Dana, I will shoot you on sight for taking the picture of me on the laptop Friday night. I look like I drove for hours and hours…no wait, I did!

Yes folks, the erotic romance author was working on rewrites at that moment. I got damn few done over the weekend. Actually the picture isn’t too bad. My hair was definitely not at peak performance though.

This is probably what I look like in the gym. Ugh.

Did I mention I won 2 raffle baskets at Silken Sands? Yeah, I did. The Gulf Coast chapter sold raffle tickets to raise money for their chapter. Baskets are donated by their members. The Tallahassee chapter (FPHRW) donated a basket for the raffle as well. (In it was a bunch of books including mine, Men After Midnight and Royal Bondage, ALPHA Ghost Team’s DVD Dead Air and signed pics of both the guys, Ron & Scott, notebooks, planner, pens, music CD, energy shots (I thought all writers needed that!), and more. I took a picture of the basket, but you can’t get a good look at everything in it. Trust me, it was nice.

After I won my second basket, Dana leaned over to me to say she wanted a pic of me with the baskets. Then she won two. Another lady won at our table too. We swept through the baskets as one lucky table of women. Above is a picture of me and Dana with our booty.One of my baskets had writing books, Time to Write, Thinking Write and Break into Fiction. What is cool is I was eyeballing all those books at the signing. Now I got them. The other basket was heart themed–heart mug, heart vase, heart frame, etc. You get the idea. It was cute.

No, there wasn’t any bullets, rabbits or paddles in the baskets this time. That RT basket was the BEST.

I love the tee shirt Dana got in one of her baskets–

“Well behaved women rarely make history.”

I love that.

And speaking of not behaving, I posted on TWC about my alternate pen name I’ll be using soon–M.A. LaCroix. It is for the kinky stuff without romance. I am still in search of a copy of a vampire erotica I had started a few years ago, Silk Whip. The first part of that was published in the short lived Xodtika magazine. I wrote a second part and gave it to loveyoudivine. I have the rights back now and wanted to post part one and two as free reads. Damn if I can find a copy. Got to check some thumb drives. Anyway, I have an idea for an Exotika for EC and wanted to make sure my non romance stuff and romance books are well defined. (On a side note: Had readers on Amazon call Pirate’s Mistress porn…I laughed. It’s an EC book, clearly marked as erotic. Even has a warning about forced seduction and domination. What did they expect?)

Annmarie said she found the container for our Spring Fling raffle basket–and we have a theme of Black and Pink. There was discussion of including a few toys in there. Pink of course. Not sure I will wait until we go shopping at the adult stores in Chicago or if I’ll look online. Maybe both. LOL

And finally, Dana doesn’t agree with the quiz result I posted on Facebook. Here’s the result I got:

Your Mind is NC-17 Rated

You’re mind is so filthy… you should should be washing every part of you out with soap. If your thoughts can go dirty, they do. Almost everything is NC-17 to you!

And she said:

That’s bull- I know what your mind is rated…and its the 3rd to the last letter of the alphabet!!

Who me? I’m innocent.

Made it to Pensacola! Laughed a hell of a lot on the way. I was told I have a dirty mind. Sorry, I can twist so much into a sexual innuendo. I mean when the backseat driver says, “We’re coming in on an angle,” how am I to dismiss that?

Oh, and when we walked in the room, our other roommate was here already, and bubbling to show us a “penis puppet”. No, really. I got pictures. Okay, and let’s not even get into the story about the cat that sleeps on her crotch. Damn it, they make it too damn easy….

Later today I’m off to Pensacola Beach for the Silken Sands conference. It is always nice to get away from the “norm” for a few days. I’m hoping to network a bit and pitch my book to anyone who will listen. I have to rewrite my pitch though. The story changed a bit since I wrote my original one last year.

I have this fear in the back of my head about writer stuff at the beach. I need to get over that. Understand, in Feb 2009 coming home from Panama City Beach I was struck with the worst pain in my entire life. THE WORST. I honestly thought I was going to die. It started my year from hell, basically. Visits to the ER in screaming pain to doctors saying there was nothing wrong, painful cramping to doctors saying it is a possible side effect of an ablation 2 years prior, etc. Delayed treatment, weeks of agony, my insisting that the problem was my ovary, not a kidney stone (I know where my ovary is, damn it), 2 surgeries, post op complication resulting in weeks of home health visits…  No wonder I was fucked up.

Do you have any idea how frustrating it is for a doctor to say nothing is wrong when you know better?

Years ago I decided I needed help in getting pregnant. I did fertility pills, to no avail. Okay, so I go to a specialist and discover I have polycystic ovarian syndrome. In other words, lots of cysts on my ovaries which fucks with your hormones, weight, skin, etc. Great. So okay, I do the fertility shots and let me tell you–a woman on fertility medicine knows where her ovaries are. The discomfort during those treatments because of the over stimulation of the ovaries make you very aware of their position. But when the torsion began, no one listened to me. I suffered. I suffered bad. And you know, an ovarian torsion is considered an emergency.

The only way I got some relief was surgery. I had to beg, but he did the surgery and it helped. Although he did notice my uterus was enlarged, he didn’t do a hysterectomy. No, I had to beg for that a month later–thus discovering I had adenomyosis.

Why am I bringing this up? A year ago this week I was in the hospital on a morphine pump awaiting my first surgery. And I am about to go to the beach with my writer pals. And I do still have one ovary. Paranoid much? Yep.

Okay, so off the tangent. I’m about to pack my bag and get ready for my trip. Treated myself to a new bra. I wouldn’t normally mention it, but it is pretty. Nothing makes a woman feel sexy confident like sexy underwear. Not doing the business suit thing this weekend. I will look nice, but no suit. Besides, my suits are droopy on me. I tried wearing some scrubs this morning and those are droopy too. I got those pretty jeans Annmarie sent me and my lacy blouse, that will be nice for Saturday’s signing and day of workshops. And a black dress I hadn’t worn in a while for a fancy awards dinner that night. Yes, I will take pictures.

Damn, where are my black heels?