I only lie between the covers.
Never fear! I’m working on A Babe in Winter. I just had to adjust the story’s priority because honestly, I wasn’t too keen on telling Mouse’s story at all, much less wrapped up in a quest. And I didn’t want the quest to become a series of vignettes, side-quests, and other such clichés. But now that I have abandoned Mouse back to his own mind, I can pick up where I left off in Black as Knight. Read more
It may or may not be common knowledge that, under my real name, I run B10 Mediaworx, an author services / digital formatting company, which I’ve been doing for the past … mmm … four years. I think. Anyway, before that, I was an at-home medical transcriptionist for six years. I haven’t worked out of doors in ten years. Read more
Okay, it’s really macaroni salad and about as ubiquitous as can be, but there’s a story behind the title.
My son said this to me a couple of months ago and I’ve been guilting over it ever since.
Well, it’s because I’m stressed. My work life kind of exploded some time last summer when I decided to escape the (dying) industry I’d been in for the previous seven years in favor of the formatting work that was falling on top of me. I kept thinking I could do less work for more money and spend time with my kids, but … That’s not the way it worked out.
Is it ever? Read more
… for the rest of the year, most likely. I reserve the right to come back and rant. It is my blog, after all.
Many projects on the table, most of which I’m behind on (oh, there’s a surprise):
★★★
Thank you for your continuing indulgence on the travails of designing a cover if you’re not a designer of covers. As I said last week, it took me almost a year and hundreds of hours of Photoshopping to come to the cover I did, which I affectionately call The Bewbies™. Originally, The Proviso was one book and it was enormous. I originally titled it Barefoot Through Fire. Then I figured I’d probably do better to split it out into 3 parts, 1 part per romance. This is the story of book 3.
Read more
★★★
Thank you for your continuing indulgence on the travails of designing a cover if you’re not a designer of covers. As I said last week, it took me almost a year and hundreds of hours of Photoshopping to come to the cover I did, which I affectionately call The Bewbies™. Originally, The Proviso was one book and it was enormous. I originally titled it Barefoot Through Fire. Then I figured I’d probably do better to split it out into 3 parts, 1 part per romance. This is the story of book 2.
★★★
If you’ll all indulge me, I though it’d be fun to do a little series on the evolution of a cover by a non-cover artist/designer. It took me almost a year and hundreds of hours of Photoshopping to come to the cover I did, which I affectionately call The Bewbies™. Originally, The Proviso was one book and it was enormous. I originally titled it Barefoot Through Fire. Then I figured I’d probably do better to split it out into 3 parts, 1 part per romance. This is where the cover journey begins.
Yeah, we know. It’s a building year.
I’m choking on childhood nostalgia, KCitians.
Does ANYBODY remember the mechanized dolls in the display windows at Harzfeld’s at Christmastime? And if you do, do you have a decent picture or, better yet, a line on where I can get one of those dolls or six?
There is a Harzfeld’s page and a Harzfeld’s blog, both created by historians with a book in the works, but neither has a search feature, and as far as I can tell, this [dead link] is the only mention of the dolls: Read more
A little while back, I posted on the sentimental value I hold of the 1960s ranch. Today, I’m rethinking 25 to 30 years’ worth of self-indoctrination.
Obviously the reason it holds so much appeal to me is that it was, in my teenage mind, the unattainable. I didn’t live in a house that nice, although I didn’t begrudge what I had. I liked it fine enough that I was proud to show it off to my friends, totally unable to see that what niceness I had was only that way because my mother worked so hard to make it nice with what little she had to work with. And on hindsight, I’m not sure my friends (from more chichi neighborhoods) were terribly impressed. Read more
Today, February 7, at 4:25 CST in Kansas City, it is 70 degrees outside. I got a sick kid (have had for about 3 days now). I got a list of things to do a gazillion miles long. Since it is my mission in life to give birth to a new race (Glow in the Dark) and the sun cackles wickedly every time I go outside in anticipation of what evil it can wreak upon my skin, I don’t go out unless I have to. I’m a hermit, I tell you, and I like it that way.
But you know what?
I’m missing something, I think. I had a visitor yesterday, like, came to the door and rang the doorbell adult human type of visitor. The real deal. To visit. With me. Read more
I had a real character of a supervisor once. The minute I clapped eyes on her, I felt real pity deep in my soul.
She was 106 if she was a day. She had a sparse bottle-blonde bouffant. Her skin was paper thin (friable in MD speak), though her face was amazingly free of wrinkles. She had a permanent snarl on her pink-painted lips that let me know she’d had a stroke and/or that side of her face got stretched too tight. She was sitting behind a desk loaded with yellow and brittle papers that had been there since the Nixon administration, one hand on her hip and the other elbow propped on the desktop, a cigarette between two long, gnarly fingers. Read more
The New York Times reports that Coosje van Bruggen, the wife portion of the husband-and-wife sculpture team who designed them, died of breast cancer at age 66 (hat tip: Pitch). Read more
My stats say that consistently the most viewed spot on this site is the Kansas City picture gallery. I don’t know why, but I’m glad because you know what? We have some nice stuff here. It’s the cozy kind of romantic where you snuggle up with your honey in front of a fire feeling. Read more
Carl Peterson, general manager of the Chiefs since dirt, just resigned effective end of the season. [2025-07-08: Link and image are gone; this is what I get for hot-linking.]
“On behalf of my family and the entire Kansas City Chiefs organization, I want to thank Carl for his two decades of service to the Chiefs,” Chiefs chairman Clark Hunt said. “Both Carl and I agreed that immediately initiating the search for the next Chiefs general manager would be the best thing for the future of the organization, and he will be resigning following the 2008 season.”
Well, we all know what “resigned” means in the rarefied air of executive management.
Okay, so being the greedy little bitch I am, I still want Herm to go and the team to get therapy.
My lovely, dear boys:
You have obviously got a fear of success, as evidenced by the last 4 (yes, FOUR!) games you have lost on your last play of the game.
Fear of success.
I prescribe the following:
*A new general manager
*A new head coach (oh, Marteeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee)
*A therapist (to find out why you can’t stand to win)
Love,
Mojo
Okay, let me clarify: I’m not so crazy about the ones where you have to read them in order, especially if they’re not marked on the cover as being part of a series (Covenant, are you listening to me?) and which book it is. I like the ones you can read out of order. Yeah, you might get spoilers for the ones that came before it, if they happen in chronological order. Read more
This is what I want to know: Why is Peterson getting WORSE at his job as time goes on? Isn’t he supposed to get BETTER at it? I mean, that’s how age and experience work, right? Right?
And you know what? I’m not even gonna touch Herm Edwards with a 10-foot punt. I want a Schottenheimer clone. Yeah, we never got the brass ring, but damn, at least we got close a few times.
Then I had to go rub salt in my wound and read Whitlock’s column this morning, which asks the question: “Why did the Chiefs go away from what was working?” Well. If they could answer that, we’d have a winning team, right? Or at least a mid-’90s team. And then this:
There was only one way to ruin Sunday’s game, and Edwards and Gailey found it.
For you non-Kansas City readers: We’re all about the football. I’m not sure who these “Royals” people are that get talked about every so often.