Promo for Upcoming Events

8:30 AM. I'm in my office, sipping coffee and enjoying the morning sun, easing my way into what promises to be a busy day.  It's days like these that I'm so grateful to do the work I do. Got cats, coffee, and a computer--life is good.

I have a few upcoming events I thought I'd mention.

Saturday August 26th at 1030 AM, Pam Cable and myself are presenting a letter-writing for social change workshop at the Making Your Voice Count: Our Collective Power celebration hosted by the Greensboro  Commission on the Status of Women. We're speaking on behalf of NOW and the administrators there picked a workshop title for us: Southern Charm for Social Change. Pam and I added to the title a bit and now the workshop title is "Southern Charm for Social Change: Bless Their Hearts, The Politicans Won't Know What Hit Them." Makes me laugh every time I read it. (For you Northeners, "Bless Your Heart" is big down here. It's almost always used to lighten an insult as in, "Bless her heart, she's just dumber than a door.") Click here for details on attending the breakfast and workshops.

On a lighter note, I'll be at the Mayodan Public Library on Monday, September 11th from 6:30 - 8 PM for a "Meet Your Local Author Night." Myself and 3-4 other local authors will give a brief talk, answer questions and sign books.

The coffee is gone and the cats have left me for better sleeping quarters, so it looks like it's time to start the day. Happy Friday, everyone.

And the Work Comes Pouring In...

I don't know what magic make-the-work-appear fountain I drank from but dang, it's done the trick.

Literally on Monday I remarked to Blair that, ho-hum, work was slow for me and I didn't have much on the horizon. WARNING: Never let the work gods hear you say this as they consider it a challenge.  48 hours later and AACK!--I'm trying to figure out how in the heck I'm going to get all this work done.

My radio interview this morning was GREAT fun. Jay Stephens was the perfect host, putting author Gail Langley and me at ease and Gail was the perfect co-guest--fun, informative and her fiction was a good balance for my humorous non-fiction. The station manager asked for my card as I was leaving and he left me a voice mail that he'd like to explore the possibility of my joining the Community Accents team with an occasional show of my own. Cool!  (NOTE: No longer is this a tiny AM station with limited range. Now it's a major broadcasting opportunity for me. Changes in perspective are such fun--it's a miracle I don't get whiplash). Anyone who knows me know I can talk the ear off an elephant so I can't wait to see what Mike has in mind for a possible show.

Other work that's come in includes a 10,000 word article with an extremely tight deadline, a new Message on Hold assignment, a web site rewrite (big project), and a former editor called about a new weekly publication that he's interested in having me either write for or write a column for.  I'm also trying to cram in two big assignments due by the end of the month. It's like, did I blink or something? Where did the ho-hum go?

I love it though. Thrive on the chaos. Now if you'll excuse me, I need to go practice my radio voice.  ;)

On the Radio

I'm doing a radio interview this morning (in about 45 minutes, to be exact) on a local AM station. It will be broadcast to at least 4 houses in the Rockingham County listening area so if you're up and about this morning and living only moments from my house, be sure to tune in.

Seriously, it should be fun. The interview is from 8:30 - 9 AM on "Community Accents," WLOE (1490 AM) in Eden and WMYN (1420 AM in Mayodan). If you miss it this morning, the interview will be rebroadcast at 6:30 PM. Jay Stephens from the Rockingham County Public Library will talk with me and another local author, I assume about our books.  To be honest, I'm not really sure what the focus of the interview is. Could be writing, could be publishing, could be many things.  I just got a call the other week asking if I was free today for the interview and I was so I said yes. 

A friend yesterday advised me to come up with a few key sound bites. Does "Buy my book!" count as a sound bite? ;)

Alright. I need to think about getting my stuff together and leaving. Listen for me on the radio....

Internet On the Fritz

Apologies for the delay between postings.  The cable connection to our Internet is giving us trouble and I haven't been able to log on all weekend. It's up now but we've got a service technician coming out tomorrow to look at it.

Not a terribly exciting weekend to report on anyway. It rained most of Saturday and Blair and I holed up in the house. We made the mistake Friday night of thinking we would watch "just a portion" of the Lord of the Rings trilogy. We put the first movie in and now we're hooked. We spent Saturday watching the 2nd movie and watched half of the third movie last night. I expect we'll wrap it up tonight and be able to move on with our lives once again.

We also cooked all weekend. Four years ago (I kid you not, it's been 4 years) my sister gave me a recipe for Shrimp  Fettuccini Alfredo with Mushrooms. We finally got around to making it Saturday night and it was delicious. We made glazed ginger salmon for lunch on Sunday and grilled scallops for dinner. We are fish-ed out for the week but very proud of our cooking efforts for the weekend.

I have so much stuff coming up I don't know which way is up. I've got a radio interview this Wednesday (local AM station), a seminar Thursday morning, a workshop all day Saturday, next Tuesday I start an 8-week Dale Carnegie course, a speech with my friend Pam at the Fall NC NOW seminar on the 26th, a 20-minute speech for Toastmasters on the 30th that I have no idea what I will speak on and then I'm gone the 1st - the 8th at a writer's retreat in the mountains (more on that later). In between there I have meetings, critique groups, and--oh yeah--work. It's good, as I like a busy schedule. But this morning as I face my desk I feel like I should take a deep, deep breath because who knows when I'll come up for air?

I hope everyone is having a productive Monday!