Whine, whine, whiiiiiiiine!

(LOL Cat from Icanhascheezburger.com)

Correcting exams isn't much fun. No, no.

What was that?

WO WAREN DIE HOFSÄNGER???? I don't believe this: I stayed up late to watch the Hofsänger at the end of "Mainz bleibt Mainz" and they weren't there. This must be the first time ever that this event ended without a performance by the Hofsänger...

Finished with the Galley!

Earlier this afternoon I sent off the galley corrections of BEWITCHED -- and as always after I had to read my own stuff, I'm utterly depressed and convinced that dinosaurs would have been by far the better authors. *sigh*

(picture from I Can Has a Cheezburger)

Meh

moar funny pictures

I'm stuck in the middle of the $%&U)"§=! love scene. Which is on page 160. Of a 316-page manuscript. Which I have to hand back in complete with revisions next Monday. ARGH! ARGH! ARGH!

The Mean Volk

I stole this title from Schrumpfkopf's post on translation desasters (which he wrote while correcting an exam). At the moment I'm correcting student papers and I'm just as happy and delighted as Schrumpfkopf was when he wrote the aforementioned post. Namely,

AAAAAAAAAAAAAARGH!!!!!!!!

Why, I ask you? Why can't people stick to the most simple formatting rules? Why don't they document their fricking sources??? WHY? We talked about this in class! There was a handout they could have downloaded. We've got a stylesheet at our department. Which students can buy. For, like, 50 cents. It doesn't cost the world. It's perfectly affordable.

Oh man, this is worse than getting a bad review! Worse than the Smart Bitches comparing your books to maggot-infested cheese! Worse than getting three points (out of 100) from Mrs. Giggles!

*sob*

Maybe I should start writing for the Mills&Boon Modern Romance line. I hear they're paying awfully well. And what with the books being translated in umpteen languages ... Heck, I'm sure there's a secret baby waiting to break free in all of us! An amnesia story! A smouldering Greek tycoon, who oozes sinful lust -- and thinks every woman must be a gold digger or punishes the poor heroine for the sins of his slutty mother! Or, even better, a smouldering Greek tycoon, who oozes sinful lust -- and is out for revenge! On the heroine! (Uhm ... in every sense of the word.)

Secret baby, where are you?

Promo Stuff instead of Easter Eggs

I hope you've all had a nice Easter weekend and got the chance to eat many lovely chocolate Easter eggs and bunnies (for dietary purposes I didn't this year :-/ ) (wellllll ... there might have been a Lindt egg or two ...). Here's a funny thing about me and chocolate Easter bunnies: I always eat the ears first. :) (But obviously not this year.)

Anyway, I spent the weekend a) correcting those student papers (and at least one of my students was stupid enough to plagiarize) and b) designing an ad for the LoveLetter, two bookmarks and a website banner. I also did some further research on bookmark printing and can now choose between

1. 1900 small bookmarks, double-sided 4c-print, for 199 Euros
2. 5000 large bookmarks, double-sided 4c-print, glossy surface, for 263 Euros

The second option is obviously the better deal, but what the heck am I going to do with 5000 bookmarks?

I'm also panicking a bit because I have ordered neither bookmarks nor flyers yet and now firmly believe the book's going to sink like a lead duckie. (Which probably makes me a liar: I said in the interview for the LL that this time around I didn't have time to be nervous. Ha!)

The Muse is still strangely absent. (Which is another reason for general nervousness: what if she never ever returns? What if I've now written all the books I was capable of writing?)

Ooookay. I'd better do the litter trays.

(To make matters worse, I haven't yet had the opportunity to watch the latest episode of Blood Ties.)

Any volunteers for the litter trays???

(Hey, a girl can still hope, right?)

Need more hours per day

This this one of those times again when I ought to do 101 different things at the same time -- and things simply don't work out the way they're supposed to. *sigh* I still haven't ordered flyers or bookmarks for Castle, I still have that huge pile of corrections, I still have to design an ad plus the aforementioned flyers and bookmarks for Castle, I still have to install Photoshop on my 'puter, I still have to prepare my seminar (which starts like, in two weeks's time -- aaaaaargh! *head desk*), I still have to edit that $(%)?"§&( book for uni, I still have to write one article as well as three papers (the third paper is Mark B's fault 'cause he talked me going to that comic conference) (okay, okay, that one's going to be a fun paper) (the other two are, too, actually), I still have to put together the website pages with the background info about Castle, I still have to do my taxes ...

Well, you get the point.

So would anybody please give me more hours per day? Please??? (Or, if I can't have any more hours, could somebody do the litter trays?)

$%($)"`?)=§/(!!!!!!

What the heck was the point of writing this novel??? Can anybody tell me?????? AAAAAAARGH!!! *head desk*

I've just realized that I have given absolutely NO thought to doing away with the villains. What in all the world am I going to do with the villains? Okay, one of them dies, but what about the other? How about sending them to Bedlam? Hmm, that would work perhaps (especially since I start feeling like a Bedlamite myself....) (See? At times like this it would be really nice if dancers and choreographers had blogs. Because, you know, you could visit said blogs and read about totally romance-unrelated stuff! Look at pics of nice-looking men hopping across a stage or other such things! -- Yes, totally shallow, but hello? nobody can expect me to be all deep and serious right now when I'm about to have a nervous breakdown over the dratted ms!)

Totally OT: Speaking of pics of men: Have you noticed that Harlequin is using one the same male model for almost all of the Kimani romances? And he hasn't got any hair! At least not on his head, but sometimes in his face. I mean, hello? Ever heard of a bald romance hero, even if he was fashionably bald??? (Oh, wait, isn't J.R. Ward's Z running around with a shaven head? His own, that is. Not running around with other people's shaven heads.) You people there at Harlequin: this is bad. Really bad. Especially when the book describes the hero as having nice, fairly long hair. Don't do this to us! And that strange beard? Beards are generally a big no-no for romancelandish heroes! So they should be for cover models, too!!!

Okay, rant over, back to the ms.

Heck.

Interim Report

70 more pages to proofread.

One more scene to write.

5 1/2 hours left. (Well, actually, thanks to the time difference I could actually stretch it to 7 1/2 hours.)

I've run out of gummibears and chocolate Zwieback.

Chapter 13, 14, and 16 suck.

Help!

Halbzeit

What can I say? Despair! Despair! Despair!

And my heroine is a cry-baby. *sigh* Okay, she's got every right and reason in the world to cry her eyes out, but still, I cut the whole bawling short. Drowning in tears, as Alice found out, isn't too much fun.

Have I already mentioned how much I hate reading my own stuff when it's all still raw and not yet approved by either agent or editor?

WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARGH!!!!!!!!!

Never mind those bloody villains! They refuse to behave, so instead of finishing that $%U)"§!%$%§ scene, I'm going to proofread for the next two hours or so. And then fall into bed, get up at six, and continue proofreading.

Oh yes, and try finishing the $%)"?§=%(")§ last scene.

Duh.

409 Pages

Earlier this evening I phoned a friend of mine. "How's the book doing?" she asked.

"Ooooooh," I wailed. "It's soooooo horrible! The first third is sort of nice, but, you know, the rest of it! It's horrible. They'll probably not want to publish it!"

"Sounds exactly like your last manuscript."

Oh.

Oh well.

So, does that mean ... there's still hope???

Yay!

I still need to write that $&)=!§/%($ last scene, proofread the second half of the book and insert those corrections.

I want to cry

I really, really want to cry.

The wail that echoed through towns and fields

I still haven't written that last scene (I hate writing last scenes -- probably because writing last scenes drives home like nothing else that the book is nearly done, which in turn means that I'll have to send it to my agent and editor soon, which means that they're going to read it ::mumble::and drop dead.::mumble:: AAAAAAARGH!) Instead of writing, I'm proofreading. (I also hate proofreading because it means I have to read my own stuff and we all know how I like that -- duh.) Consequently, I've now reached a state of utter doom and gloom. 'Tis not pretty. *sigh*