It is the Friday before the last week of school (except exam week) and half our students are either taking AP tests or have gone out of town for the state soccer game.

I’m caught up on all my work. Seriously. All of it.

What do these seemingly unrelated things have in common? They all result in Study Hall Shenanigans. And when one is IN CHARGE of that study hall, the shenanigans are a bit more difficult to pull off without being detected.

Luckily, my superpower is subtlety. Which means I was able to take these pictures for you.

Enjoy.

What do you mean, we have A WHOLE HOUR TILL THE END OF THE DAY? DO YOU NOT SEE MY CRAZY EYES? I WILL CUT YOU.

Okay. Whatever. I'll deal with it. I can do this. DEEP BREATHS.

Hmm. My hair looks pretty awesome today.

HEY! What are those kids doing over there? *old-lady type grumbling and complaining*

Okay, so I'm not TOTALLY caught up on work. I have ONE TEST to grade. ...Later.

I am very busy and important. BUSY. AND ALSO IMPORTANT.

Look! There's a chili pepper coming outta my head!

Happy weekend, everyone.

Love,

me.

Thank you for all the kind love on Facebook and Twitter–it means the world!

Looks like I better go buy a feather boa and some sparkly eye makeup, ’cause I’ve got a music video to film…

Details to come

I wouldn’t have minded so much if the explosion of activity had looked more like this:

Because, let’s be honest, that would be pretty cool.

As it is, though, I am wading my way through the following:

1) The end of the school year, which–as you will recall–turns me into a sort of kraken-type-thing that destroys everything in its path.

Like so. 

2. Baby Girl has decided to stop sleeping. She goes to bed at 7:00, then cries every twenty minutes from approximately 11:00 pm to 3:00 am. Then she gets up at 4:45.

I’m told this is common for a 17-month-old, but even with this knowledge, I continue to look like this:

Y’know…if I were…whatever that is. 

3) There was totally a third thing. But I can’t remember what it was. Hmm. Well anyway, I’m gonna do my best with the blogging and the Twitter and whatnot, but to be honest, well…

Do y’all ever feel a little stressed out because of social networks? Like, it’s fun to know what’s going on with people, but sometimes it is just too. much. noise.

You know?

Anyway, if you don’t see me for a few days, just know I’ll be back–hopefully rested and de-krakened. And who knows, perhaps I can turn out to be a productive contributor to the Blog Me Maybe movement!

*          *          *

I think the metaphor here is pretty obvious.

Well, Goodreads has managed to foil me again.

When I first said goodbye to the literary social networking site, I thought it was goodbye FOREVER. I clicked that “delete my account” button with delirious ecstasy, anticipating a future free of the pressure I’d come to associate with reviewing and rating books.

“NEVER AGAIN!” I cried while fist-pumping the air. “Never again will I leave an embellished review or an inflated rating just because I felt obligated to! Never again will I rate or review books AT ALL!”

And that part, at least, I’ve held constant.

It was the account deleting that turned out to be tricky. Here’s why.

When you create an author account, as I had, you cannot just delete it. Or rather, you CAN, but you better not, because get this: anyone can claim your author account.

Yes.

All I had to do to reclaim my author account was click something next to The Clearing that said, “I am the author of this book,” or something along those lines. And then I might have had to send Goodreads a message saying I was the author.

And then they approved me.

There were no security measures at all. Which means that ANYONE who read my post about leaving Goodreads could simply create an account in my name, claim my author account, and masquerade as ME.

Not that anyone would…

…but what if they did?

Now, it’s possible they did something I wasn’t aware of. Maybe they have some kind of hidden security measure so that Joe Shmoe would not be able to pretend he was Anne Riley. But if there was anything like that, I sure didn’t see it.

And so it is that I find myself once again a slave to Goodreads. Not only do they refuse to delete MY book that I posted on their site myself, and not only do they allow people to rate and review books that are not even available in ARC form, they also refuse to take measures that would allow me to safely abandon my account.

Sadly, when I contacted them about all this, they weren’t willing to do anything about any of it.

What’s really upsetting to me is that I LOVE the idea of Goodreads. I think a social networking site devoted solely to book lovers is a FABULOUS idea.

I just wish they would listen when people suggest ways to make it better. Instead, their response is, “Oh well, that’s just not the way things are.”

Why not? Things can always change. Look at Facebook, for crying out loud. Something changes there almost weekly. I’m not saying that’s a good or bad thing, but they sure do make it look easy.

Anyway, since I am obligated to be on the site, I decided to at least try to make it useful. I’m compiling a list of TBR books and also keeping track of books I’ve read–but I’m NOT rating or reviewing. NEVER AGAIN.

So if you’d like to friend me and check out my lack of book ratings, you can find my account here.

Good grief. Good heavens. Goodreads.

On April 27, 2011, this happened. I watched this exact broadcast from my living room, hoping I’d survive the night. (Things get really crazy around the five minute mark.)

On this map, the star represents our house. The lines represent tornado paths.

James Spann, meteorologist: “This will be a day that will go down in state history…”

My problem has always been the opposite: I focus on things SO HARD that I often have no idea what’s happening around me.

For example, this one time in elementary school, I was playing with a friend on the playground. We were inside the cement tube (yes, we had a cement tube on our playground and it was AMAZEBALLS) and I know for a fact that when we migrated from inside the cement tube to on top of the cement tube, the rest of our classmates were around us, talking and laughing and, naturally, shoving each other off the cement tube.

Ten minutes later, my friend and I looked up to realize we were the only ones on the playground. I don’t mean that we were the only ones from our class still on the playground; I mean we were the ONLY WARM BODIES on the playground.

(No, there weren’t any cold bodies, either. If there had been, this would be a very different story, now wouldn’t it?)

EVERYONE had left. And neither of us had noticed because we were so focused on whatever we were doing. Pretending to be beached mermaids or something, I’m sure.

The point is, I can focus on a task like a CHAMP.

So you can imagine how shocked I was a few days ago when I realized I have Writer’s A.D.D.

Y’all, I cannot focus on any one manuscript for longer than about five minutes. Here’s everything I’ve got going on:

1) PULL is in Query Land. Thankfully, this one is currently out of my hands. Yay.

2) BENEATH THE DARKESS (Creepy Faces) is sitting at about 45,000 words. But there is a PROBLEM, Grasshoppers. I’ve hit a wall and I don’t know what to do about it. I’m missing a super important element to my story, namely why the bad guy is doing what he’s doing, and also why this other girl-thing (yes, girl-thing) is doing what she’s doing.

I can’t even think about it because my head gets all tied up in knots. And I’m already a little knotty in the head. (Not to be confused with “naughty,” for obvious reasons.)

3) UNNAMED YA CONTEMPORARY comes in bits and pieces to me. I want to write it, but I feel A) overwhelmed and B) guilty for starting it when Creepy Faces is sitting there, so close to completion.

4) UNNAMED CREEPTASTIC DYSTOPIAN-BUT-NOT THINGY is wafting about, trying to take shape, but I keep poking holes in it with a stick so it will go away.

5) THE CLEARING is sitting on my hard drive and I keep having this conversation with it:

THE CLEARING: Why did you unpublish me? *sniffle*

ME: Oh, Clearing. Come on now. You know it wasn’t working. I didn’t have time to give you the attention you deserved.

THE CLEARING: But…people liked me! And I was your first book!

ME: I know. I KNOW. I just couldn’t handle it on top of everything else, and plus, I wrote you so long ago. You’re not even a good representation of my writing at this point.

THE CLEARING: Well, why don’t you revise me and publish me again?

ME: …………………….

THE CLEARING: [sensing hope] It wouldn’t be hard! Just change the cliche part about the dead parents and switch the whole thing from past tense to present tense. Oh, and fix the writing. And change the entire beginning. And, um, you might want to work on the characters. Like…all of them. BUT! After you did those little things, I would be perfect!

ME: [wide-eyed stare] I quit.

Yes. This is the state of my brain at the moment. Do you see why I haven’t written anything in two weeks?

The only thing I can think to do is make a spreadsheet.

A SPREADSHEET.

And it would have to be a separate spreadsheet for each manuscript, detailing WHAT I will write or edit and WHEN I will do it.

In other words, it will be a schedule and an outline, all in one.

Schedules.

Outlines. 

SPREADSHEETS.

Lord have mercy, I don’t even know myself anymore. *facepalm*

Half the time, I forget that anybody but me reads my blog.

The truth is that a lot of people read it. And that is AMAZING. I love that people are interested in blog posts about dudes watching Twilight and werewolf toddlers. It’s awesome. It makes me feel like people appreciate the dusty contents of the back of my mind, where all the crazy lurks.

This is the Krazy Korner, located in the back of my mind. If you plan to travel here, please adhere to the buddy system.

Something has started happening, though, and it makes me a bit uneasy. Anytime I’m at a social gathering–church, a party, my ten year high school reunion back in October, plus many others–someone inevitably sidles up to me and says, “I promise I’m not a stalker, but I just love reading your blog. That was pretty funny, um, about the…backsplash…”

And then they get all sheepish, like they’ve done something wrong. Like I’m going to say “NO! AWAY FROM ME, SPAWN OF SATAN! HOW DARE YOU READ MY PRIVATE THOUGHTS THAT I POST ON THE INTERNET!”

Now, I do get why they feel weird, especially if it’s someone I don’t usually spend time with. The blog gives them a window into my world, and they feel like they know me.

They know my husband’s name and what he looks like. They have a pretty good idea of what Baby Girl looks like. They know how I think, what I did last weekend, and what I struggle with.

So they come up to me because they feel like we’re really good friends, and then halfway through telling me about how they read my blog, they realize the friendship is one-sided. I don’t know much, if anything, about them. And that lopsidedness makes them feel like a peeping Tom.

I get it.

But. BUT BUT BUT. Here’s the thing, Grasshoppers. If no one reads this blog, then there is no point in me blogging.

And also, if you enjoy my blog, then you and I probably have something in common (love for crazy nail polish? an irrational fear of clowns?). And if we have something in common, then we would probably be friends in real life.

Maybe we were friends once, but time and space have prevented us from keeping up. Maybe we went to high school together but ran in different circles and never spoke. Maybe you’re friends with my mom or my dad or my sister, but you’ve never met me in person.

It doesn’t matter. You are awesome. You are NOT a stalker simply because you read my blog. You are a blog reader. That’s it. And it shouldn’t be embarrassing.

If you see me out somewhere, by all means, say hello and tell me you read my blog. I’ll totally fist-bump you, and it will be awesome.

And here are my answers.

1) Why am I doing this for free? 

Originally, the idea was for BSP to take me on in a more permanent, financially significant role. But the potential demands on my time and energy freaked me out, so I asked for a trial period first to see if it was something I could handle. Something I could get out of with no problem if it turned out to be too much on my plate. Hence, the “consulternship” was born. This could turn into something more, but as of right now, we’re all just testing the waters.

2) How can I do this if I’m always complaining about not having any time?

The situation is this: I can do as much or as little as I want. I can read ten manuscript samples in a day if I want to. I can read none if I want to. There is no time commitment, so there’s no pressure. I simply read if the mood strikes.

As for the marketing thing I mentioned, that’s the same kind of deal. I have a degree in advertising, so I have some expertise to offer if I want to.

3) What’s in it for me?

LOTS AND LOTS. First of all, networking. Second, I get to critique some amazing manuscripts, which in turn makes me a better writer. Third, I get a peek behind the scenes–how do these people at BSP separate the great manuscripts from the ones that they SIMPLY MUST HAVE OMG? What goes into their decision? And fourth, there’s always the possibility that this could become more for me. It’s a foot in the company door.

So I hope that clears up any questions you may have.

Have you submitted to us yet? *wink wink*