Jax's Artistic Journey...

Lately I've noticed my mind drifting away as I'm in mid-thought, mid-sentence. Sometimes it's when my friends and hubby are speaking, or I'm just sitting in front of the computer in my home office and completely zone out...something takes over me and everything is out of focus. I float away into a cloud of nothingness. It's not even that my mind wanders to unchartered territory... it's just missing. I think of nothing, feel nothing, see nothing. It's been happening a lot lately. Rather bizarre if you ask me. I wonder if it's ADD? Perhaps. Or maybe it's a psychological withdrawal. Hummmmm... I know I need a vacation now.

So I've been behind on several things: book reviews, web updates, and housework. Thank goodness my hubby is a neat freak and takes care of majority of the chores, but I feel guilty and I want to help him out. I just end up working so late that I never have enough time. Is it possible to freeze time? I swear one day easily turns into a month and everything becomes a complete blur. No one ever told me after I hit 21 the days would fly by at warp speed. If I had known I'd refused to grow old.

It's only Monday and I am mentally counting down the days until Friday. It's a routine for me now. Anyways, the other night I was IM-ing a friend of mine and I had this great big epiphany. I'm such a workaholic I don't really stop to have fun. Sure, I do fun things once in a while, but for the most part I'm always working. As does my friend. I'm telling him to go out and enjoy life and I'm in the same shoes he's in. What an eye-opener. Did it change me much.. just a tad bit. Not enough to make me quit working, just enough to stop and think a little.

Oh well, time to go back to work... it's an endless cycle.

Got my e-tix yesterday and I'm stoked about going to St. Louis for the Romantic Times Convention. This is my first year and I'm estatic. Don't know what I'll be taking along... mostly suits, I guess, just in case there's editor/agent schmoozing opportunities. It's not everyday I get to attend one of these things so it's sort of my vacation away from work. Well, I'll be arriving Friday evening and then stay thru Sunday. Doesn't seem like a lot of time being spent there, but I'm grateful to be going all the same. Especially representing the Romantic Times and Romance Divas.

I don't know what to expect, but it seems like a lot of fun dress up opportunities with the masquerade balls and so on. I'd have to say it's a pleasant treat after so much zaniness in my life. Where will life lead me tomorrow.. who knows, but I'm having fun bouncing through life.

It appears as if my site will go offline and the forum will be unavailable until the weekend. There's been a lot of discussion on re-structuring and we have decided that it would be best to have time to re-construct the forum adequately before launching. We want this to be the very last time anyone has to register. With people in the boards it is difficult to do these changes. The website will be down for a few hours and will be available for live chats on Monday the 18th for those who I have created profiles for.

I want to do things right and unfortunately I have to take drastic measures or I'll have to be concerned in the long run. Better to nip the thing earlier rather than later when I get thousands of members. I've learned a valuable lesson from all this and it's that I should pace myself instead of burning out. My health is important and although I know many people rely on me, I must learn to do it at my own pace...

As I struggle to get my beloved site fixed, hustling and bustling at my day job, tinkering with my website projects and juggling odds and ends -- maybe try to get my life under control... I ended up at the back end of one of the Gods trickeries.

Went in to work, sick as hell, and my boss told me to go to the doctor after much resistence. I guess all the hacking and coughing did it--er it could be that my throat sounds like a dead frog permanently resides in it. I waited almost two hours as I was shuffled from one waiting room to the next, then finally I got into the little mismatched pastel room with flowery borders, ugly tiled floors of darker pastels, as well as hazard cans and gaudy fliers.. and waited some more. Needless to say, the doc was really a nice guy. He told me that I had a cold, sinus and ear infection. Just the beginning stages of an ear infection and then he gave me some doctorly advice before telling me if my jaw and chin locks up and puss builds up in my inner ear or if the tonsil area looks lopsided to go to the ER. What kind of confirmation of getting better is that? So I took my prescriptions and adios-ed. Now I'm home and what is the first thing I do? Jump into my pj's and surf the web, work on projects, call my programmer to give him a friendly "hi, I'm the cool boss and I need your help for free". I know I should be resting, but I feel like I waste time when I sleep, so I opted to go blog.

Is my life fun-filled and action-packed? You better believe it. I need a nap, but it would cut into my workaholic time and I need to do that. I'll pop some pills, squirt some chloraseptic spray, and down some Robitussin DM and I'll be good to go.

Hummmm... what else can I do.....

It's amazing how a person can continually push themselves until they drop from exhaustion, but I must fall into a whole other categoray all together. I'm just a glutton for punishment.. Well, I tend to scrape myself off the floor, sigh a little and crawl my way to the infinite abyss called work.

Today I hit my max because I feel like I've been hit in the head with a crowbar. My sinuses are going haywire, the cough has become a major breathing obstacle, and my brain's on strike. Of course, I managed to acquire more graphic design work... good for income, bad for my social life.. er lack of it. Tonight I'm going to see a band called Angeles Drake at the Viper Room. Their single was played on Joan of Arcadia two weeks ago and they're good. It so happens they're friends of my friend and hence the connection. I'm excited about going, but everytime there's something fun I tend to get sick or stuck in a miserable situation that needs resolving. This time I say to heck with it and I'm just gonna go. Granted I'll regret it tomorrow when my headache will feel like my head was used for a bongo drum.

C'est la vie, such is life... do I learn from these lessons to relax or drop at 40? One thing's for sure, I'm going to get a living Will. Lately I've been sorting finances, organizing my investments and hoping I'll get a 2 book deal, land an agent, and take off for Bora Bora so I could sip on my Pina Colada. Ah, what I would give for a full day's rest.

Who would have thunk an itty bitty site like ours would, in five months, overload our server space. As it appears, we had 2 million hits a month with 300,000 hits only 7 days into April. Our web hosting provider pulled the plug and we were faced with a dilemma we hadn't forseen.

We barely had a chance to reach our members to tell them the status of our site before they had to shut us down for a second time due to crashing too many sites that occupied the same server space.

As it appears, it may have been a blessing in disguise for we have found a new provider that would meet our needs and we're in the process of getting Romance Divas back up and running again by Monday evening at the latest. We are eternally grateful for all those members who have believed in us and our vision-- who made it possible for us to upgrade to something new, something better through your donations and support.

In essence, this is our THANK YOU for sticking by us and we hope you'll hang in there while we move to our new home.

We'll see ya at the forum!

:: Not so long ago I lived a humble existence as a struggling artist doing cityscapes for art shows trying to make my mark on the world...knowing that most artists succeed only after some profound tragedy -- but I definitely didn't want to be considered among those who had to either cut off their ear or become a raging alcoholic to get recognition. I opted to go a different route which was to dump thousands of dollars into computer equipment to design websites and work as a freelance graphic artist. Of course, the luster of overachieving took its toll with long hours, no sleep, no social life. I did the only thing a sane person would do, I sought solace in writing romance. Not! Although, I still love every moment of the tortures of writing.

Backstory :: A friend of mine had re-introduced me to reading these wonderful stories of love, adventure, magnificent alpha male Scottish and Irishmen.. and I was hooked...again. Now Kelly and my business partner Kristen are both Golden Heart Finalists!

The Path to Revelation :: Several years ago I had toiled with the idea of writing a story about an immortal demi-goddess and that's when my ethnicity came into play. I love asian mythology and as a child my mother use to tell me many legends and fairytales that have stayed with me over the years and I wanted to incorporate them. Okay, I knew it was risky because who really wants to read about Chinese mythology or a main heroine who is Asian. Not until "Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon" came out that I realized I could be wrong. So, when the opportunity to pursue romance writing hit me, I just transitioned the fiction elements to romance fiction and took off with it.

The Writing Path :: It took me two weeks to write the first half of Ghosthunter -- and the second half took four months! Why? I decided I needed to take a small break to research. So during this time I joined the RWA and its local chapter, Los Angeles Romance Authors. Soon I took over as Treasurer when the gal moved and then was officially elected for a full term. Finally, during my online searches I found my way to a romance writer's forum to try to meet other authors to learn and pick up writing tips. Improve my writing. That's where I met my dear friend Kristen who became my critique partner.

The Path to Romance Divas :: Kristen and I are the co-founders of Romance Divas, an online romance writer's resource website and forum. We bonded quickly from meeting via another forum and soon after we realized that particular forum wasn't for us. We brainstormed for a few months and then just did it. We created Romance Divas which encompassed elements of who we are and what we wanted to achieve. It would be fun, supportive, a great learning tool and we would be giving back to the writing community. So voila, we have made this part of our dream happen! Since November 2004 we have won two web awards and had excellent write ups as well as being recognized as one of "101 Best Web Sites" by Writer's Digest. It's a remarkable feeling of floating in the clouds and we're extremely proud of it and we have grown to love all our Diva members.

Back to Ghosthunters, I was in the polishing stages when Kristen had the bright idea of having me send out partials. She went to the trouble of emailing me contact informatin for editors, publishers, and agents... so I gave in and sent out five partials not expecting a reponse, mind you. A week later my husband decided to get the mail on a Sunday evening... what should I get??? A response from Anna Genoese of Tor! She had sent a reply letter with a request for a full manuscript in the SASE I provided. How cool was that? Someone was interested after reading my query, synopsis and first 3 chapters. I was so excited I tried to finish my polish right away and then my illness re-surfaced. I've had Fibryomyalgia since 2000 and was improving until this point, the most crucial time in my life... so the polish took much longer than I wanted. Finally, I sucked it in and sent it out to Anna who is currently looking at Ghosthunter. Am I petrified? Certainly, but I keep pushing on. I need to push on or I'd flatline.

The Adventurous Path :: Back to the drawing board I go and now I'm doing a zillion things at once. Okay, I'm sure most wonder how the heck I got wrapped into the whole Mr. Romance thing. It's simple. I met Kathryn Falk the founder of Romantic Times back in November when I emailed her regarding attending a charity function which had something to do with the romance industry. It didn't hit me that it was a reality show until I came to the event.. boy did I feel awkward. So after the event I continued to corresponded with Kathryn and then she arrived in LA to be a judge on the show for the Mr. Romance Pageant. I got to spend some time with her and found out what a wonderful person she was and looked to her as a mentor. Shortly before the show aired on Oxygen, Kathryn emailed me and one thing led to another and I winded up working for Romantic Times... now I work directly with the men of Mr. Romance. It was a total blur and I couldn't give you all the details of what led to this path.

The Current Predicament :: I spend a lot of time maintaining and running the Romance Divas site, I write when I can and I hang out with some of the cast members of Mr. Romance. How did this happen? How did my humble existence as a tortured and starving artist turn into a world of utter excitement and fun? I ask myself that every day and I'm thankful to be at point B in my life. There will be many more points in my life to come....