Me preparing for one of my roles in last year’s Chicago Bar Association musical revue.

Today started taking my replacement to meet clients…I’m glad she’ll be taking over but there’s a twinge of ‘end of a life chapter’, ‘they will go on without you’ even ‘they don’t need you anymore’….But I’m ready to apply all my energy to my gainful unemployment….

Today I’m working on a workshop proposal for the Romance Writers of America national conference next summer. Jennifer Greene, who has written more than 60 books, wants to do a workshop with me! We met Oct 2004 when we sat next to each other at a local conference lunch. Then I interviewed her for my article about getting the most from RWA chapters (Romance Writers Report, Sept. 2005) and we happened to sit near each other on flights to Reno for this year’s national conference. Off to create a compelling outline so our workshop will get picked (tho with her as my speaking partner, chances are very good).

So I decide today’s the day to set up my web site. Aargh. I chose a template, but couldn’t for the life of me figure out 1) how to change the titles of the buttons. IE, one says “About Us.” There HAS to be a way to change the thing to About Me. And then I tried to upload my picture but the resolution or whatever must have been too high because it took up the whole page and I couldn’t change THAT. At least I could figure out how to do this!

On Friday my manager and her manager took me to a nice lunch at one of my favorite “let’s do lunch” restaurants, Rhapsody, to hear some of the reasons why I’m leaving. And after work was my going away “happy hour”…in the wonderful setting of Millenium Park at an outdoor restaurant/bar just beneath the Cloud Gate sculpture, AKA the Bean. I will definitely miss the people, but not the frustrations. Next week I start training my replacement.

My first event on my first business day of freedom will be a 2-4 hour wardrobe fitting for the Clint Eastwood WW II movie, Flags of our Fathers!!! And I think I’m now booked for three days/nights, up from the original 2 of the 8 days they will be shooting here.

Today I emailed the required excerpts/summaries for the AT II contest to Romantic Times magazine : a 100 word bio, first line of the book, 75 words each to describe the hero and heroine (try to describe yourself in 75 or 100 words, it is harder than it seems!), 250 word summary of the entire book, 300 word dialogue scene and 400 word love/romantic scene.

14 more working days until I’m officially unemployed…

Hello, and welcome to my blog! I’ve created this to relate the adventures of life after quitting my corporate job to pursue my passions, writing and acting, full time.

On Sept. 12th, management announced my impending departure. Since then, three fabulous things happened:

1) My medieval romance FOLLOW YOUR HEART is one of 10 finalists in the Dorchester Publishing/Romantic Times national contest, American Title II. Similar to American Idol, the two finalists with the fewest online votes each month will lose their chance to win a publishing contract. Snippets of our manuscripts will appear in RT starting in January!!!!

2) A literary agent, to whom I’d sent the first three chapters of FYH in August, asked to see the full manuscript.

3) I got booked to be an extra for two days on Flags of our Fathers, a WWII Clint Eastwood directed movie.

Coincidence, or confirmation that I’ve made the right decision?