How to Beat the Not Going to RT Blues

A lot of the authors are off to RT this week, leaving some of us feeling either left out or, if you're me.. like the proverbial mouse when the cat's away. So, I've been thinking, what are some things the shy, the scared or the just plain too dang mean for Romantic Times (this one is me)can do to pass the time while they're all down in Texas with them sexy cowboys? Hmm.. well, let's see. I could write a hot steamy romance to curl a reader's hair and win me awards, make me money and all that. *pauses* Nah, I'd rather be evil, no use going against type now.

5 things to do for those left behind.

1. Make voodoo dolls of all the RT Goers: Everybody can pick someone and get busy then make mystery type ailments befall them. I'm sure all the authors would appreciate a bad hair week. They're usually great sports about stuff like that. Helloo there Don-na King or Donolda Trump, both of them have Don in their names, now that's spooky! I call dibs on er.. well, never you mind, I have a voodoo doll already made. (now they'll all wonder, won't they?)

2. Recruit a SPY. There has to be one of the RT'ers who will sell out their brethren and/or erm.. sistren for a box of high-end chocolate. You know it, and I know it. Well, if I was there, I'd know who to try and bribe with the box. (Yes it is me! Hush!) Hmm, this may take further study.

3. Skip the spy, and get video of the confie via satellite. Oh man, I could be a high-tech redneck for real! Ooh and we could get a few shots of cover model's hotel rooms. All that lovely exposed man flesh, glistening and shiny, and.. What? Like yall didn't think of it! I mean, I'd never condone spying on naked, hot.. um.. Ok, I got a little off track , back to the program.

4. Road Trip! Nuff said. Wait, I'm not riding in the back seat, I get carsick. There now it's nuff said.

5. The last and the one I actually mean: Hope they all have a wonderful trip and come back with wonderful stories to share and slightly embarrassing pics to show us. Actually I'd love for that last bit to happen so if they could all promise to get drunk and pretend it's Mardi Gras that'd be great!

Show Us Your ..

*grin* Jenna

PS: My sweet, nice editor, Angela James (yes, I'm sucking up, yall hush) has the The Left Behind Contest for all us poor deserted souls. The details can be found at either Southern Fried Romance Writers. or at the Samhain Cafe Good luck and may the best book ho win. That'd be me, but I'm just sayin.

Amazon Teen Queen of Mean's Night Out

Sounds like a good book title huh? LOL. Um well, it's like this see, I don't call her Teen Queen of Mean for nuthin' and I have to sleep in this house while she prowls around free, so if it's all the same to you.. no.

Prom Prep is Hell for girls. And my baby's been getting ready for the Jr/Sr prom for over a month and a half now. For a kid that won't plan more than an hour ahead this is saying something. I'd say I was proud of her planning abilities if she didn't get her World Championship Procrastinating Genes from yours truly. This means I've been dragged around on all these planning trips to get the dress, the shoes, and various bits and baubles that go with everything in between. I'm not going into that dress rehearsal from hell where I was forced to do her hair, make up and all either. I'm not, but I will say I have flashbacks from it.

My aunt was deprived of a lot of this due to the fact that her firstborn was male and therefore spared all this crap. While her second child is a girl, she despises all the pomp and circumstance. What's more, she can and WILL outrun her mother if she so much as thinks that a camera's pointing in her direction. I swear that kid must have been a movie star in another life. (or Bigfoot or Loch Ness Monster or somethin)

So, my sweet auntie was happy when Mozilla of Tall City wanted to go all pinky and frilly to the prom. I was thrilled that someone else wanted to do the work so I didn't have to. She did the garter and all sorts of wonderful frou frou things I'd have hated. My mother just wanted to look at frickin sparkly shoes, and shop for a sparkly dress. Basically, she wanted to buy something sparkly, heck, at least her tiny legs matched her magpie eyes, huh? However, there is a drawback(there always is).

When they found out that we were going to take some pictures of the children at our local museum, they decided to come over and take some too. Unfortunately for my child who will be late to her own funeral, my mother and aunt arrived first and caught her BF all alone.. *evil smile* I've always maintained that my mama and aunt ain't ever met a stranger for the simple fact that there ain't nobody stranger than them. So, they introduced themselves and were basically me to the nth degree times two. I was most impressed at Mozilla's ability to have a complete and utter breakdown in four blocks, but she did it and recovered by the time we arrived.

But when we arrived well.. Oh. My. God. When did my mother become a high tech redneck? She had her digital camera in tow, tripping along after my child and her prom date in her(sparkly) flipflops telling them "Just one more." *click* *flip flop flip* *click*

My aunt? She had on sandals, *tap tap tap* and a faster camera, *click click click* "Aw, sooo cute!!" Just one more.. ad clickium

Together they were the Famarazzi!

Aack!!

Jenna

But You Have Such a Pretty Face

My blog is a little personal today, so bear with me.
This is a picture my hubby drew, which I think represents my warrior woman tude today. *snorts*





The title of my blog sounds sounds sorta sweet huh? Yeah, right. If these three things appy to you:





1. You weigh more than five bushels of corn.
2. You live below the Mason/Dixon Line
3. You clean up nice.





You've probably heard it before. And if you're a fellow curvy hotty southern cornbread and pot licka eatin' type of sista you're also probably aware that hidden beneath this saccharine sweet little comment hides one of those patented Southern Belle Bitch types slurs that goes like this "Too bad your ass is so fat."



Some SB's are a little passive aggressive you see, and would hate to scare the menfolk. They don't want do that, at least until they have them safely legshackled, then, well, look out Roosterboy, cause you're gone be henpecked within an inch of your life. I woulda warned them but, I was too busy fending off their cute but bony girlfriends' barbs that are sugarcoated so nobody figures out they're sharp enough to cut through me like a knife through butter, which I don't mind sayin is a food group in my book.


When I was a little girl, I was tiny, petite even. However, when I hit puberty, something horrible happened. I grew.. a lot. At the age of ten, almost overnight I got the bazooms. *sighs* While I could discuss the stupidity of boys at length, I won't because that has been established long ago, along with the fact that they have cooties which are contagious, and grow into these things called.. *gulps* babies. EW! But, I will tell you that other girls do not care for the ones that get bazooms first. They're jealous of the attention of the stupid boys, despite the fact that I was beating said stupids up almost daily for their teasing. I was confronted in the bathroom and informed that I'd best do something about the two ginormous growths that had sprouted upon my chest or else. *blinks* Luckily for me, I had mondo-next-o-kin and we did kicketh the arse, so it was established that you did not mess with us. (I cannot put my last name here, as we are just that evil.)


Little did I know that my own family would turn on me as I continued to grow.. my er.. maternal side is a bit, short, bony and just.. ok, they're mean assed pigmies. I was told continually that I was fat, even when I wore a size 5. But when you're up against a 4'11" person, you feel like the not so jolly beige giant. So, I retaliated by eating to piss them off. I didn't gain much though, and kept to a size 7 until I got out of school, then, after I had my kid and got on meds for a medical problem, I er.. expanded.. built on.. and stuff.


Well.. let's skip forward a few years.


I dieted, fasted, all sorts of things and couldn't lose weight. I heard the title of my blog for over 20 years and ignored it because as my fraternal grandmother, fondly called Meemaw, who was a larger woman said . Beauty is only skin deep but ugly's to the bone; beauty fades away but ugly lingers on. I take after my daddy's side of the family you see. I look a lot like my mother, but from the neck down, (besides the er.. girly parts) I am him.



So, while I ate the same amount the pygmies did I wondered why the hell I couldn't lose weight or their unspoken disapproval and that damn "But you have such a pretty face." I just wanted them to leave me and my pretty face alone. But they hovered like bony little vultures, waiting for me to gain another pound, prodding me. I tried to tell them it wasn't my fault, it must be hereditary or something else. Apparently, this was my size. I was healthy, happy (when they shut up about it) basically this was me. For 20 some odd years, I'd been this way... Finally, I just learned to live with it. And finally I tuned the evil pygmies out with the help of my hubby who said "Screwin a skinny woman's like sleepin on a bed of coat hangers." and then he um proved it to my everlastin delight *ahem*



Until *smirks* last year, I went to a new doctor who finds out that I have a thyroid problem. Yeah, I know you hear some say that "it's my glands" as they stuff their faces with fried chicken etc. But with me it was true. He said more than likely after havin the Mean Teen Queen it messed up and never got back on keel, and then the crap meds I took messed them up more. So, with my new meds and the thyroid meds.. I've lost about 35 lbs so far and now that the weather is changing, I'm going to start walking, hopefully this will make it go faster.


So, when they (the bony phonies) notice my weight loss, do I take the High Road and be nice? Hell NO! I squeal my evil little tires right on down Snark Street as I tell them it was my glands all the time in the snottiest voice I have, which is pretty frickin snotty if you must know as I learned it from The Southern Belle Bitches aka them. Is this nice? No. Do I care? Um, no. My pretty face is a little thinner, but this smartass mouth is just as big. And I have them to thank. How do I do that? Every time I open it to say. "Have you put on weight?" *evil smile* Time don't heal all wounds, but it does slow down the metabolism and all that bacon them heifers ate is FINALLY catchin up to them. Southern Belle Karma is a bitch, and I think she likes me, maybe she's one of my curvy cousins.



Jenna Leigh
Southern Belle Fruit Off
The Bitter Bitch Branch of
the Redneck Family Tree

So.. I'm The Devil

Once upon a time there was this man.. let's call him Hubby. When he'd get sick, he'd ignore my sweet, compassionate urging to go to the doctor (yes this means bitching, shut up!) and be ill, sometimes for weeks at a time. If I privately felt he should suffer for being stubborn, well, I kept these thoughts to myself for the most part. Well yes, I'd laugh and do the dance called the Righteous Rumba, which involves a lot of booty shaking and sticking out of the tongue at the WRONG party. Please keep up, ok? Sheesh! I mean seriously! I made the whiny wuss chicken soup and soothed his fevered, brow, and wiped his snotty nose. Did I not deserve to gloat? I did! Pfft! After a month of coughing, sneezing and blowing his mucus infested snozola he finally decided to go to his doctor, so I knew this sick puppy must be feeling really bad.

He took off work, which was another clue. I will say that he's a good man, a strong one, if stupid. He can have a 101 degree fever and still go to work. However, on this day, he calls and says he's going in, and will be up to my work to wait until it's time for his appt. but when I offer to go with him, he informs me very smartly that he is grown and doesn't need ME to go with him. This is despite the fact that he trucks his big butt up in MY last dr. appt, exaggerated and almost got me put on nerve pills until the doctor saw my other meds and thought it unwise to add to it. So, I smile, speak to my boss, who by the way is as evil as me despite being a member of the male sex, bide my time , follow him out the door and wait until my time to strike!

See, Hubby hasn't been to the doctor for over three, count them THREE years. Through msytery aches, backpain, headaches, chest colds, fevers, night sweats, belly aches, chest pains (not heart related, thank goodness) fever, etc, he's refused to go to the doctor. So, now you see why I smiled at the receptionist and stepped through the door behind him. She being a friend of mine (and a fellow evil woman) smiled back and gave me a wink and a thumbs up sign. She probably hogties and drags her man in there once a year. Ha! Anyway, we wait and wait and wait. Hubby isn't good at waiting, but he'd thought to bring a book, so it wasn't that bad. I had one too, a dirty one, which I shove in my purse when the doctor comes in.

I've been thoughtful enough to stick Hubby back against the wall so that I am on one side of the door and now the doc is on the other side, like evil guards against his continued bad health. It all begins so innocently. "My head is stopped up." *cough cough cough* "I have the sinuses."

"I think it's your ___." Doctor puts samples on the desk. "I know it is. And you're gonna take these this time unlike last time cause she's in here now and it's gonna be better in a week, I promise. " Evil smile at me. Oh yes, we understand one another perfectly.

Hubby frowns at the meds as if they're poison. "But but but..I have sinuses."

"I told you this same thing three years ago ." Doctor taps his fingers on table. "Are you having any other problems?"

Hubby shakes his head. I smile and lean forward. "Yes.. let me tell you all about it." And I take a deep breath and begin to list them, quickly without pausing . Ending with this jerkin spell problem he has if he doesn't eat every hour and a half.

Hubby's eyes widen, as does the doctor's smile, when I'm finished he laughs. "Buddy you shouldn't have let her in here with you. But now that you have, we are going to have to make some diet changes." It behooves me to point out that you shouldn't mess with a doctor that knows not only your medical history but also that of your aunt, grandfather and grandmother who are all diabetic. He doesn't know his father's history as he's a stubborn as Hubby and refuses to come in as he's afraid THIS will happen to him, the junk food loving, chicken.

The result is.. he no longer gets to eat what he as a genuine Irish American Redneck considers the 4 basic food groups. Taters, Cornbread, Bread and Sugar. In other words, no fun! Oh the horror! He called his father and told him. The response "You might as well shoot yourself in the head! I'm never goin up there now!" An hour later, he called back and magnanimously offered, "I'll come get that mint chocolate chip ice cream you bought the other day so it won't go to waste." My hubby sweetly offered to cut him if he tried it.

So I'm on a search for low carb, high taste crap to feed this poor deprived man who has informed me that he will weigh 20lbs by the end of the year. I doubt it, not when he figured out today that pork skins have no carbs (oink oink big boy). Now I have to put up with the stinky eye every time we pass the bread aisle at the super market. But he does feel fuller after his high protein meals. I just feel better knowing he'll be around that much longer for me to torment erm.. I mean love.

The Devil in the Blue Scrubs,

Jenna Leigh

The cover for The Wolf's Heart is up on the Samhain Site!

Each step in getting a book ready for publication is still really new for me, everytime something comes up, I'm worse than a kid at Christmas. Well, Santa Anne Cain put a great gift in my stockin early this year with this cover. I drool over it every time I look at it. *sighs* Where was I again? Oh yeah.

The Wolf's Heart is the story I started for NaNoWriteMo back in 2005, which I won by the way. I got my 50, 000 words, but, the story of Lainie and Marcus wasn't finished by a long shot. No, they kept talking and talking and yes, talking. I became a conduit of sorts for a compellingly dark yet funny story that kept me glued to my keyboard until it was finished. Then, strangely enough, I got the guts to do the *gag me* synopsis, and turn it into Samhain. Even stranger, on, Friday Octber 13th, they sent me an email saying, yes. Let me tell you, this hefty white chick CAN jump. (and holler and scream and cry and consume vast quantities of chocolate in celebration)

Now, I have to do something else....Wait. *blinks* I'm not too good at that you know. They say patience is a virtue, well pffth! Come on June! In the meantime, I'm working on the sequel to that book, which I'm calling The Wolf's Mistress. Now, I say that's what I'm calling it, but you just never know. I have to call it something, Meme laughs when I call it that damn book with the hot dude and mean girl in it. I owe her one anyway, she cyber-nurpled my cover hottie's bewb, I mean jeez! The cheek of some people! *grins* I'm really just mad I didn't think of it first, you know.

Still Droolin
Self Lovin Cover Slut
Jenna Leigh