Friday, January 18, 2013

My Darling Daughter - A Brief Study in Lydia

My daughter is a character. She eats only when she wants to eat--every other day on average. She greets Lisa's sarcasm with elegant disdain. She's crazy smart. She's an amazing friend.

Lydia has a good heart, but her own agenda. If she is interested in you, she can't shut up. When she and her cousins get together, there is a constant stream of chatter and giggles. They have a ball together. But she does not appreciate conversation with strangers which makes public outings...interesting.

I took Lydia out the day after Christmas for some deal hunting. Truthfully, I'm not a huge fan of strangers stopping us and asking questions or commenting either.

It's very rarely, "Oh my, what delightfully well behaved children!"

Oh no, it's usually something like "Wow, someone looks tired!"

Or the ever popular, "Are they ok?"

I'm always so tempted to respond to that one with something along the lines of, "Well, we're not really sure since they haven't developed pysychological testing for sociopaths under 5 just yet."

I love my kids, but the grim reality is that you never know what you're going to get with a one-year-old and a four-year-old when you go to Target. Honestly, I just wish people would avoid eye contact as they would with a pack of wild animals and keep on moving. I'm usually too busy  whisper-yelling or desperately opening whatever snack items we're supposed to be buying to make small talk about my children's perceived behavioral issues. Especially the day after Christmas. But that didn't stop a kind, old lady from stopping us at the grocery store. I'm sure she meant well.

Geriatric Woman: "Hello, young lady."

Lydia: *blank stare*

Me: *sweating* "Lydia, what do we say when someone says hello?"

Lydia: (sounding like she'd rather have someone pull her fingernails out individually than acknowledge the kind geriatric. "Hello."

Geriatric Woman: "What did Santa bring for you?"

Lydia: *blank stare* *slow blinks*

Me: *sweating more* "Lydia, what do we do when someone asks you a question?"

Editorial note: There were a few more seconds of silence here and in retrospect if I'd been paying close attention, I'm sure I would have been able to see my life flash before my eyes.

Lydia: "A knife." *creepy child-head-cock last seen in Maculay Culkin's award winning performance in The Good Son*



Editorial note: A KNIFE. I swear Lydia barely knows what a knife is and certainly doesn't know that a knife is used for anything other than cutting food. A FREAKING KNIFE.

Me: "Lydia! WHAT DID SANTA BRING YOU?"

Editorial note: Mentally, I had already packed up all the nice presents we gathered for our daughter and donated them to a child who doesn't lie about receiving a KNIFE for Christmas.

Lydia: "Toys." [Translation: Eff you, creepy oldie.]


I did my best to keep a straight face while filling my husband in when we got home. He had to look away before addressing Lydia who was served with a very extensive time out and a long question/answer session in which she informed us that she heard about a knife from school.

But I still have nightmares about that creepy-child-head-cock.

Saturday, January 5, 2013

Booklist on The Lies That Bind

My mom was very unhappy that I didn't post anything about our Booklist review, so here it goes:

 “This imaginative mystery, complete with secret passageways and passwords, will leave readers eager for the next installment.”

Yay! We're so happy readers are enjoying Kate's second adventure. We have some exciting news coming about book #3 next week, including a cover reveal!!! So. Pumped.

And in the meantime both eBooks are on sale for $1.99! Personally I think $1.99 is the perfect price for an eBook, so now is a great time to buy them!

(Are you happy now, Mom?)

Hope everyone is having a great weekend!

Thursday, January 3, 2013

The Worst Day of My Writing Life

Hello, worst day of my writing life. You are characterized by instant upper-lip sweating, full-body shakes, and many, many tears. You began at approximately 1:07 AM, Saturday, December 29th and didn't end until after 7 PM the following day. I hate you, by the way.

Let's back up. 1:03 AM was a very, very good moment. Lisa and I had just spent the past 4 DAYS, 4 HOURS per night, READING ALOUD our current edit for THIS IS W.A.R. My voice was hoarse for 4 days because we labored over every word, discussed changes at length and went off on many, many tangents. Lisa had track changes on her computer and I had a brand, spanking new document I was building as we went. AKA the final version. I saved obssessively--an every-five-minutes-kind-of-save, a type-a-word-hit-save kind of save, a if-I-hit-save-one-more-time-I-will-be-considered-a-save-junky kind of save. You get the idea. 1:00 struck and we FINISHED. We spent approximately 1 hour on the last paragraph of the book, literally tearing apart every word to make sure we got it right. And then BAM. It was right and it was finished and it was good.

Lisa: Send me the document and we'll send to Dan. Yay!!!
Laura: Wait...I thought you were doing the edits.
Lisa: Very funny.
Laura: Ha ha ha. He. he. he.

We hung up the phone and I saved one last time before exiting the beautifully complete document to attach to an email. And then my world as I knew it was swallowed up. All of the dates on the This Is War FINAL document showed the wrong date. Christmas day to be exact. The day we began editing. This is not right. This is not right. Don't panic. This is not right. I opened Word to check my most recent documents. Not listed.

Cue terrified shakes. And heavy breathing. And tears. Lots and lots of instant tears.

I knew deep down that it had to be somewhere. I had saved the document religiously. It was on my computer. Word hadn't given me any Are you sure you want to exit without saving? messages and I HAD saved. I conducted a series of searches. My husband came downstairs at 2:30 afraid that I wasn't in bed. I cried. He searched my computer. Nothing. I continued searching until 3:30 in the morning and then finally cried myself to sleep hoping when I awoke, the entire experience would turn out to be a bad dream, the finished document waiting in our inbox where it belonged.

But who am I kidding? This is the worst day of my writing life. I woke up and the document showed Christmas day, reflecting not one of the changes Lisa and I had discussed. I had a few options.

1. Continue wasting valuable time searching.
2. Take my computer to a computer genius and beg.
3. Tell Lisa. Cry. Ask for forgiveness.
4. Start over.

So...I took a shower and cried. Ditched my kids with my husband and hightailed it to the nearest computer genius store and cried. No dice. If the document wasn't found during a search of all files as well as hidden files, it was gone. If it had been deleted, genius would have been able to help. Not saved properly? Nope. But I did save properly, I Saved As, I hit the save button continuously, I DID SAVE PROPERLY, but it was neither here nor there. Didn't matter. A waste. Gone.

So I parked my very sad-looking self into a seat at the library. And I started over. I knew I couldn't tell Lisa about my mistake until I had finished, until I knew that I could finish and make everything right again. My husband stayed with the kids and I worked the entire day/night recreating the hours of work we had lost. Luckily, I have a good memory and I had been the one adding the changes in the first place. The entire process was the definition of deja vu--reading aloud the original must have helped because I'm pretty confident I caught everything and maybe even a few misses. And every hour? I emailed an attachment and copied and pasted the document into an email to myself. If I was an obssesive saver before, I've developed into a complete head case.

I did eventually tell Lisa. But not until the document was safely nestled into our inbox where it should have been all along.

Tuesday, January 1, 2013

Meet Lucy.

We're proud aunties again. Lucille "Lucy" Hope has arrived (fashionably late, of course) and we've fallen in love all over again. 2013 is a good year. Happy birthday, baby Lucy.




PS: You have the best name ever and we're totally stealing it for our WIP.

Don't call this a comeback

So it’s been a minute. Or 10. Or truthfully more like 2,102,400. At least we think that’s how many minutes there are in 3 years, but let...