One of the hardest parts of an author’s job is the waiting.

Quelle surprise, right?  You’d think it would be the deadlines or the revisions or the fear of never selling another book.  And those are all there, believe me.

But there’s nothing worse than hurrying to plot a new story, work up a synopsis or proposal, rushing to send it off…& then having to WAIT to hear back.

Will the editor like it?  Will I need to make any changes?  Did I dot all my Is, cross all my Ts?  Is there enough sexual tension between the hero & heroine, & do all my plot points make sense?

At the moment, I am waiting—rather impatiently, I might add —to hear back from Editor C on the outline I turned in for my “Dynasties:  The Kincaids” continuity book for Harlequin Desire.

Is he taking an exceptionally long time in getting back to me?  Not really.  In fact, if I weren’t watching the clock like a husband timing his wife’s contractions, I probably wouldn’t be giving it a second thought.

But I happened to turn my outline in a full week before they were due, & I suspect the editors were waiting for all of the proposals to arrive before they started reading them, since the stories are so closely linked.  Which means I unintentionally created a full week of extra nail-biting waiting time for myself.

Yeah—way to go, brainiac! :ubermad

And I’m so darn eager to start this story that I really want to know if my outline is okay.  If it isn’t, I’ll have more work to do, of course.  (Fingers crossed that isn’t the case, since I’ve got my brain really firmly wrapped around the current idea. LOL)   But if it is, I can start writing.  I could be writing already!

But alas, I cannot do anything until I get the okay from TPTB.

To paraphrase Alvin & his chipmunk brothers, “Hurry, Charles!  Hurry, fast!”

For RWA members who are judging this year’s Golden Hearts & RITAs, today is the deadline for submitting your scores to the Romance Writers of America office.  (Consider that a Dungeon PSA. :winkwink )

For those of you who are Catholic, today is Ash Wednesday.  (Consider that your stern religious reminder for the day.)

So if those of you who qualify for either have been good Darlings of The Dungeon, I offer you some Gold Star beefcake for your excellent behavior.

Oh…& the rest of you are welcome to enjoy the view, too. :gotcha

I know you’ve all been waiting with bated breath to find out what I was up to while my computer was in the shop & I was forcefully kept off-line.  (And if you don’t think that had me climbing the walls & pulling out my hair, you don’t know me very well. :hothot )

So first, I caught up on doctor appointments.  Eye exam & my annual overall head-to-toe.  (I actually waited until I knew I’d be out running around a lot to take the ol’ ‘puter into the shop to try to cut down on my cut-off-from-the-internet anxiety.  Am I a smarty pants or what? :winkwink )

Once again, I am practically perfect in every way. :thumbsup   My GP even asked if I’d lost weight.  I hadn’t; according to their scales, I’ve actually gained a few pounds. :blinkie   But that’s with boots & jeans & a winter sweater!  (I really have to start scheduling these things for swimsuit weather.)  When I told him so, he said I certainly looked like I’d lost weight…& then when I told him I was still exercising daily & even lifting weights, he said, “Well, then, you could actually be building up muscle mass, which would show up on the scale.”

So do we love my doc, or what?   Most times you go to the doctor & they get on your case about losing weight…mine makes up excuses for the scale to be wrong.  Awesome!  And also ironic, since this is the same man who never said a word or even seemed to notice when I lost 100 pounds between visits. :beerlaugh

I definitely got antsy without e-mail access.  It wasn’t a very good week for it, either, since I’d just sent off a bunch of different stuff to my editors & had no way of knowing if they’d gotten it, reviewed it, approved or disapproved, needed something else…  And I had no back-up to the internet, so I really was cut off from the outside world. :stalker

But I got some reading done! :cantputdown   Finished Mystery Lover by Lisa Childs & only have about 10 pages left of White Heat by Brenda Novak.

And I drooled my way through a few episodes of Hawaii Five-0, which is quickly becoming one of my guiltiest of pleasures.  It’s not like me to completely miss a hunk-fest like this, but I actually just started watching this show & am now kicking myself soundly for missing it for so long.  I love it!  Could be the theme song.  Could be the lush island setting.  Could be the gripping storylines.  Or maybe it’s the bevy of hunky leads.  Yeah, it’s probably the bevy of hunky leads.  I’m having a real problem splitting my fantasies between the three, let me tell you.  And my darling Dwayne & second-in-command Jason are starting to get a little jealous. :devil

I actually had a really nice dream about my darling Dwayne one night.  Nothing dirty…get your minds out of the Dungeon gutter, my smutty-minded Darlings…but it definitely had me waking with a smile. :love

I did laundry & made a bunch of phone calls (which I could still do, even without internet access *g*), & then banged my head against the wall when I realized that what I could have been doing with my down time was working on another Top Secret side project.  It’s not contracted, isn’t for anything in particular, but I started it a while back & would love to have finished it. If only I’d thought of that before I unplugged the PC & took it away. Ah, yes, regret mixed with stupidity is a bitter pill to swallow.  It doesn’t go down any easier with one of those luscious Everybody’s Irish cocktails, either.