Here’s a sure sign I’m getting older and am probably viewed as ancient by today’s teenagers (for the record, I’m only 35!) — while driving around running errands today, I surfed the radio channels and found nothing but crap, crap and, you guessed it, more crap. What genius decided the stuff being played on the radio today was good? Now, there are bands I like. I crank the Nickelback songs when I happen upon them on the radio. I think Gwen Stefani has a fun style. And when I hear old favorites like Bon Jovi and Metallica, I become a singing fool, probably much to the amusement of neighboring motorists. But it’s sad when I live in a city known for music and I can scan every location on the dial and not find anything I like and turn off the radio in disgust.

But I have the cure! Let my husband decide which bands merit radio play and record contracts. He has a good ear for quality music. He’s a moderator on Unsigned Band Web, a Web site that allows unsigned bands to post their songs so others can enjoy them. Hubby goes through the new songs posted and picks his favorites, adding them to his online “radio station”. The station is divided into Rock, Lighter Side (acoustic, pop, country, etc.) and Hip Hop. Under each section, you can view the full playlist and then click on songs to listen to them. Check out Hubby’s choices and let me know what you think.

You also can look up songs by band name, genre, etc., through Unsigned Band Web’s homepage.

To get you started, here are a few of my favorites:

Averi’s “Everything With You” (rock)
The Illusion’s “Walking Dead” (rock)
The Dust Rhinos’ “Cheers to You” and “Ragged Crow” (Celtic)
Pubside Down’s “Rockin’ Landlady” (Celtic)
Shattered Core’s “She Tried” (rock)
Jimi Ninja’s “Angel” (rock)
Unfinished Thought’s “Through Crowded Rooms” (rock)
Zolid Ground’s “Moments Wasted” (rock)

And there are several songs of Hubby’s (look up Shane Milburn under Artists) and by Jeter (Shane’s college roommate Kyle and Kyle’s brother Kerry) with Shane playing guitar. Shane also engineered a lot of these songs in the ol’ home studio.

Happy listening!

As promised yesterday, I’m blogging tonight about the tag Mary sent me. That’s actually good because I’m tired from cleaning and finishing up a freelance editing project and don’t particularly think I have the brain cells left to come up with something witty or inspiring.

7 Things I Want to Do Before I Die:

1. Learn to ride a horse
2. Learn to swim
3. Visit every state in the United States (even better, every county in every state — I’m a member of the Extra Miler Club, aka County Counters.)
4. Make a living writing
5. Hit the New York Times Best Seller List
6. Trace my ancestry back as far as possible
7. Get over my fear of flying so I can visit Ireland, Scotland and Australia

7 Things I Can’t Do:

1. The “Live Long and Prosper” Vulcan hand signal
2. Speak a foreign language (Oh, hey, that’s another thing I’d like to add to the things I’d like to do before I die — learn a foreign language, preferably Spanish. And though it’s not “foreign”, I’d love to be able to learn Lakota.)
3. Swim (see above)
4. Stand to touch a fish, thus no fishing for moi.
5. Resist desserts
6. See worth a hoot without my glasses
7. Drive a stick shift

7 Things That Attracted Me to My Spouse:

1. He’s sweet.
2. He’s cute.
3. He’s really smart.
4. He has a lot of common sense.
5. He has a good heart.
6. He takes care of me when I’m sick and listens when I’m feeling down.
7. He’s a talented musician, investor, big thinker, etc.

7 Things I Say (Or Write) Most Often:

1. Now there’s a shocker.
2. Well, that sucks.
3. In a shocking turn of events…
4. Is it time for The Daily Show?
5. Funny pet names for the DH.
6. Holy crap!

I can’t think of anything else.

7 Books (or Series) I Love:

1. the Harry Potter series
2. Diana Gabaldon’s Outlander series
3. Nevada Barr’s Anna Pigeon series
4. Dana Stabenow’s Kate Shugak series
5. Tony Hillerman’s Joe Leaphorn and Jim Chee mystery series
6. So Wide the Sky by Elizabeth Grayson
7. Pamela Morsi’s historical romances

7 Movies I Would Watch Over and Over Again:

1. Last of the Mohicans
2. Forrest Gump
3. The Shawshank Redemption
4. Dirty Dancing
5. Gladiator
6. Miss Congeniality
7. The X-Men

7 People I Want to Join In (In other words, tag, you’re it!):

1. Janice
2. Marie-Nicole
3. Kelly
4. Heather
5. Jody
6. Kendra
7. Jill

After arriving home yesterday from visiting relatives out of state for Christmas, I scooted over to the neighborhood Target to check out the after-Christmas sale bargains. When I left, I headed for our favorite pizza place to pick up dinner. En route, a dear jumped out in front of me and proceeded to do his version of a newbie ice skater on the street in the path of my car. There wasn’t any ice, but deer hooves weren’t exactly made to go running across asphalt. I locked up the brakes, hit the horn and hoped that 1) I didn’t hit the deer because in a Nissan Sentra versus white-tail deer battle, deer wins and 2) the car in my rearview mirror didn’t rearend me. Luckily, the deer and my car made it through the encounter without a scratch, but I can imagine how far my mouth was hanging open. I mean, I wasn’t in the boonies. I was driving down a major four-lane road in a city.

After sending off my Intrigue revisions to my agent last Friday, I’m enjoying a bit of catching up with house cleaning, yard work since it was like 60 degrees today, and miscellaneous record-keeping and paperwork. I’ll continue in this vein until Jan. 5, when I’m supposed to get another request for revisions, this time on my newest young adult manuscript. Looks like I’ll be starting off the year in revision mode.

I see where my friend Mary tagged me with another of those list things, but I’ll save that until tomorrow.

Here it is two days before Christmas, and I’m breathing a big sigh of relieve. After many, many long days of staring at my Intrigue manuscript until my eyes crossed and wondering if I was making it better or turning it into a pile of horse poopy, I finally finished the requested revisions and sent the manuscript off to my agent for a read-through. You can’t imagine the sense of relief of being able to spend time with family for the holiday without the pressure of those revisions hanging over me. I might very well have more revisions once my agent reads it, but that’s okay. For now, I’m going to read guilt-free, clean my house, cook good food, and just have fun for a few days. I even watched a movie tonight, the feel-good Seabiscuit.

In recent years, Hubby and I have decided to limit our gift giving to each other and instead purchase items we need for the house, etc. This year’s purchase — a Rug Doctor carpet cleaner. We had a carpet shampooer, but it’s older and it’s nowhere near as good as the Rug Doctors I’d rented to clean the carpets. So, we bit the bullet and bought one of our own so I can shampoo anytime and not have to do the entire house in one day so I can get a rental unit back within 24 hours. Let me tell you, when you Rug Doctor an entire house in one day, you’re stiff as a board and sore the next day. Is it weird that I’m excited to have a Rug Doctor and that I’d rather have it than all the expensive jewelry they advertise on TV this time of year? Just makes more sense to me.

Another fabulous gift this year was a new Dell laptop. I’d kept telling myself that I’d wait to replace my old laptop until I sold a book, but I’d gotten to where it would be extremely handy to be able to connect to the Internet while on the road since I edit an online newsletter for RWA and the Wet Noodle Posse e-zine and the various deadlines would keep me chained to my home computer, preventing travel. So now I can still do the necessary editing and writing work while sitting in a hotel somewhere, like when I travel to San Antonio in February to attend a retreat for romantic suspense writers and hopefully do some freelance travel writing work along the way. The old laptop was still fine for writing, but too old for Internet use. So, this blog post is coming to you from my pretty new machine. Now I need to sell something to pay for her.

Merry Christmas, Happy Hannukah, Good Kwanzaa and Happy New Year! I hope you get wonderful gifts, eat good food and enjoy fun times with family and friends.

Well, today was the shortest day of the year, and it felt like it. I got nowhere near as much done as I’d hoped because it was also the day of running errands, like joining the throngs at Honeybaked Ham to get ye olde Christmas ham and braving the harried shoppers at Target to buy a case for my new laptop. But the good part about today is knowing that beginning tomorrow, the daylight hours start getting longer! (Insert happy dance here.)

Didn’t blog yesterday. Just got so busy with the revisions that I forgot until it was so late I was too tired to think. Found out today at lunch that one of my critique partners actually has a copy of The Runaway Pancake. How funny.

For the next book, I need help. I have a vague recollection of a book I read while I still lived with the folks, but I don’t remember hold old I was, what the title was or much about the plot other than there was a girl in it and I believe she time traveled back to Colonial Williamsburg. I remember really loving the story and from that moment being enamored of Colonial Williamsburg. Years later, I spent several days there with the hubby and his parents. I LOVED it, history nerd that I am. I’d love to go back someday, perhaps with the sis when her girls get a bit older. Does this vague book description sound familiar to anyone?

Saw this fun little quiz posted on another blog. Who knew I had an elf name?

Christmas Elf Name My Christmas Elf Name is Get your Christmas Elf Name at JokesUnlimited.com

Tonight’s installment of Books I Liked During Childhood goes back several years to when I was a little tyke reading simpler books. There was an IGA supermarket in my hometown in those 1970s days, and there are three things I remember about it:

1. There was a cafe inside that served tater tots. I LOVE tater tots.
2. They made great rotisserie chickens, those WonderRoast kind. Yummy!
3. There was an aisle that had little shelves extending from the main product shelves. These smaller shelves were full of small children’s books, mainly Little Golden Books and Tell-A-Tale Books. And for some odd reason, the one that has stuck out in both mine and my sister’s memories is The Runaway Pancake. I honestly don’t remember much about the book other than the pancake jumps out of a pan and takes off. I do think the tale ends badly for the pancake.

Writing update: I’ve gotten through three chapters of second-round revisions so far today and plan to finish up Ch. 4 tonight. I’m cutting/tightening material and thus the pages that need to be shaved off, but we’ll see if it ends up being enough. I’ve got 16 chapters to get through, so I’m hopeful I’ll be done by the end of the week. Merry Christmas to me.

This is such a cute little story I found today, a great mix of the holiday spirit and my love of animals.

Well, Harlequin announced new page count guidelines this week, effective immediately, so the book I just revised is now 67 pages too long! Guess who is going to be doing another set of revisions. I was going to go through the book again anyway, but now in addition to the revisions I would have done I’ll be looking for ways to cut 67 pages. Ack! And I just found out from my agent today that the young adult manuscript we submitted has been read by the editor, and he wants some revisions. So, when I finish revising the Intrigue, it’s on to another set of revisions.

While I’ve got this survival theme going with my favorite books from childhood, I’m going to mention Island of the Blue Dolphins, also a Newbery Medal winner. It has the element of a girl surviving on her own in common with Julie of the Wolves, but this time the Native girl is living on an island off the coast of California.

I don’t typically post anything controversial, but at the risk of getting myself flamed, here’s a first. I just read an article online that just has me shaking my head. It was about how a bunch of protestors showed up outside a Wal-Mart to protest the fact that the retailer had chosen to put “Happy Holidays” in its advertising this year instead of “Merry Christmas”. My question is, don’t these people have something better to do with their time? And what’s wrong with “Happy Holidays”? It’s inclusive — Thanksgiving, Christmas, Hannukah, Kwanza, New Year’s Day. Oh, maybe that’s the problem — a lot of these people don’t want to be inclusive. They think the month of December belongs to Christians alone. Do they think only Christians shop at Wal-Mart? I bet not once have they wondered what it would feel like if this was a predominantly Jewish nation and all the advertising they saw in December said “Happy Hannukah.”

I detest Bill O’Reilly, but I caught a blip of something he said the other day while flipping channels. He said Christians are offended by the term “Happy Holidays.” Uh, I’m not. I’m a Christian. I’m just not one of those Christians who thinks everyone else should be too or if you’re not you just have to deal with the fact that you’re a minority and not express your opinion. Let me say, that just burns me up! These absolutists don’t seem to realize that they’re giving Christianity the bad name that comes with fanaticism.

To me, Christianity is about love, caring, sharing, NOT hate-mongering. Okay, enough said.

On to a happier topic…another of my favorite books from childhood. It falls into that survival area again.

Julie of the Wolves was a Newbery Medal winner and tells the tale of Miyax/Julie, an Eskimo girl who escapes an arranged marriage by running away. When she gets lost on Alaska’s North Slope, she gradually befriends a pack of wolves and is integrated into the pack. I actually reread this book a year or two ago and still enjoyed it. I hope to go back and reread other childhood favorites soon.

A few weeks ago, one of our garage door openers (the little clickers, not the big mechanism in the garage) stopped working. When we discovered they were going for $40 new, we were like, “What!” and immediately went to eBay where we got one for about half that. So, we were back to two functional openers, no more having to make sure the person who was getting home first would have the clicker.

Tonight, I tossed my coat in the washing machine, then the dryer. When I pulled it out of the dryer, I discovered…you guessed it…the new opener was in the pocket. Guess what doesn’t work anymore. Grrrr. Definitely a smack myself moment.

Okay, today’s look back at fun books from childhood. I’ve always loved survival stories, and you can’t get much better than The Swiss Family Robinson.

I was fascinated by how they salvaged all those items from the shipwreck and were able to make a home on that deserted island. One of my favorite places at Walt Disney World is the Swiss Family Robinson Treehouse. It would be so cool to have one of those in the back yard. I still love stories of survival, whether they’re true stories such as a book I read after visiting Yellowstone National Park about people who survived attacks by grizzly bears or works of fiction. I even incorporated a survival-in-the-wild theme into my newest young adult book that’s currently under consideration. I really hope that book gets published because I love that story.

Anyone else like Swiss Family Robinson or other survival stories?

Have any of you been to the mall lately? Have you left feeling like you’d run the gauntlet because of all the people working at those kiosks down the middle of the walkways? I definitely get a workout when I go to the mall because I walk fast and keep my face averted…hey, it’s more interesting looking in the windows of Anne Taylor and Casual Corner anyway. I mean, if I wanted to see how the Amazing Squeegee works or have my rings cleaned or have my name sewn onto a hat (pardon me, but I look horrendous in hats), I’d ask. I don’t like being accosted as I walk by, minding my own business. Can you tell I had to make a quickie trip to the mall today?

Well, I’m three chapters away from being done typing in all these revisions. Yay! I’ll be so glad to be done with that so I can start going back through the manuscript again. These revisions have taken longer than I expected, but I hope all the long hours and eyestrain are worth it.

I’ve decided to start a daily series of looking back at some of my favorite books from childhood and how they’ve shaped my adult reading. I have to start with the Little House books. I loved the books and the TV show. I wanted to BE Laura Ingalls and kick Nellie’s snotty behind.

These are probably some of the earliest books I read that got me hooked on history. I have always loved reading about what life was like in the past. I went on to get a history minor in college, and the first romances I read were historicals. I know historical romances about England are all the rage now, but it’s the American-set historicals that I love most. Authors like Pamela Morsi, Elizabeth Grayson, Miranda Jarrett, Lorraine Heath, Jill Marie Landis and Maggie Osborne provided hours of entertainment and trips to the past. My favorite eras were Colonial America, Westward Expansion and the Spanish Southwest.

Any other Little House fans out there?