Relationships…the day after tomorrow

I come from a family that believes in public service. My mother was a Korean veteran, my father would have been except he was in the Army National Guard at 17 and suffered hearing damage that made him exempt from the draft. My husband is a disabled Vietnam vet.

My brothers work for state agencies, one of them protecting the state computer network backbone and the other keeping records of the state roadway system in order. I personally spent five years in the state environmental lab, up to my elbows in hazardous waste at least three times a week to protect the air and drinking water of my fellow citizens.

So I’m just a little irritated that the local VA medical center decided today was the perfect day for my husband to have a colonoscopy–meaning he was on a clear liquid diet and he had to do the prep stuff ON Veterans Day. Bad VAMC–no cookie!

Well, my darling is getting whatever he wants for dinner tonight and pampered within an inch of his life as soon as we get home from the procedure. My own personal veteran might be a spooky guy who disappears in plain sight (including from computers, a story for another day), but he is mine and I love him. Thanks for everything, honey.

And all you other veterans, too.

Carina Press is Harlequin/Silhouette’s first electronic-only imprint, and is accepting submissions for book lengths of 50,000 words and up in all fiction genres. Let me repeat for any writers reading this: they’re not just looking for romance.

Why is this important to me? Because they hired Angela James as their Executive Editor. Angela used to be the exec editor of Samhain Publishing; yes, she’s the editor who contracted my debut novel.

Angie has a stellar reputation in digital publishing, and I’m biased, but I understand that other people also think she has excellent taste in her acquisitions. Heck, she was one of the first to recognize the genius of my writing friend Charli Teglia.

I think HQN has made an excellent choice and I’m looking forward to watching Angie do great things with this company.

And if I want to be a part of that, I have to get my behind in the chair and finish the next book. LOL.

I really enjoy teaching my Practical Chemistry for Writers class, but I always forget how much time it takes, even when my class is completely overwhelmed and very quiet (hopefully in a good way). It’s been almost a full month since my last post, but it feels as if it was only about a week ago.

I’m taking a short break from my work in progress to write a space-opera version of Sleeping Beauty to submit to Samhain’s hot fairy tales anthology…because there’s this giant plot hole I need to fix in the novel. So I’m playing with something already plotted while the girls in the basement chew on the problem. They have about another week to come up with an answer or they’re getting such a pinch—they created the plot hole in the first place, so it’s only fair.

In other news, I was interviewed by writer Jody Wallace’s cat, Mean Kitty. Mean Kitty even posted photos of the cats who own my lap, Gizmo the Many-Toed and Stuart “Stooby-dooby-doo”: http://blog.jodywallace.com/search/label/writing.

Jody also writes erotic romance under the nom de plume Ellie Marvel. Her website is here: http://www.jodywallace.com/.  Jody rocks.