Crystal Jordan :: Blog

They’ve been testing the fire and earthquake drills in the library for the last 20 minutes. Which basically means they have the alarms blaring, and then they change the sound to something different and equally obnoxious.

They can’t do this after hours? I need to stab my eardrums just for the peace and quiet. Really, how am I supposed to prep for my meetings this afternoon? Gaaaaaaah!

I’ve got nothing much to say this week. I’m working at the library and we had our big faculty retreat this week, which just meant a super-duper holy-Jesus long meeting. No fun in Whoville.

I’m also working steadily on deadlines for my new books. I sent out some new novellas to Samhain, so there should be more details about that coming soon. And, the biggest news I have this week is that I changed agents and have signed with Roberta Brown of Brown Literary Agency.

That’s about it. School’s out for summer at the university, so the library is quiet and unexciting.

This bit of hilarity brought to you by the Mad Madam M.

Can’t. Stop. Laughing.

Yeah, yeah…I know the conference was over a week ago. I’m slow, what can I say? However, I give you the awesomeness that is the romance scholars at the Poplar Culture Conference. I went and got my scholar on for a few days and since I am never without my camera (hey, you never know when a Kodak Moment will pop up. Best to be prepared) there were of course many pictures.

The first night of PCA was just the small-ish group of us that have been getting together for a few years. So I went around the table and took pics. First up, (going left to right on all the pics) we have Angela Toscano and An Goris, two fabulously smart and funny women.

Then we have Eric Selinger, Jessica Miller, and Jayashree Kamble. Jessica reviews books and is all about ethics. She rocks. Eric and Jayashree presented the next day on Bollywood. They kicked off the awesomeness that was our Romance Area this year. They set the bar high…woot!

Then there’s Jayashree’s friend and I feel terrible that I’ve forgotten her name. Next to her is Tessa Kostelc, who studies food culture and applies it to Nora Roberts’s books. She’s all kinds of delightful. I wish you could all meet her. Then comes Angela’s mom, Margaret. And finally we have Sarah Frantz, Eric’s critique partner in crime. She was one of the ringleaders of the romance scholars this year, so kudos to her for a job well done!

Of course, I took a trip to the arch. Because I was in St. Louis. Duh. Didn’t this pic turn out cool, though? I loved it!

Sela Carsen drove a bunch of us over to the arch. I miss her already!

There were a bunch more pics, but I don’t want to overload everyone. Sabrina Darby presented there with her sister, and they were super sweet! Jeannie Lin and Amanda Berry also came and presented on a panel with Sela and me, but alas, I forgot to get a group shot of just us. Blonde moments, I has them. Overall, it was a great conference and a fun trip. Glad to be home though and gearing up for RT!

Copy edits have landed on my doorstep for my November book, Primal Heat. I forgot how long and intense this book is. Time to strap in an get it done, but it’s going to take a few days. Then I’m heading out of town for a conference, where I will also get to see my grandparents and M’s parents. I love getting visitation time in when I have to travel for work. Makes it all shiny and awesome.

Anywho, all that means it’s going to be quiet on the blog until I resurface on Sunday.

Something to keep you entertained while I’m away!

Not much going on today, really. Working on a story for Samhain, another for Kensington, but more focused on getting some conference presentations squared away. The scholarly writing goes so much more slowly than the creative writing. It’s a totally different process. No wonder textbooks can take years and years to write and I can finish a novel in six months.

I’m packing up for one of the conferences this weekend. I have my To Do list together, because if something isn’t on The List, it doesn’t get done. My brain is on a little piece of paper. I think it fell out in grad school and landed on the colored sticky notepad I had back then. Now I need a sticky note to think. Or something. It sounded better in my head.

Anyhoo, heading out at the crack of dawn on Wednesday of next week, and can’t wait to see all my scholar peeps. I can pretend I’m smart and stuff. But, you know, I’ll bring my sticky notes with me, just in case.

Also a few weeks ago, I went out to lunch at an interesting little place near the university with some fellow librarians. It was nice enough to eat outside, and the cherry blossoms rained down on us in force.

The restaurant we ate at had a Jolly Box.

No, seriously. Check out the sign on the box.

Sadly, there was only coffee creamer and packets of sugar inside. False advertising!

Then, we wandered over to a quick mart and low and behold, proof that we were near a college campus!

Yes, they now sell ready made beer pong. Whodathunkit?

My partners in crime, the Prairie Debutante on the left, who can charm people out of the deepest funk and make them play nice together, which is a scary superpower to have, and Dr. Revolution on the right, for when you absolutely, positively must overthrow someone. Accept no substitute. It’s the artfully knotted scarf that gives her away. Always be wary of people in scarves!

I downloaded a bunch of pics off my camera the other day, so I thought I’d post them for you.

First, I don’t think I posted the pic of when Diana Pharaoh Francis and I went on our book signing marathon on Christmas Eve.

Then a few weeks ago, I came to work to find the library on fire. Or at least there was a smoking outlet on the 7th or 8th floor. It meant chilling outside in the cold for an hour or three waiting for them to okay the building. We went and got coffee, but first we admired the firemen. And their trucks.

And policemen. And their cars. And their fine, efficient work, of course.

See how we at the library admired?

Okay, it’s super lame, but I’m the web manager over at the International Association for the Study of Popular Romance and I made a couple of new images for the conference we’re having in Belgium in August of this year. One is a small announcement over on the right with the Grand Palace at night, and the other is a preliminary ad for the conference with this nifty stamp on it. Basically, we got the images from istockphoto, but hey, I picked them out and did the pretty fonts and such, so I’m totally taking credit for them. Here’s the ad, just for a preview, but go check out the other one.

I survived the first day of instruction, and it went really well. That’s always a nice kick off to the semester, so I was pretty happy about it. Right now, I have way too much to do at work, so the break from writing is a total blesing because I don’t have to feel guilty about not making word count every day.

Maybe I should go on writer’s strike every February and September, since those are the worst teaching months for me. Hm. Much consider for future guilt-saving.