I don’t know if I believe in love at first sight. I definitely believe in lust at first sight and I can tell you (almost without blushing) I felt that way for him. I probably couldn’t tell you the moment I fell in love with him, but I do remember being nervous as hell to tell him only to have him smile at me and repeat it back without hesitation. We fell for each other from the beginning. We were “that couple” that people rolled their eyes at and were all, “Oh you two will get married. And stop being so cute. It’s grossing us out.”

We’re still cute.

And seven years later, we are, once again, celebrating his birthday together and our lives are so utterly completely different from that day back in 2005.

Happy Birthday, Stephen. I can’t wait to celebrate so many more with you. I love you…

If you missed the last post or missed all my tweetering about it, there you go.

Babymeat v2.0 is currently baking in Le Belly Oven.

I haven’t decided how much of this pregnancy I’ll publicly keep track of. I may randomly tweet nonsense like “Oh, hey, I’m in my second trimester!” or “Oh, we’re having a <gender>” but I’m not sure beyond that. I feel a little more chill about this one.

But the stuff I know so far:

I am nearly 10 weeks – due sometime in mid-September. Yes, I have a due date but I’m ignoring it because what baby comes on their due date. Honestly.

I’m nauseous like whoa. Ginger tea and jolly ranchers are saving my life at the moment.

I’m already kinda showing which is weird because I didn’t show until 15ish weeks with Olivia.

I have a kickass midwife and Olivia loves her so that’s a huge plus in my book since she’s so shy. Olivia, not the midwife.

Yes, we’ll find out and share the sex.

We’re probably going to keep the name to ourselves so please don’t hound us about it. I PROMISE you’ll find out eventually.

I can’t wait until Stephen starts getting regular paychecks again because I need warm-weather maternity clothing and that’s a perfect excuse to go shopping. Leggings and dresses! Whee!

I also can’t wait until we move into our own place so I can nest. I’m getting the crazies not having more than two rooms for all our crap. Yes, crap. Did I mention there will be a Goodwill purge? NOTHING IS SAFE!

Except maybe the dog. *side-eyes dog*

So, there’s the skinny, the haps, the deets. I’m pretty low-key about the whole thing. I have enough on my plate with Olivia and trying to get this book published and maybe starting to write a new one. However, I will answer any specific questions as long as it’s something Stephen and I have agreed we’re sharing with the public.

1. Get Stephen a new, stable job

2. Find a place of our own to live

3. Get me closer to publishing a book

4. Have another baby

Just four things. But Four Big Things.

1. Get Stephen a new, stable job

Stephen got in touch with a recruiter here in St. Louis and through him, plus some of his own digging around, secured a handful of interviews with some large and small companies. Every single one of them resulted in a job offer.

Yep, every single one. This is me being extremely proud of my husband.

He accepted one of them and will be working for a company here in town as part of a new department they are starting. The pay is awesome, the benefits will be fantastic once they kick in after the 3 month contract period, and he noted that everyone wore jeans to work when he was there for his interview. Win.

He starts Monday the 13th.

2. Find a place of our own to live

We are looking! Now that he has a job and we know what part of town it’s in, we’re looking in the surrounding areas for a place to rent. We’re hoping to find something in the next month or two and be out of my parents’ house by April. It’d be nice to celebrate Olivia’s second birthday in a home of her own.

3. Get me closer to publishing a book

The Book is finished. It has been read (or is in the process of being read) by beta readers. I am going through one last time applying feedback from readers and my own tweaks. I will be starting next week submitting it to agents. Fingers crossed, prayers, etc. This is the next biggest step and extremely stressful. I have to convince someone I’m worth taking on as a client because then they have to fall in love with my book and sell it to publishers.

4. Have another baby

I’ll turn this one over to Olivia:

Guess What

I'm going to be a Big Sister

In September.

[grin]

I cannot even begin to describe what I’m feeling right now.  When I was in college, I was told by TWO DIFFERENT PROFESSORS that my writing was pretty much crap–that my favorite genres were stupid.  I’m not going to get into a huge debate about what teachers should and shouldn’t do, but, for god’s sake, if you’re going to be a WRITING professor then encourage your students to WRITE.

Anyway.

Yes, draft one of the story that’s been in my head since 2005 is done.  The characters that have sat in my head, tapping their feet impatiently, are finally on paper and you know what?  I love them just as much on paper as I do in my head.

What happens now, you ask?

Now, I go back and edit a few things, fix some consistency issues, make the writing tighter.  108,000 words, while impressive, might scare a lot of agents and publishers.  So, there will be some trim work, some shaving of the fat if you will.

Then my critique partner, the lovely Cassandra Graham, and my husband will start combing through it line by line and giving me much needed feedback – both good and bad.  Things I probably missed.  I mean, I know these characters as if they were my own children – you don’t – so we have to make sure I’m not throwing stuff out there or making them do things that make perfect sense to me but everyone else is all, “Wait, WHAT?”

THEN, after we have the book polished to a point we are happy with, I will send it to a couple of beta readers with no explanation.  Just, “Read this. Tell me if you hate it.”

While beta readers are doing their thing, I’m going to be researching agents and making a list of about ten agents I will query.  That is the next big hurdle – querying.  For those of you who don’t know, I will write a one-page letter that introduces me, my book, the reasons why I want that agent to represent me and it all needs to be in a fashion that makes the agent firmly believe their life would be amazingly better with my book in it.  Some agents ask for sample pages – usually the first 5-10 pages – those are the ones I will focus on since my writing is good.  I believe in my writing.

Hear that, college professors? I believe in my writing.

Depending on how queries go will determine the next steps.  However, while I’m waiting on query responses, I will write something else.  Yes, start a new project.  Why?  Because 1) I’m not guaranteed this book will be published and 2) the only way to get better at anything is to keep doing it.

But

I wrote my story.  Rumor and Bane and Braeden and William and Nyx and Vala and Ren and Jude are on paper.

Hopefully there is a path that exists for you to meet them someday as well.

The journey continues!

And the winner of Tahereh Mafi’s debut book, SHATTER ME, is….

Congratulations, Jennie!!

So, of course, I had to read her book.

“You can’t touch me,” I whisper.

I’m lying, is what I don’t tell him.

He can touch me, is what I’ll never tell him.

But things happen when people touch me.

Strange things.

Bad things.

No one knows why Juliette’s touch is fatal, but The Reestablishment has plans for her. Plans to use her as a weapon.

But Juliette has plans of her own.

After a lifetime without freedom, she’s finally discovering a strength to fight back for the very first time—and to find a future with the one boy she thought she’d lost.

The writing in this book. *flails* I bow to her wordsmithing skills – seriously. The repetition and strike-throughs and stuttered sentences convey the visceral fear Juliette feels around others. The descriptions are delicious and evoke such imagery of this broken world they live in now.

“Their hands are wrapped in gloves wrapped around guns that could put a bullet through a million possibilities.”

Brainspasm…

So, here’s the thing. When I come across a book I know I’ll want to buy, I will preorder it immediately. Sometimes, I accidentally preorder it more than once because I forget. That happened this time. I possess two copies of this book. Normally, I would send it back, BUT

I’m going to give it to one of you. It isn’t signed or anything special but it’s a first edition, release day hardcover copy. It’s pretty and new and shiny and smells wonderful. I bought it with my own money – no one sent it to me or bribed me or promised me cookies to read it.

All you have to do is leave me a comment. That’s it. One comment. Tell me about your day or your favorite color or why you’d want to read this book or just say hi. Leave me a valid email so I can get in touch with you if you win! But only one comment. Subsequent comments won’t count and you don’t get any extra entries for Tweeting, Tumbling, Facebooking, Blogging, Google Plussing or anything else-ing.

USA and Canada only. Sorry, overseas lovelies, I can’t afford the postage.

I’ll run a randomizer thingy on Monday and pick a winner. Easy!

Shatter Me and Tahereh Mafi on the web

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Buy the Book!

Yesterday, I received two texts checking on me from two other friends I’ve never met in real life.

Yes, I’m taking a bit of a social media break at the moment, but I wanted to say thank you to everyone who has tweeted, facebooked, emailed, texted, mailed, and called me either in response to something I’ve said or just on your own regarding my writing.

I’ve been told you’re proud of me, you’re inspired by me, you can’t wait to see me published, you can’t wait to read “it” (even though none of you don’t even know what “it” is!). Your thoughts, prayers, messages, everything nearly bring me to tears (some of you have, KATE and CARRIE ANN) because you constantly remind me that I. Can. Do. This.

I can conquer that voice in my head telling me I can’t. Because I battle that voice every goddamn time I sit down to my computer. You guys drown it out.

And, for that, I’m eternally grateful.

I will let you digest that for a moment.

Done?

She has an opinion on everything. And smirks frequently. Like, SMIRKS. Little baby corners of her mouth twitch upward imperceptibly and she squints slightly. Then moves about her business. Her very important toddler business.

She can sign dog, fish, banana, diaper, eat, more, want. She will often use them interchangeably just to make sure you’re paying attention.

She RUNS everywhere and is afraid of NOTHING…including, but not limited to, her own well-being. The child has no sense of self-preservation and will pitch herself off anything no matter the height. I must be part cat with the number of lives I’ve lost snatching her from busting her face on the floor or edge of something.

It’s as precious as it sounds.

She loves music. LOVES music. Especially music on TV. She even understands when a song ends because she’ll grin really huge and look at me and clap. She appreciates performance and demonstrates thusly. That’s my girl.

She is still chubby though a lot of it is slowly lengthening into toddlerhood. At 18 months, she wears a combination of 2T and 3T clothing. Size 6 shoes. So there’s that happy wardrobe change.

Her imagination is beginning to blossom. The other day, she crawled around on the floor barking then stood up and patted her belly, which is her sign for dog. This cracked her up immensely so she repeated it, totally oblivious to me watching.

She’s a such a treasure. My little angel. I could sit and watch her read for hours. I could watch her delight in a Disney song, clapping excitedly and twirling and dancing, forever. She constantly reminds me to find the happy in everything, no matter how innocuous.

We’ll pretend I was thinking something deep and profound there and not mentally calculating how much laundry I have to do.

So, when Beth Revis asked everyone what book they were most grateful for I was stumped. How could I pick only one? So many books have touched me in so many ways, influenced how I think, how I write, how I perceive the world around me.

But one book sprang to the front of my mind unbidden and I knew it was the one. And it may surprise you but bear with me.

Yes, Memoirs of a Geisha…

If you haven’t read it, please do. The story is overwhelming and gritty and magical and beautiful in the middle with soul-crushing roughness around the edges.

There’s this image of water that creeps through the whole story. Her eyes, her soul, her life.

Imagine a trickle of water at the top of a hill. At the bottom of the hill is the ocean. The shortest route from point A to point B is a straight line, yes? But, along the way, the water runs into obstacles – ruts, logs, stones, hills, animals, etc. And what does it do? It adapts and changes direction if nothing but to get over/around/under/through that obstacle and continue its journey to the ocean.

That image really spoke to me and continues to speak to me to this day. Our lives are like that trickle of water and our dreams/goals/wishes/hopes are at the bottom of that hill in the ocean. And, through life, we hit obstacles that may seem insurmountable. But, by adapting and solving the problem, we overcome it.

So, the book I’m most grateful for? Memoirs of a Geisha because it changed how I view my personal obstacles. I’m not just going to pool up in a hollow and give up. I will find a way to flow to the ocean.

What about you?

Haunting.

There really is no better word for this book. Released at the end of September 2011, this is the first of two parts (I believe, unless she decides to make it a trilogy). And it throws your whole mind for a loop. You spend half your time wondering if you are going crazy right along with Mara and other times flushing at her [seriously twisted] romantic interludes with Noah Shaw, British bad boy.

What I love about this book is Michelle’s writing. It flows so beautifully and sucks you in. It’s dark, delicious, haunting, twisted and everything I admire in a talented writer. I cannot wait for the sequel to this and anything else she writes for that matter.

From the Dust Jacket: Mara Dyer believes life can’t get any stranger than waking up in a hospital with no memory of how she got there.

She’s wrong.

Seriously, though Buy It.