Plot Monkeys

Hey, ya’ll! I’m about to get on a plane, so I have no funny today…but I do have a winner! The brownies go to #70, Celise! Please email me at julie@julieleto.com with your address and I’ll send them out this week!

See you all next week…and feel free to share any funnies that you might have gotten this week to fill in for me!

Question: “What do you like best about Nashville?

LK: The hotel! WOW The Hermitage is unbelievably beautiful. The service is impeccable. There is this huge bathtub in which I took a relaxing bubble bath (Julie took a picture…I might be persuaded to put it in here, it was hilarious–I thought the shower gel was bubble bath, so I poured in half a bottle, and ended up with bubbles climbing halfway up the wall! We have a view out our window of the state legislature building, which has been a flurry of activity for tomorrow’s inauguration of the governor! We’ll have a front row seat. Big thumbs up for this place!

CP:Seeing the other Plotmonkeys, of course! Throughout the weekend of laughs (too many to count!) and tears (after Grey’s Anatomy- that soon turned into real life sobs and confessions that were cathartic); of arguments over food (Les and I had stomach problems and Julie had to have BBQ b/c she was in Nashville) the weekend was absolutely perfect. So was the city and the hotel. As of this posting, no time outs have been given. I love my plotmonkey pals!

JEL: It’s hard to beat this hotel. If it’s not five star, it should be! And I’ve travelled a lot, so when I say this place is fabulous I’m not kidding. The other monkeys want me to write about the food, and while it’s been great, I can’t not write about the people here. I can’t talk enough about how wonderful the people are here. Everyone from Lucy at the front desk to Bonita our cab driver have been friendly and accommodating and genuinely amazing. I can’t say enough about the people of Nashville…they definitely make me want to come back!

JD: I’m here, I’m here! I forgot to add in my post! Ditto on all of the above! It’s hard to pick out just one thing that I’ve enjoyed the most about Nashville. The hotel service has been superior, the people so super-friendly, and the weather just perfect! I just wish we had more time to get out and sight-see, because there is so much to “see” here in Nashville. The good news is, we’ve been busy plotting some awesome stories for 2007-2008!

Okay, so you all guessed. You all are just too smart for us! Yes, we’re in Nashville. It’s a funny scene right this moment as we all sit here with our laptops, sharing whatever we’re surfing and avoiding work! But trust me, we’ll be working hard just a little bit.

In celebration of our trip, here’s the contest for this week…this is from Colt’s Chocolate, a female-owned business based here in Nashville. They’re chocolate covered brownies in heart shapes in a beautiful rose box. Perfect for Valentine’s Day!

Just enter a comment and you’re eligible!

Good luck!

We all have our own weird quirks we have to deal with, and I certainly have my share. One of them is cleaning up my house right before I leave on vacation, so I can come home to a CLEAN house and can just unpack and relax. So, this past weekend the process began. Scrubbing down bathrooms, vacuuming, mopping, cleaning the kitchen until it sparkles, 10 loads of laundry, etc. By the time I was done, the house looked great. Better than it had in a long time. Now I could leave to meet with the Plotmonkeys knowing that my job was done.

Fortunately, I’m not taking my entire family with me on this trip – this is a girl’s only vacation, and something I look forward to every year as five days of pure fun, laughter, pep talks, gossip . . . oh, yeah, and plotting! But that means my husband and two teenagers, two cats and one dog, are left behind in the house that I just cleaned! I have to wonder, will I return on Sunday and be able to enjoy my ritual of unpacking and relaxing? Or will I be too aggravated by the mess created in my absence?

The husband doesn’t make much of a mess, and what he does make is usually confined to a particular space or room in the house. He doesn’t do dishes – never has, never will. He’d rather let them pile up to the ceiling before rinsing one off and put it into the dishwasher. And most of his “mess” is kept in the bedroom - - clothes that don’t make it into the hamper and a few empty glasses on his computer desk. But the teenagers . . . one of them is fairly clean and picks up after herself. But she’s like her father – she hates to do dishes. Then there is the other teenager who isn’t so clean. She’s the one that you know exactly where she’s been in the house because there is a mess of some sort left behind. Shoes, jacket, and backpack dropped on the floor when she walks into the house from school. The kitchen counter full of crumbs and other “evidence” of what she’s eaten. Papers, books, Ipod, and other stuff in the living room where she watched TV. And these things don’t get picked up/cleaned up until I NAG. Which I do often, trust me!

But I’m not going to be there to nag. I’m not going to be there to clean up after everyone. The cats and dog will have free run of the house while I’m gone, and they will leave hair balls and kibble all over my nice, fresh, recently vacuumed carpet. Damp towels will be left on the bathroom floor after the teenager’s showers (because they just can’t hang them up to air dry - UGH!). Their bathroom will be a mess, too – since they aren’t very good about rinsing out their sinks after brushing their teeth. Another UGH. Dishes MIGHT get done, but I’m not counting on it. I’m sure once the actual silverware and plates run out they’ll resort to paper and plastic! And I don’t want to think about how the counter tops and stove are going to look!

So, this past weekend, while I’m cleaning like a fiend, I kept asking myself – Why am I spending all this time cleaning the house when I know it’s going to be a disaster when I get home? Because I just can’t help myself. It’s one of those idiosyncrasies that I just can’t let go of. Oh, and there’s that deep seated hope that maybe I’ll walk in the door on Sunday to the wonderful surprise of having a nice, clean house waiting for me. (Yeah, I know I’m dreaming!).

So, how many of you can relate to having messy kids in the house that just can’t seem to pick up after themselves? And do you think I have any chance of coming back home to a fairly clean house?

PS: Another clue for you to guess where the Plotmonkeys are for their retreat: “This city is among those called the ‘buckle of the bible belt.”

Yesterday at Access Romance, it was my day to blog. I really had no business doing anything but working on the novella that is, er, WAS due Monday. Same goes for today. The story is done, but I’m editing, a process that always takes me more time than I plan for. I could plan a month and it would take me two. Just the way it works.

So I’m still working on polishing my story and shouldn’t be blogging. Bad, bad Julie. I hope the editor for this project–with whom I have never worked before–isn’t reading this. :-)

Here’s my blog.

Did you ever notice that there are no fruits that start with the letter I? Yeah, me neither, until my daughter was assigned a science project where she has to cut out pictures of fruits or vegetables, one or two for each letter of the alphabet. I must say that if not for the advent of Google, this task would be impossible. Alas, Google exists, so I (and my daughter) now know that there is a fruit from South Africa called the Ice Plant. I will ask my South African friend tomorrow if she’s ever heard of it, but I’m doubting she has. None of the pictures showed the fruit–just the flower. It’s pretty. Doesn’t mean I want to eat it. The other name for this is the sour fig. I’m a big fig fan, so this is a turn off, to say the least.

But I wasn’t satisfied with only one “I” vegetable, no matter how rare and obscure. Oh, no. I researched further, losing my daughter’s interest right about now while I went on my quest. Hawaii uses a lot of i’s. Surely they have some tropical plant or veggies starting with an I. No luck.

The search for this fruit was not easy. I had started with the basic search, “Fruits A-Z” and one for veggies, too. That got me a comprehensive site and list, but it wasn’t quite enough because well, there were letters that had no fruit or vegetable. Then I went to Wikipedia, figuring they’d be pretty reliable on a topic like this. They were. Lots of lists and pictures, too. That’s where I found the Ice Plant.

But for a second “I,” I was stumped. Nothing was coming up, so I decided to try to look up the latin name for the fruits…hoping this tact would impress Alyssa’s teacher mightily. That’s how I found the Ice Cream Bean (Inga edulis). I’m so clever!

The Ice Cream Bean is a delicacy from the Brazilain Amazon which reportedly tastes like, well, vanilla ice cream. Or so they say. I doubt the Ice Cream Bean is going to be stocked in my local grocery so I can try it out.

I am so smart! I am the Google queen! I print off pictures and give them to my daughter to cut and paste, explaining to her how yummy this bean must be (and then explaining why our local grocery likely doesn’t stock it, but promising to check at the specialty shop next time I’m out, since vanilla ice cream is her favorite/) I have completed gathering pictures for half of the alphabet…and lest you berate me for doing my daughter’s work for her, you can’t exactly find pictures of an Ice Cream Bean in a magazine and my daughter is much too young to surf the ‘net alone. She was beside me the whole time until I started exploring Hawaii and latin names for plants.

And then…the inevitable happens.

I’m bragging to my husband about my discovery of the Ice Cream Bean and he says, “Couldn’t you just have used Iceberg lettuce?”

Clearly, I am not quite as clever as I think.

Now I’m back to doing my own work. But I did find a Quince for Q, part of tomorrow’s research effort. If anyone can think of something obvious that I’m missing, particularly for Q or X, can you please let me know? Save me the embarrassment.

I suppose I should ask if anyone really wants to see pictures of my poor :doggie: but I’m just going to assume that you do. Humor me because I have no time for anything these days except raising teenage girls and taking care of a sick dog. Buddy had two fatty tumors removed, one on each side of him - BENIGN - thank goodness.

But he’s miserable. Can dogs cry? I think he’s that unhappy with his situation - obviously he is wearing a cone so he can’t rip out his stitches and he bumps into things. He can’t drink with the cone on so I have to take it off a few times a day. He can’t eat with it on, so ditto. In the beginning he couldn’t pee or … - you know - with the cone on because it interfered with his sniffing on the ground. He’d sniff the grass, the cone would get caught and he’d get frustrated and couldn’t pee. Thank goodness we’re passed that point. Another week to go.

However there is GOOD NEWS for Buddy’s caregiver (namely me)

I’M OUTTA HERE TOMORROW ON MY PLOTMONKEY TRIP!!!!!!!!!!!! That leaves kids and hubby to take care of Buddy. I have one thing to say to that. POOR DOGGIE!

YEAH ME!

So where do you think we’re going?
Here’s a hint … When a former president visited this city, he made a comment about some local coffee…which ended up becoming a major national jingle.
Anyone?

As you all probably know, Carly, Janelle, Julie and I are going away later this week for our plotting retreat. Can’t wait to see you guys!

I thought you all might like a glimpse at our process. And I’d like to ask for your input as readers…so you can be “honorary Plotmonkeys” today.

Basically, when we go away, we carve out pockets of time, usually in 2 hour increments, and divide them among us. We all get to plot a minimum of 2 projects, and if there’s extra time we’ll do general brainstorming, career planning, etc. Janelle has this nifty little recorder that can be loaded right onto our hard drives, so we can go home with an audio recording of our entire session. (They come in very handy months later when we’re actually writing the books we talked about!)

This is all very casual and flexible. And I mean casual. We always stay in very nice, exclusive hotels where we can get pampered…(except last year, the year of the rats.) Usually, we work in sweats or pj’s. We get room service for most meals. We laugh a whooooole lot. Julie sometimes gets sent to the bathroom for a time-out. It’s a total blast. Sometimes we work on books we’ve already started, sometimes we’re just throwing ideas around so whoever is “on the hot seat” can come up with a workable synopsis. Sometimes we start by reading whatever the writer has jotted down so far about the book, sometimes it’s strictly verbal.

See? Flexible.

Right now, I am trying to decide what I want my monkey pals to help me with. I know I’m going to ask them to help me figure out the logistics of my “Take 5” Blaze, which will be coming out next October or November (depending on how fast I can write the thing!) It’ll be a challenge, since I’ll be writing five connected, mini-romances, all in one book.

Beyond that, though, I’m a blank page. I have nothing else contracted, nothing else promised. I had hoped I’d be preparing to write the third Trouble book…but my publisher doesn’t want it. (That’s one thing I was talking about Saturday when I mentioned how demoralizing this business can be. Like many other midlist authors with wonderful, supportive fans but not enough #’s, I got dumped.)

I am absolutely at a crossroads in my career and this plotting retreat is (hopefully) going to help me figure out which way to go. Part of me wants to write the last Trouble book for my own enjoyment if for nothing else. It probably wouldn’t sell–I don’t know many publishers who’d take on the third book of a series the original publisher doesn’t even want. But I WANT to write the book. Especially because the 2nd Trouble book, SHE’S NO ANGEL, which comes out in July, is, hands-down, the best thing I have ever done. (Well, it’s not better than my children…but it’s the best thing I’ve written. My editor who’s been with me for nearly 30 books was the first to say it.)

But I have to earn a living…so while I would just love to write that whole book and try to sell it “on spec” I know I have to come up with something else for my agent to shop in order to try to get me a second publisher, something I’ve wanted for a long time. I have a very cute idea for another contemporary romantic comedy series starring a comic book character come to life, but I haven’t worked on it much yet. And a little voice in my head is asking me why I should bother. If my contemporary romantic comedy career is totally in the tank, maybe it’s time to shift gears altogether. (Funny, I just found out I was nominated for an RT Career Achievement Award in Series Love & Laughter. That was wonderful…though I haven’t been doing a lot of laughing lately. Sigh.)

I think I’ve mentioned here that I want to write thrillers…my first venture into that arena didn’t result in a sale, but it got a lot of very positive feedback. I think if I finished the entire book and marketed it outside the romance publishing world altogether–and put a man’s name on the manuscript–it would have a better shot. So there’s that.

Or maybe I could ease into a change of genre by sticking with romance, but going darker into romantic suspense. I have an idea for a trilogy about an FBI unit investigating internet-based crimes.

You see? A crossroads. More Trouble? A new romantic comedy concept–which could, if I decided to take it that way, have a paranormal element? Go back to the thriller that has been the book-of-my-heart for over a year? Explore the romantic suspense trilogy?

Which way do I go, what do I do? Each of these ideas is singing to me, but I don’t want to make another major misstep with my career.

So I’m asking you as readers…what do you think? Should I go after more Trouble, hoping the 2nd book does well enough that someone will want to snap up the third? Or shoot for the new comedy idea? And on that subject—are contemporary romantic comedies ever going to make a real comeback? (Or will dark vampire/werewolf paranormal EVER die? Good Lord, I am so over them.) What about the suspense–R.S. shows no signs of losing steam, and it would be a better stepping stone into straight thrillers.

Before you answer or offer any opinions, let me say, I absolutely have no intention of leaving romance altogether. I adore writing my Blazes and I think I’m valued enough by Harlequin that they’d like me to keep writing them. I fully intend to do that.

But I know after several years of writing the longer books, I won’t be satisfied by doing only the short category ones. I need to go further, to push boundaries, explore more intricate plots and characters.

I just don’t know whether those plots should revolve around bloody corpses or zany redheads. If those characters should be serial killers or sexy bombshells.

I would sincerely like to know…what do you think?

PS: A CLUE! Wanna know where we’re going for our retreat? Here’s a clue…Julie’s going to have to pack some sweaters. The high temperature for Friday is only predicted to be about 45 degrees!

The winner of Friday’s Jungle Madness is:

Rachael from NJ!

Congratulations! Email: carlyphillips@mac.com with your mailing address and we’ll get the prize out ASAP.

And now for the Sunday funny: NO insult to women intended!

The Husband Store:

A store that sells husbands has just opened in New York City, where a woman may go to choose a husband.
Among the instructions at the entrance is a description of how the store operates:

You may visit the store ONLY ONCE !

There are six floors and the attributes of the men increase as the shopper ascends the flights. There is, however, a catch. You may choose any man from a particular floor, or you may choose to go up a floor, but you cannot go back down except to exit the building!

So, a woman goes to the Husband Store to find a husband.
On the first floor the sign on the door reads:
Floor 1 - These men have jobs and love the Lord.

The second floor sign reads:
Floor 2 - These men have jobs, love the Lord, and love kids.

The third floor sign reads:
Floor 3 - These men have jobs, love the Lord, love kids, and are extremely good looking.

“Wow,” she thinks, but feels compelled to keep going. She goes to the fourth floor and sign reads:
Floor 4 - These men have jobs, love the Lord, love kids, are drop-dead good look ing and help with the housework.

“Oh, mercy me!” she exclaims,
“I can hardly stand it!” Still, she goes to the fifth floor and sign reads:
Floor 5 - These men have jobs, love the Lord, love kids, are drop-dead
gorgeous, help with the housework, and have a strong romantic streak.

She is so tempted to stay, but she goes to the sixth floor and the sign reads:
Floor 6 - You are visitor 4,363,012 to this floor. There are no men on this floor. This floor exists solely as proof that women are impossible to please. Thank you for shopping at the Husband Store. Watch your step as you exit the building, and have a nice day!

*****
Now really, we know better than this, don’t we?

Katie A. asked:

What do you feel is the greatest challenge as a writer?

CP: Writing. Seriously! These days just putting words on paper feels
like a challenge. Putting worthwhile words is an even bigger challenge. I’m always surprised when I go back and read something I wrote and think, “Hmmm, that’s GOOD. Why am I second guessing myself and this story?” But then next day when I sit down to write, I’m back second guessing again. The next biggest challenge is writing a book that I think will keep readers coming back for more. It’s just challenge after challenge and intimidating knowing you’re being judged by your readers! I feel so grateful to be published and to have people spend their valuable money on my words, I want them to be worth it!

JEL: Definitely the writing! Discipline is really hard when there are so many other EASIER things I’d rather be doing. NOT writing, however, is not fun, either, because of the guilt and because I really, really, really do want to tell these stories. I’m also struggling right now with memory issues…I honestly cannot remember things about my story after a certain amount of time or pages. I just went back and reread thirty pages I swear I don’t remember consciously writing. Of course, I was working on the project concurrently with another one, but the words weren’t familiar to me at all. Luckily, however, they were really great!

JD: Julie, that’s what happens when you turn forty! Yes, the day to day writing is very difficult! After writing 40+ books, I sometimes feel like I’m repeating myself, and the biggest (and most difficult) challenge for me is making sure that each story is unique and different. That’s why I’m so grateful to have the Plotmonkeys — not only are they the best kind of friends a girl could ever want, but when we all plot together (plotting retreat coming up this next week — YIPPEE!!! ) they come up with some great ideas that I never would have thought up on my own.

LK: Sorrry to be late everyone, I had no internet last night & this morning! But I thought I’d pop in and add my answer. For me, the day to day writing is absolutely the hardest part. It’s not so much the “putting words down” that I find so hard, but just discilining myself enough to force EVERYTHING else out of my head and focus on what I’m doing. When I get “in the zone” the words flow, but getting into that zone has become harder and harder over the years.

The second hardest part of this job is just how dang tough the business is. It can be so incredibly demoralizing and frustrating. I often wonder why I’m still doing it when I just never seem to get anywhere, then I get lost in a scene or fall in love with a character, and I remember why I started doing this in the first place: because when I lose myself in it, I absolutely love what I do.

SIMPLY SEXY FRIDAY!

Enter to win red lips . . . seriously!
Red Foil Wrapped Milk Chocolate Lips (and it’s not even Valentine’s Day yet!) 3 oz. of individually wrapped milk chocolate (my favorite) red foil covered lips (8 - 10 pieces - enough to cheat, not enough to do serious damage to your diet) and a gorgeous red lips Coach key charm (easy to hook on your existing key chain or any place else you want to put it, LOL!) and (drumroll) … a signed copy of SIMPLY SEXY (in stores now!).