On submissions, Improv Comedy and one Crazy Dog

Current mood: upbeat

I *should* be tired since it's 1:12 am and I'm not in bed. Gotta get up at 7 am, but oh, well. I haven't blogged in a while, and I can always sleep!

I'm feeling encouraged because I've got The Daddy Issue out for review and I just now emailed Mending Rafe's Heart out to a publisher. So will be waiting to hear on those two manuscripts. Meanwhile, I dropped the idea of writing something for the Harlequin Presents contest. It was a good idea until I actually tried it. I don't think I have the voice for that line. But at least I made an attempt that I canned *before* I wrote a 50,000-word manuscript.

I've decided to try writing an amateur sleuth mystery. There may be a dash of romance in it, and then again, maybe not. I'm thinking that with my love of fleshing out the main characters by showing their interactions with those around them, cozy mysteries may be the better way to go. That gives me a cast of suspects with motives! Sounds like fun! And God knows we writers have to have fun with the process. If not, we dig in our heels and do things like, well, anything but write.

Meanwhile, improv comedy is sooo cool! It's HARD. It's fun. It's frustrating. Imagine coming up with jokes about corn at 10:30 at night. Or if that's not up your alley, how about acting out a scene with another player where every line has to start with the next letter of the alphabet?That's improv!

Dog agility training, on the other hand, is not fun when you have the class clown dog. My dog wants to bark, to play, to lunge. He thinks running thru tunnels and walking up and down A-frames is tame compared to what HE can do, which reminds me of that white bear in the Dr. Seuss book, Put Me in The Zoo. When I think about my dog Shadow, I'm always playing this rhyme from that book over in my head: "They would put me in the zoo if they could see what *I* can do!" But alas, this Aussie cattle dog must live (boringly) at home with us, in our once peaceful home. Arrgh. He'd be a halfway decent dog if he wouldn't seek out entertainment like chewing the feet off my 100-year-old doll! And that's just one of his many feats around here. Shadow also reminds me of the movie "Napoleon Dynamite." Remember the scene where Napoleon is on the bus and the younger kid goes, "What're you gonna do today, Napoleon?" And he answers, "Whatever I *feel* like doing. GOSH." That's the cattle dog mentality. Today my friend Emily said Shadow looks like the Blue Dog. I agree. He has that same intense gaze. Too bad I can't sell Shadow for $22,000, which is what Rodrigue is getting for his original Blue Dog paintings these days! Guess I'm stuck with my practically free pound pup. Good thing I love him.