Thank you for posting all the great news yesterday! The winner of the signed copy of either Reality TV Bites or Blackthorne’s Bride is Amy. Amy, email me at shana@shanagalen.com and tell me which book you;’d like and your address. Congrats!
Love this picture. Doesn’t it look like she’s posing?
I wanted to give everyone an update on my kitty Roxie. Those of you who are regular visitors to the blog know that she has been sick for about a month with fatty liver disease. Well, she finally got a clean bill of health! After a month of force-feeding her, giving her half a dozen pills a day, and worrying pretty much all the time, Roxie is eating on her own and her liver enzyme levels are back to normal.
I can’t tell you how wonderful it is to have my kitty back! Roxie has a little yellow stuffed bunny USF and I call Mr. Bunny. When Roxie started playing with Mr. Bunny again, I knew she was feeling better.
Thank you for all your support and kind words. Roxie thanks you, too!
Have you had any good news lately? Tell me about it or the lack of it. One person who comments will get very good news! Choice of a signed copy of either BLACKTHORNE’S BRIDE or my chick lit as Shane Bolks, REALITY TV BITES.
I had planned to “cheat” today, to simply copy some things from my humor files and call it good. We all need a laugh, especially on Mondays, right? But of course I can’t write that short.
You have a humor collection, don’t you? Maybe a file folder where you stuff the funny drawings that get passed around at the office and comics you clip from the paper that really tickle you. A drawing I’ve had for a long time is of a blender, plugged in and filled with water, with two fish swimming around. One fish, his eyes bulging, fins twitching, is saying “I can’t stand the tension!” There’s also the serenity prayer, skillfully arranged in lovely flowing script, that reads “God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to hide the bodies of those people I had to kill because they really ticked me off.”
Some items get outdated after a while, like the lyrics to a ditty about John and Lorena Bobbit, to be sung to the tune of The Beverly Hillbillies’ theme. Others are timeless, like a comic panel of Cathy struggling in vain to find a flattering swim suit.
On my hard drive I started a Humor folder where I store all funny stuff that comes electronically. (A lady came home from the doctor’s office smiling from ear to ear. Her husband asked why she was so happy. “The doctor said I have the breasts of an eighteen-year-old!” she said. Her husband rolled his eyes and said, “Well what did he say about your 45-year-old ass?” “Oh,” she replied casually, “YOU never came up in the conversation.”)
Soon I realized I couldn’t remember all the jokes just by their file names, and some I definitely wouldn’t want my mom to read, so I started a Clean Jokes file. (A little girl asked her father, “Daddy, do all fairy tales begin with ‘Once Upon A Time’?” He replied, “No, there is a whole series of fairy tales that begin with ‘If Elected I Promise’.”)
In these folders I also have multi-page Word documents that are collections of jokes by popular category, such as dumb blondes and lawyer jokes. (”Why didn’t the shark bite the vacationing lawyer who was surfing? Professional courtesy.”) The longest doc is probably Bumper Snickers, which has wisdom gleaned from car bumpers, key chains and magnets:
“Diplomacy – the art of letting someone have your way.”
“I used up all my sick days so I’m calling in dead.”
“Santa’s elves are just a bunch of subordinate Clauses.”
Many of the humorous pieces I save are related to my interests, like writing. When I got pregnant I added a new category.
“Q: Should I have a baby after 35? A: No, 35 kids is enough.”
“What’s the difference between a Playboy centerfold and a woman who’s nine months pregnant? Nothing, if the pregnant woman’s husband knows what’s good for him.”
And of course there’s a humor file in My Download folder, too, where I keep stuff like this that amuses me:
These folders and files are better than any medicine cabinet, and I can open them any time I need a chuckle or a mood lift, with no prescription needed, no nasty side effects. Some people might even think of them as part of a sanity survival kit.
Do you have your own H-Files?
… is catslady. Thanks to everyone for some great suggestions. I’ve been playing at the iTunes store all afternoon! 
Catslady - please send your info to margo@margomaguire.com. Congratulations and stay tuned for more opportunities to win great stuff from the JQs!
I had lunch with a friend today that I hadn’t seen in (other than just running into her) over a year. We used to critique together when she was writing…so we went from seeing each other every week to nothing. She’s busy. I’m busy. And we just never called to set anything up.
One of the interesting things we discussed today was the fact that we’d both (up until recently) had best friends since high school that aren’t our friends any longer.
Things happen, people disappoint. What was interesting is that we both in retrospect felt that we’d hung onto the relationship longer than we should have. That years ago the friendship had began to change. We had less in common…and everything always seemed to be about the other person. Still, we held on and tried to make it work…though we weren’t quite sure why. Maybe because there was so much history…maybe because we couldn’t believe that we could have so little in common after being friends for so many years…or maybe because it’s hard to say goodbye.
Being loyal is a good quality….but so is being honest with yourself. I think I was just reluctant to admit that what had once been there wasn’t there any more.
Talking about it today made me realize I wasn’t alone. How about you? Have you ever held onto something or someone when you really should have moved on?
When I first started writing, I preferred complete silence. Not that it’s ever completely silent at my house but I wanted it reasonably quiet.
But over the past few years, I’ve started to enjoy listening to some background music as I write. I llike lots of different kinds of popular music, and I love classical (I’m a sucker for Mozart and Haydn and Vivaldi) but what I prefer for writing is a good soundtrack. I’ve got several playlists on my iPod that are called “Wordless” soundtracks - because music with lyrics is too distracting. And - happily enough - I received mucho denero in iTunes money for Christmas. So I’ve increased my soundtrack library!
Here are some of my favorite soundtracks, although with some of these, I only like one or two of the tracks (love that iTunes store for picking and choosing!!)
Finding Neverland
Harry Potter
Dancing with Wolves
Jurassic Park
Pride & Prejudice (the Kiera Knightly one)
National Treasure II
Lord of the Rings
Edward Scissorhands
The Girl with the Pearl Earring
Robin Hood, Prince of Thieves
Braveheart
Stardust
Shawshank Redemption
You can listen to clips of these themes if you go to Amazon music or iTunes. Let me know if there are any other great soundtracks you think I’ve missed. I’d love to add a few more to my playlists, and I think I just might send out a prize pack (a book and some Avon coverflats) to somebody who gives me a great music suggestion.
Probably most of you are aware that right now the writer’s in the WGA are on strike. Let me preface all of this by saying that I am 100% behind the writers. The sticking point in negotiation is that the studios don’t want to pay the writers a percentage of the billions (BILLIONS) of dollars they make off of streaming shows via the internet. Yeah. That’s right. They want to put content writers have written online, make money off advertising… and then not pay them. Nice, huh? So go Writers! Go WGA!
However, this strike does put a crimp on my television watching. I mean, I have “my shows”!! The Office (PB&J anyone), CSI, Battlestar Galactica (which is not back yet, but I’m scared!!), etc. Of course, you all know about my sick obsession with reality television, but I have limits. And now it’s all I’m left with… for the foreseeable future. So here’s what I’m watching or plan to watch as I hope the studios get their acts together.
Rock of Love 2 with Bret Michaels – Help! I watched the first Rock of Love with the Poison frontman and now I can’t help but watch the strippers battle it out for Bret’s heart again. It’s just WRONG, but it’s so right!!!
Paranormal State – This one is on A&E and follows the paranormal phenomenon investigation group from Penn State. It’s really cheesy, but also tooootally creepy.
Intervention — Another A&E show, but it’s actually really moving. Follows addicts as their families prepare to participate in a secret intervention. Makes me cry and thank my lucky stars that I made good choices.
Survivor — The classic show comes back in February. I can’t help it. I still love watching the rats and the snakes battle it out.
Amazing Race – This one takes couples of all kinds around the world, doing tasks and testing their relationships. It’s over for this season, but I was rooting for TK and Rachel, the super chill, clearly supportive “recently dating” couple. Also, they were kind of hippies. Hippies are fun.
Celebrity Rehab – Anything on VH1 Celebreality you know is going to be BAD! And yet, I can’t look away from the trainwreck. Help.
So what shows do you desperately miss during the writer’s strike? And what reality and news shows are you tragically watching instead?
Okay, I know Japanese manga has been around for many years and that it has thousands of fans here in the good ole USA, but I have to admit that I’ve never really paid much attention to the buzz over it, even though I have watched and enjoyed several of the anime series that have arisen from them. With so many authors I know and love recently dabbling their toes in the manga waters, however, I finally decided to give reading a few of them a try. A friend of mine handed over Christine Feehan’s recent manga edition of Dark Hunger along with several volumes of Fruits Basket, since I loved the anime so much, and though I’ve only flipped through a couple of them, I have to say I find it all very disorienting. The whole “back to front” thing really throws me off, though the artwork is definitely cool.
So, is anybody here a manga fan? It really seems like this might be the next big thing. The buzz is getting louder, and publishers are snapping up the rights to Japanese manga series right and left. What do you think? Is this going to become a bigger craze here in America? What do you think about the recent trend of romance authors moving into the manga or comic book arena? A good thing? And if you are a manga fan, do you have any recommendations for a good series?
BTW, in closing today, I have a bit of a sad announcement. As of the end of January, I will be officially turning in my quill and stepping down as a member of the Jaunties. While I’ve had the time of my life here and have enjoyed the experience, I have decided that right now I really need to focus all of my energy and attention on my writing. I know Jaunty will miss my august presence, as I will no longer be around to torment him or drag him (Kicking and screaming, I might add) into more haunted places, but I promise to continue stopping by to visit and hope that I will be able to guest blog a time or two in the future. I promise I won’t be a stranger. Thank you to my JQ sisters for being such a great source of support and friendship, and thank you JQ visitors for making my two years here so fun and memorable!
Have a favorite lolcat or web animal picture that you’ve seen lately? Please, share a link inside! 
Here are some faves of mine from the last month.
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I know I’ve mentioned on here before that I love NBC’s The Biggest Loser, well, I don’t know if I’ve been able to properly express how much. I mean I really love this show. I wish it was on every night. It makes me laugh, it always makes me cry and it reminds me just how powerful the human spirit can be. I even recently watched The Biggest Loser Australia marathon on the Reality channel and it was from 2006. What can I say, it’s my favorite show. Well, the new season started on New Year’s day and while it is a short season, it’s turning out to be a special one. This time around they’re doing all couples - husbands and wives, mothers and daughters, mothers and sons, friends and even brothers. They have a little bit of everything. But my favorite couple, oddly enough, is a formerly married couple - Paul and Kelly, the Yellow team. Well, they’re in white in this picture.
I think I probably was intrigued by them from the very beginning that they were there together working as a team even though their marriage had ended. But then I heard their story and now I’m totally committed, totally invested in them. It’s not that I want them to win, that’s never a big issue for me with the show, I just want them to succeed. And, I admit it, I want them to reunite. Maybe it’s the romance novelist in me, but for them, I have hope. First of all, Paul is so still in love with Kelly, you can see it all over his face. But really it’s their trials, the stuff they’ve been through that you can extrapolate was the reason they split, that just breaks my heart. You see Paul and Kelly suffer from infertility. And I’m sure some of you know from things I’ve said here and there that this is an issue close to home for me. They’ve lost three to miscarriage and two to ectopic pregnancies and that’s on top of the actual treatments and years of trying to conceive. I know, only too well, as I’m sure many of you do, how difficult this can be on a relationship. And to top all of this off, Paul comes from a family where the men (his father, grandfather and great-grandfather) have died far too early (in their 40’s) of heart disease. So you have a woman who clearly is driven to become a mother and is worried about the man she loves and whether or not he’ll be with her for too much longer. It’s no wonder that in our society they divorced. I’m sure I’m simplifying things for them, I don’t know this couple, nor do I claim to know anything about their actual situations, but hey, I’m a fiction writer and a lover of love and I can’t help but pull for the miracle. That they meet their weight loss goals, get their health back, and get back together to start that family they so desperately want.
So how about you? Do you get invested with people on reality shows?
