Back in August, April tagged me with this award. I didn't see it at first; I was in Cozumel. She tipped me off to it last week, so I went to check it out.

In her nomination, April said some things that made me blush and dig my toe in the carpet and grin like a loon. She also speculated that I wear WWND undies. That is so not true. And it isn't because nobody has made any, either. *mumbles* That would be sacrilegious and disrespectful. I mean, what if I got my period? We would then have to design a special pantyliner worthy of the WWND undie line. So yeah, let's not even go there.

I'm not exactly sure what this award entails, although I'm flattered as hell to receive it from someone as awesome as April. Heck, she nominated Dear Author, Bam, Smart Bitches, me, and Karen Scott, so from where I stand, this means April thinks I'm one of the coolest, smartest, funniest, and best informed people on the Internet. I would suspect her of secretly wanting to host Tupperware parties, which I would then feel obligated to attend, if I lived in a 50 mile radius. But I don't, so I most conclude, she likes me, she really likes me!

Then I started thinking, huh, do I rock? Do I really? Today I got a comment from a guy on MySpace who said I'd honored him by adding him as a friend. My initial response was, ok, he's having me on -- sarcasm is his native tongue. Then he followed it up with a personal message that made me think the fellow was sincere. Flattering, right? Reviewers have been asking for ARCs of Grimspace and SciFi chick put me on a list today with David Eddings and Alan Dean Foster. One of her commenters said, "Apparently I need to go look more into Grimspace, seems to have a following already." At this point it's more of a conga line, but I'll take what I can get. So maybe I do rock. A little?

Let's examine the facts. This morning, I got up and rambled downstairs in my awesomely ugly flowered nightgown. My hair stood on end as I packed lunches for my kids. I chafed them into eating breakfast and feeding the animals. I chased them around to make sure their backpacks contained school supplies instead of Pokemon cards and Bratz whatchamabobbies. I smelled their breath to make sure they had, in fact, actually brushed their teeth.

After everyone left, I argued with the water meter man in Spanish. By then I had my hair up in some ornamental chopsticks I bought for five pesos at the Asian Cultural Center. Then I shooed two street peddlers away from my gate, still wearing the awesomely ugly nightgown (you'd think that would've scared them away on its own, but no). After the minor contretemps, I ate some cinnamon cereal while I answered emails.

Then I got down to work, which lasted until 12:45 when my son called from school. "Mom, can you bring my trunks at 2:30? I have team swimming today." I could and did; I also picked up his sister.

While the girl sat in the kitchen eating her snack, she had the bright idea to let Daisy in. Our dog is a crazy bitch. She ran straight for the cat box, which is hidden under the stairs. Our male cat, Don (aka Don Quixote de la Mancha) happened to be using said box when Kamikaze Dog bombed him. Daisy quite literally scared the shit out of him. He ran, only half done with his business, and left me clues as to what had happened. I will not describe the resultant mess, except to say it took me a while to clean it up, and the cat now has a twitch.

The cats (Dulce / left, Don / right) have to eat their dinner up on the bookshelf because the dog will pig down their food if we let her, and then come down with a raging case of the runs. However, the dog is terrified of the squeaky steak we bought her as a toy. If you squeeze it, she runs like hell. It's about the only thing that deters her.

For dinner, I decided to make chicken marsala and then realized the only things I had that I needed for the recipe were chicken, butter and fresh mushrooms. My daughter watched in awe as I poured Boone's Tropical Fruit Wine into the pan, along with Perrier, a chicken bouillon cube, some miscellaneous spices (such as rosemary), white vinegar, sun dried tomatoes, and I forget what else. I also didn't have the cream to add at the end, so I melted some butter and whipped that in some milk, then used the concoction to finish the sauce. And the almost-chicken-marsala was motherfuckin' delicious, if I do say so myself. And that's probably allegorical -- I wing it, flying by the seat of my pants, and to an outsider, it probably looks like a hot mess, but it comes out fine in the end.

Welcome to my life.

For my nods, I have no idea who's been tagged, but here goes.

Sci-Fi Chick -- She shares my geeky interest in many things, such as SF books and superhero films, she lives where I used to, and she put me on that list.

Victoria Dahl -- Met her at Nationals; she's funny and charming. Plus she just sold a new book. That's pretty rockin'. Go show her some love, why don't ya?

Jeri Smith-Ready -- I first saw her commenting on Smart Bitches, and I read one of her books. Requiem for the Devil is brilliant and heart-breaking. Much later, I asked her for a blurb, then we met at National, and now we're, like, friends, and everything. I adore her sense of humor and I love the fact that she answers my emails, like I'm not a total pain in the ass. Go check out her guest blog at Bam's place and win prizes today.

Carrie Lofty -- She's one of my best friends, (who I also met on Smart Bitches, damn, I met just about all my friends on SB!) and she's also the only person who can crack me up just by yelling, "TURK!" At National we totally MST3K'd some romance novels we got, and we made each other cry laughing. It was a four day slumber party and I loved it. So if you wanted to meet me and didn't, blame Carrie, 'cos we had so much fun hanging out that we just didn't go out much in the evening, once seminars were done. Next year, we'll throw a party in our room.

L -- I just got to know her, but I'd like to know her better, because her dry, droll sense of humor slays me. You know, not literally. Cos I'm still typing. I love her way with words, and I like reading her blog even when I don't comment, because of the charming way she writes about mundane things. It doesn't hurt that she said so much nice stuff about Boundless and that she thinks Dev is magically delicious.

Now you tell me... do I rock?

Labels: about me, rockin' girl blogger award

Today is my birthday. Woohoo! The sun is shining, the birds are singing, and I'm home alone, at least until the maid gets here at 10. Anybody who has kids (or even roommates) can appreciate the lovely feeling of being left to your own devices.

We had a big family party on Saturday, where I ate an awesome burger, danced, drank some Chivas and listened to some really funny stories. The celebration went on for some six hours, so I'm okay to chill this fine Monday. We'll probably go out to dinner somewhere tonight, but otherwise it's business as usual for me today.

I'm on page 255 out of 283 in my Good Touch revisions, but it's the last bit here that needs the most work. However, I think I've just about figured out how to fix the rough parts. I'm nearly done with the accompanying proposal as well. It would be a grand birthday present to myself if I managed to get the project back out the door to my agent today, but we'll see.

Anyway, contest news: I have a new one running over on the Bradford Bunch, one you won't want to miss. The prize is pretty awesome, if I do say so myself. Go check it out.

We have a contest winner over here too! L has won an e-ARC of Boundless. Blam! Her first time commenting on my blog, and she racks up a win. Email me, and I'll hook you up.

Finally, I have a contest running on my loop, but I can't talk about it here. If you were a member of my inner circle, you'd already know what it was all about, and you'd probably have entered by now. But don't despair. If you hate feeling left out, just put your email in the box up in the sidebar, and you can still enter. It closes on Aug 29, midnight. I hope you'll join us.

And for those of you who, like me, could never get enough of Mr. Hut from Life on a Stick, I bring you this very special Happy Birthday Dance. The look on your face is thanks enough.

Labels: about me, birthday

This post probably isn't about what you think. I'm not gonna ramble on about HQN plotlines today. I'm going to tell you the story of how my life became a HQN plotline. I make the joke often enough, and then it occurred to me that this is a story worth telling. It'll also let you get to know me a little bit better by the time I'm done. (Don't worry, I'll skip the sad and/or boring parts.)

I was born in a small town in Indiana and grew up with the usual amount of dysfunction. When I was seventeen, I went away to college. I studied English Literature. I intended to teach, but halfway through my student teaching, I fell ill and had to be hospitalized. They wouldn't let me return to student teaching, due to the missed days, and I couldn't afford another semester without working. So I dropped the Education degree, graduated with a Lit degree that qualified me to do jack shit and went out into the world to look for work.

Around that time, I moved to Indianapolis, which is a big city by most Indiana standards (unless you happen to live in NW Indiana near Chicago). In classic writerly fashion, I held a series of crappy jobs, most of which I didn't stay at for more than a year. Let's see, I worked as a daycare teacher, a retail clerk at Sam's Club, and a voice actress, just to name a few of my gigs. By 24, I hadn't really gotten my shit together, but I had a decent job at least, one I liked fairly well. I started working at an animal hospital as a receptionist but before long, they made me office manager. It was a small clinic and I was in charge of all the HR stuff, hiring, training, evaluations, firing, scheduling, overseeing client appointments, all that jazz. Sometimes it sucked being around the sick or injured animals, but I do love animals so overall I enjoyed the work. I'd always wanted to be a writer and I still messed with it some at night, but I was nowhere near ready to do anything with it. I was still reeling from having my stuff subbed in NY at 21 and hadn't recovered from the rejections yet. My writer-skin was baby soft back then, ya'll.

So my social life was nonexistent. I had a few guy friends, but they were stoners I had to throw out of my apartment after a while because if I let them, they'd turn my house into a hippie crash pad. I don't make friends easily, and even back then, I was much more likely to stay home after a long day's work than to hit up a club. Ya'll are gonna tease me about what's coming next, but I don't care. I'm coming out, dammit!

Back then, I socialized mostly on AOL. There was an RP channel (no, not "spank my ass, I've been a bad monkey" type RP either) where I liked to hang out. Not as myself but my online persona, a character if you will. Syn was tall, wore leather pants and carried a silver knife around that would've made anyone think twice. She was slinky and dangerous; she'd kill you as soon as look at you. Reminds me a little bit of Danny Valentine, now that I think of it, from Lilith Saintcrow's books.

I wrote all kinds of stories with a wide variety of people whose names I didn't know in real life. Adventure stories, fantasy, sometimes romance. Man, that was fun. It wasn't to please the market or anything; it was just for the pleasure of it. Well, eventually, Syn got herself a love interest, a mage (think White Wolf Mage). Eventually I started talking to this guy OOC (out of character) too. I started getting to know him.

His name was Andres, he was nine months younger than me, and he lived in LA. He was attending Pepperdine University at the time, or he had just finished up there. I can't remember which. He was originally from Mexico, and his family still lived there. We got on real well, and I'm not embarrassed to say we were totally crushing on each other. Oh, we tell people who can't handle an 'online' lovestory that we met in a bookstore, but I'm not shamed to say how it really went down.

We talked online for about a year, I guess. In April (he's an Aries) of the next year, he begged me to let him come see me because we were nuts about each other by then. I was a little bit nervous (massive understatement) but I said okay. I made chili for him and baked him a chocolate cake. He said both were the best he ever had. He spent the weekend at my place, and I'm not gonna write a whole lot about that, except to say it was smokin' hot.

In August of that year, he moved from LA to Indy to date me. He started school at University of Indianapolis, doing a masters in international business. I didn't know anything about his family. He didn't really talk about them. I assumed (somewhat stereotypically, I admit) that he came from a poor(ish) Mexican family who would be happy if we sent money home so they could eventually join us in the States. I didn't worry about whether they would like me or how they'd feel about their son seeing a white girl.

He went home periodically to see them, but I never went. The trip would've cost me a lot and I wasn't making tons of money, although that changed when I went to work for the phone company. In that job, I made 50K plus including sales incentives. I hated it, though, it was soul-killing. I worked in a cubicle, all that. I supported us while he went to school.

We were together and happy as clams. A few years down the line, my dad died. I remember Andres asking me about a condom, and I was so messed up in the head, I ran the numbers and did the math wrong (I suck at math anyway, never mind when I'm grieving). I just wanted to forget for a while, so we went on and did it like crazy love-hungry fools. I came up pregnant in a few weeks.

I called him from work to tell him. He got real quiet and asked me, "Are you sure?" like ten times. It must have scared the shit out of him. There was no question that we'd raise the baby together, and we made it official when I was six months pregnant. We eloped to Vegas and got married.

I still hadn't met his family, though. When you have a small baby, the last thing you want to do is get on an airplane and take a long flight. Andres called them once a week, though, so I assumed they knew about us.

Man, was I wrong. See, he never mentioned his wife or family when he called home. He says he didn't know how to break the news over the phone and the longer he waited, the harder it got. Plus, they were estranged. He'd rebelled against working in the family business and run off to the States.

Yep, you read that right. Family business. It was years before I knew the truth. Far from struggling, his folks belong to the upper class. They own a pharmaceutical company that makes medicines for the social security program. They supply government contracts. They're like the Eli Lily of Mexico in some respects.

Mind you, our son was fifteen months old by the time I found all this out. He didn't warn me, the first time we all came to visit. I walked into his mother's home, this gorgeous place with marble floors, chandeliers and stained glass in my grubby jeans with toddler drool on me.

That's when I realized I hadn't married a poor college student after all, but an heir to the dynasty pretending to be such. Andres still likes to brag, "I so got you and I didn't even have to flash my checkbook either." You can imagine this led to some trust issues, though, because that's a huge secret to keep. I understood why he didn't mention it at first; he couldn't be sure I wasn't some golddigger, but after I had his child, you'd think could've clued me in, no?

We've put each other through some crazy soap opera shit that I won't write about because it's sad (and real life sometimes is), but we're still together after ten years plus. And I love him. His parents were a bit cool to me for a while (I think maybe they didn't know what to make of me or this white girl their precious boy had gone and married without their approval) but we're getting past that as well. We moved to Mexico City two years ago, and I imagine this is where I'll be for the rest of my life. It's been weird adjusting to what is definitely a privileged lifestyle. I had no fucking idea what to do with a maid when we first got here. I'd run around cleaning up before she arrived because I didn't want her to know what pigs we are. Andres found that hilarious. I've adapted, though, and put down roots. I'm slowly making friends.

I hope you feel like you know me better now and you're glad you stopped by. What about you? How'd you meet your man?

Labels: about me, real life romance