A New Dog

When I lost my dog Red a few months ago, I swore I wasn't going to get another dog. After all, we have seven--SEVEN--so we didn't need eight. I've seen strays, had people try to give me dogs, and even saw one stray that looked like Red that really pulled my heart strings. Through it all, I stood strong. No more dogs!

Until a couple of days ago. (Smile)

My husband and I had gone to Wal-Mart to get some things, including dog chews and dog food. We had two bags of dog food so one was in the buggy and the other was under it. A stray dog, a puppy really, came up to us just outside the store and began to follow us. I fastened my eyes straight ahead and refused to even look at the puppy.

Before we reached the truck he had got ahead of the buggy and was smelling the bag of dog food under it. A few more steps and he was biting at the corner of the bag, trying to tear it open to get at the food. We kept going.

When we reached the truck he stopped too, then went to work whole-heartenedly on the paper bag of kibble. I had those chews in the buggy, so I tore the bag open and tossed the poor pup one. He grabbed it up happily while my husband--who could no doubt see the danger of where this could go--rushed to get our stuff into the truck.

The puppy only gave the chew a few seconds before he decided correctly that it was a hide chew and not real food. With determination he turned his attention back to the bag of dog food under the buggy.

With my heart breaking, I told my husband to open the bad and pour the puppy some food out. Of course then I was afraid someone might hit him with a car if he were standing there in the parking lot eating and maybe not moving because he didn’t want to leave the food, so we decided against pouring out some food for the pup.

My husband tried to put that last bag of food into the truck and the puppy tried to follow it into the truck. I just couldn't stand it.

To make a long story short. We left with our stuff and one puppy in the truck. He's keeping Clover, Red's friend, company in the big back and side yard. He's eating a lot, loves to play, and I think is going to be a huge dog in a very short time. Clover is so happy to have a playmate again, since the other dogs are all inside dogs and he only spends time with them when they go out or I let him in for a little while. The new pup's name is Kane. He looks like he has a number of breeds in him, including maybe some pit bull and boxer. I'm not so happy about having a puppy again. They chew on everything. (Smile) And yet he already feels like part of the family.

The Limbs are Down

I know it looks like a whole tree, but that's the limb that was holding on by a splinter to the big oak you see a glimpse of standing beside it. In this picture the smaller limb is still up. You can see it leaning against the backside of the oak. Hubby decided if we waited for the city to come take care of it, the thing would either end up on one of our pets, one of us, the truck, the house, or something else that wouldn't be good, depending on which way it headed when it came down.

I'll admit I wasn't happy about him trying to get it down. A man he worked with was killed after Katrina, trying to get down a leaning tree. That limb my husband got down this evening was about as big as a tree. I sat inside, my stomach in knots, through the hour or more it took him and our son to get that biggest one on the ground. Even inside the house with the doors shut and the AC on, I heard the thud when it finally gave way and landed in the drive with a crash. The sad thing is, there are other huge badly damaged limbs up in that tree. I know it's only a matter of time before they too snap and come down.

My husband and son are still out there in the dark, as I write this, trying to cut the limbs up and get them out of the way so they can put the fence back up. Both have to leave for work before daylight in the morning.

But what are you going to do with men?

Excuse the Fit, but I'm Throwing One!

This was taken in my back yard. Not in August of 2005 after Katrina, but today, August 6, 2006.

Under that huge broken oak limb that’s hanging by a splitter from the trunk of that even bigger oak tree, is my husband's gas grill, charcoal grill, a patio chair, and a number of my plants and flower pots. The biggest part of the limb is still stuck against the trunk, but when it comes down, and it will, it's crashing through my chain link fence. (It would probably get the truck too, buy my husband parked it across the street and is leaving it there until the limb is gone.)

If I hadn't been so angry, I think I would have just sat right down in the middle of the new mess and cried. I tried to get that tree with its spilt limbs taken down. Or even just the limbs taken out. It’s a big, big oak tree, and I never wanted to see it go, but Katrina just got the best of it. The limbs, like the two that came down today, have spilt-off hunks missing from them.

After I signed papers, FEMA came out and looked, took down two small pieces of limbs, had their tree expert agree the tree needed to come down, and then they refused to do it. Said it was really on city property and a city (Bogalusa, Louisiana) problem. I told the FEMA tree expert that those splintered limbs couldn't hold their weight up there, and they were going to come down on my property no matter who the tree belonged to. He said they would come down, some year. (He said that only weeks ago.) They were supposed to be taking down any trees or limbs that were leaning or a danger to homes.

Well, that the tree is on city property, I know that, and it is all fine and good I guess, but the corner of my house, my truck, my yard, my fence, and other things like my plants, don’t belong to the city of Bogalusa, and those things, my family’s things, are what’s going to get crushed when those big limbs come down. Like today. (It would cost hundreds for me to pay someone to come take it down for me. It's a city tree and they should pay to have it removed if FEMA says it's their problem.)

The city of course isn't going to touch the tree--I'll bet you. The tree on the other side of my driveway is a hollow oak and has a big dead limb that sticks out over the driveway, over my car. (My new car that I had to buy because I couldn’t leave my other car parked in my own driveway because I thought during Katrina that hollow tree would come down on it. I had to move it to protect it. Well, the tree actually stood, but the lower land spot beside my house where I moved the car to, flooded so badly that my car was totaled.)

That tree has been sick and hollow for many years. The city of Bogalusa marked it after I complained, and said they would take it down. That was some where around fifteen years ago. My mother's been gone for eleven, and it was years before she died. They've marked it a couple of other times over the years, after I've fussed again, and all that's happened is the paint mark has worn off with time. That tree and the one that lost the limb today, were both marked to be cut after Katrina. But that didn't happen then either. Seems FEMA was ticked at the city for having to take down trees on city property that the city should have handled, and I guess the city was ticked at FEMA for leaving a lot of those trees for the city to take care of later.

And guess who is paying the price for their battle?

Sorry for the little fit, but sometimes you just gotta scream or you'll just blow up.

Sometimes all it Takes is...

...a Big Fat Zero.

No, really. I started doing this for my workouts. I hate to workout, but know I need to. So, in an effort to get myself to do it more often, I took a notebook and drew out three columns on the page. In the first I put the date, in the next I put my weight, and in the last I put how many minutes I work out for the day. I soon found that having to draw a big 'ol round zero in that column was something I didn't like to do. I also don't like looking back at the page and seeing too many zeros in a row or even scattered about. I'm still not working out as much as I should, but I'm working out more often, just to keep from having to add another zero. (Smile)

So, why can't the same idea work for your writing? No reason that I can think of. If you have been having a hard time writing and just skipping too many days, grab a notebook—doesn't have to be fancy, just what ever's around—and draw lines down the page to make three columns. Put the date in the first, what kind of writing in the second, and the amount in the last.

Date, I don't need to explain. What kind of writing, well, you can just put the word Type, and then when you fill in that column use words like rewriting, editing, new writing, ect... Make that middle column the biggest so you have a little room if you like. You can even add things like promo, research, or such, depending on what you did that day. The last column is for the amount. You can put hours if it was research or promo or even a workshop you did on writing for income or promo, and for the actual writing you can put a word count, the hours, or the pages. Since it's your record, you can set it up to cover what and how you want.

The hope is though, if you start noticing days in a row where there is only a line of zeros, you'll try to make them appear less often, which means your writing will increase. (Smile)

Wish Me Luck

And cross your fingers too. (Smile) I've been working on a non-fiction book for writers to help them, what else, but write. An agent who handles such non-fiction books looked over some of it and asked for the complete. I mailed it out today after spending the last few days getting it polished and ready to go. Now all I can do is wait.

Found Missing Gril

The missing gril I wrote about in my last post has been found. :-) She isn't home yet, but an aunt and uncle who weren't too far from where she was found, picked her up and in a couple of days she will be back home.

Help Find Missing Girl!

One of the ladies on my e-mail group has a daughter who has been missing for over 12 hours as I write this. This lady has her daughter's picture up and information about her on a website. I have added the link to it below. Please take a moment to look and to pass the link on.

I know this lady. She has been a member of the RWC group a very long time, so this is no joke.

http://www.marjoriejones.com/staci/missingx.html

Rewrite Without Fear

I've put the manuscript aside that I've been working on, or trying to work on. The short story starter helped me accomplish a lot, but I think I'm still caught up in that sagging, dragging middle blues. In other words, I just felt like I needed a break from it, and maybe another long story would move along better for me right now. Instead of allowing myself to start something new, I decided the best use of my time would be to work on a finished story I have that I really like, but that could use some touch ups--some kind of big ones.

Each time I opened the file and started to make those deep changes I had in mind, I froze up. I finally realized I was fixating on all of the hard work I had already put in on that manuscript, and how it would be lost if I deleted big sections of it, reworked the story, and found it had worked better the way it was to start with.

I don't know why I hadn’t thought of this before, but suddenly I thought of a way to set myself free from that fear. It was so easy that it was just a duh moment. (Smile)

I simply copied and pasted the whole manuscript into a new Word file, renamed it so I knew which copy was which, and pulled out the word hatchet. I could delete, add, move around, or what ever else I wanted to do with the story with complete freedom without any worry of what was lost or messed up.

With that freedom I've made some big changes to the plot, to one of the main characters, and even added a few other characters. I’ve only reworked the first few chapters so far, but I don't think I'm going to need to go back to the old copy. I have a feeling the story is coming out much stronger in its new reincarnation.

So the next time you aren't happy with a story and you think it needs some deep cutting and some major reworking, free yourself to play around with it without fear. Make another copy and just let yourself go. You might come up with almost a totally new story, and one that is so much more interesting than the original. You don’t have anything to lose if you give it a try.

Win Four Free Books

Hi everyone,

One of the e-mail groups I own and run is RRC. All the other groups are for writers, but this one is for romance readers....though writers are also welcome.

RRC is holding its first RRC Summer Read contest. I've lined up four wonderful authors who are willing to put up prizes--each author is offering one of her books. In fact, I had more than four authors offer books, so I did a kind of random pick to line up the first four for this first contest. There will be another contest later, maybe even more than one. :-)

The first four books are....

Dance of Desire
by Catherine Kean
www.catherinekean.com

The Prey
by Allison Brennan
www.allisonbrennan.com

Rawhide Surrender
by Elysa Hendricks
www.geminimoon.org/

Virtually Yours
by Crystal Inman
http://chryswriter.tripod.com

It's really easy to enter the RRC Summer Read contest. All you have to do is belong to RRC. To join, send a blank message to RRClist-subscribe@yahoogroups.com or visit the group page here
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/RRClist/

The winner of the above listed books will be drawn randomly on July first. I will announce the winner on the RRC group. She will then contact me off list and give me her snail mail address. I will pass that address on to each author listed above, and each will send the prize they offered to the winner.

Best of luck!
Charlotte Dillon ~ www.charlottedillon.com

Avon Editors Have A Blog

If you are a fellow romance writer and hope to send a manuscript to Avon, there's good news if you'd like to know a little more about the editors there. Right now the Avon editors are working together, posting info to the Avon blog--taking turns as it was. May Chen has a post up about herself today.

You can check it out here.... http://www.avonromanceblog.blogspot.com/