It’s too bad houses aren’t expandable.  Like luggage, or elastic waistbands.   What prompts this? you ask.  Well, I will tell you.  Today I was interviewed by my local paper here in my house - there will be a feature article with photographs in next week’s book section.

Woot! you might think, and yes, I was very excited.  But my second thought after reading the initial email from my publicist was, HOLY CRAP.  I HAVE TO CLEAN MY HOUSE!  I emailed my publicist back and said, “Can’t we meet in a pleasant coffeeshop or something?” to which she replied, “No.  They want to see where you work.”

HOLY CRAP.  My office was worse than my house!  So, panicking, I called DH from SanFran last week - “We have to clean the house.”  Of course I was 3000 miles away, so WE meant HE.  (Some might say I planned this, but even I am not that evil, LOL.)  DH is a Good Man.  So when I returned from SF, my house was pretty clean.  Cool.  But my office was not.  Sigh.  And in a pile next to my bed were boxes filled with Things DH Did Not Know What To Do With.  Yes, I ended that with a preposition.   Grammar was the last thing on my mind as the days rolled by and my office got no cleaner on its own, no matter how much I glared at it as I plodded through page proofs on my new book.  But the newspaper people were coming … 

The net of it is, I cleaned my office.  I even dusted, kind of.  I vacuumed and you can see my carpet!  (I’m not sure how I’m going to work in here.)  It’s CLEAN, except for the boxes filled with stuff I Didn’t Know What To Do With, which are now on top of the boxes DH piled in our bedroom last week.   I’d put them somewhere, but I realized my closets are already full of boxes of stuff … wait for it … that I Didn’t Know What To Do With over the last few years.  I need an elasticized house, to fit all the boxes.  I can’t get into bed without tripping over the dang things.  Needless to say, my bedroom was closed off to the newspaper folks today.  It’s dangerous, and scary.

As my house does not have elasticized closets, I have but one choice.  Wait for oldest daughter to go away to college in a few weeks, then move all the boxes into her room!  HA!  I bet you thought I was going to actually go through all those boxes and throw stuff away.  Suckers…

Do you have expandable closets?  Piles of boxes?  What do you do with the stuff you don’t know what to do with?  Be honest now, or Zeus will zap you with a lightning bolt. 

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Yesterday, I was trying to get the laundry done, finish my five Alpha pages, tune up my synopsis for submission, keep the dogs from driving me crazy, and stop the phone from ringing when . . . it did. I answered it the way I always do –

“Hello?”

Silence. Then I hear my DH say in a cautious voice, “What’s wrong?”

One word and he knew I was stressed. Now I didn’t yell “Hello.” Nor did I snap it. I just SAID it. But that’s why my DH is such a DEAR Heart — he gets me.

They say that women use 25,000 words a day while men only use about 9,000. I can see that. Think of how many words you know for the color ‘beige’ (eggshell, winter white, cream, natural, sand, off-white, etc) and yet he’ll only know one (”Uh. I don’t know. Beige-y?”). Women, as a whole, are more descriptive.

My DH is a great listener. He really, REALLY listens. I know because he always passes the little quiz I give him at the end of every conversation. Right now he’s carrying a 97.4 average which is pretty impressive, if I say so myself.

Of course, not all men are good listeners. Some men stare vacantly over your shoulder (my son, for example) and you can tell that what they’re really thinking about is how much gas they have in their car and whether or not to take a shower before leaving the house.

Worse, some guys will actually pretend to listen while some just wander off in mid-sentence. My dad does that to my mom. He’s not being rude . . . well, he is, but not intentionally. He just doesn’t hear well and so he has a tendency to tune out ‘noise’ and uhm, that would be her.

How do the men (DHs, kids, fathers, brothers, milkmen) in your life listen? Are they active listeners? Do they pretend to listen? Have any of them ever wandered off while you were explaining how you ended up buying red pumps when you actually went to the store to purchase popcorn? And what do you do to make sure they’re tuning in? Oh, and how many words DO you know for the color ‘beige?’

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Today we welcome Guest Goddess Leslie Langtry author of STAND BY YOUR HITMAN.  I love her titles!  Leslie Langtry is, in fact, a mom and a Girl Scout leader, but she has never assassinated anyone, either professionally or for recreation. Okay, she knits, but she almost never garrotes anyone with the circular needles. Instead, she lives with her husband, Tom, and two children in the Quad Cities - with no immediate plans to train either child as an assassin. She wants to make that perfectly clear. So there, you see, this book in no way mirrors Leslie Langtry’s life. That’s her story, and she’s sticking to it.

So without further ado, here’s Leslie!

HELLO, my name is Leslie Langtry – author of the Bombay Family Greatest Hits series for Dorchester. Thank you to the Goddesses for allowing me to praise them with my humble presence! I’m a huge fan and lie prostrate before you in your virtual shrine!

My books are about the members of a family of assassins as they try to live normal lives while taking out really naughty bad guys. I’m talking raising kids, tackling the PTA, running scout troops, paying bills and falling in love - with the occasional garroting of someone now and then with circular knitting needles.

My first book, ‘SCUSE ME WHILE I KILL THIS GUY, features Gin Bombay, soccer mom/assassin extraordinaire. Book two – GUNS WILL KEEP US TOGETHER, focuses on her playboy brother, Dakota Bombay, as he is assigned to come up with a marketing plan for the family business in order to make them more competitive as, um, assassins. Both books are out now and my third, STAND BY YOUR HITMAN, comes out in late August and is about Gin and Dak’s cousin, Missi Bombay – the family’s inventor – as she’s assigned to go undercover on a cheap, Canadian knock-off of SURVIVOR.

The only problem with the series is the titles. I’ve painted myself into a little corner in that the title always has to be a mangled song lyric with a violent theme. And believe me, it’s harder than it looks. In fact, at the RWA conference last week, my editor told me she does not like the title I’ve come up with for book four – I KILLED HIM MY WAY (actually, I think she said she “hated” it). The fourth book features Coney Island Bombay – a carney with a Ph.D. in philosophy from an Ivy League school. Oh yeah, and he looks just like Daniel Craig…just because.

Who does a poor, wannabe goddess turn to in times like these? Real Goddesses! Duh! So, I’d like to ask…no….beg for your help. I need suggestions for the next title. The top three suggestions will receive copies of STAND BY YOUR HITMAN. I will also forward these suggestions to my editor and if she picks yours, you will be thanked profusely (and probably shamelessly) in the acknowledgements of that same book.

So Goddesses, hit me with your best shot(s)! Fire Away!

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As many of you know, Karen H and Suzanne shared a room at the Romance Writers of America National Conference. Take the quiz below and see if you can guess which roomie is responsible for which high-jinx!

1) Which side of the closet belonged to which roomie?

2) Suzanne and Karen tend to hibernate at conferences and play inane games. This year, who won the Ultimate Roomie Scrabble Championship?

3) Who sat straight up in bed, wide awake in less than a second, and yelled at the top of their lungs, “WHAT WAS THAT?” when a cellphone fell off a nightstand in the middle of the night?

4) Snacking is an important part of both Karen’s and Suzanne’s lives, though they have different ideas about what, exactly, constitutes a snack. Which picture shows Karen’s snacks and which shows Suzanne’s?

5) Who forced their roomie to change out of their comfy jeans and into ’something presentable’ for the prestigious RITA Awards when said roomie was on ‘conference strike’ and ‘tired of wearing those monkey clothes?’

6) Which roomie lays awake all night and stares at the other? Which is sort of eerie, when you think about it.

7) Who showed up carrying a Hans Solo doll? (Ok, that was a give-away, but we like you, so it’s all good.)

and 8 ) Which roomie wore the naked Homer pajama bottoms?

Take the quiz! Two names will be drawn from the winners and will receive a signed book from Karen’s and Suzanne’s backlists!

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I love the English language. I love everything about it. I love how it’s irregular, and how it borrows from every other language freely and with no apologies. I love how pronunciation differs across the map. I love how you can tell where someone’s from or where their parents were from by how they pronounce certain words. Or you can tell if you’re a really good pronunciation detective. I’m not that good at it, but I keep trying.

Try this quiz: three words that are pronounced differently across the American English speaking world.

Roof: do you pronounce it like ‘tooth’ or like ‘tough’?

Interesting: do you pronounce it ‘in-tres-ting’ or ‘in-ter-es-ting’?

Experiment: do you pronounce it ‘ex-spear-i-ment’ or ‘ex-pear-i-ment’?

Once you have answered, tell where you’re from and see if the pronounciation detection exercise works! By the way, my DH and I pronounce each of these words differently because we’re from different parts of the United States. Needless to say, it drives me nuts that his pronunciation is so off.

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Yup. It’s my birthday. I’m 29 allll over again!

Because of that, I am posting a FROS repeat. We had this picture not too long ago, but it spoke to my heart.

OK, maybe not my heart exactly, but it spoke to me and I’m still panting over it, so we’ll SAY it spoke to my heart, anyway.

Here, for my birthday, is one of my favorite FROS:

****HAPPY SIGH!**** Thanks! I just had to see that one more time. HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO ME!!!

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I loooove games! So for today, I thought we’d play a fast and fun game called NAME THAT RINGER! One of the following statements below is true so see if you can spot the ringer! Everyone who answers correctly will be entered into a contest for one of the signed prizes Goddess Kim is bringing back from RWA!

So . . . which ONE is TRUE?

1) I’m faintly allergic to peanuts and get hives when I eat them, but only on my legs. It’s not as attractive as a tan, but it’s better than Stark White.

2) When I was in San Francisco when I was nine, I saw a man jump from the roof of a building right in front of me. He didn’t bounce.

3) At my senior prom, I wore a hit pink mini-dress with MASSIVE puffy sleeves. And no, there are no surviving pictures. (Praise be!)

4) I can touch my nose with the tip of my tongue, though I don’t usually admit this on a first date.

There you go! Now name that ringer! Goddess Kim will draw a name from one of the correct answers and an autographed treasure will be delivered forthwith!!!

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Through the years, I’ve come to realize that people are either music people … or not. My critique partner has a few record albums (yes, records!) that she listens to occasionally. Whereas I have about 600 CDs (at least), and an Ipod full of music I downloaded from I-tunes. I listen to everything from Peter, Paul and Mary to Evanescence, Tori Amos to James Taylor, Beethoven to David Arkenstone, plus tons and tons of Celtic music. 

By the way, my current favorite subgenre is Celtic fusion. It’s Celtic music married to electronica or rock or some other subgenre. It’s what I write to, believe it or not–groups like Bad Haggis, Peatbog Faeries, and Old Blind Dogs. That and New Age. All instrumental. For some reason, I can’t write to classical although I love classical music. I need something more static, and Celtic is not only somewhat static (no huge rises and falls in volume), but it “feels” old. So even though I’ve only written one Celtic book in this series, I listened to Celtic for most of the others I wrote. I have to write to music–it drives out the noise in my head, leaving only the book–but I can’t EDIT to music. How weird is that?

So, are you a music person? Do you only have a few Best of albums or do you have a collection spanning centuries? Do you tend to stick to one subgenre (rock and roll or classical or folk) or do you range wildly? And if you’re a writer, do you or can you write to music?

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Me, that’s what I saw myself!
Fah, a long, long chain of duns!
So, a needle hurling Fred!
La, the goat that hollars GO!
Tee, a clink of churning dread!
Which brings us back to . . . DOH!

Ok, so maybe those aren’t QUITE the words, but you get the gist. I’m not good with words, but tunes? Once I get one in my head, it burrows in and sets up house.

My daughter calls these songs ‘tune worms.’ It’s an infestation as it were. And I wish they’d make a pill for it already.
The worst thing about a tune worm is that it doesn’t even have to be — and usually isn’t — a song that you like. Sometimes it’s an ad jingle or a snippet of song that is, simply put, annoying and regrettably simple. I never get a tune worm that might impress people like Mozart’s seventh symphony. Nope! I’m the woman in the back singing The Dr. Pepper Jingle slightly off key and completely incorrectly over and over and over and over and over and … you know how it goes and it ain’t pretty.

My top ten most annoying tune worms:

1. She’s a briiiick house! She’s mighty, mighty, just lettin’ it all hang out!
2. Wouldn’t you like to be a Pepper, too?
3. The Double Dutch Bus.
4. I’m Too Sexy For My (fill in blank)
5. Gobble ‘em down and the plate comes back - for Hungry Jack!
6. C is for Cookie
7. Yankee Doodle Dandy
8. And then I saw her face! And now I’m a Believer!
9. Roll Out the Barrel! Roll out the barrel of fun!
10. Should auld acquaintance be forgot aaaaand never lost to mind!

Have you ever had a tune worm? What was the song? How did you get rid of it or is it still humming in your mind right now? And two hours from now, will you be humming “I’M A PEPPER! SHE’S A PEPPER! HE’S A PEPPER! WE’RE A PEPPER! WOULDN’T YOU LIKE TO BE A PEPPER, TOO!

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I’m on my way to San Francisco for the RWA conference. Before I go, I want to leave you with the latest weird news. I read this and it cracked me up.

A man who tried to rob the Café Treo in Salt Lake City in April told the employee to “fill” the bag, but when the employee reached over and earnestly started to “feel” the bag (according to police), the robber said, “You’ve gotta be kidding me” and ran out of the store. [KSL-TV (Salt Lake City), 4-11-08]

Au revior, Auf Wiedersehen, Goodbye and try not to have too much fun while I’m gone.

Are you all going somewhere fun this summer?

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