explain to him about the rules…blah, blah, blah…

He grits his teeth and comes back with this: “I’m changing the rules!”

*sigh* I’ve had a talk with him about it, but he still insists that rules are made for changing. Boy, is he in for a rude awakening when he gets to Kindergarten next year. I have cihlls just thinking about it. :)

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In writing news, I finished out my Fast Draft progress with a total of 134 pages for two weeks. Not too bad! Although, I’d hoped to at least get 150. Still, my first draft of HER OWN BEST ENEMY is almost complete. I should finish it by the end of this week. Hoo-Yah!