This time of year always brings about alot of musings and memes and lists of “what I did” and “what I’m gonna do.”

I’m not doing any of that. I’m not doing much of anything, really, but goofing off! I keep thinking about writing, but I’m not writing. I think about cleaning — not cleaning. Been playing a bunch of video games and watching movies and reading books.

That’s a great end of the year, if you ask me!

This is also my final post for The Bradford Bunch, though you might see me around here now and again!

Happy New Year, everyone!

M

Hey, all!

Happy Wednesday, everyone! I am sitting here, my fingers freezing, but looking out the window at a world covered in snow and ice.  I want to go back to bed and maybe I will, since I was out late last night (for great reasons, but this old lady gets tired, ya’ll) and my kids are in school for another couple hours…

But here’s the thing.

I also need to write. Because if I don’t write it, I can’t sell it. If I don’t write it, the superfabandgroovy Laura Bradford can’t put it out there in the world for editors to buy. If I don’t write it, ain’t nobody gonna give me any money for it!

And no, I don’t write solely for the money. Heck. If I wanted to do anything just for the bucks I’d pick something other than novel writing. But I don’t do this as a hobby, it’s not something I toss off in between bon-bons and soap operas. Writing is my job, it’s my career, it’s something I love enough to sacrifice for!

So, if I want to make it in this business, I have to make it (the writing.) I have to actually produce. I can’t sit around on my ever-widening bum and moan and complain and eat thistles because nooooobody’s going to buyyyyy my storrrryyyyyy…I have to do the work. I have to make the effort. I have to get up early and go to bed late and not watch t.v. and not make quilts or play the Sims2 all day!

I mean, life’s about balance, and I will always find time for sleep and the Sims, but really, there’s nobody who’s going to do my work for me. My editors aren’t going to approve checks just ‘cuz they like me, and Laura B. as fab as she is, can’t sell books I haven’t written (well, technically she CAN but that’s because I’ve proven I *will* write them…and I had to do that buy actually finishing a whole bunch before I got to the point where I can sell on proposal and not on a full. It’s part of the way it goes.)

This falls on me. So as much as I’d like to crawl back under my blankets in the soft, warm, flannel cavern of my bed…I’m going to write today, darn it. I’m going to write and write and write some more! Because I want to MAKE IT in this business!

And I can’t make it…if I don’t make it.

As Ringo says, people: Peace and love, peace and love,

Megan

It’s getting close to holiday time again, which for many of us, means a veritable cornucopia of gifts! Both given…AND received! It’s my personal opinion that the only thing better than getting the perfect gift is finding one to give to someone else. I’m a hater of giving something just to give it– I like my gifts to mean something beyond the expectation of it’s holiday time, pass around the presents.

Look at that face. THAT is the face of someone who got just what she wanted. I was fortunate — Superman (aka that man I live with, aka the father of my children) actually listened to me when I said, loudly and constantly, that I hated having switched from TIVO to some other service. He got my TIVO back!

Yay!

Frankly, that means more to me than a poem and a bouquet of roses, because it shows he actually paid attention to what I wanted. And he made the effort to get it! And look at how happy I am in that picture. You can see the joy radiating from my face.

I don’t need any other gifts this year, and probably won’t get many, but it meant more to me than anything that he took the time to find the one thing I really, truly wanted.

Look what else is making me happy…; I got my author copies of STRANGER today. Double Yay! Now I can send out all the copies I promised to people and hopefully make *their* days!

So, what was the best gift you ever received? How about one you gave?

M

Ahh. Nothing like some good, old-fashioned procrastination. I wonder what writers did before they had the internet and were expected to blog, make book videos, do chats…

Hmmm. Did they all just…write?

What an amazing concept!

I have to admit, I love the fertoodliness of the internet and book vidoes and chatting and blogs. I love that connection with the “outside” world — and I put it in quotes because I’d probably never leave my house if I didn’t have to. I’ve become a hermit lately, preferring to snuggle under a blanket with my Alphasmart Neo on my lap rather than going to my used-to-be-favorite coffee shop to write…hey, it’s warm at home and if I take a little snooze, nobody’s the wiser.

But that won’t get the writing done, of course. So, how much of that internet stuff is necessary? See, I pass it off as promotion and tell myself it’s necessary, but the bottom line is…who knows? Having a presence online might help sell books. If you’re a doofus who doesn’t know how to behave in public, it actually might hurt your sales. But really, what it comes down to is writing a good book and having people enjoy it and talk about it, so you could let THEM talk about your book on the internet and you wouldn’t have to…

Hmmm.

But then what would I do with all me “free” time?

Here are two little suttin’ suttin’s I spent some time fertoodling with lately, instead of doing any writing/editing/polishing/critiquing or anything else.

Oh, and instead of mopping the floor, too.

M

I watched history being made last night.

A lot of people are saying that — we watched history being made.

But don’t we watch history being made every single day? Every moment we live, we observe it become a part of our history. Sometimes it’s individual, sometimes it’s collective, but life itself becomes history by the very nature of passing time.

I think of the moments I’ve watched or shared in my lifetime, events that have happened since I became an adult — the fall of the Berlin Wall, the end of the Cold War, September 11th…and the election of Barack Obama. These are moments in history that have affected me as I’ve witnessed them along with thousands and millions of others.

Yet I’ve also watched my children being born, seen my first book on the shelves, watched the Matrix for the first time…these are individual moments of history but nonetheless, moments that have shaped me, have affected me, will live on inside me.

We are history, each and every one of us. Every step we take, our every action, creates it. Our decisions and beliefs and dreams make history. Sometimes what we do affects only ourselves. Sometimes what we do affects the entire world.

Today, I’m prouder to be an American than I have ever been before, and not because of who won the election, but because of what it took to have an election at all.I am proud to have been part of making a difference. I’m proud to have helped make history. 

Every single day.

M

The top of my head blew off Monday night. All because of a technical issue with my DVR…which I hate…but that’s a rant for another day. Bottom line, something I had looked forward to, a simple pleasure, had been ruined by something becoming unnecessarily complicated.

I fixed the problem on Tuesday (and for a complete description of how I did it, see my blog for my rant) but the sour taste remained for a while.

So I found another simple pleasure. Music. I turned on my iTunes and cranked up my new favorite song, We Are Okay, by Joshua Radin. It’s on his new album, Simple Times, and it seemed just right to listen to an album called Simple Times when I was in search of simple pleasure.

Nothing complicated, nothing dramatic, just something feel-good, feel-good. You know what I mean? So when Joshua sang “we are okay, we are all right” — well, I can go with that. I can be okay, I can get into being all right. I can let go of that frustration and blah feeling, and just get into the fact it’s a brand new day and for me, a brand new year and season of renewal.

I can face the new year with optimism, not antagonism. I can take a deep breath. I can dance. I can eat something good, I can smell a flower, I can write a story. A good story. I can look around and appreciate everything in my life and understand if the worst that ever happens to me is that I can’t get a stupid remote control to work my tv, then I’m a lucky woman.

I can be reminded, as Josh says in his song One of Those Days — “it’s just one of those days.” And they pass, those days. Bad times pass, and we are okay.

That can apply to a lot more than a broken remote control.

M

I’ve been reading a new LOLcats type blog where people take pictures of celebrities and put them next to another picture and say they Totally Look Like…whatever. Another person, a frog, whatever. So there’s this post comparing to guys, one of whom was Tom Welling (and he’s pretty cute) and this other guy, who looked a whole lot like Tom Welling, but…was not…cute. At all. At least, not to me.

And yet there was no denying they both looked a lot a like.

So I got to thinking, what is it that makes a man attractive? Why do we fall for one guy, swooning and pining, while another just leaves us colder than leftover spaghetti that hasn’t fully defrosted? It has to be more than features, the alignment of noses and eyes and hair, right?

Part of what makes a man attractive to me, beyond the initial “ooh, cute” is personality. Or attitude. Something intangible I can’t always put my finger on, but woop woop! There we go! HOTTIE ALERT! Sometimes it can be a look, a word, an slow smile. Or a joke he tells, or the way he lifts his child into a stroller or pauses to open a door for someone with an armful of packages.

I’ve been watching True Blood, recently, the new HBO show based on Charlaine Harris’ Southern Vampire novels. I don’t recall seeing the guy who plays Bill Compton (the vampire) in anything else, but something about him playing this character absolutely flips my switch. It’s the way he looks at Sookie, and says her name, all slow and southern-like, and the way he moves toward her. It’s the way he says “MINE” when he speaks of her. It’s the way he oozes sexuality, and it’s raw and more than a little scary.

Now, mostly in real life I’m not so much a fan of the intimidation type stuff, but on this guy, it works. For me. Big time.

And yet when I look at him, I’m not overpowered by anything in particular about his looks. It’s all the attitude.

This guy, on the other hand…

He’s just flat-out cute! 

So what about you all? Somebody new floating your boat and melting your butter? What makes a man attractive to you? First glance, or do you  have to get to know him a little bit, first?

M

So yesterday I typed the last line in my first draft of my upcoming Spice Brief, working title Everything Changes. This story, mind you, won’t see the light of day on teh internets until 2010. And yet it’s finished, all but for the last bits of of polishing.

Wow.

I’m looking at a schedule that takes me out until 2011. Dudes, I can’t even imagine 2012. Won’t we all, like, have flying cars and download books right into the implanted memory chips we all get when we’re in utero?

In 2011 I’m going to be 40 years old, people. I’ll have a teenager. How on earth can I write something now that will still make sense to me in 2011!!!!

The short answer is, of course, that I won’t. I won’t write the books coming out in 2011 until, oh, 2009 and 2010. And by then 2011 won’t seem so far away, you know?

But this story, this short Spice Brief, is interesting, because I’m writing it now, it will come out in 2010, and it’s actually taking place in 2008, the year Tempted came out (because the short story is Alex’s version of the events in Tempted) and I actually WROTE that book in 2006.

Okay, now I’m losing track. Talk about a mind-hump. It’s like time travel only without the funky machine and the Morlocks!

Basically what it all comes down to at this point is, just like that blue fish in Finding Nemo, I’m gonna just keep swimming. Just keep writing, just keep writing, keep writing, keep writing!

I used to keep a notebook marking my progress — 5 pages one day, 3 another, etc. I love to look at that notebook, because it was a daily record of what I was writing and how fast or slow, or what I was doing. I don’t do that  now, because I blog online. I should get back to that notebook, though. There’s something satisfying and nostalgic about going back and realizing, wow, I wrote this book or that story in this time of my life. 

Of course, I could read the books and tell from hidden clues what was going on in my life at the time (favorite songs crop up, or little events like going to the circus, or watching a television show — they happen to me, they end up in the current work.)

That’s my ramble for today. Now I have to get to writing!

M

With apologies to Madonna… *grin*

So, yes, in case you hadn’t heard, I’m back from what some might call the “trip of a lifetime.” I think it was the trip of a lifetime because I’m not sure we’ll ever do it again. It was fabulous, wonderful, exciting…um…long…but overall a great trip that gave me oodles of inspiration and research!

So, now I’m back, the kids are back in school and the man I live with is back to work. One might imagine I would be pounding away on my keyboard, typing typing typing. 

Alas, this is not the case.

First off, the laundry we brought back after two weeks (and I even did a couple loads at one of the campsites!) was, literally as high as my waist. It was bigger than a first grader, lemme tell you. Then there was the school shopping we didn’t get finished before leaving for the trip. Oh, and a trip to IKEA to pick up some bookcases for Superman’s office and a chair for mine…so he’d have a place to put all his stuff I told him to get out of my office when I redecorated/organized and I’d have a place to sit…to write.

Yeah.

So the slipcover for the chair is missing a piece (the one you sit on!), the phone service we just switched to before the trip is wonky, one kid had to have a tooth pulled yesterday and the other one fell off his scooter over the weekend which meant a trip for x-rays and now one to get a cast put on his wrist.

Did I mention I had the bright idea of putting together a photo book for the nearly 2,000 pictures we took on this trip? Since they’re digital I wanted to have something to hold and look at and show around, and uploading them all to make prints was too much effort. But um, yeah, 2,000 pictures take a long time to organize when you consider I wanted to add text and commentary — and yeah, it had to be done soon, before I forget where we were and what we were doing!

Nonetheless I managed to get started on my next Spice Brief, tentatively called Everything Changes. It’s a short story told from Alex Kennedy’s point of view, about his feelings about what happened in Tempted. I started three times because I couldn’t get a feeling for the style — first person present was what came out first, but I thought first person past tense might be better, and then I chucked it all and made it third person past tense. I got 10 pages done, but heck, with all three versions is should count as thirty, right?

RIGHT.

So I’m back but not quite on track, and I’ve decided that’s just the way it goes when juggling motherhood, wifedom, household goddess status AND writerly pursuits. Never enough hours in the day to get it all done. And I guess I won’t complain too much because heck, I’m still doing what I love and getting paid for it, and I’m not the one who fell off a scooter and broke my wrist!

Have a great day, everyone!

M

The Grand Prismatic Spring, Yellowstone National Park

I was thinking about milestones today. How excited I was when my books first became available on Amazon.com because it was a milestone — it was a place I could say, hey, find my books here. You couldn’t find them easily in the stores but you could get them online.

When the books started becoming available in brick and mortar stores? Wow. Talk about a milestone. Now not only could people buy my books online they could actually walk into the store and find them on the shelf.

So what’s next? What do I look forward to? 

Finding my books in grocery stores and airports. Seeing someone reading one of my titles on a plane or at the beach. Getting a review in a major national magazine. Hitting a bestseller list.

Will my life be complete if I don’t make these milestones? Sure. Of course. It doesn’t mean I’m not successful. It just means I have something to look forward to.

Every step of this journey has led me higher, and when I look back at every step I remember how exciting each one was. I hope I never lose that excitement, no matter how small or vast the leaps. Every step, every milestone, every level I reach — I hope it’s as exciting and breath taking as the one before it.

In other news, go check out www.danehart.com or www.bringmemyhookah.com — Lauren and I have launched a our brand-new, multi-media site for our video blogs, both joint and individual. We’re having a couple contests to celebrate, so stop on by!

M