Cake!

Okay, guys, here it is, as promised. In order to appreciate this miracle, you must have read my previous post, From the Writers Cave.

In cake class this week we learned to do a shell border, the flowers on this cake, how to make clown bodies in which you stick a plastic clown head. (I don't know if I've already shared my strange dislike of clowns in all forms, but let's just say there was no way I was putting a clown on my cake. I did it on a piece of waxed paper and promptly tossed it as soon as it was finished and approved by my instructor.) We also learned how to make a decorating bag from parchment paper. Very cool skill, I might add -- saves tons of clean up. Oh yeah, we also began our instruction on making roses. Now that was fun.

Any way, here's my finished product, level and all in one piece. Drum roll, please.

It's not great, and certainly not as good as my daughter's, but it's a huge improvement for me! My chocolate frosting was really too soft to do a proper shell border on the base. Live and learn.

Don't want you to get the wrong idea, I'm actually a good cook, it's just the pretty factor in which I struggle. (sigh)

I'm missing next week's class. So it'll be a while before I can (hopefully) share further progress.

Thank you for visiting Susan's cake creations and have a great day.

From the Writers Cave

I'm becoming one of those writers. You know, the reclusive, glued to the keyboard, forgets to brush hair, can't hold a conversation with real people kind of author. I'm becoming disengaged. I mean, just look at what I had on my feet for two hours before I noticed.

Seriously. I was even up and walking around.

Guess that's what I get for having two pair of slippers under my desk.

I would blame it on the snowy weather, but I think it's more than that. I like being snowed in. I like it when my phone doesn't work.

So I'm countering my anti-social gravitation by taking some classes with my mom and my daughter, separately -- that way I have to go out twice, not just once.

My mom and I are taking a very, very, very beginners Yoga class ... you know, so we can prevent what my brother fondly calls "pre-rigor mortis." He's not very flexible, but then again, he never was, so I can't tell if he's losing ground or not. I used to be very bendy. Not so much now that I'm (ahem) older and spending most of my time in front of this computer screen. So the class. Mom and I spend more time wiping tears away from laughter than yoga-ing, but I have faith we'll get the hang of it.

Now my daughter and I are taking a cake decorating class. She's pretty good at it. I, on the other hand, have to say the only thing good about my cakes is that we get to eat them. Last week was our first week to tote in a cake to class. I made the mistake of baking devil's food and frosting it with white frosting. Let's just say I didn't shame myself by taking a photo, but believe me, that white frosting looked like cookies and cream.

Still, it was more level than any cake I've ever baked, so there's a mark for me.

My all time worst cake was one I made it for my daughter-in-law's birthday. I knew I should have stuck with a sheet cake, but no, I had to make a layer cake. It was uneven and broke into three sections after it was frosted. She was very nice and blew out the candles as if it was a normal cake. We dubbed it "the birthday blob." As you can see, we couldn't even chance piercing it with more candles.

I'll post a photo of my class cake tommrrow ... if it looks better than the birthday blob.

Best Buddies Indiana Fundraiser and Book Signing

Saturday was a very special day, one I'll remember for years to come. Many new friends from Best Buddies Indiana joined me to help launch my latest romantic suspense, SLEEP NO MORE.

Best Buddies is a non-profit organization dedicated to creating opportunities for one-to-one friendships, integrated employment and leadership development for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities. And what a wonderful organization it is!

I was reminded of the value of friendship, a thing many of us take for granted, and how a life without it can be so very desolate. This organization is particularly helpful to high school and college age people with intellectual disabilities, a time in everyone's life that is made richer by friendships. With this kind of social and emotional support, many people with disabilities develop the necessary social skills to better able to integrate into the flow of life and the workforce.

We had a great party at Noblesville, IN Barnes & Noble, gave away some goodies, raised some money for Best Buddies and more importantly raised people's awareness of this great organization. You see, up until recently, I didn't even know about Best Buddies Indiana. But in writing SLEEP NO MORE I created one of my all-time favorite characters, Maggie, a young woman with Mosaic Down Syndrome. During my research, I learned much, gained a better insight, and discovered Best Buddies.

I have a couple of "small world" stories, three actually. First there was the book club I visited in early January (on a horrible, frigid day, but these ladies were hearty souls who ventured out anyway). I mentioned my upcoming signing and the tie-in with Best Buddies. Lo, and behold, one of the women there was on the parents' advisory board and has a son who participates in Best Buddies. Now M.J. and her son Jeff are among my newfound friends. I'm going to get a photo up on my website of Jeff at the signing.

Small world story number 2. The woman on the right of this photo is Kim, she works for Best Buddies Indiana and was there the whole day. As Kim and I were chatting, we were discussing Noblesville, as I grew up here and live here, and discovered that her father was my band director when I was in junior high!

Small world story number 3. Katie, on the right in this photo, also works for Best Buddies. One of my friends from waaaay back, a friend of my older brother in fact, was at the signing, saw her and said, "Hey, she took care of me while I was in the hospital a while back." He and Katie had a conversation, and yes indeed, Katie was a nurses aid and took care of him. (And we have lots of hospitals in this area!)

How about that for one short afternoon?

Katie also shared a story with me that I will never, never forget. She said that while she was in high school, she did not have a person who she could call "friend." For four years, she ate lunch alone and walked the halls alone. Katie is now working to make sure others with disabilities such as hers don't have to go through their days alone. It seems such a small thing, having a friend. But you don't realize, until you walk those halls alone day after day, what a huge difference it can make in your life.

Best Buddies and the people I've met through them have enriched my own life. And I'm thinking Maggie won't be my last character with an intellectual disability.

If you'd like to know more about Best Buddies, visit www.bestbuddies.org

New Year, Old Me

I have to admit, I'm very content and don't want to screw that up with resolutions that I know myself well enough to know I'll never keep. That's not to say I don't think I need improvement. Au contraire.

I am setting goals for myself this year -- and none of them involve exercise and weight loss (not that I don't need both, it's just I'd rather fool myself into thinking I'm doing both just because I want to, not because I promised I would). Ah, mind games. I play them with my characters every day, guess it's spilling over into my real life.

My goals are simple. And achievable.

Everything hinges on this one rule: If you have thirty minutes, you can accomplish almost anything.

Really. Think of all of those things you put off. How many of them take less than thirty minutes once you set yourself to dealing with them?

If I find myself with a block of thirty minutes I'll set myself to a task. It's amazing what a person can actually accomplish in thirty minutes -- I used to know this when my children were small, somewhere along the way I lost it.

Writing is like closet space, the more you have the less efficient you are with it. For some reason I've fallen into this "I need two hours to be effective" routine. So not true, and I've found it to be counter productive. Thirty minute segments will keep my head in the game.

I need to volunteer more. My thirty minute rule will allow me to gather up those wasted minutes and put them to good use.

I want to spend more time with my mom. Aren't frequent short visits better than one long one?

I want to spend more time reading for pleasure. Again, I don't need to carve out hours to enjoy a good book. Why not plan a thirty minute break in every day for this?

You're getting the idea. In fact this blog was done during one of those thirty minute "dead times."

I think cleaning out my sock drawer is nest on the thirty-minute-to-do list. Then I'll be able to close it and be happier each and every morning.

Computers -- Making My Life Easier????

I'm sure that overall, that's an affirmative. However I've just spent the last three hours fighting my web browser to let me into a conferencing site for a board meeting tomorrow. I mean, if I can't get myself in there (I'm the secretary), then we have to change the meeting. Then my computer would be inconveniencing five other people who have arranged their schedules to accommodate this meeting. On the suggestion of a friend (whose time I also chewed up trying to figure out my problem), I downloaded another web browser. I now think I'm good to go for tomorrow's meeting. That's assuming it'll accept the three people it wouldn't let me add today. Grrrrrrr.

Although on-line shopping is a great tool for writers who keep odd hours and like to do their shopping at 3 am, I spent two hours last night trying to purchase something that HAD to be purchased. I browsed. I chose my item. Clicked the "add to cart" button. Chose additional options, and again added to cart. Went to check out ... "your shopping cart is empty." Seriously? I logged off. Brought the site up again. Went through the entire process. Same result -- empty cart. Well, I must be a real idiot not to be able to point and click my way to a purchase.

Rebooted my computer. Tried again. Again, empty cart. And you know, time's a tickin' toward the holiday when said gift needs to be at its destination.

Now I'm smart enough to know when to yell "Uncle." Well, maybe not, because I should have after the second failed attempt. So I take a giant leap back into the early nineties and call the 800 number to make a telephone purchase. First call disconnects as I'm waiting for a "service representative." Did I mention that I'm doing this after an afternoon of real live in person store shopping (so not my favorite sport)? Well, I'm invested now. There is no way I'm giving up until I have that item in my cart and on the way to its new home.

Second try on the 800 number does the trick. By now, I'm sweating and grinding my teeth. Oh, yeah, the person on the phone is using the same website to place my order, I can hear her clicking away, telling me as she makes each selection, all the way to purchase confirmed. Crikey.

You know, I think perhaps I need to come up with a murder mystery that has to do with computer frustration. We've all been there. It's a believable story line, right?

Been a Busy Day

I'm just about ready to surrender and not even try to write until after Christmas. Although I have all of these thoughts swirling around in my head about my current work in progress, it seems I can only grab a handful of minutes at a time. But it isn't as if I'm not working...


I started off my day with an Internet radio interview conducted by the gracious Cheryl, Dallas Book Diva. This woman really knows how to conduct an interview. It's difficult for me not to sound like a babbling idoit once I start chattering about one of my books. But she was so organized and did such a great job of asking just the right questions -- which tells me something very, very important about her. She read the book, really read it, not skimming and getting facts confused. She knew my characters probably as well as I do, and had some keen insights of her own.


Cheryl loved SLEEP NO MORE, she loved the plot, the characters, the family drama and the romance. I'm very flattered, because she gets dozens and dozens of books for review and only reviews and interviews eight per month. So here's a huge thank you to Cheryl!


After my interview, I had to take a break to wet the parched whistle. Then I worked for a while on a very personal Christmas gift I'm preparing for my mother. Then it was time for lunch, followed by a trip to the post office to mail off books to contest winners -- this is worth repeating ... I went to the post office in December. The line is killer in a non-holiday month.


After I brought my trembling hands and gritted teeth out of the post office, it was time to take my daughter to the airport. She's going to visit a lifetime friend who now lives on the west coast. They were born three weeks apart, grew up two doors from one another, went all through school (including college) together. They're going to have such a great time!





Now, after I dropped her at the airport curb, getting the stink-eye from the security agent who seemed to think we were taking too long to get the luggage out of the car, I hit rush hour traffic -- on a Friday. Grrrrrr.



On the way back home, I had to stop at my daughter's house and pick up our grandpup, Ellie, and all of her gear 'cause while her mommy is having fun on the west coast, she's staying with us. We have a dog too, a big dog, but our dog is just short of being a stuffed animal, you hardly know he's around, doesn't eat much, doesn't bark much, has his own bedroom and stays there a lot of the time. Ellie ... well, Ellie is the exact opposite, a bundle of muscle that wants to play (intensely) constantly. Lucky for her she's so cute. That's why she gets to stay with us and not
at the kennel -- those brown puppy eyes and cute floppy ears. Right now she's supervising the writing of this blog. This is her in her Colts jersey. She's a fan.




Once I had Ellie all settled in, it was time for the ritual Friday night at the movies. I can get my husband to go see just about any movie if I buy him popcorn. We saw Invictus. It was good. Morgan Freeman was phenominal, as always. Post movie, it was time to run a little energy out of Ellie (she's poking me right now with her nose, trying to get me to throw her stuffed squirrel). Wonder if she'll ever go to sleep tonight? Heaven knows, I'm ready to go to bed.

Maybe I'll get a paragraph written tomorrow.

Exercise is Fun

Actually, I detest exercising. And truthfully what I do barely qualifies as exercise – it certainly doesn't qualify as "working out."

I do like the way I feel after I'm cooled down and showered. I do like being less sluggish. But what I like the most is listening to my audio books while I walk outdoors or struggle to meet my (embarrassingly small) goal on the elliptical. And because of that, I only allow myself to listen to audio books while I'm exercising. And because of that it takes me a really long time to get through an unabridged edition, which is the only way I'll listen to them. I mean, really, what is the point of listening to an abridged book? Who decides what parts I'm not interested in? But I digress….

When I've spent all of the time I can tolerate sitting at the keyboard, when the novel I'm writing turns into white noise in my head, I take off for fresh air and my audio book break. I usually come back recharged, and listening to a good book really inspires me to write.

Right now I'm listening to an exceptional audio book, Kathryn Stockett's The Help. Oh my gosh, I can't even imagine reading this book because it's so well done in audio. I have actually walked an extra mile just so I don't have to stop listening. Each character point of view has its own voice actress, and every one of them is phenomenal. The only problem is as I am now into the third audio part, I don't want it to be over. Although I haven't finished this audio book, I fear that I'm going to feel like I've been taking daily walks with friends and they have been stripped from me. So be warned, if you listen to this one, be prepared to feel a little bereft after you've reached the last word.

I'll try to post again after I've finished the book. I feel I've only given half of a review here, but I've just been so enchanted with this one, I couldn't wait to share.