Nearly a month ago I got out my horn a did a boot of tooting…my novel had won first place in a contest! Go me! Toot-toot! It was exciting and felt good because, well – winning always feels good. Also, it was that whole Sally Field thing: “I can’t deny the fact that you like me, right now you like me!” (Only in this case it was “They like my writing! They really like my writing!)
Well, here is my follow-up tap dance. I got a lovely plaque (Accolades – yesss!) And of course I have to post a picture. What else is the internet for if not to proclaim your awesomeness to the world? Oh, right…all the p0rn. Anyway, here is a pic of the plaque, it’s not pornographic, but I suppose you could use your imagination. (Also – there were a lot of p’s in that last sentence).
And now I’ll take my bow…and do some begging. My good fortune has continued, and my novel was selected to take part in the 2012 Baker’s Dozen Agent Auction hosted by the anonymous Authoress who blogs under the title Miss Snark’s First Victim . Out of 400 plus entries, To Catch A Fetch was one of 60 to be selected (25 adult, 35 middle-grade/young adult). If you are curious to see what a story looks like in the pre-published stage, or if you want to know what agents find in their slush piles, then take a read through the entries. All 60 went live this morning. You can read and comment on them through the morning of December 4th. After that, the REAL fun begins, when the 15 participating agents have 24 hours to bid for pages.
Or…if you just want to be nice to me, because my begging has made you pity me – I’m good with that. My entry is number 10, you can read it HERE. Comments are most welcome. Of course I want you to be honest, but if words like: “Brilliant!” “Amazing!” or “I HAVE to read the rest, I can’t wait until it’s published!” happen to pour from your keyboard, I promise I won’t mind.
It’s the final day of Thanksgiving weekend and some leftovers are still in the fridge, I’m still in my pajamas, and there are Christmas storage boxes still on the floor…all over the floor. I am a staunch supporter of waiting until after Thanksgiving to begin decorating for Christmas – but I also like to get the tree trimmed and the house holiday-ed before CyberMonday. (Which I shop much more avidly than Black Friday, no pushy people in Santa sweatshirts to bring out my inner Grinch.)
So I’m Christmatizing the house…and I pretty much mean the whole house. From the traditional family tree in the living room to the StarWars tree in what used to be my dining room, to the purple and Tiffany-blue trees in my daughters’ rooms – there’s a whole lotta trimming going on.
This fine Sunday morning I took a break from the decorating to make some Christmas cards. Shutterfly had a great deal of 10 free cards (ends tonight, btw) and since I missed out on their free calendar deal that ended on Friday (still annoyed at myself for that), I figured I’d better order the cards now or be mad at myself tonight.
My favorite Christmas Song is Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas (for other favorites, see my TOP 10 page). Hence, the inspiration for the card. Here’s the results, if you’re not lucky enough to get one in the mail, at least you can enjoy it via the magic of the internets!
Thank you to Ubisoft for sponsoring this post. Please click here to learn more about Ubisoft. I was selected for this opportunity as a member of Clever Girls Collective. #UbiChamps
Happy Thanksgiving! Today kicks off the final sprint to the end of the year—a joyous and frenzied time that has been known to leave me feeling frazzled. Then too, there are all those seasonal goodies threatening to expand my bottom line and make me feel frumpy (and look lumpy).
But this holiday is going to be different, and my salvation has been found, believe it or not, in a video game. The epiphany came last week when I was stressed to the hilt with a to-do list that seemed to go on forever. I felt like I had no time for anything…no time to work-out, no time to play with my children, no time to chill. But then my 4 year-old begged me (yes, I am ashamed to admit she had to beg—I had been putting her off all morning) to play JustDance with her. (Even without the Minnie ears, which she has recently insisted on wearing daily, she is very hard to resist).
Fast forward to half an hour later and I’m sweating and laughing. It was awesome! I got a work-out in AND I was spending time with my daughter, AND I was having fun! We zipped through a series of songs including Carly Rae Jepsen’s Call Me Maybe (my four year old’s favorite), So What from P!nk and On the Floor by J.Lo. After those and a few others my heart was pumping and I felt like I was burning some calories!
Then last weekend, my 9 year-old daughter Miss A was invited to a sleepover party and she took Just Dance 4 with – the game was a hit! All the girls got into it and had fun…the host mom texted me a pic with a thank you for keeping all the girls entertained.
And Miss A felt pretty cool because, “even my friend’s big sister wanted to play, and she’s in HIGH SCHOOL!” Here’s what else Miss A had to say about JD4:
As the days get colder and colder, it’s getting harder to get the girls to go out and play afterschool. I was delighted when the other day we came home from school, and instead of the usual routine of fighting over who gets to watch what on t.v. the girls put JD4 on and enjoyed a fun afternoon.
So instead of sitting zoned out on the couch or beating each other up for the remote they were exercising and getting along?!? Woo-Hoo! 2 points for Mama!
After the big meal tonight I was tired from making all that food, painfully stuffed from eating it, and cranky from washing all those dishes…when I popped JustDance4 into the Wii for the girls I thought I was going to sit and watch and be a little bit grumpy. But soon enough, the inherent fun of the game got to me, especially after seeing the character for the Rick Astley song, Never Gonna Give You Up. I don’t want to spoil it for you, but all I’m going to say is “orange underpants.” Also, some crazy stuff happens in the background of this video, causing my 4year old to react like this:
It was also pretty funny to see my husband dance to the B-52’s Rock Lobster. He picked the song, and our daughters thought it was very weird indeed.
All this dance time earned my family enough “MoJo” points to move up a level and unlock a bonus—in this case it turned out to be a Mash-Up video of Call Me Maybe. The husband was done, so I stepped in for this last dance. I wasn’t sure what to expect from the mash-up, but it turned out to be crazy fun. The song stays the same, but the dance is performed by a montage of JustDance characters, Miss A was excited to see the return of on her favorite dancers from JustDance2 and I was giggling when underpants man (see the above note about the Rick Astley song) made an appearance. Before the mash-up the girls were getting tired and ready to call it a night, but they had so much fun with the new version of the song they wanted to keep playing to earn more points and unlock more fun stuff.
Speaking of unlocking fun stuff, JustDance announced they are releasing a special “extra” you can download, and get your groove on “gangnam style.” Find out more via this video:
If you want to know what other songs come pre-loaded and ready to play, check out the song list on the JustDance official website.
And I know you’re going to want one of these for your house too, so hop on Santa’s lap and tell him to slip JD4 into your stocking. If you don’t want to wait that long to practice your Moves Like Jagger, head over to Toys R Us and grab it (they have some great promotions, you could stock up on all the JustDance games!)
Don’t want to leave the house but still want the game? Order JD4 from Amazon and you can sit there at your computer, in your orange underpants if you like.
I’ll just put it out there right now – I’m a sucker for a good compliment. Though I have no problem working hard for the personal satisfaction of knowing I’ve done a job well, I also enjoy the occasional ego stroke. Tell me I did a great job planning a party or that my outfit is cute and I’ll probably ‘Aw Shucks’ it, but inside I’m beaming like a little puppy, basking in the glow of your praise.
With my writing, it’s a bit of a conundrum. Compliments – while nice, aren’t all that helpful. To improve her craft, a writer needs to suffer the slings and arrows of honest critiques, and worse – be ready to face rejection by agents, editors, reviewers, and even readers. I swallowed my first bitter Rejection Pill early this summer – and despite my best intentions to suck it up and keep going, the experience set my writing back for months. As you can see from my last post (way back in July – I’ve been MIA on the blogging front) – I was in poor spirits indeed.
In May, only a few weeks prior to the start of my summer slump (the rejection I mentioned came in early June), I had entered a writing contest. Now, nearly six months later – the results of that contest are in and I’m feeling better about myself and my writing and have dug out the ol’ horn and polished it up for some tooting.
I am happy, proud, and excited to announce that my paranormal romance manuscript took First Place in its category in the 2012 Molly Contest sponsored by the RWA Chapter Heart of Denver Romance Writers.
I received my winner’s notification via a phone call over a week ago, but now that the results are posted on the HODRW’s website, it feels more official. Also, since the call came while I was sitting in the car pool line with two four year old girls giggling and screaming in the backseat, I was worried I may have imagined the whole conversation. But nope – it was real, and I’ll even be getting a fancy plaque to prove it. (Picture to come, of course I’m going to post a picture! Toot-toot.)
I know that while it’s nice to win a contest and have my writing recognized as being pretty darn good, I still have a long road ahead of me. Breaking into publishing is hard, heart-breaking work. But I’m not going to lie – winning the Molly has recharged my batteries, given me a much-needed confidence boost, and revved my writing engine.
Melonie Johnson 
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