Tag: compound

Weekend at The Compound

The Brides came by Saturday night and showed us honeymoon in Jamaica photos. They’re so sweet and happy! I’m glad they’re home safe and sound.

Tom read the draft of MOONLIGHT AND ROSES and said lots of good things about the stories. I did word processing magic on it today while Tim was writing his preface–which MADE ME CRY! I love him. I’d written my intro quite a while back, but when I found out what he wanted to write, I tossed mine and started over. Then after I read his today, I had to go back and alter mine a little more. That’s one of those good things about collaborating. Your writing partners make you strive to be better.

We both worked to complete the marketing questionnaire. I made a spreadsheet of all the contributors’ contact information and checked their contracts for the zillionth time.

Then I printed out the final draft, read the entire manuscript again cover to cover (Tim did that last week), did some corrections here and there, printed out change pages and an entire second copy, saved it on a disk, and SHIPPED THAT BABY OUT FROM THE AIRPORT POST OFFICE AT THREE A.M. (I’m yelling that so I can make sure Greg hears it.) It’d better be at the publisher on Wednesday, since that’s the day it’s due.

When I read it, I was awed all over again by the stories that were sent to us. Damn. There are some good writers out there.

Bastards.

Kidding.

I really am kidding. I love good writing, and the more of it I get to read, the happier I am. You guys hang on. We’ll start forcing you to brag about yourselves soon. As soon as we’re told that all this is good to go.


We like Thursdays

Rex and I, we like Thursdays. On Thursdays, Rex goes out to Green Acres with Tim for a play date with Sparky and sometimes Sue and Seig. (I don’t include Greta because the Dowager Doberman doesn’t “play”; she observes. From a distance. With a haughty attitude.)

Then Sparky gets to come back to The Compound with Rex and Tim. Sparky loves the car almost as much as Rex. Lynne comes here when she gets off work, we eat dinner, and we watch Survivor. Thursday is also the only day that Margot likes Rex, because Sparky becomes Disturber of Margot’s Peace No. 1.

As for Guinness, she’s excited about the menu. She never gets anything, but Guinness is a dog of Great Hope, always. Tonight, I’m trying something different. Baking a hen with orange slices and crushed cranberries. I’ve never had cranberries that weren’t jellied or at least drowning in sweetness. Too bad Tim wasn’t holding the camera when I bit into one earlier. “Tart?” he asked. “Who knew,” I replied. “Anyone from New England,” he said.

Today, I’m finishing a short story. Hopefully it, too, will be a little tart as well as a little sweet. We’ll see.

Rainy days and…well, Sundays

They don’t really get me down, though. Rain rarely bothers me except that it bothers Margot so much. Even though I did have to get out in it this evening for a grocery store run, and I’m still all damp and icky feeling, the grocery store was a pleasure. I’m currently mad at Kroger, so I went to Fiesta, not the best grocery store in the world. However, the guys who rang up and bagged my groceries exchanged witty banter of the gay variety. Better than TV, always.

Also, Lindsey and Rhonda came by for a bit today, and what’s better than being safely inside with friends on a drizzly day? This time next week, they’ll be on their honeymoon, the Wedding Bitch will be decompressing, and Rex will be saying, “Can we go somewhere in the car, can we, huh, huh?”

Between bouts of writing today, I’ve been putting music on my computer. I’m the last person on the planet who has figured out how to transfer music from my CDs into an iTunes library and buy music from iTunes. I keep marveling over the wonder of it to Tim, who occasionally walks through and gives me another nugget of iTunes wisdom to keep me happy for a while. And Tom figured out a bunch of stuff with my clip art, so I have plenty of diversions to keep me from writing now.

Still, I must get back to it. Hopefully, my fiction is better than my UnLively Journal.

Bonus dog photos, just because.


Margot: “Is that a squirrel?!?!”


Guinness: “If that’s a squirrel, there are pecans buried somewhere…”

Reading is HOT!

I’ve photoshopped before and I can do it again.

Yesterday, FARB made me laugh with this tongue-in-cheek blog entry about the gay media.

So we are launching the (fictitious?) “Reading is HOT!” campaign. WE WILL NOT BE IGNORED, GAY MEDIA!

At least I didn’t have to photoshop this celebrity enjoying the second-best activity ever on a rainy day.


Oh, no, typo! (Kidding, FARB.)


Gratuitous nature shot: It really did rain hard at The Compound today.

It.Never.Ends.

Jim is going to be in his second home this weekend and needed to take TJB5 material with him to read. I worked until after five this morning to add finishing touches to two chapters. I e-mailed them just before six a.m. and went to bed.

After I got up, I had several things to take of and a client to see. While I was away from the house, I realized what I did wrong in one of those chapters and what I needed to do to fix it. I rushed home and unsent it, snatching it from Jim’s e-mail before he could stop me. (And THIS, my friends, is why the TJB writers keep their AOL accounts. We must have this option to better torment one another.) Now Jim has nothing to read this weekend, and I have work I didn’t know I’d have.

This manuscript has to be finished SOON because I have three other pressing projects demanding my attention and I’m TIRED.

However, I always have enough energy to offer a little gift from The Compound: