What would you do if you had one extra hour a day?

I had an interesting comment from an author today.  I asked him if he had an extra hour to do anything he wanted, what would that be?  Here's his answer:

"Without a doubt, if I had an extra hour, it would be spent writing."

Oh, can I relate.  For those who don't know, I run Pump Up Your Book and it takes me 24 hours to do it.  If I had one extra hour, I would spend it writing, too.

Speaking of writing, I had one of my co-writers from a paranormal book we had written contact me.  Let me give you a little back story about this book.  We had it published back in 2006 by a new small press publisher.  This publisher ended up going bankrupt and taking all of our royalty checks.  We never saw a penny.  We have since gotten our rights back and the book has been in the back of my mind to get it published by someone else but again, there is no extra hour in the day, and like everything else that isn't tour related, it stays on the back burner.

So this co-writer emails me and the other co-writer (there are 3 of us) and tells us that she knows of a publisher who will do it for $15 a month.  I read that over three times.  Like, WTF?

I told both of them what in the heck are they thinking?  You can publish it yourself at CreateSpace for shit's sakes.  And keep all the profit.  I'm a firm believer in never paying to be published.

So after I told them about CreateSpace, they thought it might be a good idea.  So I set up a new Yahoo group for us three to hash out the chapters as we do want to revise it, punch it up, make it better than it was.

They can't get into the group so we're having to email each other which is a pain because the group can keep all the messages together  and I won't have to go looking for something, right?

So anyway, it was the weekend (this past one) and I thought I would take my only paperback copy and go through it.  I decided to go on and type out the words into a doc and that way I'd have it on files and I could revise as I went.  I wrote the first three chapters so I thought that would be a good place to start.  This so called publisher didn't even catch the typos.  I did.

But this is what revising, making it better, is all about.  

So Sunday night comes and I have to get back to working on tours.  I have tried to find a few minutes each day since then to work on this but it looks like Saturdays are about the day I can give it my total attention.

And if I had one extra hour?  Omg.  I'd be working on it like a banshee.

What would you do with one extra hour?

American Idol Rocked Last Night

While Idol hasn't been packing in the ratings it used to, the last two nights have sent them up the charts for Fox TV.  Last night was no exception.  Because I am a die hard American Idol junkee (no crack pipe can hold a light to my allegiance to the cause), I feel as most of you all do that it takes a little while to get into the show at first, then about when they get to Hollywood doing group rounds, you're starting to figure out which ones may or may not make it.  However, some will fool the hell out of you.  I never picked this girl out to be one of my favorites but she definitely is now.  Her name is Zoanette Johnson and I think a better way of me having to explain why she stands out is to show you her performance from last night:





Is she a hoot or what?  My predictions is that she'll go far, but winning?

Is it spring yet?

It's all the way up to 45 degrees all ready.

I hate winter with a passion.  It's not so much the cold (although I hate that as well), it's more about the psyche.  It's all about rejuvenation, waking up, ready to light the world on fire.  Spring comes in with a fiery passion sometimes but it's always welcome and needed and enjoyed.

It's only February 5 and I have a long way to go.  So I need something to look forward to, something to get me out of the winter doldrums so to speak.  So I have found a few things that help.

Funny Pictures

Poor snowman but really, do we need all this frozen white stuff all winter long?  Now, here's what makes me get through the winter:

Okay so this is a rather FAT picture of me taken a couple of years ago (I have lost it since then thank GOD), but this is trip to the Outer Banks started my son and I loving beach walking.  We have a thing here on the island.  If it's above 40 degrees and the wind isn't blowing, you better take a beach walk because it doesn't happen very often.  God I can't believe I was that fat.

 

Ahhh...Ocean City when they had their kites out.  I can feel the sand between the toes and the ocean breeze in my hair.

Ahh...a little skinnier, thank God, but this picture...this was the first cabin the kids and I stayed in back in '06.  Pigeon Forge, Tennessee.  Good good times.

What's not to like about NYC in the springtime?

 Last but not least...looking off your front deck and seeing this - my daughter with her beloved Sheltie, Skylar. These are the pictures that keep me going. 

So what helps you get through the winter doldrums besides a nice warm fire, a good book and everything above?

I'm baaaaaack....

Happy Sunday to everyone and it's so freaking fantastic to be back! I let this blog go because one of my sidebars slipped to the other side so basically I had one looooong left sidebar and no right sidebar and I couldn't figure out for the life of me what I did or how to fix it. Had I thought for a minute, I could have emailed Zoe at Chick & Sassy a long time ago to save the day as she's the one who fixed me up here, but nooo I had to wait years down the road before duh it hit me, email Zoe!

Zoe fixed me right up, God love her!

Okay let me tell you why I wanted to resurrect this blog. I just went into the hospital (I'm fine!) for an ultrasound and they put a "scope" down my throat to find out why I'm having so much stomach trouble and they found out it's my gall bladder which I've got to have removed (really I'm fine with it...I just want to be out of pain!). Seriously it's fine because now I know and it's not the C word which of course I had that in the back of my mind. Before the tests, all sorts of things were rolling through my head as it would do when you're about to come face to face with your maker or so it seems at the time. Such a drama queen.
But that's not the main reason. The main reason was I was talking to an author about how I started this blog and when I had a book out, it really helped to sell it as I made lots of friends and when those friends found out about my new book, they bought it!

Here's the thing. I went over to this blog to see if the book was still in the sidebar which it isn't (must have taken it down for some odd reason) but one thing led to another and I landed on my links section to see just who was still blogging. What an eye-opener. One had died and several had stopped blogging.
While Zoe and I were hashing out the details of getting this up and running again, I started revamping my blog links so that only my favorites (some had died as I had mentioned but I still wanted to keep the links) remained.
Here's the sad thing about walking down that memory lane. It reminds you of how much time changes things. One blogger left one last message: I'm still here, but I need to know if anyone is reading this? There were no comments and that was the last she wrote.

So sad.

Of course one of my last messages was that I had moved to another blog, so I guess when people landed on this blog they thought I had disappeared too. The crazy thing is this blog is still getting great hits - from the search engines.

But the search engines is so impersonal. Why they are landing here is anyone's guess (not knocking it!) but where is the community I once knew and loved? Where are the laughs, the joys, the friends I would visit every day to see what they were up to?

Back to the tests I had a few days ago, when you are at the boomer age and things start going up on you, you reflect. I think that's what old ladies sitting on rockers on their porches staring off into the distance are doing as well. Reflecting.

Not that I'm old, far from it. I'll be the first to tell you if I ever have to go to the hospital again (which is coming up), I'm going to have my laptop strapped to me under the hospital gown.
And there's so much living I want to do.

I'm not ready to give up the ship yet and resurrecting this blog and rekindling old friendships, making new friendships, that's why I'm here. If you want to leave a comment and friend me, please do it and I will reciprocate as I love meeting new people - boomers and otherwise!

Okay gotta get some work done but it's so good to be back home.