Soldiering On!

I am now over yesterday's snit/paranoid panic attack, and I'm returning to what passes for normal with even more determination to do everything I can to help make my books a success. It's better to take action than to whine about it, but sometimes the whining helps me crystallize the situation, what I fear about it, what the worst-case scenario is, and then move on so I can do something about it. One of the best ways to motivate me (as Mom can attest) is to give me a challenge or otherwise tell me something can't be done. Mind you, that's different from telling me I'm not allowed to do something. I'm the ultimate Good Girl, and I have a hard time disobeying rules. But tell me something's not possible or that it's very, very difficult, and I'll just about kill myself to show you that I can do it. Now that I see making each book a bigger success than the one before as a challenge, well, look out world!

I have some fun experimental ideas, but I'll have to wait until after the next round of travel before I can start implementing them. By then, I might have thought them through some more and have them more fleshed out.

Even as I'm still adjusting to the idea that people might be interested in meeting me or hearing from me, I'm also still stuck in fangirl mode, myself, at times. In my quest to further push my books, I decided to send a news release to the SFWA pressbook site (now that I know it exists). I sent off the information, then later in the day, the name Vonda McIntyre showed up in my in-box. If you were a Star Trek geek in the 80s, you should know who she is, as she wrote some of the better tie-in novels, including the novelization of The Wrath of Khan (which was in many ways actually better than the movie). I had a minor flip-out. It turns out she's the volunteer who runs that part of the web site, and she asked if they should use my author photo in addition to my book cover art. She'd obviously been through my web site and said that my books sounded like fun. When I replied, I mentioned having been a big fan. I know a lot of bestselling authors on the romance and chick lit side of things, but I guess I'm still getting used to the idea of being peers with the authors I read when I was growing up. So, yeah, when I was supposed to be interacting like a professional, I was having a fangirly sqeee moment. I haven't really done much through SFWA, and I think a part of it is that intimidation factor. Some of these people were my heroes when I was a teenager scribbling the beginnings of stories in a spiral notebook. It should be fun to watch me at the World Fantasy Convention this fall.

In other news, I accomplished everything on my to-do list yesterday. Go me! Today's list is kind of scary. I may have to miss choir tonight to get everything done that must be done before I head to Austin on Friday. That's because I also have to start getting stuff done before I head to the RT convention next week. But it's all to help achieve that "maintain/build success" goal, so I will soldier on! (Which reminds me, I owe my friend in Iraq an e-mail.)