I know it’s hard to believe that THREE such cool people could all be born in April. First my agent, then me (if I say I’m cool here it makes it true because this is the web, right?) and now, on the very last day of the month, in the nick of time, my ultra-cool husband.

Seriously, you cannot even imagine what a blessing he is in my already blessed life. My husband is the best. The best what? EVERYTHING. He’s my best friend. He supports my writing with every fiber in his body. He never complains (even when he cracks a rib, which, I might add, he did just so he could help me research the amount of pain a character might feel with a cracked rib – okay, not really, but it was a bonus for me!). He makes the best omelets. He’ll eat anything I cook. He’s sweet to our kitties. He rides a bike instead of driving, both for his health and the environment’s (and because technically, he’s like a six year old boy and loves bikes). He’s a fantastic singer/songwriter/musician. He takes fabulous pictures. He is a tender heart, has a wonderful southern accent, and big smile. He does tons of volunteer work, opens doors for everyone, and sends thank you notes if you have him over for dinner. In other words, his mama raised him right.

And best of all…he loves me for exactly who I am and I love him the exact same way. Happy birthday, darlin’! I love you!

Well, I handed in my edits! Yay! Even did it a few days early. Love that. I have a strange thing to share though. Somewhere along the editing road, my manuscript transformed into a book. I was kind of hoping this would happen.

What I mean is, that while it seemed like a really good story, and like it had potential (this is not my ego, but my agent thought so and Putnam bought it, so I guess I can say that) to be a book, it was lacking something. I mean, I would read it and think, yeah…yeah…okay…but it just doesn’t seem like something you could bound up and pass off as a novel. It seems like a manuscript still. I was mystified how this metamorphosis was going to take place. In fact, I still am a little! But I was pretty sure it had something to do with an editor and now I’m convinced that’s true.

Basically, my editor called me on EVERYTHING. Big, small, confusing, convoluted, too long, not clear enough, you name it, she made a note and basically asked WTH (what the heck)? And then, on top of all that, she made me cut another 60+ pages. And after I did that, made the cuts, fixed (hopefully) the things she’d asked about, it was like she had waved her red pen over the manuscript and turned it into a book.

Of course, I’m not saying it’s even close to done. Not at all. This was only our second round of edits and the first one consisted of me cutting 65 pages all on my own without any notes from her. Yes, you read that right…I have cut over 120 pages and still have a 254 page manuscript! We still have lots to do. But suddenly I feel like this might just work out! Now if I could only figure out how to get this far with a WIP, I’d be golden!

Actually, since I met my husband, nothing keeps me awake at night. We are so content in our lives that we’ve become champion sleepers. However, if something in my writing did keep me awake at night, this is what it would be.

The little mistakes that writers make when they write about something they think they know about because it’s common knowledge. I’m not really worried about the big stuff because between my editor, agent, and critique group, we’re bound to catch those errors. Also, if I don’t know about something, I research it and then I make sure and have someone who knows read it too.

Here’s an example of what I’m talking about. Last night I was reading a YA by a very well-known, well-loved writer. In one scene, two characters are talking while one makes a loaf of bread. Now, while I don’t consider myself an expert bread maker, by any means, I do make about 99.9% of the bread we eat. Seriously. I buy about 3 loaves a year, the rest I make myself (yes, I made the rolls in the pic above).

And let me tell you, if the woman in that scene made bread the way it was written, she would not have bread. She would have a hard flat loaf resembling a brick.

The thing is, I’m sure it never occurred to the writer to check on how to make bread because “everyone knows”, right? I mean, there’s some kneading and some bread pans and you bake it…and you have bread…close enough for a tiny scene, right? And that’s what I worry about. Writing about something I think I know about, but don’t actually know anything about!

Sewing is a great example. In my book that I’m working on now, my character knows how to sew and at one point she works on a dress. I had to take costuming to get a theatre degree, so I’ve had some sewing. And my mother is an excellent seamstress, as well as both my grandmothers, so I’ve grown up around sewing. And in my book, I had my character basting the whole dress together until she can get to a sewing machine. When my mother read that, she said, “Umm…you wouldn’t really do that. You might baste the long seams together, but not the whole dress.”

The conclusion I’ve come to is this. It is the author’s responsibility to get everything as right as possible. And it’s a good idea to have a variety of people read the manuscript before it goes to copy edits to help with this. But in the end, does it really, really matter if the bread turns out to be a brick? They never eat it, so maybe the character has no idea how to make bread.

I have to give my ego a rest and know that perfection is unattainable. And also a bit boring.

I know! Where the heck have I been? My husband and cats are wondering the same thing. Well, I have a deadline on April 30th. Need I say more? I’ve been holed up in my office working on my book and it’s all good! I’m very pleased with my edits! Ask me again when I get the next round. Haha!

So I know that a lot of you count on me for witty reparte and amusement to distract you from work with my ramblings and I have totally slacked off. Because I love you all, I am going to share something wonderful with you, right now, right here. Well, there is some assembly required.

This is the easiest, most yummiest, flourless chocolate cake ever. I’m sure there are ones that are just as yummy, but this is EASY too. I have adapted the recipe some, and that’s the beauty of it…if you don’t have as much of whatever it needs, you can fudge a little. My recipe follows, but if you’re a traditionalist and want the original recipe, you can get it here.

   Flourless Chocolate Cake

Takes 45 minutes or less, including the cooking time!

6 oz (aproximately 150 grams) of semi-sweet chocolate – I used organic dark orange

1 1/2 sticks of butter (use the real stuff)

1 heaping cup of sugar

4-5 large eggs (I used 7 small ones)

3/4 cup unsweetened cocoa powder (this stuff is the BEST and it’s organic/fair trade)

Preheat the oven to 375 and butter a 9″ cake pan. Then cut a piece of parchment and line the bottom of the pan and butter that too.

In a double boiler or a bowl over simmering water, put the chocolate (chopped) and butter. Stir occasionally until smooth. Remove from double boiler and add sugar.

In another bowl, beat the eggs.

Temper the eggs with a little of the hot chocolate (so you don’t scramble them) and then add it to the eggs and stir well. Sift in cocoa. Pour batter in pan and bake for 25 minutes or until it forms a thin crust (25 minutes worked perfectly for me). Cool on a rack for 5 minutes, then use a knife around the edge to loosen it and then invert it onto a serving plate.

Dust the cake with sifted powdered sugar.

Oh, and by the way, you can use any pans you want. Like ramekins for a bunch of small cakes or whatever. I did an 8″, a 4″ and a taster ramekin with that much batter (the others are for a party so we had to have a taster to make sure it wasn’t poison).

Who loves ya, baby?

Last year on my birthday I listed forty things that I was grateful for (because it was my fortieth birthday). I am going to make this a tradition, so without further ado, forty-one things I am grateful for (in no particular order):

1.      Such a great life so far!

2.      My husband

3.      My parents & the rest of my family

4.      Warm cats to nap with me

5.      Putnam is publishing my book & my great editor, Stacey Barney

6.      The best literary agent a girl could hope to have!

7.      Caramels

8.      That I live in such a beautiful place

9.      The zillions of friends I’ve made here

10.  The Cubbies & Pat & Ron on internet radio

11.  Hearing my niece’s voice on the telephone

12.  Daffodils

13.  Sunday Soup

14.  Eileen Cook, Wanda Collins Johnson & Alix Barry – great writers, critiquers, & friends

15.  Our dishwasher

16.  My husband makes me tea every morning and brings it to me in bed

17.  Elizabeth Gilbert & her wonderful book EAT, PRAY, LOVE

18.  Audio books – who knew?

19.  Hand knitted socks from Eileen

20.  Guacamole

21.  The Enchanted Forest

22.  The Archers on BBC Radio 4

23.  The Big Blue Chair & books

24.  Boys Night Out on Wednesdays (which means I don’t have to cook dinner!)

25.  All the free books I’ve been getting from authors, my editor, my agent, and especially Penny Mason – Penguin sales rep extraordinaire!

26.  My husband’s wonderful photography

27.  Meeting Sarah Tradewell and hearing her play fiddle

28.  That my husband wasn’t hurt any worse than he was when he fell off his bike

29.  All the live music in my life

30.  Toasty fires in the woodstove

31.  The beautiful deer in our yard and the fawns to come

32.  The Neighbour

33.  I will probably go to the Betsy-Tacy Convention this summer

34.  I met Susan Juby this year

35.  Days off – I’m taking weekends off now, something I learned from my brilliant agent

36.  Snuggling into bed at night and one of us saying, “This is the best part of the day, except for all the other best parts.”

37.  My husband is growing so much of our own food.

38.  Finding one last pint of frozen blueberries from last summer in the freezer the other day.

39.  I’ve learned to make butter, crackers, cheese, and lots of different soups this year

40.  Knitting – the ultimate something from nothing

41.  Sleep. Lots and lots of sleep.

Interestingly, I looked at last year’s list and there are a lot of repeats. That means I’m doing something right! What are you grateful for?

Hi All, Sorry I haven’t posted in ages. I’m busy, busy, busy listening to the Cubs kick the Cards butts working on my revisions of Restoring Harmony and cutting like crazy! And guess what? It’s going to work! I’m very excited. But that’s not what this post is about.

Hmm…if I don’t write fast, I’m going to have to amend my Cubbie statement since they just walked a guy in the 9th, and then hit Albert Pujoles with pitch…

Anyway… Tomorrow is my 41st birthday and I decided that for my birthday present I am going to teach myself math. Wow! I know! You’re all jealous, aren’t you? Here’s what happened. A while back someone tweeted that “Winnie Cooper got married”. I remembered Winnie Cooper from The Wonder Years, so I clicked on the link to see what the actress, Danica McKellar looks like as a grown up (gorgeous!) and discovered that she is a mathematician and she wrote several books. The first book is what you would call MG non-fiction and it’s called MATH DOESN’T SUCK. It got me thinking about how my husband loves to do crosswords during breakfast and I really need something to do so I don’t accidentally talk to him before his coffee kicks in (not a smart move, trust me).

Crosswords are not the answer for me. In fact, I almost flunked high school French because my teacher realized that some of us were so swamped with homework that she decided to make French homework easier on us and give us crosswords instead of anything more taxing. Heck! I can’t even do crosswords in English, let alone French, and I ended up with a D. Yeah…a D. I’m not proud of it, but wait…we were talking about math.

Anyway, I’m not any better at math than I was at French that year (My agent is probably reading this and laughing at me because I’m always trying to slip French into my books and he’s always making me cut it. I got better and did really well in college, so stop laughing, Michael!).

So at the wise old age of nearly forty-one it occurred to me that when they told us in junior high that we should pay attention in math class because we’d need it our whole life, it turns out they weren’t lying! I use math all the time. In the kitchen when I cook. In my knitting. Even in editing (if I cut 54 pages, how many more do I have to cut to get to my goal? The answer is none because I’ve already reached my cutting goal, plus I’ve cut 5 extra pages!).

Here’s my plan. Each morning during breakfast, I’m going to work with this book MATH DOESN’T SUCK. At least until it’s due back at the library. And then, if I’m still going strong, I’ll buy the book. Here’s what I learned already.

I’ll use the number 18 because it’s my favourite.

18=2×3x3 That might not look that impressive, but it is. I factored the #18 down to its prime numbers. Yeah…I’m cool. Oh, and the Cubs won!

The next best thing to announcing a book sale of my own is announcing a 3 book deal for my best friend and wonderful writer, Eileen Cook! Do drop by her site and tell her congrats. I can hardly wait to read them, Eileen!

I usually don’t promote anything other than books and writers on this page, but this little device is something I feel so strongly (and happy) about that I have to share in case you need to know about it.

As an adult, I’ve been plagued with spring allergies relating to tree pollen. They weren’t too horrible in Portland, but were totally debilitating when I lived down south. I am talking DEBILITATING. I won’t go into the gory details, but I will say that they lasted 8-12 weeks, and during that time, not only could I not go outside, but I slept about 10-12 hours per night and usually 2-3 hours in the middle of the day. I didn’t write unless I had no choice. I felt like I was going to die. Meds helped some, but often gave me headaches. The last year I was there, I decided to try a new approach.

I bought a very silly looking silk nose/mouth mask to sleep in (it helped!) online. I also purchsed this handy dandy personal air purifier. I read a lot of comments online and it seemed that even if it didn’t help with my allergies, it would keep me from getting sick on planes, so I forked out $140 for the purifier, 2 rechargeable batteries, and a charger.

IT HAS CHANGED MY LIFE.

In Tennessee it reduced my allergies by about 50%. Here, where they are much more mild, it reduces them by about 90%. To function in TN, I still had to sleep in the mask, take drugs every 12 hours, and use the purifier. Here, all I’m using in the purifier. It is FANTASTIC! I have not had to take ANY allergy meds. I think that’s the best part.

So anyway, I just want to say that I am on a pretty tight deadline for the month of April, and without this, I couldn’t actually meet the deadline, so if you need this, and you have the dough, I highly suggest you order one. I got mine from Amazon and the batteries from Radio Shack.

Oh, and the bonus is that I’ve flown about 4 times using this and I did not get sick once and I used to get sick every time I flew.

I am part of a Yahoo group and Twitter has come up for discussion. Like me, before I started to tweet, those who haven’t tried it see it as a huge waste of time. I posted the following message to the group and thought I’d share it here.

My name is Joelle Anthony, and I use Twitter. I didn’t want to, but my agent encouraged me to because “it’s fun”. I actually agree now. He’s so smart!

Anyone can follow me, but I don’t follow just anyone. If you tweet too much, or talk about your family life too much, I’m not interested. Instead, I follow my agent, a couple of other agents, my publisher, Plublisher’s Marketplace, a few writers I like, and some people who are in marketing or are editors. I have over sixty people following me and I only follow 36 or something, and only about 15 of them tweet regularly.

I generally tweet about my writing day. People seem to like to hear how my editing process is going, and at times I can let out bits of frustration in humourous ways.

Also, because a tweet is only 140 characters, I’ve found that it forces me to write tight (I don’t like abbreviations unless they’re really needed) and that’s always good practice for a writer.

I also use it to announce new blog updates (I cut and paste these announcements on  Facebook too – I can’t stand Facebook, especially the new changes, and while I’ve gathered a lot of friends, I do not hang out there).

Here are a few of the tweets I’ve posted recently just to give you an idea:

• Staying in pajamas and in bed with tea, manuscript, RED PEN, and kitties. Now to see  what’s left of this book after all the cutting.
• Shower was worth its weight in gold. The warm water loosened one of my editing issues, gave me a clear, answer and washed prob down drain!
• New blog post at http://www.joelleanthony.com Also, read about HOW TO BE BAD under the Need To Read tab there.
• Last day of hacking away and cutting the manuscript. Tomorrow I read it & next week I sew up all the seams. Hopefully! Then polishing begins

I also banter with my agents or friends occasionally. All in all, I try not to post more than 4-5 tweets per day. Usually less, and rarely on the weekends. It might not sell books, but it might too. Other people’s posts have led me to interesting articles on publishing and publicity, as well as new books I might want to read. I don’t consider Twitter a waste of time at all because it hardly takes up any time anyway. And because I don’t post personal info, I don’t have to screen who follows me.

If you care to follow me on Twiter, my username is Joellewrites. Tweet, tweet!

I’m still here, just not blogging much because of the baseball games I am busy revising my book Restoring Harmony. I am on my last day of chopping, dicing, and cutting up the manuscript (had to lose 63 pages!) and tomorrow I get to read it and see what’s left. Then next week the real work begins. Oh, wait…this was pretty much real work…either way, I better get back to it. Have a lovely weekend and if you celebrate the holiday, then I hope you enjoy it.

I had seen this book in my library and avoided it for a couple of reasons. The first was the cover. It looks like rich-girl-chick-lit. Sometimes I love YA chick-lit, but I’m not so much into the elite rich girl stuff full of brand names. Another reason I didn’t pick it up was because it was by three authors and I, for some reason, thought it was a collection of short stories and I can never get into short stories. The reason I did finally pick it up is because I read something else by Lauren Myracle and E. Lockhart and loved them both, and I already loved Sarah Mlynowski, so I thought, “What the heck?”

I really, really liked this book! It’s very seamless. You can’t tell (or I can’t anyway) who wrote what (it is a novel, not short stories). What I loved about it was that in some ways, it’s your typical road trip story, but in so many other ways, it’s not. The characters are all so well developed that you want to know them more, and it takes many surprising turns. It’s a very satisfying read. I would actually love to see a sequel.

When I used to fancy myself an actress, I would find myself having to do the occasional audition piece – a one minute monologue. I got tired of digging up new pieces, so one day, I wrote my own. Looking back on it, it’s not great writing, but it actually performed pretty well. Sometimes writing is like that. You add the actor to it and it’s like adding the wet ingredients to the dry, suddenly you have cake. It actually got me some call-backs and was a pretty successful piece. One thing that always amuses me is that for some reason, if you write the audition piece yourself, you’re not supposed to admit it. I guess the idea is that if it really sucks then the auditors will be doubly embarrassed for you. So whenever I performed this piece, I always made up a name for “the play” it was from and a playwright!

Anyway, since today is Opening Day for baseball, I thought I’d share it with you. It’s all true. And it makes me smile.

GO CUBS!!!

My grandpa did all the things you’re not supposed to do. Ate bad food, drank more than was good for him, smoked two packs a day. When I was seventeen he paid the price.

No. He didn’t die. He had a stroke.

Sometimes I see it as a blessing. He was a man I could never get close to. Suddenly his towering figure hunched a little, he began to garden and do dishes. He never regained his speech. And his love for baseball became an obsession with the Cubs. We became friends over TV baseball, Harry Carray, and milkshakes I picked up on the drive over to his house.

He would watch every game on TV and the few words he could get out were all swear words which are the only words a true Cubby fan needs anyway. When he died eight years later my grandmother gave me his jacket, even though he had five sons and two daughters who might’ve liked to have it. There was still a pack of Wrigley Doublemint gum in the pocket. Pretty ironic since someday I’m gonna to wear it to Wrigley Field.

Every year I get his coat out and wear it around. Last year was our first year in Canada and I actually forgot, but today I wore it to The Village.

Early in April, not so very long ago (certainly not as long ago as I was born), a bouncy baby boy was born and he grew up to be a bouncy literary agent! Please join me in singing wishing my extremely nice, very efficient, smart, handsome, fabulous,caramel-loving, agent, Michael Bourret, a very, very, very

!!!!!

This British YA is quite funny, light reading. If you like Louise Rennison, you’ll like this too. It made me laugh quite a bit. Also, just because you think you know where it’s going doesn’t mean it actually is going there! And the best part about this fun book is that it’s a series. Already out in Britain, and hopefully here soon. I got the ARC in October, so hopefully by the time this posts and you’re reading, my editor will have sent me an ARC of the next one!