Recess and Ritalin

I was reading a magazine in the doctor’s office yesterday about the obesity epidemic among US children and best/worst schools for active, healthy kids. Which is how I learned something that shocked me even more than the epidemic of fast-food cafeterias and junk food vending machines in schools. Ready?

An incredible percentage of schools have done away with P.E. and recess in order to “bring up scholastic standards”. Which is dumb because I can testify that having an active body is essential to a clear mind. If I don’t balance desk time with physical activity, it doesn’t take long for my concentration to go to hell and my brain to turn as mushy as my backside.

When I picked my jaw up off the floor, the first thing I said to myself was, “6 years olds are supposed to sit still in class ALL DAY without PE class or recess? Holy sh&*, no wonder they’re all on Ritalin.”

I can’t believe it. To parents out there, complain to your school board about this. When I was a kid, we had PE. We hated it, but we all did it. We had recess and we played dodge ball, jumped rope, played on swings, ran. We had summer vacations (!) which we used to do more of the same along with endless bike riding and swimming. And most of us walked to school.

I think there was one overweight kid in the entire school.

You want to do something about the obesity epidemic, not to mention juvenile diabetes? Bring back the good old days. Let kids walk or bike to school, go to PE class, run around during recess. Get fast food venders out of the cafeterias and candy bar laden vending machines out of schools.

Oh, yeah, and let’s see if suddenly all these elementary school aged kids no longer need Ritalin in the process.

Thought for today

Read this last night and I’m still thinking about it.

“Writing is about honesty. It is almost impossible to be honest and boring at the same time. Whenever I am stuck in a piece of writing I ask myself, “Am I failing to tell the truth? Is there something I am not saying, something I am afraid to say?” When the answer is yes, the writing shows it. There is a softness, a tentativeness, a rot to it that telling the truth instantly dispels.” – Julia Cameron, The Right to Write

Nice to be reminded that scared to death “can I really pull this off/can I really say that” feeling just means I’m doing my job.

Going postal

Finished The Synopsis and trotted it on down to the post office along with the rest of the Blaze contest entry. You never can tell, I could be the lucky winner of a year’s supply of books! It felt very strange to be sending something out by snail mail again. I’ve gotten used to doing everything via email.

Which made me think to myself, “I should probably blog something about why I’m shopping different projects around.” Because I’ve already said I love EC and have no plans to leave EC and that must seem confusing.

It’s like this: not everything I write is going to be a good fit there. And that whole burnout problem would probably strike at some point if everything did. Some of my stories are more steamy than erotic or mildly erotic and those are stories I think would do better with Red Sage, Brava or possibly Blaze. I want every story I write to find the best possible home, and when you don’t always write the same thing that means having more than one publisher.

Starting to shop for alternate markets feels a little like having to date again after being happily married, but I’m jumping in there and going postal.

In writing news, I’m finishing a Quickie and then I have the sequel to Love and Rockets to do. A reader asked me the other day why there wasn’t any information on When Sparks Fly on my site and I realized I don’t have a series section. My bad. So I’ll be starting a series section for both Sparks and Dangerous, because those both have sequels coming. I’m working on a few other site updates, too.

Print status of Love and Rockets

Love and Rockets is just now at the printer’s. Which means it should be in print sometime this week. However, it’ll take a couple of weeks for shipping and stocking before it appears at Borders. Not sure what happened; I emailed the print book coordinator after the list of EC print books for Aug. 12 went out and Rockets wasn’t on it. At any rate, it’s in process and should be in stores in early September. I’ll post a more exact date when I get one and I’ll update the books page and front page of the site accordingly. For those wondering where it is, it’s coming!

My brand

Branding is one of those topics that crops up frequently; you should have a brand say the experts, and the theory goes that sticking to one subgenre is the way to build that brand. I somewhat agree and disagree.

I have a brand, and I’ll tell you what it is. Ready? I’m not really a romance author. In reality, I write fairy tales. All of my romances are fairy tales for grownups. They’re contemporary, paranormal and futuristic respectively, they have snappy dialog and sizzling sex, but they’re all fairy tales underneath.

Exhibit A: Yule Be Mine is a contemporary version of Dicken’s classic tale with a happy ending and takes place when Scrooge (Luke) was young enough to make different choices. Various people and events play the roles of Christmas Past, Present and Future, and Jacob Marlow isn’t dead.

Love and Rockets is an updated version of Cinderella. I thought the wicked stepmother and stepsibs were too melodramatic so I axed them but Anna went to a dance and met her prince. And since it’s the modern version, she didn’t need a fairy godmother, although she did get some help. But she used her brains to reinvent herself and go after the life she really wanted, and lived happily ever after.

Dangerous Games? Futuristic Beauty and the Beast. Drake’s high-tech fortress is the enchanted castle and Melinda breaks the spell of his loneliness and inability to trust which had turned him into a surly beast. But since I always thought the beast was more interesting without turning into a boring ordinary man at the end, Drake doesn’t change too much.

Love Spell? Witches, magic, does it get anymore fairy tale than that? Besides, Mitch is definately a modern prince. And Lucy gets a happy ending because witches deserve them, too. They get such a bum rap in fairy tales.

I didn’t set out to be a fairy tale writer, but that’s my voice. Which is why I’d argue that voice is brand and nobody should worry about subgenre or even what label gets stuck on their book. All my books are clearly my voice.

Also, it shouldn’t surprise anybody that I enjoy writing fairy tales for kids as much as I like writing fairy tales for grownups. I’m now getting around to finding markets for those fairy tales; it’s been a busy year and that got shoved onto the back burner. But Morgan Hawke’s got a great article about success and burnout, and I believe that if I stick to my plan of writing all the fairy tales I want to, I’ll never burn out. I can continue to write fairy tales for adults into my sunset years and I can mix it up endlessly with various subgenres of romance and varying lengths. When I want a break from that, I can slant my fairy tales to a different age group, children or even Young Adults.

Now I just need to find an agent who supports my Evil Plan and won’t try to get me to stick to one length and subgenre or one age group. Don’t try to tell me it’s impossible, I believe in fairy tales and I’ve got some magic apples laying around…