I ran 10K

I decided back in January that I needed a fitness goal so I decided to do the Sun Run, a 10K fun run in Vancouver. There’s a program you follow and a group to run with and it sounded like a good idea. Then it rained. And rained. But, being a good girl with a goal, I kept running. Sloshing through puddles, panting, soaked, miserable. And then I got the flu and bronchitis and I had a busy travel schedule and somehow my running schedule went sadly askew. However, I did my best, kept running when I could and at some point revised my goal from running the whole damn thing to running and walking and just crossing the finish line.

And I did. And you know what? It was fabulous. Oh, don’t get me wrong, I doubt that I will ever experience the elusive runner’s high. Unless runner’s high is just another way of saying, “It feels so good when you stop!” But there is something about running with 54,000 people, and bands playing and a gorgeous day that’s inspiring. So I did it. I ran more than I thought I would, met some great people and decided that my goal for next year is to run the whole thing….

What am I saying. Next year?????

What do our books say about us?

I have a friend, Kate, who lives a very different life than I do. She’s happily single with an easy care lifestyle I admit I occasionally envy. But I turn bright, scary, scaly green when I walk into her apartment and see nothing but books. Books every where, books to drool over. Every single wall is lined with bookcases, every nook houses a few novels, I suspect her drawers are further repositories of her library. She has just enough furniture, great art on the walls, but the place is dominated by books. Mostly they are hardcovers or collector editions that have been read once. And her tastes are delightfully eclectic. Proust sites beside Plato, who nudges Dick Francis, who sidles up to Jane Austen who leans on Janet Evanovich. What I most love about Kate’s library of an apartment is that the books have no order (well, perhaps to her, they do, but it’s not a system any librarian would recognize.) Books by the same author are scattered all over. Mystery and religion and modern poetry share the same shelf. High brow hard covers and pot boiler paperbacks get the same real estate. It’s a bibliophile’s brothel. So, this week, Kate’s in New York for a writing conference and she gave me the keys to her place and told me to go, write, step into her world. It’s been my writing retreat, my reading retreat, my week to play in another woman’s space. There’s something very liberating about writing in a new atmosphere and the combined brilliance, wisdom and wit contained in those thousands of books just has to affect the atmosphere there.

I’m not sure if my writing this week has been more brilliant, but it’s nice to think that everyone from Socrates to Carl Hiassen shared my space today. Lucky me!

I wondered as I browsed, what our books say about us? Perhaps, the way a person’s clothes closet gives a sense of their personal style, so their bookshelves give a glimpse into their mental closet. Hmm. My best discovery was a Georgette Heyer book, Venetia, to which I had written the introduction. I never got my author copies so it was fun to see the book for the first time in someone else’s house.

Oh, and my guilty secret is that an early Hiaasen I had never read decided it had to come home with me. I’ll have it read and returned before she gets back. Oddly, the Socrates didn’t have the same pull, which obviously says something about me!

When the going gets tough…

Sometimes, all you can do is pack your bags and head for the sunshine. After seven fun filled days and nights of noisy fans and damp, dusty air blowing through the house, me and my bronchitis had had enough. Wednesday I booked a flight to Mexico and Sunday we headed for the Yucatan. What bliss! The roaring sound was not that of dehumidifyers and industrial driers, but of ocean swells and Caribbean breezes. Instead of having workmen appearing and disappearing at odd times, it was iguanas showing up in my path. I love iguanas.

We snorkeled — is it me or is that reef not in good shape?? Very worrying — and toured Mayan ruins and hung out in the sunshine. Best of all I came home to quiet. The driers are off. Happy day! Even my cough is mostly gone.

I need quiet to work. I am not one of those people who choose music to write to, or can shut out distractions, so it’s really good to have the quiet back. At least for now!

There’s another Nancy in my life!

There’s another Nancy in my life.
Actually, there are a couple of special Nancys in my life right now. There’s Nancy Warren who writes to me when ‘our’ name is out there, and who, I think, was never a romance fan until she discovered her alter-ego. She’s in banking and helped me research Breathless, where the heroine is a banker. It was a very surreal moment when I thanked The other Nancy Warren in my acknowledgements.

But my current favorite Nancy is the woman who is in charge of putting my poor, flooded downstairs back together. She is unfailingly cheerful and always makes me feel calm and happy — which — well, the calm part anyway, is an incredible feat. I’ve watched half my belongings go off in a truck to some storage warehouse, and sodden dripping floors be ripped and tossed, and then it turns out there’s asbestos down there!!! But no, it’s fine. Really, they’ll bring in the special hazardous materials team and it will be gone in a day. And if Nancy says it will be gone in a day, it will. I love her! She doesn’t know this yet, but I’m thinking of writing a heroine who is a restoration specialist. Imagine the possibilities….

Nancy

And then my water tank blew up!

Then life gets in the way!
Current mood: drained
Category: Life

So I had so many good intentions to keep updates going on the Daytona trip and I got home and my water tank committed suicide. Very. Messy. Suicide by drowning. I had no idea that thirty gallons of water could do so much damage in just a few hours (of course, the thing blew in the middle of the night). Now it sounds like I’m living inside a vaccuum cleaner. There’s a constant roar of dryers and dehumidifyers. All the floors had to be pulled up downstairs. Walls are wet. Books are wet. And I have a lot of books. Furniture is ruined. You know what’s wierd? How little any of that stuff matters. Except for some of the Christmas ornaments that were too soggy to save and over which I found myself getting sentimental. And the books. I’m a writer. Books are like friends. However, luckily most of those are okay, and the ones that aren’t can all be replaced. They tell us it will take two months until we’ll get our downstairs back. I think I can cope just as soon as the blowers get turned off!

Fox news read a bit out of Speed Dating at yesterday’s race. So that was my cool news. And believe me, I needed some after squelching through Lake Warren, formerly known as my downstairs.

Posting from Daytona

So, I’m off to Daytona for the Daytona 500 and the official launch of my book Speed Dating and the NASCAR/Harlequin series of romances.

I’m planning to continue blogging while in Daytona because I suspect there are going to be a lot of fun and amazing goings on.

The highlight, of course, will be the speed dating event Friday with NASCAR driver Carl Edwards taking part. I’m taking my digital camera so if I can figure out how to post photos, I will.

Stay tuned.

Nancy

Runner’s High? A sick joke?

So, I posted over on MySpace about this running program I’ve been doing to train for a 10k ‘fun’ run. Oh, puh-lease. I know running’s good for me, it’s a fast way to fitness, you put on some decent running shoes, some high-tech wicking fabric shirt and lycra running pants that should be outlawed on aesthetic grounds, and off you plod. I’m doing a program where you run a few minutes and walk a few minutes and the running part increases while the walking part decreases. I have never known minutes could be so long as those running minutes are. And then these perky training leaders hold out the prospect of the runner’s high.

I’ve got a sneaking suspicion that runner’s high is a sick joke perpetrated by runners in the notion that misery loves company. However, I recently heard from fellow author (and runner, so take this with a sack of salt) Loreth Anne White that she is a runner’s high addict, and it does in fact exist. She sent me to this web page. Runner Scott Dunlap says for him the runner’s high hits around mile 8 (!!!) “It’s a mental state of relaxation partnered with a mild pain cessation that occurs after 60-90 minutes of steady exercise. I find it truly euphoric, setting me in a state of eternal optimism that can last hours after a run. It’s not exactly a “drunk” effect … I would equate it to two Red Bulls and vodka, three ibuprofen, plus a $50 winning Lotto ticket in your pocket.”

If I ever get there, believe me, I’ll post about it. In the meantime, I plod along, trying to remember that this is good for me. The closest I get to a runner’s high is the feeling of how good it feels when I stop!

Romancing Daytona

It’s a very exciting week as I finalize the details for my trip to Daytona next week and the launch of Speed Dating and the official NASCAR/Harlequin series. You know, as authors, our lives aren’t very glamorous. There’s a lot of sitting around staring at computer screens, trying to lure the muse with creativity-inducing aromatherapy, and then giving up and eating junk food. Then once in a while something really fun and exciting happens. Like spending a week at Daytona with racing fans and romance fans — and who knew there were so many women who are both? What’s fun for me is that the book is long written and out of my hands. Seeing it go out into the world and into the hands of readers is the fun part. I’m looking forward to Daytona enormously, not least because I’ve got the power of 3M behind me. That would be Marsha, Melissa and Michelle. Marsha Zinberg, the brilliant editor of Speed Dating, Melissa Gawalko in Harlequin Marketing and Michelle Renaud in Harlequin PR who make these trips so fun, stress free (for me) and successful. I’m a big fan of Harlequin. They publish wonderful romance and women’s fiction and they treat their authors with respect. It’s a great combination. It was their idea to have Carl Edwards, driver of the 99 car, make a cameo appearance in Speed Dating, I believe it’s the first time a celebrity has appeared in a Harlequin. Then they thought it would be a fun to have an actual speed dating event in Daytona. And it will be! Carl Edwards is even going to do a few rounds of dating. Speed Dating is one of four Harlequin novels officially licensed by NASCAR that are out this month, including books by Gina Wilkins, Roxanne St. Claire and Debra Webb. Twenty novels will appear in 2007 in the series.

To find out all the details and view the official press release about the series launch, please see my website: www.nancywarren.net

Welcome to my new blog!

I hope you’ll come to visit me often, because I have lots to write about these days!