It was the best of times. It was the worst of times. No, I don’t have my classic novel lines and titles all messed up. I’m talking about spring.

Spring is just around the corner. I’m seeing the signs — my daffodils have bloomed, there are buds on the Bradford pear trees, people are fishing on the lake, and the tennis courts at the nearby apartment complexes are actually seeing some activity. I even saw a bee the other day. Spring is my favorite season of the year because the temperature warms up, leaving winter’s cold behind, and the rebirth of the natural world is uplifting and inspiring.

Too bad my sinuses don’t like spring as much as I do. While I love to go outside and breathe in all that warm, spring air, and smell the perfume of the flowers, my allergies go berserk — even if I’m faithfully taking my allergy meds. I begin to resemble a fish on the lakeshore, sucking air through my mouth because my nose is basically useless for anything beyond keeping the facial tissue companies in business. It doesn’t help that I live in one of the top 10 cities for allergy/asthma problems, aka Pollen City. While checking the weather temp online today, I see the dreaded announcement “Today’s Pollen Count is High.” Ugh. I’ve turned into one of those people who have to wear a surgical mask if I’m doing any type of yard work that stirs up dust and pollen. It’s a good thing hubby is in charge of the mowing.

I was just thinking about when I started reading romance. I was in high school, and my friend Jennifer and her mom were romance readers. In those early days, I read historical romances by Kathleen Woodiwiss and similar authors. I loved being swept away by the love stories set in different times and locales. When I went to college, there was a used bookstore close to campus. When I wasn’t studying, I’d browse through those store shelves and bring stories set during the Civil War, the Revolutionary War and the Spanish Southwest back to my dorm room to read. After I graduated but still lived on campus, in married housing while my husband went to grad school and I worked at a weekly newspaper, I frequented the used bookstore more often because I didn’t have to study anymore and had lots of free time to read.

Somewhere in the midst of all this reading, I began to write. Being a lover of historical romance, particularly American-set historicals, my first manuscript was a historical set along the Oregon Trail. It went through countless versions, beginning as early drafts pecked out on our first home computer. During lunch breaks at work, I’d write new scenes. But since we worked on typesetters instead of PCs with common word processing programs, whatever I wrote I had to print out and retype into the computer when I got home. I remember reading accounts of women’s journeys along the Oregon Trail, even playing the Oregon Trail video game to get some extra details about life in a wagon train. I’m still fascinated by the Oregon Trail. On a trip out West a few years ago, I drove along portions of the trail, seeing sites such as Chimney Rock, Scottsbluff and Fort Laramie, landmarks and important resupply stops for those early travelers. In Nebraska, I even saw ruts made by those long-ago wagon wheels.

After I joined my first RWA chapter and my first critique group and began to read more widely in the romance field, I ventured into writing contemporary romance and haven’t written any more historicals beyond the first one. Eventually, I married two genres I like to read — romance and mystery — and started writing romantic suspense, which has been the subgenre with which I’ve had the most success. All four of my Golden Heart finals and the one win have been with romantic suspense manuscripts. The book I recently revised per an editor request and which is now on that editor’s desk is a romantic suspense. I’m hopeful that book will turn into my first sale. I certainly don’t lack for story ideas in the romantic suspense area.

So how did you get started reading and/or writing romance? Who were the first romance authors you read?

Someone posted this link on one of my loops today. Okay, gals, this one’s for all of you, particularly if you like skating and hot cowboys.

TK in Returner:

It’s no secret I’ve been watching a ton of Olympics coverage, finding a lot of inspiration from the athletes who work so hard to get to this level. If the Olympics makes it back to the United States anytime soon, within easy driving distance, I think it’d be great fun to attend some events. Somehow I don’t think they’re going to have the Winter Olympics in the South though.

So, at the games, there is understandably a lot of flag waving going on among the crowds. And winners of events often take their country’s flag and do a victory lap. I’ve noticed that some countries’ flags are easily recognizable — those of the United States

the United Kingdom

Canada

Japan

Switzerland

Australia

China

and South Korea.



After watching two weeks of Olympics coverage, I can now even pick out Finland’s, Germany’s and Norway’s. But is there anyone else who gets really confused by a lot of the European nations’ flags, many of which seem to be a three stripes of varying colors. I know the colors all mean something, but I honestly couldn’t tell Bulgaria’s from Estonia’s from France’s. It is interesting, however, to go to online sites such as this one that show all the countries’ flags and do comparisons.

Some fun races tonight in speed skating. Apolo Anton Ohno won gold!

And how fun was it to see Clara Hughes and Cindy Klassen singing the Canadian national anthem with HUGE smiles on their faces after Hughes took gold and Klassen took bronze in the 5,000m speedskating race?

It was also cool to see three Nashville Predators win bronze when the Czech Republic beat Russia in hockey today. Congrats to Tomas Vokoun, Martin Erat and Marek Zidlicky. And Nashville defenseman Kimmo Timonen has a shot at gold tomorrow when his Finland team faces off against Sweden.

Okay, on to something unrelated to the Olympics…a couple of movies about to come out that look interesting. I’m looking forward to seeing V for Vendetta and Ultraviolet.

Today’s TK:

I know I have one sister named Mary, but is it possible I have two? Okay, I know I don’t, but the similarities between me and my good buddy Mary are getting kind of funny. We knew we had several things in common, but while visiting her a couple of weeks ago, we discovered we had not only the same sweater but also the same pajamas. So today I saw she’d done one of those fun onlines quizzes and decided to take the quiz too since I didn’t really have a blog topic planned. And guess what — that’s right, same result! And I like this result because Rogue is one of my favorite characters (along with Wolverine) from the X-Men.


You are: Rogue, from the X-Men movies.

What Movie Heroine Are You?
brought to you by Quizilla

Every time the Winter Olympics roll around, I find myself wishing I was a good figure skater. In fact, a few years ago, I actually took a figure skating class at the local ice rink just to learn how to actually stay on my feet. It was a big moment when I was able to move away from the wall. Don’t get too excited — I’m not going to be doing triple lutzes anytime soon. I’d be more likely to land a triple klutz. I’ve never been particularly coordinated when it comes to things like riding bikes, roller skating (one less-than-fun experience, not doing that again), skateboarding (never could do that), etc. But when I watch the figure skating, there’s something magical about it, and I imagine myself gliding over the ice to soaring music in the background like Shizuka Arakawa did tonight to Turandot, the soaring music I fell in love with when I heard part of Pavarotti’s performance of it at the opening ceremonies of these games. You can tell when the magic is with a skater, and tonight it was Japan’s Shizuka Arakawa. Perfect costume, perfect music, the best free skate. She was beautiful, smooth, a joy to watch. And so much coverage had been shone on Sasha Cohen and Irina Slutskaya that Shizuka’s win was extra thrilling.

The saddest part of Shizuka winning the gold was that Irina will likely not get another chance. She’s 27, she’s been fighting vasculitis, and her mother is ill and waiting for a liver transplant. Irina seems like a really sweet person and is very talented. But it was Shizuka’s night, and deservedly so.

And I have to say I loved many of the skaters’ costumes this year. Tonight, Swiss skater Sarah Meier’s black-and-red pantsuit really caught my eye.

Have you ever dreamed of being an Olympian? If so, in what sport?

TK with Ziyi Zhang in House of Flying Daggers:

One of my former co-workers sent me these fun pictures, and since I don’t have anything particularly insightful to say tonight, I thought I’d share these fun food photos with you.

As I mentioned yesterday, I’m re-reading Scene and Structure and taking notes. I’m hoping the notetaking will help it stick in my head better, as taking notes in school always seemed to do. One interesting tidbit from today’s reading was the idea that a story is moved FORWARD by having each scene move the protagonist further from his story goal, indeed going BACKWARD. That seems odd at first, but when you think about it, it’s true. If the protagonist got what he wanted out of every scene, the reader would soon be catching up on his sleep. He has to meet roadblock after roadblock to keep the reader interested until the end when he finally achieves his story goal.

Another night of Olympic coverage just concluded, and the USA’s Sasha Cohen is in first place in figureskating after the short program. Yay! But she’s only 3 one-hundredths ahead of Russian skate Irina Slutskya. Should be a great night of competition in the long program on Thursday.

I just finished watching the Olympic ice dancing competition, and the USA’s Tanith Belbin and Ben Agosto took the silver! They are so fun to watch, such a beautiful pair, full of passion and excitement. And they broke a 30-year ice dancing drought for the U.S.

Writing update: I got back to work on my young adult manuscript today, reading through the comments made by my critique partners, then deciding I needed to re-read Jack Bickham’s Scene and Structure and some material about deep POV (point of view) before tackling the rewriting of Chapter 1 again.

So, for those of you who are writers, what authors do you think do deep POV the best?

After a pretty nice winter with above-normal temperatures in January, winter decided the middle of February was a great time to make its appearance with some lovely snow and ice. While at my father-in-law’s, my silly hubby decided to go check the mail in shorts. It was probably about 20 degrees at this point. Brr.

While driving back from my FIL’s today, we hit sleet and freezing rain about half an hour from home. Have I mentioned how much I dislike winter weather? Yeah, I thought so. But I’m home in my nice warm house now and that’s where I intend to stay until the temp rises above 50 degrees. But the weather outside did put me in the mood for another night of the Winter Olympics.

Speaking of which, have you been confused by why the site of the Olympics is sometimes referred to as Turin and sometimes as Torino? Here’s an explanation.

And since I’m back home with access to the ol’ home computer, welcome back to your daily TK: