Tuesday, December 21, 2010

Contest winner!

Buttononthetop!

If you'll email me at batortuga at batortuga dot com, I'll mail your pressie out.

Happy holidays, y'all!

Julia and I are heading out for a few days off.

Merry Christmas!

Monday, December 20, 2010

Rolling into Christmas week

Lord.

Packages and cards sent. Parties hosted and attended. Presents bought. Trees decorated (we have six -- white, pink, blue, silver, and 2 green). Now I have to wrap (which, okay, I admit, I make someone else do. I hate wrapping), make some cookies (meringues and gluten free spice drops). Get food for Christmas eve and snacks for Christmas day. Clean.

Happy holidays.

:D

Friday, December 17, 2010

One y'all in a story does not make him a cowboy.

So, I have to admit, I love cowboys.

Love them.

Come from a long line of them.

I love how they’re prideful and strong. I love how they look. I love jeans and chaps. I love the drawl from the Texan version and the craggy lines from the mountain version. I love the hands of the ropers, the mouth scars of the roughstock boys. Boots, hats, trucks, dogs – I’m in.

It’s my heritage.

This is why last night I went hunting cowboy romance and… Wow.

Wow.

I have Texas and mountain cowboys in my family. I know literally hundreds of cowboys.

They’re vain. They’re close-knit at best. There’s a code that you either follow or… shit, I don’t even know what the 'or' is.

When I want to read cowboys, I don’t want to read a strange white-washed, generic romance hero plopped into a Stetson and boots because that’s what popular and that’s what sells right now. I want to read a man like the amazing men I grew up with. I want to hear the sound of my life – the tone and phrases that any ranch-raised girl knows means ‘I’m here and it’s going to be okay now, baby girl’. I want to believe in the story.

In other words, the only horseshit I want to smell needs to be from the horse, or I can’t get into the story. I’m tired of choosing a book and getting four pages in and discovering that the author has obviously never been to a rodeo once, much less once a week for every rodeo season she’s been alive.

Don’t get me wrong. I’ve written Italians after only spending a few weeks in Italy. I’ve written an eco-terrorist without actually having blown anything up. I get it. We’re writers. We research and do our best. Hell, my editors pray daily that I write a book where the characters speak and think in ‘proper’ English (don’t hold your breath, y’all).

But sometimes a girl just wants to get in bed with her Kindle and read a love story with a cowboy. A real, recognizable cowboy.

You know what they say, don’t call him a cowboy until you see him ride.

Wednesday, December 15, 2010

Contest!

I have a Christmas stocking from the central Texas area that needs a home.

You have a favorite holiday song to share with my bad self.

Why a holiday song, you ask? Y’all…

I’m a music whore. I admit it. I had to buy a separate hard drive just for iTunes music. No, really. I have 455 Christmas songs and I’m always looking for that new favorite arrangement.

Now, I can tell you that Mahalia Jackson’s version of Go Tell It on the Mountain is my eternal favorite. My mom had this album when I was little (yes, kiddies, once upon a time, people had these magical machines called record players and they played these circles called record albums. They were a little twitchy and, in my recollection, if you made your daddy have to replace the needle, you weren’t allowed to put the records on yourself. Also, playing Angry Gorilla next to the record player was bad.) At any rate, this album was a double and the cover opened to a pop up Christmas scene complete with baby Jesus and gigantic dangling star hanging over hippie Mary. I loved it.

Loved it.

It had Andy Williams and Steve and Edie. Bing Crosby. But for me, it was Mahalia Jackson. That voice meant Christmas.

Now, that doesn’t mean that I don’t love the newer stuff. Merry Christmas from the Family by Robert Earl Keen, Oklahoma Christmas by Kelly Willis and Bruce Robison. Please Come Home for Christmas by the Eagles. This year it’s the Baby It’s Cold Outside arrangement from Glee.

So, tell me your favorite. I want to know, and I might need to hear it.

I’ll let Julia pick a random number to win ye olde Christmas sock.

Monday, December 13, 2010

It's December the what-th?

Lord, where did the month go?

I can remember being a kid and waiting for school to end, for Santa to come and it took forever. FOREVER, damn it.

Now? Right.

Now I still have a load of presents sitting on the table to be wrapped and mailed to family all over the country. (I do get bonus points for having all the internationals sent last week.) I have to buy bottles of wine for all the people that I know that I want to give something to, but that we don’t exchange gifts really. I have to go buy gift cards for my younger siblings who are still in that ‘please just send money’ phase of life (there is 24 years between the oldest and the youngest child in my family, so we’re all in different places). I haven’t made cookies (and probably won’t at this point). I haven’t finished either the scarf that goes to my high school best friend or the quilt that goes to the brother-in-law (waves to Julia’s brother).

We do have a tree up. And the yard’s decorated. Christmas cards were made (not sent yet – shut up). Julia and I had our annual ornament making party and I made both a fabulous Kahlua dark chocolate pound cake and a cheesecake of joy.

Still, it’s the 13th and I’m still busy.

And I haven’t watched White Christmas yet.

Wednesday, December 8, 2010

Looking for a party recipe (preferably gluten free) for tomorrow's party

Julia and I have been invited to a party tomorrow night and we're supposed to bring a treat to share. We're both gluten-free and, honestly, bored.

Anyone have a tried-and-true party recipe we can whip up tomorrow?

Monday, December 6, 2010

Busy-ness abound.

I *will* be more on it, soon.

I swear.

Really.

Contest coming soon.

Thursday, December 2, 2010

Oh, wow. Y'all! Look!

*blushes happily*

Not that I'm one to toot my own horn... Wait. That's not true. I'm a tooter, but still. Look!

Delane has some lovely things to say about me and some fab tips for my reading list and I couldn't be more tickled.

Y'all know I have a deep and abiding personal relationship with my Kindle, right? We're very close. Now Delane's given me some more ideas about books to fill her up.

If y'all get a chance, pop over and look. It's pretty damned cool.

There's a contest coming Monday, btw, stop back by and see. ;-)