Wednesday, August 27, 2008

MY SUMMER IN A MINUTE

Because I've left it for so long, you get only a few thoughts from the many inspired blog posts I've written in my head this summer. Think of it as the Readers Digest version.

1. BodyBugg: Working. Down 10 pounds (me, not the device). Had one woman ask me how it monitored my baby--felt a drastic drop in esteem before I realized she'd misread the label as "BabyBugg".

2. WorldCon 2008: Or, as my friend Laura calls it, GeekFest. An enormous Science Fiction and Fantasy Convention held in Denver this year. Since Katie and I could stay in the same hotel we stayed in during Left Coast Crime, we figured what the heck. Saw lots of costumes. Men in corsets (okay, it was only one man, but he wore a different corset every day). Bought corsets of our own. Dressed up for the Costume Contest (as spectators, not participants). Heard someone refer, seriously, to humans as "The people from this planet". Attended my writer friend's panel on Mountains in Fact and Fiction. Bravo, Suanne, for making it fascinating! (You can read Suanne's take on it at http://www.suannewarr.com/blog/) Spectated at the Dowager Duchess of Denver's Ball. Ate good food. Read good books. Went to bed early. Best moment of the trip--the panel "Firefly: What Would the Second Season Have Been?"

3. Stephenie Meyer: A good summer for her--THE HOST released in March and BREAKING DAWN, the last of her TWILIGHT series released in August. In writerly circles, Meyer seems to be the next Dan Brown--envied for her fabulous sucess and despised for not deserving it. I say any writer who can sell out tickets to a signing in ten minutes flat and be greeted like a rock star by screaming fans is good for all writers. Love or hate her books, she's doing something right. (Oh, and I enjoyed BREAKING DAWN, but TWILIGHT is my favorite. So sue me for having no taste.)

4. Becca Fitzpatrick: This is long and shamefully overdue (in fact, I honestly thought I'd done this post already--but apparently only in the vividness of my imagination). If you haven't checked out her blog from my links, do it now (http://beccaajoy.livejournal.com/). She's the next Stephenie Meyer, only with deeper characters and killer dialogue. Her novel, tentatively titled HUSH, got Becca signed by a real live big-time New York agent this year. Becca's in the midst of rewrites and the agent wants to start submitting to editors this autumn. We're talking bestseller lists and movie rights, people. You heard it here first.

5. Tea: Technically this doesn't fall under summer, even though it happened in August. Last week Katie and I celebrated the first full day of school for our children by having tea in Salt Lake City at Elizabeth's Bakery and Tea Shop. Technically, I shouldn't call it tea, either, since we didn't actually drink tea, but Hot Chocolate hasn't become a noun yet. Plain scones with clotted cream, ginger scones with lemon curd, and shortbread just to send my BodyBugg into a tizzy fit. Then a ramble through the London Market next door, where one can buy anything from frozen Yorkshire puddings to Marmite to Harry Potter scarves.

6. Writing: This also is technically a non-summer activity, since I began last week when school did. I've started a new project, one that sprang to mind while attending the Dowager Duchess of Denver's Ball at WorldCon (hmmm, do you think I could write that off?) I'm not talking details yet, not to anyone, but I'm actually having fun, a concept I'd begun to doubt the existence of when it came to writing. I'm 4000 words in and writing every weekday. Good on me :)

5 comments:

Katie said...

Just so long as it's not a self help book titled "How to avoid dancing with the guy who is dancing by himself" I have dibs on that one.
Possible chapters:
The wedding ring. Is it enough?
Timing your snack runs.
Have you not noticed I'm wearing jeans?
I'm from Salt Lake City. (Better than all of the above)

~pollyanna said...

What a fun post... and I don't really care for RD (as a rule)...

LAURA said...

Thanks, Polly! I'm flattered :)

Becca Fitzpatrick said...

HAHA! Laughed out loud at the baby monitoring. And, okay, seriously you are too kind. If Hush does sell, it's because of the fabulous suggestions I got from YOU. I'm really excited to have some free time and read the rest of the Twilight series as well as The Host. Thanks for the summer in rewind.

Dionne said...

It's probably not kosher to admit this, but... WorldCon 2008? I'm green with jealousy. That sounds like so much fun.

And I'm geeking out that they had a panel on Firefly. You should blog more about this, if only for my sake. ;)