Crunch Time

I'm sure it's obvious that I don't blog as much as some people do. One excuse for that is that I don't want to bore anyone with descriptions of what I ate for breakfast (Yogurt Burst Cheerios, vanilla-flavored) or angst over life in general (so what if those extra five pounds just won't go away?) I'm sure no one cares how many miles I walked this morning or how brilliant my children are or how my dog understands more words of English than many humans I know.

No, my main excuse is that I'm working, working, working, on finishing the second of my two soon-to-be-published novels, Dead Girls Are Easy and Where The Ghouls Are.

Where The Ghouls Are is nearly finished. YAY! I'm working on the final chapter this weekend, and with any luck, I'll reach those two little words, 'THE END', by midweek.

I may celebrate by taking a walk on the wild side - scrambled eggs for breakfast instead of Cheerios! Bet you can't wait to read about that!

Dead Girls Are Easily Flattered

I got the nicest compliment the other day.

Kristin Nelson of Nelson Literary Agency (who is NOT my agent, by the way) just posted a blog entry entitled “One that Got Away – And I Regret It’. To my utter surprise, she was talking about me!

http://pubrants.blogspot.com/2006/05/one-that-got-awayand-i-regret-it-part.html

Just to give you some background, I queried three different literary agencies last year with my quirky paranormal, DEAD GIRLS ARE EASY. (Only three, you say? Yes, only three, but they were my top three – each carefully selected and highly recommended. I was told to shoot for the stars, so I did, but believe me, I would’ve kept sending that baby out if necessary!)

Anyway, I was lucky enough to receive interest from all three agencies. Kristin called me last June, and while she was very enthusiastic about the manuscript and very professional, she told me that she was swamped at the office and was afraid she couldn’t give the manuscript the editorial feedback it deserved. I could tell she was on the fence, and came away feeling good about the conversation instead of bummed. The other two agencies both made offers of representation, and I chose the one I felt was the best fit for me.

Best decision I ever made, and I don’t regret a thing.

Still, it was nice to be somebody else’s ‘regret’ for a change! :-)

Gone But Not Forgotten

The last Mother's Day I spent with my mother was in 1998, and she was dying. We'd known it was coming - she'd been diagnosed with ALS (Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis, better known as 'Lou Gehrig's disease') two years earlier, and had spent the previous 18 months bedridden and on a respirator. ALS slowly robbed her of her ability to move, speak or breath, but it never took away her sweetness, gentleness, or her sense of humor - she was writing jokes on a legal pad until the day she died. So today, on the anniversary of her death, I'm moved to post a memorium:

In loving memory of Louise Bohannon
March 9, 1925 - May 16, 1998

Eight years without you hasn’t dimmed the memories of the sparkle in your eye, the softness of your touch, the smell of your perfume. I see you in my dreams, in the faces of my sisters, in the roses in my garden. I know I’ll see you again with a smile on your face, waiting on the other side, just as I know you were waiting for Jon when he followed you over. Keep him out of trouble over there, will ya? All my love, now and forever,

Terri

Oh, To Be A Writer

The Writer

Oh, to be a writer!
Indeed.
To be the one with command of the pen;
And, have us read
Tales too spicy and scary,
Tales too delicious and delightful
For ears to merely hear.
No, no! Tales to be read by all
No less than this is for the true writer!

Apparently I'm not the only creative one in my family.

My daughter wrote this for me when I sold my first book last fall. She found a poster-size piece of paper that looks like a giant scroll, and handwrote it for me as a gift. It hangs on my office wall, where I can look at it every day.

Oh, to be a writer. Indeed.

Spooked In Savannah

I have no doubt that anyone who reads what I’m about to write will think I’m making it up. As Ripley said, you can Believe It or Not, but it's the honest truth.

My husband and I just got back from a weekend trip to Savannah. We rented the second floor of a neat old townhouse (rumored to be haunted) in the historic district.
My sister came down from Atlanta to spend Friday night and Saturday with us. Before dinner on Friday we were sitting in the living room talking, having a beer (my sister) and a glass of wine (us). There was a small coffee table in front of the couch. When we got up to go out to dinner, my husband knocked over his glass of red wine (quarter-full) and it got all over the rug, so we moved the coffee table and cleaned up the mess as quick as we could before it stained. Then we moved the table back where it was, walked out the door and went to dinner.

After dinner, my husband dropped us off in front while he went looking for a parking place. My sister stopped at the foot of the stairs and said, "Let's wait for Bob". I teased her about being scared, but it turns out she actually was. She didn't want to go in without Bob, even though we'd been in and out all day, and Bob & I had already spent a very peaceful night in the place. I poo-poo’ed her fears, and made her come in, but she was still scared. We'd left the lights on, so she and I walked all through the place while I tried to show her everything was ok.

By then, we were back in the living room and Bob came in. I was still teasing my sister about being scared as Bob walked over to the coffee table to put down his keys. He said, "Who did this?" and pointed at an empty beer bottle.

It was UPSIDE DOWN. It was sitting, perfectly centered in the middle of the coaster where she'd left it, but it was balanced on the smallest part - the TOP, not the BOTTOM. There was absolutely no way it could've been like that when we moved the table, because it would've fallen over. We'd all three been together the entire time, both before dinner, during and after, except while Bob parked the car. If one of us had done it on purpose, we'd certainly have seen it.

And that’s not all. The doorbell rang twice on Friday, and there was no one there. When we tried ringing it ourselves, it didn’t work, even though we tried it repeatedly over the course of our stay. The answering machine registered five different messages, all just dial tones and ‘If you’d like to make a call, please hang up and try again’ messages, all recorded in the wee hours of the morning, though the phone didn’t ring. We know the phone worked fine because we did receive one legitimate call while we were there.

Last, but certainly not least, we took a lot of pictures, and they all turned out beautifully EXCEPT for the ones taken inside the townhouse... those had a fuzzy, 3-D effect over the face of whoever was in the picture, while the rest of the picture was fine.

Creepy? Definitely. Explainable? To a skeptic, I suppose. But I’m here to tell ya, I was glad to leave Savannah and that townhouse behind.