Gwen's blog

Current Events

May 3, Houston: The big one -- the Inprint reading -- occurs at the Alley Theatre on Monday, May 3. Do not miss it or you'll be sorry. I'm not kidding -- I'm going to say the craziest, most intellectual yet hilarious stuff I can think of, and I'll be sharing the stage with the ultra sexy Oscar Casares, too.

June 24, Houston: I'm one of the peeps scheduled to read at Poison Pen, at Houston's famous Poison Girl bar. Besides me, everyone there will be ultra, *super* sexy. Come see me and drink!

June 26, Washington, DC: I'll be reading at the American Library Association conference. Come on down.

My other blog: Go read my the Houston Chronicle parenting blog (or my ChronMomBlog, as I like to call it) and make sure my kids won't resent me more than other kids resent their own parents.

Buy my new novel, Lone Star Legend. Already did? Well, buy a few more for your friends, then. :)

Wednesday, February 25, 2009
holas

I keep wanting to write stuff here but haven't had time. Meanwhile, I know all too well how the lack of updating causes readers to slip away. But that's life, right? Hope y'all who've slipped away are doing it temporarily and finding awesome substitutes until you return.

I shouldn't be writing this right now because I have so much "work stuff" to do, instead, but oh, well. Right now I'm going through this phase where I've planned a bunch of publicity events - traveling and all - months in the past, and then these dates come up on me and I've almost forgotten, and it scares the crap out of me. But then I see that the Me of the Past has taken care of everything. I click the starred document on my email and out pops everything - maps, itineraries, tickets, packing lists.... It's still a little scary, though. The Me of the Past is way more organized than the Me in the Present, and I'm starting to worry that the Me of the Future will be a total flake.

I just read a good/sad book and now I'm all enmeshed in that. You know how that goes. I'm gonna be sad for a couple of days, but I don't regret it.

My work (day job) is all insane right now, as anyone who watches the news and knows the name of my workplace could tell you. The news is bad, and yet somehow that doesn't translate into less work for me, personally. I hate to say this, but I'm kinda just counting the days 'til they lay us off, because uncertainty bugs me. Plus, I need more time to write. But I don't want to be poor. But I haven't been poor for years, because I really dislike that. So things should work out okay, if they want to lay us off. Plus, I'll get more writing done.

I recently finished my next novel. Well, in my mind, it's the "last novel," but for you, it looks like the "next novel." That one comes out in 2010. The next novel, in my mind, hasn't been started yet. But I already know what it's about, and I'm excited, which is good. I hope to stay excited until I'm 97% through writing it, at which point I will of course be sick to death of it. That's how it always happens - no way to avoid it.

I'm hyper-conscious, right now, of writing all these sentences with the word I in them. Like that's a big bad thing. But I'm trying to tell y'all what's going on with me, real fast, without time for fancy faux-un-self-centered metaphors, so there you go. What else can I say?

I really want to tell y'all about:
1. this laminating machine that used to be at an old workplace
2. my current unusual living arrangement and why I think more people should try it
3. the cats' misadventures
4. the truths about Twitter
5. annoying entitled people on the carpool
6. people I've met and why they're awesome
7. awesome books I read recently
8. Indian condiments and the bloat-causing, frightfully addictive sodium within them

but I don't have time So I'll do that soon.

Also, I updated the other site, gwendolynzepeda.com, by hand, by myself, which was difficult because I'm not a good coder but I know too much coding to justify paying someone else to do it... So, yeah. I've been doing that, in addition to everything else.

And... Salome! I saw this show called Tim and Eric's Awesome Show - Good Job! - just one episode of it, twice - and it semi-traumatized me, but in the good way, when something makes you laugh and creeps you out at the same time. And I've been watching Flight of the Concords, a little, and I'm resisting having a crush on Jemaine because I think that would be a cliche, but the whole thing with them loathing/fearing Australians is killing me. If you know what I'm talking about, hollah. If not -- um, go ahead and holler, anyway, if you feel like it.

And, ble-e-e-e-e-e-e-eh. I hate writing entries like this, but it's better than nothing for the 8 dedicated readers who are still checking back for updates once a month. Right? Not really? Oh, man....

xoxoxox
Gwen

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9:54 PM #
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Tuesday, February 17, 2009

for Trasherati

Do you do this:
1. Get an unexpected day off,
2. say you’re going to spend it crafting or doing art,
3. but first, you need to go buy one or two supplies, so
4. you go shopping and end up spending the whole day doing so. Shopping. Nothing else.
5. Then you come home dead tired – too tired to craft or do art.

Am I the only one who does that to myself? I suspect I’m not.

Did that yesterday, because I had Presidents’ Day off, and my kids were supposed to, also, but then the school district decided to pull them back in and call it Hurricane Ike Make-Up Day, obviously because they wanted me to stimulate the economy by spending the whole day shopping. So I did, and didn’t even feel guilty about it because it turned out to be a Lucky Shopping Day for me, with the theme of Shoes.

I went to Payless, (don’t ask me how I ended up there if I was only supposed to be buying two beading supplies) and got two pairs of shoes, on BOGO sale, of course.

Later, I went to Ross Dress for Less, which is like a giant garage sale or thrift store, but with only new merchandise. If “new” can describe stuff that’s been thrown on the floor a couple of times and maybe stepped on or slobbered on by toddlers.

I only go to Ross a couple of times per year. I hadn’t been in six months or more, and last time, I got some skanky red patent platform heels, just for the hell of it, because they were only $11, once I asked for 15% off because of a scuff mark.

So I go back there, thinking I won’t look for anymore platform spike heels, because I only wore the red ones once, and only for about 45 minutes, and my feet went numb and I was sad. And that was when I weighed 15 lbs than I do now.

So… I’m there, and I’m glancing at the shoes, and … omg… there are, like, a thousand nice shoes. By well known designers. In my size. All I had to do was navigate my cart through every shoe aisle (because the sizes posted above the aisles are only theoretical, at Ross), each of which was filled with aggressive women, only 28% of whom spoke English, and one of whom wore the same size as me. But I enjoy a challenge. I zig-zagged all over, loading my cart with 8 and a half pair of shoes. (Never did find the other size 10 black Michael Kors pump, even after squatting on the floor and checking under each rack.)

As the shoe area afforded no privacy and I didn’t trust the other big-footed chick not to ambush me, I pushed my cart of shoes to the patio furniture section, where I could sit on an ottoman and try on all my loot in relative privacy.

Results:

As you can see, I am cheap. I have cheap feet. But at least I’m doing my part to get the economy back on track, right?

See y’all bishes at Ross! xoxox

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5:45 PM #
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Friday, February 06, 2009

Want to win a copy of my newest novel?

Then go to Loida Ruiz's skirt! blog and enter her contest. She's worried that the contest questions are too difficult and that's why no one's entered.

Let me know if you agree and I'll post the answers here. :)

brief respite

Having finished and submitted revisions on my second novel, I'm now just waiting for my editor to read the whole book and write back and say, "Oh my god, Gwen, we have never before received a perfect manuscript... until now!!!1!!! ZOMG!!! You don't have to do any more revising or editing, please just lie back and have a cocktail! Good work!"

I'm pretty sure that's what she's going to say.

There are 7 or 3 billion other projects I need to start right now. But I think I'll take a weekend to myself, first.

I admitted to my fiance today, "I don't think I feel comfortable unless I have a project to stress over."

He just made this face, like "Why are you telling me stuff I realized years ago?"

happy

You know when I'm happiest? Don't laugh at how cheesy/hipster/ironic/cheesy this is, but it's when me and my brats are playing Rockband together, and we get to a song that all of us like enough to sing out loud.

I can't explain how awesome that is, but it is.

My fiance's a musician, and he's been writing a bunch of new songs lately. He won't let me sing on them because I sing too well to mimic like a pop vocalist (or something), but sometimes I help out with the lyrics and melodies. Last night I ad-libbed a new melody to one of his own songs, and he said he liked it better...

and I don't even care if he ends up using my melody, but I liked making it up. It brought back all the good memories of making up harmonies with my friend Tania in the church choir, nine billion years ago, and writing songs with my high-school rock band 8 billion years ago, and working as the receptionist for a local arts org (7 billion years ago) and being allowed to sing in its halls with the student musicians.

And I don't know what my point is, because you either know what I mean already, because you do music, yourself, or else you don't know because you don't.

But, hey, if I were to stop and ask myself what the point is to everything that gets posted here, maybe nothing would get posted, so....

I have a lot more to tell y'all but

not enough time yet. So, more later, while I'm on break. More in a couple of days. Because I missed writing to y'all, here, too. It's another something that makes me happy.

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6:01 PM #
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