Work in Progress

Listen, I'm late to meet my friend to see Les Mis, but I am hit with a sudden urgency to let the three of you who follow this blog know that I am working on a real, grown-up website, and that is where my blog will be now.

Are you ready for the url?

For reals, are you ready?

Can you handle it?

Did I mention I was late for the movies?

OK, here it is:

http://www.sarahtitle.com/

I know.

Bye!

Hunks!

It's rainy and windy and cruddy out here on the outskirts of Frankenstorm, and I've got a love scene to write.  The only help for that is...

HUNKS!

Yes!  Hooray!  I got home from work today to find my HUNKS mug waiting for me.  It is from the store of the hilar Kate Beaton, of Hark! A Vagrant, who draws comics about history and feminism and Canada, sometimes all at once.  This one is my fave.  But there is no mug for the Brontes.

Anyway, HUNKS!  I think this is really going to mean a turning point in my manuscript.

Because it sure don't mean a turning point in my ability to use the daggun webcam.

Happy Couple

Early Holiday Greetings from your Fave Couple!  I know we only just met, Henry Rollins and I, but I have a feeling that in the three seconds I talked to him and shook his hand and ran a hand caressingly and creepily down his back (dang, he's got muscles) - during those three seconds I'm pretty sure he fell in love with me.  In fact, I think I am pregnant with his child.  You can get pregnant from caressing someone's unwilling back, right?

Anyway.

Do I look pregnant yet?

Yes, I am wearing the same outfit I wore to meet JR Ward.  It is my Meeting Famous People Outfit.  Although I added a borrowed jean jacket, jauntily thrown about my shoulders in a casual manner.  Also, My Baby Daddy is pretty short, but not as short as he looks in this picture.  I am just wearing Gigantic Sensible Shoes.

OK, that's it.  Just some afternoon name-dropping.  Peace!

Updates from Your Fave Author

Hi, everyone!  It's Leo Tolstoy here.

JK, it's Sarah Title.  That joke might only work if Leo Tolstoy is your fave author.  And, frankly, if LT is your fave, you probably ain't readin' this here blog.  Feel free to prove me wrong in the comments.

Also, does Pinterest have porn now?  I was googling "sexy Leo Tolstoy" to see if I could put in a funny visual joke here, and there was one potentially sexy image that linked back to Pinterest.  Should I not be clicking on random images of men's bare backs?  Even if they are very muscly?  Fucking magnets, how do they work?

Also also, just yesterday someone was telling me how much more effective bing is than google.  I don't know about that, but neither of them retrieved any sexy pictures of Leo Tolstoy for me.

Anyway, I just haven't blogged in a while, due to COPYEDITING.  Or, more accurately, due to making changes my publisher's wonderful copyeditor's suggested.  I like to think of myself as a job creator in that way.  Sarah Title: Keeping People Who Know About Grammar In Business Since Just Last Week.

Oh my gosh, my brain.  It is everywhere.  Let me just make a bullet list of updates and then you may carry on with your lives:

• I have a deadline that is happening pretty soon.  Expect more fun google searches.  
• My friend Emily did an amazing photo shoot for my headshot like, months ago.  Expect an update in about a year.
• I am reading Defending Jacob by William Landay for a book group and I am finding it frustrating in the way I find all suspense novels frustrating.  Just tell me if the kid did it or not!  This is why I read romance.  You know what is going to happen at the end, so you can just chillax and enjoy the story.  But aside from my mental problems, it is an enjoyable read.
• In the past month, I have gotten about six hundred thousand emails from twitter.  I have a twitter.  It is, cleverly, titleauthor.  Yes.  Get it?  I have not tweeted (twat?) yet.  This is making twitter upset.
• What am I going to be for Halloween?  Is this finally going to be the year for Miss Havisham?  Oh, maybe I should write a post about fave Halloween costumes of the past.  That sounds like a good thing to do instead of my deadlines.
• And, finally, this weekend I had a visit from my friend KW and her dog.  Her dog is young and does not understand about personal space:

What you can't see is that she is crushing my windpipe.  Adorably!

 OK!  Nice to see you all!  Feel free to comment so I don't feel alone in the world.  *Sigh*

No Human Male Could Write This Blog Post

I realize the week is almost over, but I am still reeling from my weekend adventures in Cincinnati.

In a word:

I'm the blurry one. 

That is not a word.  That is a picture.  BUT!  That is a picture of J. R. Ward.  It happened!!!  She signed copies of her newest Fallen Angels book (Rapture!)  for 300+ of her closest fans at a Barnes & Noble in Cincinnati, including Yours Truly.

This is what I imagine my first book signing will be like.  But with 300 fewer people.

Anyway, if you don't know what I'm talking about (as per usze), J. R. Ward writes the Black Dagger Brotherhood series and the related Fallen Angels series.  These books are, in a word, CRACK.  Honestly, you start reading one and you're all, well, I'll just see what Sarah is talking about, and then suddenly it's two weeks later and you don't know where the time as gone but there is a pile of increasingly-fat books covered with intense-staring men teetering on your bedside table and your cat moved to your neighbor's house.  (Does that sentence make it sound like the men are teetering on your bedside table?  Whatever, it could happen.)  These books, they are nuts.  She goes there, people.  Where does she go?  Wherever you imagine, while reading a book, that, no, she couldn't possibly...she does.

(And the books - especially the earlier ones - have this really strange mix of homophobia and homoeroticism that I find compellingly offensive/attractive.  Duality, people.  Anyway, she's grown into straight (ha) homoeroticism for her newest book, which is about two dude vampires who have ANGSTED OVER EACH OTHER for like six books.  Honestly, Bella and Edward have nothing on Qhinn and Blay.)

(And Ward's world has a language that looks a lot like English, but has a bunch of extra h's in it.  Look, just read them.  There's a glossary.)

OK, so what happened.  I was nervous that it would be sold out (apparently her last signing had 800 people there - that was for a BDB book), so my friend who is actually named Sarah and I got there at like 6:30 to get in line.  We were cold.  Fortunately, I am a pack rat and there were chairs and blankets in the trunk of my Sensible Camry, so we persevered.  We were nowhere near the front - that title went to the people who had gotten there THE NIGHT BEFORE - but we had no problem getting tickets.  We were also handed an instruction sheet that included the point:

• All gifts must go through Ms. Ward's Security Team. (you can't miss the guys in fedoras!)

This part was not a joke:

Fedora.  Mustache.  Joan Baez.

Despite all of this silliness, J. R. Ward was super-friendly and chatty with people.  She seemed to know a bunch of her fans from the world of J. R. Ward fandom (I believe they are called Wardens.  Yes.), and she had on a really cute jacket that she took off because it was hot.

She also curses.  A lot.  I loved it.  She said someone once asked her if she would ever write a children's book, and she said, "Have you read my fucking books?"  Which, interestingly, was exactly the same reaction she had to the question "Will there be sex in the next book?"

And her fans!  Ravenous for gigantic alpha vampire warriors!  I loved all of them instantly.  They asked her a million detailed questions about, OMG, I don't even know what.  And Ward cursed and answered most of them, but kept enough suspense that nobody knows what is going to happen in the next BDB book (except for hot man-vampire sex).

My fave part of the whole night, though, is when someone asked if there was any possibility of a television or movie deal.  Friends, the room.  It exploded!  Gasps and shouts and vile protestations!  And then, out of the hubbub, somebody shouted:

NO HUMAN MALE COULD EVER PLAY A BROTHER.

I'm not entirely convinced that the rest of the women in the room (author included) were fully aware that the characters are, in fact, fictional, but that is what makes the books so daggun cracktastic.  Filthy, cursing, smutty crack.  Love them.

Love those Brothers so much.

And thank you to My Friend Who Is Actually Named Sarah for the pictures.  Someday I will get my own picture-making device.

Fifty Shades Dorkier

I took the day off to work on the edits that are due at the end of the week (side note: I curse a lot!).

But an immense flaw has just appeared in my plan.

My library hold just came in. 

I already know what happens in this book, more or less, because I've been reading Jennifer Armintrout's AMAZING recaps.  (PS Cute haircut, girl!)  This is not a deterrent.  Fifty Shades is exactly the kind delicious train wreck that I crave when I have a lot of work to do.

Public Libraries: Enabling Tomfoolery Since 1981.

(I don't remember exactly when I learned to read, but that seems about right, right?)

OK, back to work.  I'm going to hide my nook in my Red Room of Procrastination until tomorrow.  Damn you, Christian Grey!  Damn you, public libraries!

Write what you will, at some point, know.

This is a post about hairdos which contains some spoilers for my book, which has yet to be published.  But this will happen soon (the published part), so if you are the kind of reader who does not want to know anything about the plot of a book before you read it, be forewarned: you will get spoiled.  I mean, it's sort of a minor incident, but it is sort of a turning point.

But if, like me, you are the kind of reader for whom knowing some of the stuff that happens does not necessarily affect your enjoyment of the book, well, read on.

OK!  Who's still with me?  Nobody?  Fine, I'm used to it.  Won't stop me from telling the story.

In book 1, the heroine has a jacked up hairdo.  Mostly a bad dye job, but it doesn't suit her.  But she has it anyway because it made a previous relationship work, and by work, I mean not at all.  It's a metaphor people.  Later in the book, things are getting sorted out but also sort of getting worse, so she decides, screw it.  I'm chopping my hair off.  (She does it herself, but don't worry, it has a happy hairdo ending.)  And, once a trained professional gets involved, it's a wonderful freeing experience and she can move forward with her new, surprising, authentic life.

And that is what I did today.

It's maybe not that dramatic for me.  I don't have her troubled past.  My past would not make much of a novel, to be honest.  But I do have some serious hair issues.

Before I go to far, I have to say that I tried.  Really.  I have a wonderful guy who has been cutting my hair for several years.  His name is Troy, which I think makes him cut my hair even better.  But some things cannot be helped.  I have really really thick hair.  It is coarse and dry and I dyed it with semi-permanent dye almost a year ago and it is still sort of red, except for the roots that are about half the length of my hair.

Perhaps most importantly, I am the laziest hair person ever.  Troy is willing to work with this, and he always gives me minimal-fuss hairdos.  But I like it short, which means there has to be some fuss or there will be extreme volume issues.  I have spent more time than I care to remember with a mushroom head (that was before Troy, I assure you).  Seriously, this last cut, all I had to do was blow it dry and it would be fine.  Even that was an issue.

Let me give you an example from a recent vacation:

Vacation face!

It is a little bit curly, and if my head was straight (never happens), it would be large on both sides.  Don't try to explain it away.  It is big hair.

So I usually end up pulling it back, but since Troy is a wonderful person, he cuts lovely layers in that make it less huge, but also make ponytails (which he hates)...difficult.  So I look like this:

That's me and my friend, Jodi.  Hi Jodi!  Also, I bought new sunglasses on that trip.  And it was a trip to pixel-land.

OK, so the point is.  My hair is like always a mess, and my laziness does nothing to help it.  And I also try to look professional at work, but I always just look a mess.

So I chopped it off.  Like the heroine in a romance novel!  And now it is this:

I'm not wearing the wrong foundation.  My neck is just a different color from my face.

So there it is.  We'll see what happens tomorrow when Troy is not there to style it, but the general consensus from everyone in the salon and everyone with hair this short is that it will be easy.  Yes.  That is what I want.  Easy.

So, anyway.  Life imitating art.  Now I just need to have a burly horse farmer fall in love with me, and the transformation will be complete.

Also, here is me making a face, as is my wont:

You're welcome.

Productivity

This is what I did this morning instead of getting ready for work:

I mean that I watched this video, not that I took a bath with a dachshund. 

In my defense, this all came about because I had to look up how to spell dachshund (that is a lot of extra consonants!) because Word was not happy with how I guessed it was spelled.  And I was spelling it while working on my novella, the second in the world of Harlequestrian.  I mean the second story.  The first is a novel.  

And I will probably have some sort of happy announcement soon.  Unrelated to dachshunds.  Or babies.  Although, you never know.

OK, no babies.

I'm seriously going to be late for work.

Nighttime Edit: The first time I saw this, I thought it was amazing.  I mean, there's nothing better in the world than BabyLaugh, right?  Fat BabyLaugh!  But now that I see it again, it feels like a sad metaphor.

And I was not late for work.

What am I going to do with this giant zucchini?

*snort*

Anyhoots, when my landlord goes out of town, I am allowed to go out back and legitimately rape the garden for produce that will be overripe by the time he gets back.  Today's haul was just this one gigantic zucchini. 

Honey Bear included for reference.

I feel like this photo taken with my Commodore 64 cell phone is not doing justice to the massive amounts of zucchini I must now consume.  I'm thinking zucchini bread or just the normal cook it with oil and onions.  Or!  Oh!  Once I made zucchini parmesan and I breaded it and baked it, but then the zucchini was so good I didn't even bother with pasta and tomato sauce.  

I ate the hell out of it.  

With ketchup.

Mostly I just wanted to practice uploading pictures.  And write a post with a pervy headline.  Get used to it.

Here for the Right Reasons

Should I be detailing every step of this getting-published project?  Or should I just admit that I am watching Bachelor Pad?  In my defense, I do have my laptop open.

Why do I love this shit?  I mean, honestly.  OK, I don't love BP (although we're on an acronym basis), but I do love the Bachelor/ette.  I especially loved this last season with Emily (and not just because she was from WV, although my heart had a little thrill when I found out); there was not as much drama, just people trying to fall in love.  And confusing notions of masculinity which might explain why I will be single forever.  But, seriously.  Who are these dudes?  Where do they come from?  Why does the montage music always make them take their shirts off?

Also, why do they always wax their chest hair.  Fellas (all the fellas reading this blog), why are we doing this? 

Anyway, the Bach(s) is my fave reality show, and it can be yours too if you just let go of the notion that it is in any way real, and just watch the romance unfold.  It's sort of anthropologically interesting for a person who is not at all like these Greek system graduates.  (No hate there - I'm just saying I went to a school with no fraternities or sororities.)  Also, if you can survive bungee jumping off of a skyscraper, you can survive any problem in a relationship.  It's true.  There have been studies. 

But this obsession with Being There For The Right Reasons.  It makes things confusing, and that makes people take their shirts off.  Because it's a TV show, and it's a game, but it's also love and marriage which is sacred and so we cannot admit that it's a prize on a TV show and also if you are gay you can't have it.  (There's a lot to parse in that sentence.  I'm just going to move on.)  And, so, even though we know in real life that love is hard to find and to maintain, we still like the illusion that it is somehow simple enough that with the right sparkle gowns and helicopter rides, it can still happen.  But if anyone even remotely smells like they are playing the game (which, aren't they all?  The Game of Love?), that person is swiftly kicked to the curb.

I also like watching the men get all competitive and cat-fighty.  I mean, it really does some solid work for breaking down the gender dichotomy.

But that's for another time.  For now, everybody take your shirt off!  It's time for a montage!

Eeyore Moment.

Googling "stud business" does not yield the hilarious results I hoped it would.

*sigh*

The Obligatory First Blog Post

Hello friends,

Uh, so.  Blogs.  Mostly I just read blogs for celeb gossip, because that enables me to keep up with the World of the Fabulous while still Pretending Not To Care.  Also, it enables me to say "celeb" with comforting regularity. 

But now I am trying to be a writer ("You ARE a writer!" says every writing teacher ever), and that means blogs.  It took me about six years to get comfortable with Facebook, so I feel like I'm right on schedule. 

Welcome to my blog!  I have no idea how you got here, and you probably don't either.  So check back in two months and I'll probably have an update! 

Kisses,

Sarah Title.