I'm gearing up for a bit of a fight with my publisher because she told my editor that my lead character in the book is "just so strong, we need to see more of her emotional vulnerability, otherwise readers won't connect to her."

Write a scene where she stabs someone in the head and then feels really really bad about it afterwards. That's vulnerable, right????

(I would do a winky emoticon here if I emoticon-ed. Which I don't.)

Write a scene where she stabs someone in the head and then feels really really bad about it afterwards. That's vulnerable, right????

::hearts Teppy::

I have had raspberry pie. It is good.

Was it just straight up raspberry? Was it regular crust?

Straight up raspberry. I think the fruit gets mushed first. I remember making a mixed berry jam that had a lot of raspberry in it and thinking gosh, it wound up tasting like raspeberry pie.

Straight up crust, too.

Heh heh. "He ran into my knife. He ran into my knife ten times. And would it kill him to pay a compliment?" (looks at body) Guess so. I've been reading this romantic comedy type book that overall I like, but they can't get over that the lead's teen daughter is (gasp) Goth. I know that's not quite what you meant, Barb. But it made me think of it.

flea sighting in beep me! Yay! You made it, and didn't even kill any children on the way!!

(But we still miss you.)

Amych! Are you around for a bit? Do you have any time to look over something for me? I need a sanity check.

There's a commercial on for a special plastic pot for cooking pasta in the microwave. They're actually talking about how difficult and inconvenient it is to cook pasta on the stove, because it uses boiling water, and if the heat is too high, it'll boil over, and if it's too low, the pasta will stick together. Also, there's a shot at the beginning of a woman collapsing under the weight of carrying pasta, a pot, a lid, a colander, and a few other things that I couldn't identify.

Happy Birthday Kat!

I just know if I hit them with questions about true alternative lifestyles, they might just look at me as if I've grown a third eye. Because what romance considers "alternative" vs. what's truly alternative are no doubt quite different.

I recently made the mistake of trying to explain slash to a group of romance writers over lunch. We were talking about how you know you've made it as an author, and my measure was, "When there's a thriving fanfic community devoted to my work." I added that I was fine with people slashing my protagonist and his best friend, but if anyone slashed my protagonist and antagonist, I didn't want to know, because I'd have to hunt them down and kill them with a spork. Anyway, they knew what slash was, but they seemed baffled by the idea that I was writing my protagonist and his friend as straight while being aware of and comfortable with a potential for homoerotic subtext.

It was weird. I'm used to being the vanilla one at the table.