stats, romance in washington, and tossing the cookies

Good morning blogoblogs,

As promised, I'm going to post my updated QQ09 stats, though yes, they are a day later than I'd hoped.

I've been a little swamped helping everyone prep for the RWA (Romance Writers of America) conference in Washington (which starts today, though most of my HQN people won't depart until tomorrow as we spend today putting the final touches on various presentations, etc) so yeah, my days have been busy as of late. "When are they not busy?" you ask? When everyone has finally left for Washinton, that's when! I plan to hit that slush pile hard.

In addition to being busy, I'm also very tired today. Last night, around 4am, I awoke to the sound of sweet little Oliver kitten retching in the living room (it wasn't very loud--I must just have an ear for kitty barf). I wonder what made him so sick?


Oh I see....

After cleaning up the multiple messes (he's a bit of a traveling cookie tosser) and steering him toward a large bowl of water, I headed back to bed only to find I was in that zone where I'd been awake just long enough that I was too awake to sleep and just hungry enough that my stomach began to growl. I'm not big on the idea of eating during the night. I'm convinced it will give me weird dreams or an upset stomach so I convinced myself to toss and turn through the growling stomach and around 5am, I finally fell back asleep only to find myself cursing at 6:45am when my alarm went off. On the upside, Oliver seemed to be back to his chipper snuggly self when I went to feed the kitties.

So yeah, Kate = tired, but still mildly glowing from her first FULL request!! Here are the stats:

Query Rejections: 20
Partial Requests: 6
Partial Rejections: 3
What's that? A new category, you say?
Full Requests: 1

Hooray! Let us all rejoice and dance and sing to celebrate this next milestone in my publishing journey! I know I will be celebrating with my family this weekend at the cottage.

One more thing before I sign off. Harlequin Teen has launched a new website to correspond with the imprint launch later this month. It's very shiny. Check it out.

pom-pom hockey

Hello blogoverse,

Sorry for, yet again, taking too long a break between posts. I'm still in this waiting/holding pattern where I'm so anxious I want to chew my own hand off. Ok, maybe not (that would definitely involve an ick factor, plus I tend to need both my hands). Anyway, yeah, I'm somehow remaining somewhat patient as I wait and wait and have a heart attack every time there's new mail in my inbox. It's hard to remember the last time I ever wanted anything more than this.

Boyfriend has been in Germany for business over the past few days, which has been an odd experience--not because I'm on my own (boyfriend travels enough for work that I'm used to that), but because I kept thinking about how far away he was. When he's in Chicago for business, he doesn't feel that far away, but this felt different. I suppose it's probably due to the time zone thing. Either way, I'm not really a fan. I don't like to feel so out of touch. Happily, he comes home today! Yay!

Huntley and Oliver, les petites chats, will be turning two in a few weeks and their personalities seem to grow more and more endearing everyday (which seems impossible, but somehow, it happens). Here's Oliver taking a break from the mad, mad world:


And here's Huntley, enjoying the sink:


Those crazy kitties! Lately, Huntley has taken to a game I like to call pom-pom hockey. To understand how the game works, you have to know that Huntley is obsessed with the drawers in my dresser. I think the obsession began when she realized that whenever she loses a pom-pom (her toy of choice), it's because she's flicked it under the dresser and her mummy has to remove the drawers to get it back out. Now, whenever I open a drawer in my dresser (usually for the purpose of, you know, getting clothes out and NOT retrieving pom-poms), she comes running from wherever she is in the apartment and looks up at me expectantly, OR attempts to climb into the drawer I've opened (I'm not sure where this habit ties into the whole pom-pom thing. I think she just realized at some point that drawers, like boxes, are fun to sit in). Because of her fondness for the drawers being pulled out, I suspect she's taken to shooting the pom-poms under the dresser on purpose and now her favourite thing to do when I pull the drawers out is to climb into the empty space where the drawer was and knock the pom-poms back out herself. This is how pom-pom hockey was born.

The other day, Huntley was lying on her stomach pawing under the dresser, a sign that another pom-pom had gone missing. I pulled the drawer out and she instantly jumped into the empty space, flicking the pom-pom back at me. I flicked it back at her and she threw her paw out to block the shot and flick it back out at me. This continued on for about 10-15 minutes until Oliver woke up from his nap, came over to see what the commotion was all about, stole the pom-pom and ran into the living room with it, but Oliver's sneaky interception didn't put a damper on Huntley's playful spirit. The drawer thing has evolved into her wanting to play pom-pom hockey all the time, so when I pull the drawer out, she climbs in and sits, ready to play. I will get a picture of this eventually to share, but for now, you'll just have to imagine the cuteness.

If I could only get Oliver to join in the game somehow...they could take turns taking shots on goal while the other defends in true Canadian style :)


UPDATED to include pom-pom hockey action shots! (ok so not exactly "action", but you get the idea...)

they should bottle this stuff and sell it

New post! (as promised)

First off, I am reaching ridiculous levels of uber-excitement because I just received a request for a partial from one of my absolute top agents! I pretty much read the email and then went off like a rocket, dancing around with joy. Then the small part of my brain that reminds me to not get my hopes up kicked in and composed myself enough to reply with said partial attached. Now I wait and no, I'm not going to get my hopes up, but yeah, I am going to cross my my fingers and daydream, and pray, and maybe sacrifice a virgin daiquiri (or maybe a non-virgin daiquiri... it is a long weekend after all).

Ok, so here are the current stats:

Rejections: 7
Partial Requests: 2!!!!!
Partial Rejections: 1

Not a bad ratio if I do say so myself.

So anyway, this news is extra amazing because it came to me on my first half-Friday of the summer (ah, summer hours, how I love thee) and we got free hot breakfast and birthday cake at work this morning! Pretty good day all around, yeah? Yeah, and it only gets better because it's the beginning of what is going to be a great long weekend. Tomorrow both of my sisters and my brother-in-law are coming to visit (always a good time) and then on Sunday, boyfriend and I are headed up to the cottage until Monday. I'm was looking forward to this and the added happiness over this partial request just sweetens the pot.

I suppose I didn't get around to blogging about last weekend. Boyfriend and I had a wonderful time in Niagara Falls. We had gorgeous weather the day we went and there were rainbows all over the place (so girly and pretty!). We had a very nice dinner and then headed back home in time to visit the parents for mother's day/my dad's birthday (which always falls near mother's day weekend).

Work has been busy this week as I got back into the swing of things after my leisurely weekend, but I still took some time to make some revisions to Chameleon and start mapping out my WIP. (Gah, I hope those revisions pay off!)

Been watching finales of all my fav show this week- LOST left me a little heartbroken, but The Office healed said wounds with Jimtastic smiles. I didn't think that guy could act any more adorably. Sigh. What a great season ender.

Aright, that's enough of an update for now. The partial request excitement is flowing through my veins and I just can't sit still :) Also, my kitties are wrestling in the next room and from the sounds of it, things are getting knocked over. I should probably put an end to that...

what's good for the gander is good for the gander a second time

Canada geese update! I overheard someone describing how they'd witnessed the male Canada goose attacking a car in the parking lot. Will the madness ever end? The most entertaining part of this follow up story was that apparently the goose spent a good long while checking out his own reflection in the shiny door of the light blue sedan before pecking the crap out of it. Are these vehicular attacks maybe just a symptom of the Canada goose's poor self image? ....maybe.

The weekend went by FAR too quickly. Boyfriend and I had a little gathering at our apartment on Friday night and many drinks were consummed, leaving me in a weakened state on Saturday. After a late breakfast/lunch/it-didn't-sit-very-well-either-way, we decided to hit up the theatre in our building for a matinee showing of I LOVE YOU, MAN. It was just about right for the kind of relaxation I was in the mood for. I've always enjoyed both Paul Rudd and Jason Segal (since seeing the former in CLUELESS about a million times back in highschool and seeing the latter in the still-mourning-over-it revelation that was FREAKS AND GEEKS) and neither was disappointing in I LOVE YOU, MAN. Good fun all around.

Sunday was far more productive. Finally got around to purchasing an air purifier thing so that I can breathe a little more easily at night when sneaky kitties try (and often succeed) to have a good night's sleep on my head. Girl kitty Huntley (on the left of sidebar kitty pic) will often settle for sleeping at the foot of the bed, but boy kitty Oliver (on the right of sidebar kitty pic) stakes his claim on my pillow every night, only leaving a tiny corner of the pillow for me to rest the top of my head on (to be fair, I've never been one to use the whole pillow anyway). This is how it's been for well over a year now, since they were kittens. When we first brought them home back in the fall of 2007, I'd wanted to lock them out of the bedroom, but boyfriend was all, "They're so tiny and cute and oh, look, they can't even jump up on the the bed they're so small." That changed rather quickly and now I don't have the heart to lock them out despite the fact that I have a mild kitty allergy.

Wow. I really didn't mean for this blog post to turn into a such a long tirade about kitty-related business. I guess sometimes these things just can't be controlled.

No news on the query front, but I'm hoping I'll have something to report before too long as I start to send out more letters. I'm also planning to do a blog post soon that does Lil Novey a little more justice in terms of what the heck she's all about.

For now, I must get back to work...I'm proofing a ms that somehow got severely screwed up at some point in the editing process. We're talking ZOMG YELLOW POST-IT FLAGS ALL OVER THE PLACE! I wish that were an exageration. It's not.