A Letter to My Fellow Authors

Dear Fellow Wordsmiths:

As several of you know (and most of you don't care) I have an exciting, heart-stopping day job. I am a CPA who specializes in audit. Auditors are beloved by all (or maybe it's abhored--I get the two confused). But the point is, you have to act professional and people assume you know a lot about complicated stuff that nobody can pronounce.

That's where I was yesterday when I got the email: Choosing Charity, the third installment in my Faith, Hope, & Charity trilogy has been accepted by CFI.

I wanted to do the happy dance accompanied by a couple of banshee hollers for good measure. I mean, it's my book and it's been accepted!
If you bust a dance move and engage in general merriment whilst acting in the capacity of an auditor, the client gets nervous.

So I calmly walked into the controller's office and said quietly. "I'm going to share something with you that no one else knows."
Having captured his attention, I followed up wiith, "I just got word my 4th book has been accepted for publication!"
He blinked and said, "I got a new refrigerator."

I had to force a smile until I remembered, I can make this audit really difficult for him [evil, maniacal laughter erupts in my brain]

I called my husband who, like Mary Poppins, is practically perfect in every way. (Except he doesn't carry a carpetbag and has way too many speeding tickets.)

"Choosing Charity has been accepted for publication!" I gush.

"Wow, that's great. You'll make, what--five or ten cents an hour?"

I'm revoking his Mary Poppins status and grounding him from my Camaro.

Such is the support I had--or didn't have--so I'm turning to you all. The few, the proud, the people who work for pennies per hour.

MY BOOK HAS BEEN ACCEPTED FOR PUBLICATION!!!!

[Bustin' dance moves, fracturing a hip, trying to find my car keys]

Carry on!

Terri Ferran

Tristi Pinkston and Terri Ferran's Interview - YouTube

Check out the interview with my amazing author friend, Tristi Pinkston (I interview her and then she interviews me!)

www.youtube.com/watch?v=teFlm2EFyYs
 
Tristi Pinkston and Terri Ferran interview each other about their books.

Thanks to wethepeeps25 for their mad camera & editing skills!

Text from my daughter who is reading my manuscript. "Dear mom, out of the honesty of my heart i am telling u that ur book totally got me sucked in..." All I saw was UR BOOK SUCKED. Why do writers do this to themselves?

Nothing says "back-to-school shopping" quite like performing the Heimlich maneuver on your daughter at Vanity. Usually I'm the one who chokes while we're shopping together.

Have Sprayer, Will Kill...

Sometimes a woman’s gotta do what a woman’s gotta do…


I can testify that a woman can even change a toilet seat--as I did last night since my husband is out of town and the old seat came off in my hands (I was trying to write my name in the snow...).

However, I did chatter constantly while doing it and it was nerve-wrackingly high-pitched even to me.

I am about to kill and maim bed bugs, as we have sighted one in my son's room. I have no remorse and am not even slightly horrifed by killing them. Last August when we were infested, I even named the ones I used as test subjects to verify the pesticide worked (Edward, Bella, Carlisle, Alice and a trio of old, hard to kill bugs I called the Volturi). If I find another, I will name, maim, and destroy it, too.

I’m a wee bit ticked off that he commandeered my specially-purchased bed-bug pesticide sprayer. I can’t prove it, but the new sprayer is now neatly labeled “Round-up” and we all know I don’t label anything--except people who drive slower than me (slo-mo’s) and Wyoming Highway Patrolmen (Officer I-Need-More-Fiber-In-My-Diet). That’s an entirely different post, however.

I found the old sprayer, under a shelf in the spider-infested region of the garage. Did I scream or cry or throw a fit? Yes, and the neighbors are now shunning me. After that, I rolled the dead-spider-coated sprayer on the wet grass to sanitize it. Opened a Diet Coke, took a long-burning swig—I’m good.

Sloth-itude

SLOTH – It’s more than just a medium-sized mammal that moves only when necessary and even then very slowly. More than the unwitting prey of jaguars, the harpy eagle, and humans.


Did you know that more than two-thirds of a well-fed sloth's body-weight consists of the contents of its stomach, and the digestive process can take a month or more to complete.

…but beyond the well-known happy facts of sloth-hood dwells something that hits very close to home. So close that it’s frightening…

SLOTH is also an acrostic that describes:

Stupor – state in which one has difficulty in thinking or using one’s senses

Lassitude – uncaring attitude; lack of interest

Obtund – dulled or less sharp

Torpor – lethargic indifference; apathy

Hebetude – mental dullness or lethargy

Evidence suggests I may be a sloth.

That may account for where I’ve been all winter. It’s difficult to blog and write while hanging upside, clinging to a branch, even while being shot at from below.

But I am emerging from my sanctuary of stupor, my oubliette of obtundity, my lair of lassitude, my trammel of torpor, my habitat of hebetude.

I am back in blog-land.

I'm a guest blogger today, talking about how I got published. Check it out if you're interested. http://ping.fm/auwJR

I may be possessed by the ghosts of Dale Earnhardt and old Elvis. I found myself drag racing with a client while shoving a Twinkie in my mouth. Okay, the Twinkie part is a lie, but if I'd had one, it would have been in my mouth!

"Panhandlers settle lawsuit with Salt Lake City"
http://ping.fm/YniuN

Thank goodness--those legal bills had to be taking all their spare change. I'm in the wrong line of work! The only panhandling I do is once a month when I cook!