Sail, that's a gorgeous, evocative piece.

Jennifer Crusie currently does a column for Romance Writers Report, and she rocks.

This is *key*. I had authors who were on manuscripts seven or eight before I bought something from them.

I always enjoy reading the First Sales column in RWR, especially when there's one that reads, "Mary Jones has been writing for 15 years. Forbidden Ecstasy is the eighteenth manuscript she completed before selling." We've got an author like that in our chapter--kept at it and kept at it, and now she's not only published, she's completely supporting herself as a full-time author. Of course, I'd rather be Julia Quinn and sell the first book I ever wrote, but I figure that ship has sailed.

Deb, Sail, love it. (Though Sail, I have to admit I heard Inigo Montoya in my head at the end... "Because I know something you don't know...")

I agree with the consensus that this topic is HUGE. I'm getting to the point in life where different directions are going to be taken, and home starts to become something completely different. Of course, I'm a Packrat Extraordinaire, so home is where all my junk lives. :)

(Want to drabble more... allergies are invading my brain...)

Inigo Montoya

Anything can be made better with a judicious application of Inigo Montoya.

Anything can be made better with a judicious application of Inigo Montoya.

One of my favourite taglines during the ramp-up to the invasion of Iraq: "My name is George W Bush! You defeated my father! Prepare to DIE!"

I'm sitting here with an acoustic guitar and one of my earlier drabbles, In Winter Darkness, which was a poem written for the "Holiday Hell" challenge. It was suggested it ought to be a song lyric.

It's kicking my ass. Something about the structure wants to be almost Gregorian chant or church music or Edmund Purcellish, and I can't work it out.

Feh.

"My name is George W Bush! You defeated my father! Prepare to DIE!"

I'm sorry, nothing can beat the good Goofy bad Goofy sitting on the voter's shoulders, "My dad wears pants." "I invented pants!"

That was adorable, but was it Inigo-related? (memfault)

I'm asking this here because it's less "noisy" than hte other threads--tonight notwithstanding--and Susan's generally here.

I'm reading Jane Austen's "Northanger Abbey," and our heroine is in Bath. One of the fashionable places she's hanging out is the pump room.

What the hell is the pump room? The only mental image I'm getting is the turbine rooms of huge hydroelectric dams, and it's screwing up the appreciation of fashionable people wandering around and seeing and being seen. All those trains and feathers would be hell to manage around the turbines.

Allyson -- why don't you see what you want to write, and I'll see if any of the bits of my life make me feel oogie.

Okey dokey. I've been thinking over what I want to add, and it's more about my own embarassing moments than adding stuff about you, personally, which I think will protect your privacy.

I'm thinking about adding something about the World's Hottest Security Team as well.

I was talking to Strega last night and she sort of talked me through the more interesting points. It was "dangerous" to invite you in. I didn't know you. You could have robbed me blind or hurt me in some way. You could have betrayed my privacy. You could have been a different person than the one you are, and it never occured to me that you were anyone but who you said you were.

I'm having trouble getting the point across that it wasn't a naive view on my part. There are few people to whom I'd extend that sort of invitation. I could count them on one hand, if that hand was missing three fingers.

It's hard to describe instinct.

I guess the only way to "prove" that my instinct that you were who you said you were, incapable of hurting me or betraying trust, is to say that a couple of years later, I'm still entrusting my safety to you.

And people will say, "she could have stolen everything. she could have killed you in your sleep. she could have told everyone about the unfortunate freak-out with the peel-and-stick linoleum in the bathroom."

And all I can say about that is, "but she didn't."

Allyson, there's the universal theme again: trusting one's own instinct.

I picked ita up at SFO at half past two in the morning and she spent, IIRC, three nights in my house. We'd never met. It never occurred to me not to believe my own instinct, that the woman I'd been hanging out with online for a solid year was not likely to be somehow grossly different from the one I'd invited into my house.

connie, the Pump Room was a Georgian conceit, I think; all the Dandy crowd and the Prince Regent hung out there.

edit: Pump Room, Bath