Visiting the “Draft” file…

I spent a good part of Monday afternoon reading through the 123 (no exaggeration!) blog posts I’ve drafted but haven’t published. Some turned out to be great stories that I’ll publish with a word of warning that the content came from the draft file. Then there were several wonderful titles that got me super excited to read what in the world I’d blogged about, only to open the post and see nothing, or just a few words or sentences. So, because misery loves company, I’m going to share some of these titles with you all so you can all be like me and wonder “where was that going?!”.

• Yard Sales vs. Rose Gordon (The only line in the post said: Yard sales for the win!)
• Backhanded Compliments (The only line in this post read: No matter who you are, we’ve all received one of these little jewels…)
• Let it Go! (Not the song)
• My Favorite Things (Yes, because you ALL have been waiting with bated breath for what I love. As if I’m Oprah. Good grief.)
• In My Former Life (Actually, this one has a LOT of content. I write it when I was 27–I’m now 31–but I might post this one one day when I’m scraping the bottom of the barrel.)
• From the Marshmallow Man to a Beast! What’s a mother to do?! (This was from two years ago when my son started wrestling at school and got his butt handed to him. That didn’t last too long. 😉 )
• Candid, Blunt and…well, perhaps a little TMI
• Didja Know #10 the definition of a Nincompoop
• Wicked Wednesday!
• Didja Know Facts about Humans (Contrary to the cute kid in Jerry McGuire, the human head weighs approximate 12 pounds.)
• The Truth about Passions of a Gentleman (Ooooh, so many things this post could have contained, but probably didn’t.)
• Wanna be my friend? Probably not.
• Looking into 2015
• Sometimes I wonder…
• A Day in the Life: Humble Pie (I dearly wish I’d written something–ANYTHING on this page to know what I was talking about because I am quite certain that since the date I wrote that heading I’ve eaten a lot more humble pie.)
• Ten Year Reunion?
• Unspoken, but not unimportant, rules among authors
• End-of-Year questions for teachers and moms (final plea as homeroom mom). This was the year an alien had inhabited my body and told the teacher I’d be delighted to be the homeroom mom for a gaggle of kindergarteners. 
• Research
• RT Anyone?
• Kids + Outside = Resistance, “no fun”, and a tinge of whining! Why, oh why?
• Awkward confession…totally off topic.
• Seeking suggestions.
• I need help… (yes, yes I did and still do!)
• A writer’s confessional
• A writer’s biggest reward
• Let’s talk spam, and I don’t mean food.
• No title
• Advice on friends from Edward Banks
• Poor Bob
• A candid discussion and a few revelations
• Come laugh at me!
• Authors are human, too. At least this one.
• Writerly Woes
• Oh. My.
• Scandalized. (Another Florida escapade.)
• An Impromptu poll (AKA I need help again.)
• Inside joke for those who’ve read Intentions of the Earl (I’d love to share with you all where I was going with this, but alas, the contents were blank.)
• Oh help us all…I’ve been asked to act as host.
• Drawing lines–Warning Touchy Subject
• It’s tough being a writer… (So tough, I seemed to have given up on this topic after writing the title.)
• In regards to my books, please note:
• Guilty pleasures
• A hot date
• 10 things you probably don’t know about me (Seeing as how I only got to #5, I’m going to take that as a hint that I’m pretty dang boring.)
• Hard lesson: old manuscript copies do not make suitable scrap paper.
• Not a fairytale wedding
• Do romance novelists have a more stellar romantic life than everyone else? (I can answer that without a post: no.)
• Ever wish the ground would open up and swallow you whole?
• Honest chat
• Perceptions
• Men can be such babies
• Henry and June, Part 2
• Right on!
• Unconventional
• Where did you come up with THAT?!

 

There were many other fully written blog posts that might require a little polishing and posting. Turns out I blogged more than I originally thought I had. 😀

 

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Long time, no blog

For those of you who don’t know (or remember me :-p ) my name is Rose Gordon and once upon a time I wrote historical romance–mostly Regency-era.

Here’s a few visuals…

Me at RT in Chicago 5 *gulp* years ago.

 

 

And when I wasn’t slaving away to write about unsuspecting fellows and their over-scandalous counterparts, I was on here blogging about nonsense like…

Jezzie–the mannequin head my family and I pass around.

 

(The time I fell through the attic on Thanksgiving.)

 

(Crazy stuff I’ve found–and maybe bought…–at the fair or craft mall.)

I also shared on here about my failed attempts at crafts:

Held crazy votes:

 

Or shared stories about my kids:

(100 “signed by author” stickers, plus autograph for 100th day of school; and my kids fighting over a stuffed enema…)

So many of you supported me when I raised $10,000 for MS and looked like an idiot while doing it!

On the bike for the first, but certainly not last, time for the weekend. (Picture blurry to protect the guilty…as well as the innocent.)

Let me share some seriously scandalous “swag” I’ve picked up at different conventions:

 

I had so much fun writing over 600 blog posts whether they were stories about the craziness in which I live, a man’s POV of my books, hosting contests and so much more. I have missed out on so much by not posting very consistently for the past three years. A fact I wish I could change–but some things aren’t things you post. Or at least not things *I* could ever post.

Many don’t know that about 3.5 years ago my world tilted on its axis when the happily-ever-after I believed I was living fell apart. I have gone through fire after fire since and in my own opinion, I think I’ve emerged a much different, and perhaps stronger person.

Am I ready to write romance novels again? No. Maybe one day, but not today.

Am I ready to start blogging about the craziness that I now face with boys who are 10 and 12 and have entered into their first year in public school? Oh, absolutely. (Funny sidetrack: on Halloween my kids left for the school bus 10 minutes earlier than they needed to. Why? Because they could and I was in the shower and couldn’t tell them, “Oh, hell no.” When I got out of the shower, I noticed I had received about 5 texts from my kids. “Mom, we’ve been down here for 5 minutes and haven’t seen a single bus. I don’t think they’re having school today. You know, Halloween is a holiday.” Oh, my poor kids who’ve always been in a church school or heaven help me homeschooled for an overwhelming year. I wrote back: “Wait for the bus. You left 10 minutes early. The bus doesn’t even get there until 7:40 and you usually leave at 7:30. Writing me at 7:25 to tell me you haven’t seen the bus and you think there’s no school in observance of Halloween will be posted to Facebook if you two argue when you get home tonight. 😀 Love ya!”)

So, if you’re up to following my blog to follow more about me and my shenanigans, my crazy parenting, unusual finds, ridiculous signs, craft fails, wild tales and other craziness where truth is stranger than fiction, than please stay tuned and subscribed. (After all, it IS called Rose Unscripted.)

If you followed my blog as a means to keep up with my writing progress and being informed of new books only, I will by no means be disappointed if you’d like to unsubscribe.

Again, I want to thank you all. Whether you’ve been a follower since I started blogging in Feb. 2011 or have subscribed recently, it doesn’t matter, I just appreciate that you’ve enjoyed my work enough to sign up!

My hat is off to two people who don’t even exist!

I have to admit, I am AWFUL when it comes to some of the skills and traits I give my fictional characters. Except maybe Emma, while my husband can fly fish as good or better than Paul and Marcus, I’m about as hopeless at it as poor Emma who tries but heaven help her, she just can’t. But some of the others, well, I’ve graciously given them the skills I wish I had. Two that come to mind right off are Madison and Juliet. For the truth is, I cannot paint worth crapola. And last night only proved it.

About two weeks ago I passed a store while navigating an unchartered part of the city for me. The store was called Pinot’s Palette. Intrigued, when I got home, I googled it and thought. “Oh, that would be fun.”

And don’t get me wrong, it was, but I am NOT an artist, and for your entertaining pleasure, I have included some pictures of my first public attempt at painting…

The object was to paint a schooner–the name of the wagon pioneers used. Here’s how it is supposed to look:

First, she said to paint a straight line across the bottom third of the canvas:

Then she gave us very good directions about drawing lines to make the “box” part of the wagon and the scallops along the top. I didn’t think it could even be possible to mess this up, but…

 

It was passable, and actually what I’d consider fair, until I got the to last “scallop” then oops… I think I’d made them too close together, thus resulting in having to make the last one giagantic in order to reach the back edge.

Then we were told to fill in the background red. Which was perfect, I thought, I can cover up and “re-construct” my scallops. So I did…

 

The problem is that I had to paint down in order to fix the scallops, and when I did this ingenious maneuver, it shrank the size of the canopy (duh!) and suddenly it was too small in comparison to the wooden bottom, leading me to have to paint lines lower to show the edge of the box. (Later, and I don’t have a good picture of it, trying to paint the canopy in a way that would hide the horizontal red line going through it was a bear!).

Then as you can see, we did the ground.

At this point, I looked at what I had, then turned to my friend, who is so comfortable as she paints that she’s eating a sugar cookie, and said, “This is an awful disaster. I can only imagine what the finished product will be like.”

Sweet friend that she is, she looked at my painting, shrugged and said, “Don’t worry, you’re more a Brooke.”

“A Brooke?” What in the world?

“Yeah, wasn’t it her who claimed to have painted those atrocious paintings in the drawing room?”

Oh my lands. I knew it was looking bad, but not THAT bad!

Next came filling the canopy, which was another disaster because I somehow managed to drag the paint over the top edge of the canopy and onto the red…

So I tried to fix it by redefining the red outline…and added the wheels.

 

With now such a lovely outline along the top of the schooner, I knew when we did the final touches to the background I’d have to blend that into the rest or I’d never live down such a mess.

 

We were told to mix a bit of black and a lot of red to make “plum” to do the corners of the red and as you can see mine came out black. I guess there were tornadoes in the area that day. Otherwise, I can’t explain it.

Though I cannot paint worth beans, I had a great time and I’d strongly recommend that if any of you have anything like this available to go do where you’re at, go do it. Even if it’s just once, it’s definitely an experience to have. I never knew I wanted a pioneer schooner hanging in my living room, but now I have one, and I must say, I’m starting to like it even if I’ll have to stash it in the closet whenever company comes to visit.