All right. I am back from another sojourn to baby, cat, and dog-land. As usual, when visiting my family, I turned into a passive, overfed slug. My light-speed life slows down to such a degree that I become almost completely catatonic, while simultaneously regressing to a state of junior-high-school-esque insecurity. In other words, I am *lots* of fun.

Then, of course, there is the whole flying part of the equation. This, as you know, is extremely treacherous. Especially, when, like today, due to some unspeakable snafu, I was forced to sit in a middle seat! The flight becomes 50% more dangerous when I cannot sit by the window, where I must vigilantly look outside at all times to ensure the flight is not plummeting to the Earth! I thought about informing my seatmate of this so she would trade with me, but she did not look as if she would welcome such a suggestion. In fact, she looked like she might cause a big, fat scene. So I took more Xanax and somehow managed to keep the flight aloft from my middle seat, though I tell you it was MUCH harder.

Meanwhile, that canned airplane air killed any creativity I might have so I will sign off. You might notice the comments are back, though I will now be moderating them. That is, I will only publish you if you're nice to me.

Xo
BB

It is always a great way to start the day being awakened by twenty men stomping across scaffolding right outside your windows destroying your walls with the loudest power tools known to man. It is especially delightful when the demolition party starts at 7 a.m. and you've been up until 3 a.m. the night before (and suriving on minimal sleep before that).

Oh, exhaustion doesn't really kick in until my first caffeine high has faded and I'm in my office spellchecking the most boring documents known to mankind. That's when the world becomes the dimmest shade of gray. When my self-confidences morphs into self-pity. When what appeared to be my rising star reveals itself as just a cheap neon sign at an abandoned motel on some stretch of sad and lonely highway. When my metaphors become ridiculous.

Last night was not my finest hour as a musical performer. Oh my friends all smiled and said I sounded great, but I practically fled the stage during the first set due to a panic attack. Me! Who gets up and sings karaoke at the drop of a hat for complete strangers. Who, as a youngster, played Chopin nocturnes, Beethoven bagatelles, and Mozart sonatas to largeish crowds for years with only one major flub-up (which we shall not discuss at this point in time). Who usually loves nothing more than to get up and regale adoring crowds with my wit and wisdom.

I don't think it was stage fright so much as just plain old panic due to 1)sleep deprivation and 2)stuff. I came in late on my first solo, completely effed up my second one, then screeched more than usual in my first song. My nerves calmed for the second set, luckily, or I would have had to resign the band right then and there, which would not be a good thing given that major label contract we just got offered!

Anyway. Moving on. Isn't it great when you see ex-boyfriends who, seemed, when you dated them to be emotionally unavailable and incapable of settling down, only to find out that immediately after you they found the love of their life who tamed their bad boy ways?

Yeah. Well this has never happened to me, but if it HAD, I would surmise this: whatever it takes to be a bad boy tamer, I don't have it. Making a general and very damaging extrapolation from that, which my therapist would never let me make, I will say this: whatever it takes to get someone to fall in love with me, I don't have it anymore.

Oh I have what it takes to get ten million admirers (and they seem to have multiplied this week) but love? I don't even know what it feels like anymore and I wonder if I ever will.

Says sleep deprivation.

xo
BB

Darlings,

You may have noticed that my comments are down. I’m not exactly sure why. All I got was an error message saying: “System overloaded with bitterness, pettiness, and catiness. Start paying the price of fame, yo. "

Wow! Who knew Haloscan possessed such functionality! No doubt when and if the comments re-open they will do so with the moderation feature enabled. I tell you – I’m not sure I’m cut out for this celebrity thing. While most of my readers are adoring (thank you!), there is a small but vocal contigency of bored, broken-down people who must not only use me as a punching bag but track my every move and the moves of my various beaux. “BB seen snorting coke in the back room of the Dubliner! Modeling contract with Dior cancelled!” “BB’s BoyToy #1 caught in the act with Paris Hilton – BB turns to Vince Vaughan for comfort!”

Good God, people, have you really nothing better to do? Tweeze your eyebrows? Procreate with your relatives? Besides, Vince and I are just friends. FRIENDS. Got that?

In other news, I have completed the slog through my copyedited novel and am about to send all eight million pages of it back. Can we believe it is done? CAN WE BELIEVE I HAVE FINALLY COMPLETED A NOVEL? Much as I complain about feeling blah, and bleh, and blue, I just have to say that about this I feel good. Real good. I feel light as a feather! This book is off my back! My baby is almost out in the world and I am now free to shackle myself with another!

In still further news, I am (sort-of) busy planning my great Patagonian escape. Of course, for me, “planning” usually entails telling everyone I know, “Hey I’m going to Patagonia!” then not reading my guidebook or making any plans until the very last second, but so it goes. In a few months I will lose myself among the windswept peaks and valleys of Torres del Paines National Park – often referred to in hushed tones by veteran world travelers as the “best” place they have ever been.

I am hoping that a magazine editor for say, Outside Magazine will hear that I am “planning” this trip, call me up, and say “BB – we want you to write a feature on your Patagonian adventure! Kind of a Carrie Bradshaw meets hot South American mountaineering guides – type thing!” But alas, even with my oh-so-minor celeb status, if I want any big-time editor to notice me, I am going to have to start cranking out query letters and coming up with actual ideas and for some reason, I am feeling a bit tapped. Not up to the task of cranking out query after query.

I think, however, that I am up to the task of buying shoes. Which I will proceed to do momentarily.

xo ,
BB

Let’s see. It’s Tuesday. I do not have much more to say than that. I wore a dorky outfit today, ate too much cake, had bad hair, got a big needle poked into my arm, and cannot see out my living room window because it is now covered in plastic wrap.

Not only is it covered in plastic wrap, I paid my condo association a whole lot of money for this plastic wrap and not only that, when I bought this place I knew I would have to pay a whole lot of money for plastic wrap that would obscure my view.

But never mind that. Let’s look on the bright side, shall we?

Umm.

Our debut gig went well. I have a novel coming out in a few months. I appear to have no horrible diseases – yet. My home may be shrink wrapped but it has not recently been hit by a hurricane, tsunami, earthquake or terrorist bomb.

I even – gasp! – have an idea for my next novel!

As for the blog, well, I’ll probably just keep it as it is.

But who cares right at the moment. The main thing is I get to go to bed soon and read a book and slough off the semi-lameness of the day in somebody else’s imaginary world.

Yes I know, the GLAMOR!

Darlings, I am abuzz with anxiety these days. Buzz, buzz, buzz! Book, buzz, boys, buzz, work, buzz, band buzz, what's next in my life now buzzzzzzz!

It's ridiculous, really. I should go back on the little pink pills or smoke a bowl or start going to Yoga again. I hardly breathe anymore. Or when I do, it's certainly not deep, cleansing breaths. We're talking short, hyperventilating little puffs!

But enough about me. Let's talk about me. I mean - you. We've all noticed how I don't dish about boys anymore because I'VE BECOME CELIBATE. But I do so like writing about boys that I was toying with the idea of making stuff up. Turning this into a sort of fictional blog where I could write about racy dating adventures to my heart's - and your's - content! Since you can't read about my "real" love life anymore, would you like reading about a made-up one? Just checking.

Someone suggested a while back that I turn the site into a dating advice column. I've toyed with that idea too. Not a bad one. I might yet do it at some point. Because clearly I have so much wisdom to share about healthy relationships and how to find one!

The bottom line is, this blog is the best marketing platform I have for my book. So tell me, aside from posting naughty pictures, what is the best way to get and keep new readers? What can I do to get you all whipped up into a buying frenzy?

In other news, the copyedit slog continues. Today's favorite edit from Miss Copyedititrice.

Sentence: "The phrase 'up-and-down' fails to do justice to my emotional state about as much as the word 'hot" does to Benicio del Toro's physical state."

Comment: "Author, Benicio isn't actually hot, he appears hot or or has an aura of hotness."

OK missy! Fine! From now on I'm not going to say "Dangerously Delightful Boy is hot," I'm going to say "DDB has an aura of hotness! Especially when he takes off his shirt. "

In still other news, I have recently reconnected with a delightful high-school friend of mine who is now a glamorous screenwriter in L.A. She is going to adapt BB the novel for the screen and we are both going to become rich and famous. At which point I can buzz with anxiety about a whole bunch of different stuff. Money, buzz. Swiss bank acccount buzz. Botox, buzz. Paparazzi, buzz buzz.

Buzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.

Oh poor me, I have been forced to drop my Nanowrimo novel to address the one-ton pile of paper that is the copyedited version my novel, "Breakup Babe." Oh, but if I could only get up a few hours earlier I might be able to do both but we have already established that nine hours of sleep is crucial to my well-being so sleep-deprivation is not an option!

If I ever thought I had copyediting skills (and I am an editor, remember) this copyeditor puts me to shame. I can see just see her now in her cramped Manhattan apartment, hip little glasses perched on the end of her pointy noise, addressing the less-than-brilliant-but-perfectly-functional-sentence: "My voice sounded high and quavery.": "Author: quavery means tremulous; wavery means to wave." Yeah OK fine. Whatever. Or this bit of overwrought prose. "But of course he died anyway, the bastard, without any parting words for me other than a gurgling death rattle." "Author: death rattles are gurgles." Right. Well I knew that - I was just testing you!

(Heh heh, bet you didn't know there were people dying with gurling death rattles in my book, DID YOU?)

Well it's been fun chatting with you for a few brief moments. But now it is time for me to go slither into my technical editor hole - the deep dark place where a little bit more of my bloom fades every day and there is no one to appreciate my shiny hair except tie-dye-clad developers.

Asta la vista.

Well I really should not be writing to you: I should be working on my Nanowrimo novel, but, can I just say – bleh! I’m a failure as a novelist! A one-hit wonder! Or rather, a one-idea wonder.

Let’s all hope my first novel goes bling-bling because it’s all downhill after that. The well will run dry, the pen will run out of ink, (insert other clichéd metaphor here) and I’ll end up a housewife in Bellevue with 3 kids, a minivan, and a serious Xanax addiction.

Oh. Wait a minute. I already have a Xanax addiction. (OK, not really. Just because I carry it with me everywhere I go doesn’t mean I’m addicted!) And a husband sounds awful nice right about now. A hot, sexy, intellectual husband who loves nothing more than to jet off on international adventures together yet doesn't mind supporting me while we’re home so I can keep writing my going-nowhere-novels in style and taking care of the three kids on my lunch break.

Wait – three kids – that’s too many. One kid – yeah, that’s pretty civilized. Easy enough to pack up in the carry-on bag when you jet off to Tahiti or wherever, along with your Valu-Pak of Xanax and your copy of "Breakup Babe" the novel!

In other news, I’ll get back to that Nanowrimo novel any minute now. I just have to say, thank you to Wyn for telling me I’m too cute “to be indoors and being a technical editor.” Hallelujah to that! If anyone has more suitable employment for me, please let me know. Meanwhile, I’ll slowly just wither and die in my windowless office.

I didn’t put my picture up just to get your compliments, by the way, though they are much appreciated! I just thought that now that you know who I am, and can find my damn picture on the Internet anyway, I might as well put up a good photo of me – one that involved a hair stylist, a makeup artist, and an expensive photographer, and the dewy youth that I still possessed back in May.

Plus, did you notice, I finally took down the original blurb that had been there for three and a half years?! The one that described as “broken-hearted?” Ha. Broken-hearted my a*s. I’m hard-hearted now!

Just kidding. My heart is cracked in a few places, that’s for sure. Maybe hardened in a corner here and there. But soft and sweet and ready to love the right person, should he ever come along, which is starting to look more and more dubious as time goes by, but never mind about that.

Back to the crap second novel.

There’s nothing like coming back from a trip where you felt like a kickass goddess to knock you down back where you belong.

First of all, there’s the jet lag, which makes you feel about as glamorous as an earthworm. Then there’s the windowless office, that ensures that your world shrinks back down from a sun-splashed, autumn-dappled east coast adventure, complete with skyscrapers, starstruck fans, and one-martini lunches to a backlog of boring, work-related e-mails.

There’s the first draft of your second novel, up to 5,000 words now, which is possibly the most boring, most trite, most clichéd thing ever written.

So one must live in the past. Ah yes, I remember so long ago, on Wednesday night…when I got to have a beer with the Kissing Slut! Now, whether I become a famous writer or I vanish into obscurity, it really doesn’t matter because all it takes is one person telling you how much they love your writing to make your entire writing career worthwhile. I felt like a celebrity, I tell you! Plus, she was a blast to hang out with. If you ever go to Boston, hook up with the Kissing Slut. She will show you a good time for sure.

Oh yeah, and then there was later Wednesday night when I got to go out for drinks with not one, but two cute Bostonian guys all by myself! Plus Wednesday and Thursday, which I spent wandering around Boston in the fall sunshine with my long-lost friend M, discovering things like the amazing Boston Public Library, charming Hanover Street, and chocolate-chip cannolis. Mmm.

Now, well. I’m certainly glad I survived my flights. That is a minor miracle. But it is pouring down rain outside and gray and cold* and I am now about to go park myself in traffic for God knows how many hours-on-end. Now I’m no longer a celebrity, just a girl who is tired and melancholy.

Welcome home!

*Ok, it's true. I actually like this kind of weather. I just put that there 'cause it sounded good.

Well, my darlings, my one foray into writing about Dangerously Delicious Boy or Dangerously Delightful Boy or Dangerously Dangerous Boy or whatever his name is– has so traumatized me that I think I shall stay away from it for a while. Like a little seedling that one nurtures indoors before putting it outside, this relationship needs to be protected from the elements for the time being– namely the proclamations and pronouncements of my oh-so-opinionated readers!

So let’s forget I ever mentioned him and move on to the news of the day: moi. I am enroute from New York City to Boston in a glorified bus called the LimoLiner, complete with food, movies, and Internet access. Slow Internet access, but whatever. I have spent the last few hours hard at work on what may or may not be my next novel, but whatever it is, it sure sucks! Nonetheless, it is National Novel Writing Month, which is all about writing a sucky novel in a very short amount of time.

I’ll be doing a podcast for “WrimoRadio" later in the month; stay tuned for the details and you’ll get to hear my perky voice reading inspirational words about how to write a sucky first draft and then sell it to a big-time publisher!

Speaking of books. Now, I know you are hardly going to be able to contain yourself at this news. BUT. You can now pre-order my book on Amazon.com. That’s right! I recommend you do it too, because if you do, I will make out with you. I’m going to go pre-order 10,000 copies right now myself.

Anyway, my meetings in New York went well. (All except the part where I had to take an elevator up 52 floors and found I had some previously undiscovered “issues” about elevators and skyscrapers). Everyone at Ballantine was friendly and enthusiastic and made me feel like a Relatively Important Person. I loved the lobby of the Random House Building, which was a shrine to all the books that have been published there, and lined nearly floor-to-ceiling with glassed-in bookshelves. Pretty soon I'll be one of those authors too, I thought to myself, and that, as you can imagine, was one of the best thoughts I could ever have.

In other news, during my limited time in New York, I also lunched with the delightful and beautiful TeaHouse Blossom, saw a couple college friends, checked out the Frick Collection, tried on a $500 hat in Bergdorf-Goodman (it looked really good on me too!), and totally forgot to eat a real New York bagel – doh!

I have a full day and a half left in Boston now so if you feel like telling me your favorite spots to go (including cool coffee shops to write in), hurry up and tell me already!

Love,
BB