I've been writing non-stop since 7:30 am this morning. I'm going to go until midnight. Patrick's mom has the kids so I won't have to worry about making food or breaking up loud, thumpy wrestling matches in the hallway. I've gotten a lot done, but I've had a lot of starts and stops too.
- I ate chips and dip twice today
- I surfed around for more info on the band, 5,6,7,8's, just because
- I played with the puppies for a little bit (eyes still not open yet)
- I found and squeezed a pimple on my chin (TMI, sorry!)
- I put new sheets on my bed
- I heated up chocolate chips in the microwave and dipped ruffles in them and ate them
- I used the new $200 toothbrush the dentist gave me for the first time, very nice!
- I changed my chair three times and *almost* went shopping for this new office recliner with glittered vinyl but Patrick stopped me
- I decided to stop by here and say hi!
In spite of all of this, I really am working hard. I have a deadline on Wednesday and I have to finish everything up this weekend. It is taking much longer than I thought! Especially with so many interruptions.
Tomorrow I speak at the Latino Book Festival. I asked for a 10 am time so I could slip in and slip out when the place was empty. Didn't work! Not only did they give me a prime time hour of 1 pm, but they also put a huge color picture of me in the brochure! It's a super hammy picture too. Oh geez. I still need to write my speech just in case anyone shows up. Usually I'm sandwiched between some hardcore critically acclaimed Hispanic lit people like the wonderful Stella Pope Duarte. She always gives such empowering tear-filled speeches about how her deceased father told her in a dream that she was meant to be a writer. She lived up to that dream and is now writing her second novel for Harper Collins and has won all kinds of national writing awards.
How do I follow that? So next, I go up - "Hello! It's time for some looooca crafts!!!"...
But I think I'll be ok. Crafts and all, I'm doing pretty well, I have no complaints. I have some Harper Collins books coming up too and this week I got invited to do a whole bunch of segments for the DIY Network. I go to Los Angeles in October for taping. That is, if nothing changes and that they like all my projects. One of the producers also invited Maya to come and show kid crafts. She sure is getting an early jump on all this. I hope her craftiness continues to grow!
The national TV thing has me heading out to comb the stores tomorrow after my speech. I need to get new work-out clothes because I've promised my Aztec Warrior Angels that I'm going to sweat it up in the company gym again.
*Sigh*
The new set of gym clothes I bought the last time I got the exercise bug, are now my full-time paint clothes. Except the pants. They are made of thick old-lady polyester (which these days are only found in plus-sized attire, so rude!) and when I wore them on the treadmill for one week, they just about ignited into flames between my thighs. I could have been the one to start the fire for my team on Survivor. I swear to God, I had two burn marks on my tender skin! So I'm going for 100% cotton this time...
OK, I'm going back into Word. Ciao for now!!
Felicidades,
Kathy :-)
Saturday, August 28, 2004
Thursday, August 5, 2004
A new book deal!
Labels:
Arte de la Soul,
honors,
non-fiction
I'm sooo bummed! It's already Thursday night and I didn't finish ANY of the items on my to-do list this week. Instead of completing one task at a time I went through a did a little bit of each. I'm normally not like that at all but I think the excitement of having a week off of work did silly things to my brain.
A big part of the excitement is that I got an offer from Rayo, an imprint of Harper Collins for a book deal on Wednesday morning. I just about fell out of my chair when I got the news. Talk about a crazy dream coming TRUE!! This is definately a *huge* step up the national crafty ladder and I can feel that more good things are on the way. I would like to personally toast a champagne glass of sparkly confetti to the wonderful ladies Laurie Notaro, Jean Railla and Marcela Landres who coached me on! And of course the awesome staff over at William Morris! No wonder they have such a good reputation! Not to mention the A+ book editor at HC that made the offer and Patrick, who rubbed my back Tuesday night to put me to sleep when I was ready to toss away my glue guns forever because I thought this wasn't going to happen.
I was told last week I would have some news by last Friday afternoon, but it didn't come. This week came and since I was on vacation, I didn't know what method my agent would use to contact me. I swear I checked my work AND home email, plus BOTH phone messages every 10-15 minutes on Monday. No news. And Tuesday. Nada. Seriously. I went to bed so stressed and depressed that a chunky hunk of chocolate pudding cake couldn't even calm my nerves (hence the backrub). When it came time to say my prayers ang go to bed, I did something different. Instead of sayng "PLEASE! You must make this deal come through tomorrow or I'll die of an ulcer..." I said "OK, I give. It's out of my hands. Whatever happens, happens..."
Wednesday morning I woke up to check my work voicemail to see if anyone responded to a story I did (I'm weird like that). There was THE message I had been waiting for. Chalk it up to another case of "when you least expect it, expect it." I tell my sister that all the time about finding a boyfriend, I have to remind her again!
I learned that doing a book proposal for a major trade is way different than the previous ones I've done. A lot more specifics and research go into it. It was 30 pages long! A couple weeks ago, I stayed up until 3 am (when I would normally be posting here) many nights in a row reworking and rewriting. Somehow I still managed to make it into work by 7:30 am - minus a tamed hairdo and mascara - but I made it in. I'll keep you posted as it all develops. Oh! This was the big secret I had mentioned a while back! I was scared to say anything because I didn't want to jinx it. You know how that goes...
Also on Wednesday I had a photo shoot scheduled for the finished Crafty Diva projects. Still in giddy overdrive, I hauled a bunch of stuff over to John's (the photog) studio only to discover that I left half of the goods at home. And I forgot the background paper and had to rush and buy some. And THEN I broke one of his glass vintage drink coasters. It was a shaky session but we got a lot done. This is my favorite part of the whole book process - seeing the final pictures. John is so snappy with his shots that he makes each item look as though it's been pulled off a page from US Weekly. I still have about 15 projects to assemble (sigh.) that I was hoping to be done by today....No complaints here. Overall Wednesday was as golden as the wrapper on a Wonka bar. And yes, I will be making a scrapbook spread about it!
Felicidades,
Kathy :-)
A big part of the excitement is that I got an offer from Rayo, an imprint of Harper Collins for a book deal on Wednesday morning. I just about fell out of my chair when I got the news. Talk about a crazy dream coming TRUE!! This is definately a *huge* step up the national crafty ladder and I can feel that more good things are on the way. I would like to personally toast a champagne glass of sparkly confetti to the wonderful ladies Laurie Notaro, Jean Railla and Marcela Landres who coached me on! And of course the awesome staff over at William Morris! No wonder they have such a good reputation! Not to mention the A+ book editor at HC that made the offer and Patrick, who rubbed my back Tuesday night to put me to sleep when I was ready to toss away my glue guns forever because I thought this wasn't going to happen.
I was told last week I would have some news by last Friday afternoon, but it didn't come. This week came and since I was on vacation, I didn't know what method my agent would use to contact me. I swear I checked my work AND home email, plus BOTH phone messages every 10-15 minutes on Monday. No news. And Tuesday. Nada. Seriously. I went to bed so stressed and depressed that a chunky hunk of chocolate pudding cake couldn't even calm my nerves (hence the backrub). When it came time to say my prayers ang go to bed, I did something different. Instead of sayng "PLEASE! You must make this deal come through tomorrow or I'll die of an ulcer..." I said "OK, I give. It's out of my hands. Whatever happens, happens..."
Wednesday morning I woke up to check my work voicemail to see if anyone responded to a story I did (I'm weird like that). There was THE message I had been waiting for. Chalk it up to another case of "when you least expect it, expect it." I tell my sister that all the time about finding a boyfriend, I have to remind her again!
I learned that doing a book proposal for a major trade is way different than the previous ones I've done. A lot more specifics and research go into it. It was 30 pages long! A couple weeks ago, I stayed up until 3 am (when I would normally be posting here) many nights in a row reworking and rewriting. Somehow I still managed to make it into work by 7:30 am - minus a tamed hairdo and mascara - but I made it in. I'll keep you posted as it all develops. Oh! This was the big secret I had mentioned a while back! I was scared to say anything because I didn't want to jinx it. You know how that goes...
Also on Wednesday I had a photo shoot scheduled for the finished Crafty Diva projects. Still in giddy overdrive, I hauled a bunch of stuff over to John's (the photog) studio only to discover that I left half of the goods at home. And I forgot the background paper and had to rush and buy some. And THEN I broke one of his glass vintage drink coasters. It was a shaky session but we got a lot done. This is my favorite part of the whole book process - seeing the final pictures. John is so snappy with his shots that he makes each item look as though it's been pulled off a page from US Weekly. I still have about 15 projects to assemble (sigh.) that I was hoping to be done by today....No complaints here. Overall Wednesday was as golden as the wrapper on a Wonka bar. And yes, I will be making a scrapbook spread about it!
Felicidades,
Kathy :-)
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