The End of the Year, "The End" on my WIP, and an Award

After a very late start this year, we finally pulled Christmas together at our house. The tree is up, the cards are mailed, and the gifts are purchased and wrapped. I even baked my Chocolate Dipped Toffee Bits Cookies tonight!

Most of our tree decorations are up high because our dogs have been destroying our ornaments. Ack! But...remember how cute they are.
Look at those little faces. And in their defense, they've been wound up because we have a naughty squirrel who lives in the yard and taunts them. We've named him Chester because he has a white chest and...well, he looks like a Chester. Think Bugs Bunny of the squirrel world: funny, clever, and hard to catch. I'll take a picture of him the next time I spot him tormenting my dogs through the windows. Ooh--maybe if I get the camera I'm hoping, hoping, hoping for, I'll snap a picture with that!


I finished the last chapter of my ultra-revised WIP and sent it to my critique group on Friday. Once I get the chapter back and revise accordingly, I'll give the full manuscript to an author friend who volunteered to read the whole thing. She's awesome and she's never seen more than three chapters, so she's a fresh set of professional eyes. Plus, you can catch different things when you read the full vs. one chapter at a time. In the meantime, I'll be goofing around with family, tweaking my synopsis and query letter, continuing my agent research, catching up on reading, doing research for my next manuscript, and spending way too much time eating Christmas cookies.
Now for the award part of the post! Thank you to Abby Annis for giving me the Honest Scrap Award. Abby has a wonderful blog, so check it out if you haven't yet.

This award has rules:
1. List ten honest things about yourself.
2. Pass it on to seven other bloggers.

Here are my ten honest things:
1. I love being a mom.
2. I'm red-green color blind.
3. I'm not good at singing, but I do it anyway. (My poor family--and dogs.)
4. I'm afraid of heights.
5. I don't like to eat meat when it looks like an animal. For example, when fish is served with a head and a tail or when pork has a head and still looks like a pig...blech. I know I'm immature this way, but generally I don't want my food to have a face. Of course, things like chocolate bunnies don't bother me. :)
6. Gap jeans are my favorites.
7. I'm a bit obsessive-compulsive, but I consider this a strength instead of an issue. Hee!
8. I've traveled a ton in the U.S., but I've done very little international travel. I'd love to go to Europe!
9. Geometry was my least favorite class EVER.
10. I'm a huge Beyoncé fan.

It's so hard to pick only seven bloggers for the award because there are so many fabulous blogs out there! I'll pass it to seven people who have never received an award from me but fully deserve a blog award:
1. Bane of Anubis at Bane's Blogging Blues
2. Karen at Novels During Naptime
3. Kjersten Anna Hayes at Collage Clips
4. Patti Nielson
5. Paul Greci at Northwriter
6. Sierra Godfrey
7. Stasia Kehoe at Writer on the Side (if you write children's, you need to check out her "Business of Children's Books" posts)

Congratulations everyone!

Also, congrats to Lydia Sharp who has been selected as a guest blogger for Pimp My Novel. Her article "Ideas That Sell Are Not Always Groundbreaking" will be published on Tuesday, December 22nd.


I'd like to thank my followers for making the whole blog experience extra fun and meaningful! Thank you so much for following and making comments--I really appreciate it! You guys are great, and I wish incredible things for each of you in the new year! See you in 2010!