Amie Stuart ~ On the Back Porch

It was Neil Diamond night on AI last night. Overall, I was not thrilled. It’s below the cut for Amanda in the UK

Yes, I wrote last night….I’m also doing page proofs for MUS and some heavy WIP thinking. I started a scene for Screwed that feels like it’s in the wrong place. It’s toward the end but I’m thinking it’s more important than that–the heroine finds out the hero violated her trust and invaded her privacy. It means doing a lot of tweaking I don’t have time for but I seriously think it needs moving.

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Got page proofs for MUS on Thursday. After doing yardwork all day yesterday, I’m going to start on them today. The meter for Screwed will move–I’ll update later today after I dump the Alpha Smart. I ended up home on Friday writing with a sick kid. The poor baby has SHINGLES under his EYE! Which required a quick trip to the doc Friday morning.

In the mean time, here’s some good reading.
21 Suggestions
Astrologyzone
Fantasy Book Critic–to ogle the pretty book covers
Bettye Griffin has a stellar post up at Romancing the Blog

Over at NAS I’m blogging about books you’d stake a friendship on–blatantly stolen from Stephen Parrish. Consider it a quick meme.

Over at SFC Dennie is talking about sentence structure and you really need to read this. Really.

And tomorrow at SFC we have the uber-fabulous Mechelle Armstrong guest blogging about her latest release!

The meter has moved. I’ll see ya’ll next week.

A strange thing has happened the last few mornings. I woke up happy. I know this might seem strange but normally I just wake up. The last two mornings I’ve woken up almost GIDDY. (I Should probably save this for my Monday blog post at SFC but oh well)

Strange indeed and I can’t explain the happiness (despite the impending deadline). Spring is here, the book is coming along, I have no kids this weekend, and life is good. I feel optimistic and dare I say, poised on the edge of something, almost as if I’m holding my breath….waiting.

So what’s the point of all of this?

I watched Eli Stone this morning. And if you’re not familiar with Eli you have no idea what you’ve been missing. Eli is a lawyer at a top San Fransisco law firm who suddenly begins having halucinations. All of which are geared toward him taking cases involving underdogs, helping the common man etc. It involves George Michael and has a real spiritual bent to it–because Eli’s acupuncturist/friend believes that Eli is a prophet. The truth of the matter is Eli has an (almost) inoperable brain aneurysm that they think are causing his visions–except his visions keep coming true. So, I’m watching last week’s episode–the one about the earth quake, where Eli’s boss (Victor Garber from Alias who I LURVE) nearly gets voted out of the company while Eli is trying to get the city to close the Golden Gate bridge because he believes this HUGE earthquake is coming.

So anyway Victor makes this wonderful speech about how every company, every law firm, every-body needs an Eli to basically keep them human. I had chills and I sat there watching it (and yes I know it’s TV *eyeroll*) praying PRAYING that Eli was right and that the earthquake really was going to happen.

Meanwhile in court this fringe scientist who also has predicted this earthquake gets on the stand and he said something that really hit me, so I ran for a pen and jotted it down.
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Has moved here…for today. I know I mentioned yesterday that Ali had won The Biggest Loser this season, and since she’s the first woman, and most of US are women, I thought it might make a good blog topic for this week. Ali started TBL at 234 pounds.

April 16: Ali Vincent, who shed 112 pounds to become the first-ever female winner of weight-loss competition “The Biggest Loser,”

For those of you how haven’t ever watched the show, teams of women and men (in this case couples ranging from best friends to perfect strangers) work like dogs to lose lots of weight. This year was interesting in that they seemed to have more younger people on-folks in their early to mid-twenties and I remember PC Cast saying at the DARA conference during her workshop (what we all already know) that our kids are the most overweight kids EVER. E-VER! In the past it’s always seemed like the mid-30 housewives and dads….not those 20-somethings (and I’ll admit I’ve got a child whose weight I worry about A LOT).

So anyway, one of the reasons I watch is because it’s inspiring. And sometimes you need inspiration to keep going. You need to see that average people CAN lose weight, (granted in a commando style setting with trainers and lots of help with stuff like…oh FOOD), but they’re average joes and jills who have fought all the same struggles we’ve fought with our weight and dealt with a lot of the same health issues we’ve dealt with losing weight with good old fashioned sweat (and a helping hand). And a lot of it goes into believing that you can…

From Emaxhealth:

Here I wanted to write a little about goals and mindset. Kelly and Ali both worked incredibly hard. They were both underdogs in many ways. They both REALLY wanted the win the Biggest Loser. Both of them had a single minded obsession with being the first girl biggest loser. At the end of the day though I think one thing made Ali rise above Kelly. I suppose we could say that Kelly had a back problem and it held her back. That may or may not be true. However, Ali binged on frozen yogurt so they both had their setbacks and problems.

What made the difference, IMO was mindset. Kelly wanted it badly. She always said: “I really want to be the first girl biggest loser.” “I have a shot at being the first girl biggest loser,” but she never fully claimed it as hers.

About midway through the season Ali Vincent stood up and said to a room full of her competitors, “I’m going to be the biggest loser.”

Do you watch? Does it inspire you? If not, what does? And how do you keep your mindset? How do you keep pushing forward through the deadlines that mean lots of sitting, PMS that makes you want to binge, hectic kid’s schedules etc etc ad nauseum?

I have 15 minutes until I leave work so it’s gonna bea quick one. But first WOOT! A female biggest loser!!!!

You can read more at msnbc.com

Also we’ve got the lovely Joely Sue Burkhart at Southern Fried Chicas today!

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see more crazy cat pics

Writing………..