Guess Where I'm Headed & a GCC Tour

Yep, you got it - I'm headed to the airport this morning. Off to Los Angeles until Friday when I return home around 12:30 am - yes, that's as in the morning. (yuck) Everyone is saying things like "oh, but the weather's great there right now." Of course, I'm like "yes, but the weather inside the Hampton Inn is always great. That's what thermostats are for." I simply can't get people to understand that travel is exhausting. Training is exhausting and I'm not on vacation. I have to work all day. Who wants to go out at night when they've worked all day - alone, in a strange town? Not me for one. I'm too damned old.

Still haven't gotten a chance to take a picture of the kitty, but I'll see if my hubby can do that this week and email it to me.

Today I have a GCC tour brought to you by EllenMeister and her debut novel, SECRET CONFESSIONS OF THE APPLEWOOD PTA. Not only can you get this book in hardcopy and read it - it's available in all audio formats and read by Lisa Kudrow. How cool is that?

When a Hollywood location scout comes to Applewood, Long Island, and announces that the local elementary school might make the perfect backdrop for an upcoming George Clooney movie, the PTA's decorum crumbles like a cookie from last week's bake sale.

Enter Maddie, Ruth, and Lisa, three women who become the glue that holds the project together, forging a bond of friendship stronger than anyone could imagine. And not a moment too soon, as marriage woes, old flames, and scandalously embarrassing family members threaten to tear each of them apart. Is their powerful alliance strong enough to overcome the obstacles to getting the movie made in their town? And will their friendship be enough to mend their hearts and homes? Join them as they reach for the stars . . . and try to pull off a Hollywood ending of their own.

At once tender and hilarious, Secret Confessions of the Applewood PTA is a captivating story that turns suburbia upside down . . . with more humor, heartache, and heat than one PTA can hold.

Praise for Confessions:

"Meister's debut novel is heartbreakingly funny, her characters facing life's dramas and disappointments head on with wit and spunk." – Library Journal (starred review)

"Ellen Meister has written a beautiful book about love, life and friendship that you are sure to never forget." – Fresh Fiction

"A funny and wonderfully irreverent look at the dark underbelly of suburbia." – Lolly Winston, author of Good Grief and Happiness Sold Separately

"With sexy characters, sharp dialogue, and snappy pacing, Meister's sassy, saucy debut novel could well turn into a movie of its own." – Booklist

"Women, hide this book from your husbands and resist the urge to read passages out loud. Ellen Meister knows our secrets, and she tells them in a smart, honest, and very funny voice." – Maryanne Stahl, author of Forgive the Moon and The Opposite Shore

"Three conflicted housewives in Applewood, Long Island, long for something more fulfilling than what their families and their membership in the local PTA offer.... helping each other realize their dreams. Comical yet poignant." – Kirkus Reviews

"George Clooney should be proud." – Mark Ebner, author of Hollywood Interrupted

"Ellen Meister's first novel is a smashing success ... touches the heart and the funny bone ." – Romance Divas

"Funny, compelling and well-written." – Trashionista

"The best time I've had in years. Ellen Meister's characters are so funny, smart, and real, I feel like I've made three new friends!" – Lisa Kudrow

About the Author:

A Long Island PTA mom herself, Ellen Meister is no stranger to the scandal and drama of the carpool set. Add a background in writing ad copy and short stories—as well a stint as editor of an online literary magazine—and the result is a novelist as dedicated to nuances of language as she is to a storyline that delights on every page.

Meister lives on Long Island with her husband and three children. She writes, she swears, she sings, she dances … all from the front seat of her minivan. This is her first novel.

Visit Ellen at her website and buy the book!

Exhausted and Aggravated

So normally I don't rant on my blog, but today I'm going to.

I'm tired of traveling and at the moment, I really hate my job. I have had one full week off the road since the middle of April and that's ridiculous. My allergies keep me sick and my doctor has said there's not a darn thing he can do unless I stay in one place. Allergy shots are geared for the place you live. He can't immunize me for the entire US.

And if that's not bad enough, I had a serious computer malfunction. Wednesday night I got on a roll and finished my first chapter of the new wip I was working on. Since it's the beginning of the story (and something different that what I normally write), I went back and edited and polished. Did all the research that I need to do on names and some historical data. Anyway, long and short - it was about five hours of research. So before I dozed off, I emailed the chapter to Cindy, one of my cp's. Saved it one last time and went to sleep.

Thursday night I get email back from Cindy on the chapter and I'm confused. Some of the things she's bringing up are things I DID do in the chapter. So I open the chapter to see if I can figure out what she's talking about and all of my work from the night before is gone. I mean, totally and absolutely gone. I did a search on my entire pc for all text files and it's simply not there. Not only that, what I emailed to Cindy didn't have any of the changes either.

Now I save about every two sentences when I'm writing, so I simply don't know what happened. And normally, I would save to flash drive, but I was writing in bed and broke my cardinal rule of backup.

So that's it - I lost a full night's worth of work and I was sick. I really, REALLY loved what I had done and I know I will never get it back the way it was again.

So between the exhuastion and losing my work, I didn't know whether to drink or cry. But ultimately, I was too tired to go get alcohol and too tired to cry so I just sat. A couple of hours later, I rewrote the chapter, redid the research and got back to where I was, but I'm not happy with it yet. And who know, maybe I never will be.

All I know is I really want to board and plane and go home. Even though it will only be for a couple of days.

Complete Loss

I'm at a complete loss for what to blog about today. Quite frankly, I just don't have two thoughts in my head other than I have to get dressed and I really need coffee. I think that just about fills up my mind.

I stayed up late last night working on the new wip. I'm only one chapter in, but I edited a bit so that took longer and my initial working on a book is always a slow start because of all the French names. It takes me forever to pick suitable names in my books. And when you're talking about naming people, cities and in this case, a house, that's a lot of research and decision. My friend, Jaye Wells, blogged about names the other day, and it got me to thinking again about how my characters were sort of no one at the moment.

I started writing the same as usual - without any names. It goes something like this: (heroine) jumped out of her car and waved at (best friend) who was talking to (sheriff).

Then when I decide on something, I come back and put them in. It's almost like I need to see what kind of people I'm writing about before I can decide on a name for them. Unfortunately, it's harder to write with no names so the name choosing has to happen sooner than later. I've found one chapter is about my limit before I need to decide on something.

Then there's times when I'm halfway into a book and realize that my secondary characters (are even smaller) all have similar names or names that start with the same initial and I have to change one or two of them so that readers don't confuse them with each other. Name picking is probably one of the more frustrating parts of writing for me.

What about you? If you write, how hard is it to decide on names? If you're a reader, how much do you think name choice adds (or takes away) from the story?

What Ever Happened to Common Sense

I've decided if I could figure out a way to produce common sense in a liquid form and distribute it on the open market, I would probably be an overnight billionaire. We often hear the expression that "truth is stranger than fiction" and Lord, I know that's true. In some of my earlier works I "borrowed" some instances from real life and people who read the work would say "no one's going to believe that." Well, probably not. Heck, I wouldn't have believed some of those things if I hadn't been there when they happened. And knowing the people involved always gives it some credibility too.

But odd situations aside, one of the things a lot of writers struggle with is character motivation. They need characters to do certain things because that's what moves their story forward. Unfortunately, they sometimes have their characters doing things that aren't "in character" at all. Or ever worse, exercising no common sense. Now, in real life that's becoming the norm. Most people just don't seem to think beyond their nose. Let me give you an example:

On Monday night it was raining so I didn't want to go out and get food. I ordered a pizza from room service. The pizza was so bad that I took two bites, threw it away and ate microwave popcorn for dinner instead. So last night I was still wanting decent pizza and spotted a Domino's on the way back to my hotel after class. So I order a pizza from Domino's and have it delivered to the hotel. About thirty minutes after ordering, the front desk calls and says my pizza is there. So I tell them to send him up and they say they can't for "security reasons." Now, mind you, every single day since Sunday, I have strolled in and out of this hotel, past the front desk, without anyone so much as looking at me - much less speaking or checking my id. But when someone who clearly has a defined business in the hotel - wearing a pizza uniform - carrying a pizza - wants to use the elevators, this is apparently a security risk???????

Who the hell are you fooling??????

So any bad guy dressed in a non-food delivery uniform can get right by the front desk with no problem but people carrying food are apparently risky. I simply don't know where to go with that.

So I tell the front desk "you're kidding me - I'm in my pajamas." But they won't budge. So I say to hell with them, slip on flipflops and go downstairs in short shorts and a tank top with no bra. You get what you get, I figure. I apologize to the pizza guy for having to wait. He apologizes for not being able to bring it to the room as he had intended (all this just inches from the front desk) and I say "It's not your fault. The service in this hotel is some of the worst and the most ignorant I have ever come across. And I travel every week." He just laughs, the front desk clerks (all three of them) glare, and he walks nervously out of the hotel.

See, that's stupid character motivation. If you had a front desk person as a main character who was doling out those rules without at least acknowledging that management made them do it and it was stupid, well, your character would look really dumb.

Everyone always says that you have to "suspend disbelief" to read fiction, and that statement is sometimes true, but more often I find you have to "smarten up" real life in order to write fiction.