CAROL BURNSIDE / ANNIE RAYBURN

Finding the juicy ones

Posted on January 24, 2005 by Annie Rayburn/Carol Burnside

>Everything seems to be moving so fast. I can’t keep up. Yes, I’ve been checking the sites I sent ARC’s to almost daily, but I really didn’t expect to see a review in my e-mail yesterday. Surprise! There it was. I took a deep breath and sat there staring at it, wondering… Do I really want to know what’s in there? Well, yeah, I did. But at the same time I didn’t. Nobody wants to hear someone trash their work. Regardless of how thick we THINK our skin has become, it still has its fragile spots.

So I IMed my friend, Linda, and told her what I’d received. She’s going, “Open it, Open it!” like she doesn’t agonize over opening the same types of e-mails. I look again and reason with my ego that I have to open it sometime if I want to know what’s in there, and what if it’s not so bad?

“CLICK”

A quick scan and the three red hearts tells me it’s not a glowing, gushing review, but I didn’t bomb either. ::whew!:: Immediately I scan for the tidbits I can use to promote with and sure enough, there’s not one but two juicy ones.

Check it out: http://www.geocities.com/annierayburn/Quotes_Reviews.html

Posted in Books, Everyday blather, Good News | Tagged Insight, Reviews | Comments Off

Wallpaper

Posted on January 23, 2005 by Annie Rayburn/Carol Burnside

>Okay, I know what you’re thinking. What does wallpaper have to do with writing? Well, I’ll tell you.

I was thinking how great it would be if I had write and wipe boards on all the walls of my office. Now that would be something, because I have few large expanses of wall in my office. But then I thought – what about tacking up that newsprint stuff you can get on a roll? That would be awesome! I have a formal dining room seldom used and there’s a great wall in there I could paper. What a cool way to brainstorm problems in a manuscript or plot out a new book. Just scribble on the ‘papered’ wall, scratch through what you wanted to discard, and voila – the genius stays on the paper. I’m constantly thinking through ideas, and the phone rings or the dryer beeps, or something else interrupts and I forget where I was headed in my thought process. (Can we say short attention span? Duh!) But this would be perfect. I could have a ‘papered’ wall in every room. Can’t you see the possibilities?

I’ve got a 4′ bulletin board for one wall, but it holds stuff I don’t want to take down. WIP stuff. So, I NEED something else, don’t you think?

Hmm… Reality sets in. My DH would think I’d lost my mind, and it wouldn’t look too swift when company comes over, so maybe I’ll go back to the drawing board on this idea – or the write and wipe board as the case may be. I think a 6′ foot one should do nicely.