Rachael

Reentry to the week is hard, isn't it? I have to do it a little earlier than most. Sunday night is when I have my "Monday," and by the time most of you are heading for work, I'm heading home for bed.

And we're all tired, aren't we? Yep.

What would perk us up? What about a little dream-weaving, eh? I'm not one of those people who fantasizes about what I'd do if I won the lottery. It's not something I think I shouldn't do; in fact, I think it does us all good to have a little mind-wander. I just never remember to do it.

So I'm going to let myself imagine for a minute, and you should do the same. What if we won the lottery? And let's say we hit it big, and had the money to do all the obvious things: invest wisely, pay off debt, buy houses for everyone in the family. What would we want once those things were paid for? (Think selfishly. You've already helped lots of people out. That's the game.)

1. An iPad for Lala. (That's silly, huh? But I sometimes feel guilty that I got one with book money in order to write books, and she doesn't have one yet (so this counts as selfish because I'd feel better). She should have one.)

2. A yellow Smartcar! And a red Mini! I can't choose, so how about both?  

3. A second home in Venice in the north part of Cannaregio.

4. A third home in the Avenues of San Francisco (somewhere to go when I get too hot in the Oakland heat. I'm a delicate flower, yo).

5. Um. Oooh! A maid! No more cleaning the litterbox! Boy, do I hate that job.

6. Cashmere yarn. Lots of it.

That's all I've got. Apparently I don't think about it much because I don't have much of a list (I honestly thought when I started writing things down I'd have a hundred things. Huh.)

What do YOU want to buy with your winnings?

On the plane flying home from Orlando, I sat next to the awesome Carolyn Jewel (who had been up for not one but TWO Rita's (the Oscar of romance)), and while she wrote (or didn't write) a sexy scene (I was working so hard not letting my eyes accidentally fall on her laptop screen that now I don't remember what she said she was writing), I finished going over page proofs for HOW TO KNIT A HEART BACK HOME. Page proofs are awesome in that they are the very last time you'll lay hands on your book. This is it! You're pushing the baby bird right out into traffic!

And you always find some typos that have made it through your own editing, that make it past your agent and your editor, past copy-edits and all the way to this last draft. Now, say that I noticed things in my copy-edits that needed to be added, and say I wrote them in by hand to be changed. Now, it is NOT the production editor's job to decipher my sloppy handwriting (which I do try to make clear, I promise). They add to the text what they are told (by me) to add, and that's that. I take the blame for the below HYSTERICAL mistake.

When I read that my heroine had a vapid heartbeat, I almost choked on my peanuts. It's true, my Vs do look like Rs. I'd never noticed that before. A vapid heartbeat! Oh, lord! I've known people with one of those!

In another spot, I'd added a sentence about the pattern she'd been making. That R and N certainly smoosh up close in my handwriting, and the text read that she was knitting from a patter. (Both vapid and patter obviously passed the spell-check test.) (I just wrote "past the spell-check test." I am at word overload. Please forgive the other inevitable typos in this post as I mock myself.)

Carolyn and I started howling about vapid patter, to the point that she said, "Watch! I'm putting it in my book! Right now!" Clickety click click, and she did.  

So today, I put it in my third novel because it happened to fit beee-yoo-tifully (and Carolyn practically dared me to). (That novel is coming along smashingly, by the way. I keep expecting the other shoe to drop, but it seems to be going well so far. Yippee!)

When I get a copy of Carolyn's book, she'll sign the page with vapid patter on it. And I'll sign that page in her copy of MY book.

And I here and now challenge all y'all book-writers to sneak the phrase in. It's now A Thing. Anyone who does it will get a shiny badge WITH GLITTER from me. Promise. (And when you read book three and hit that phrase, you'll think, "Huh? That sounds awfully familiar…")

Pass it on! Quick link to this post: http://bit.ly/a9Z5CJ

And the winners are:

Handspun: Anne (maplecorners)

Signed book: Ruth (rutababe)

Signed book: Mary McM.

I'll be emailing all of you tomorrow for addresses! Congrats, and woot! More winners soon, I'm sure. xoxo

I just wrote a very boring blog, which I've erased so that you don't have to bear reading it. You're welcome. I'm not even censoring myself or acting in a self-preserving manner–it was neither inflammatory nor racy. It was just boring.

So instead, I'll tell you this:

The Sharpie Liquid Pencil(erasable, turning to permanent in 36 hours) is not the life-changer that I thought it might be. But it IS a surprisingly satisfying implement with which to edit. I hate scribbling changes and then instantly changing my mind. Adding a sentence, and then hating half of it. This is PERFECT for that, because it's dark like a pen (I wish it came in colors) but erases cleanly. I was slightly let down by it, but then I realized that was because it is, in fact, as smooth-flowing as a pen, and I hadn't expected that. I'd expected the normal pencil scritch, which wasn't there. But I'm still pretty stoked about it.

Ha! And this isn't the boring blog I erased (erased as if it were PENCIL, people). Imagine what I saved you from!

(I haven't forgotten about the drawing — I'll do that tonight! Leave a comment in the previous post or sign up for my email list (to the right) to enter.)

I'm writing. Writing, writing, writing. It's hard for me sometimes to think of anything else. Ask the long-suffering Lala or my poor sisters about that. I am officially the most boring person in the world, as when I'm away from the desk I'm either working on how to get back to it or how to stay away from it without guilt (answer to the last: big long naps, that's how, under the guise of Avoiding the Cold from Hell that's going around–must rest!).

Sister Bethany pointed out that lately I write about writing, and seldom about knitting. Good point! See above.

But I have been knitting a bit. And spinning. Oh, Lisa Souza, with your perfect, perfect batts. Really, when I'm spinning her stuff, I don't want to touch another piece of fiber that she hasn't prepared, ever. I spun a lot of this: 

It's 90% super-fine merino, with these little glints of colored tencel, red and yellow and pink, that gleam through, and it made a nice DK-weight 2-ply. I made this cowl (super-simple free Ravelry link) out of the first batt: 

I wish you could really see how pretty it is, with those little sparkles of color here and there. The camera doesn't do it justice. SO SOFT. And I still have two batts left (now spun, they just need to be washed and hung).

It's funny, this is the first yarn that I've ripped in a long time. I tried three different kinds of scarves before realizing it needed to be a cowl. And I knew it would come to me–I just had to keep trying.

DRAWING – FREE STUFF

Hey, in apology for not being all knittified like I used to be, I feel like giving things away! I'm going to draw one random winner from my mailing list (not on it? I never spam; join up there to the right) and I'll send the winner an autographed copy of HOW TO KNIT A LOVE SONG. If you have it already, you can either have me make it out to a friend of yours, or have me make it out to you and pass your copy on to someone else!

Ooh, hang on a sec, it seems I'm feeling REALLY generous. Again, from the mailing list, I'll randomly draw a name, and that person will win enough of the Lisa Souza yarn that I made to make a cowl, just like that one up there. 

And just for fun, I'll randomly draw a winner from the comments of this post and send an autographed book out that way, too. Just tell me what's keeping you from YOUR knitting right now. 

Yeehaw! Fun! I'll draw on Wednesday.

I think I've mentioned here before that once a week, when I switch my sleep schedule and stay up all night working, I take a sleeping pill when I get home at 7am, just to jolt myself into sleeping days for the week. Seems to work well, and because I don't take them very often, they're always strong, and always work.

This morning, after I'd drifted off into sleep, I got the hiccups. I know this because I remember hiccuping and startling awake, wondering what the hell had just happened, and then falling back asleep. Then I'd wake up for the next hiccup, only to fall immediately back into deep sleep. Lather, rinse, repeat. It was pretty funny for someone like me who can be woken up by a whisper in another room sometimes and normally has problems falling back asleep. I have to say, it felt good.

As does sitting here in Peet's, having written for a few hours, and when I'm done with this post, I'll go to work for the night. I do love what Gloria Steinem said about loving having written. After-writing is always the best part of the day, even if it's only the short drive to work where my day starts over. That drive is happy, even if the words themselves actually sucked.

RWA National was amazing, terrific, awesome. I didn't get enough sleep (surprise!) and ended up with a migraine the night of the RITAs, but at least I made it through the ceremony and got to see my chapter-mate Elisa Beatty win the Golden Heart! We were so very proud!

I spent plenty of time in meetings and attending parties where we got to wear our best clothes and our highest heels (if we wanted to, of course — but I did). I hung out with five of the PensFatales (oh, we missed the ones who couldn't make it). I spent time with my agent, who is SO AWESOME. I had a massage in a spa and pretended I did it all the time. I met many, many people. I decided Orlando in July is too hot to support life, and I'm not sure how they fake it, and I sat next to a hairy drunk guy on the plane and thought terrible things in his sleeping direction until he woke up and talked about being Etta James's keyboard player for twenty-five years. Just goes to show — when I judge people, I am usually completely wrong. I should know this by now.

A wonderful, writing-filled time. And it feels so great to be back to the writing, too! I didn't work while I was gone, a conscious decision, and I feel refreshed just for being gone from the page those five or six days.

Yes. Happy. Working hard. I think those might be related.