Okay, so maybe I’ll admit to having a teeny inferiority complex. When we first started The Goddess Blogs, it took me all of three seconds to figure out that my fellow Goddess authors are all delightfully funny. I’m in awe of their talent and pea-green with envy that humor comes so naturally to them!

It’s tough enough being witty and entertaining and interesting and fun. But funny? Trust me, it’s like pulling your own wisdom teeth out with a humongous pair of pliers if humor isn’t your forte. Which is why I get butterflies in my stomach every time I contemplate writing my next blog.

So why am I here? Why do I wrack my brains to be worthy of participating? What am I getting out of this? The answer is simple. I’m here because I need it. I benefit from a romance blog like this in countless ways.

Sure, we authors want to showcase our books and hopefully drum up interest and a reader following. After all, selling books is what keeps us employed and able to pursue our passion. But there are lots of other benefits, too. You may know by now that I adore lists and can’t function without them, so let me count the benefits in a list:

1) Laughs. Both the bloggers and commentors have given me so many lol moments.

2) Commiseration. I get sympathy and empathy from people who understand my neuroses, who share my passions and pet peeves, who think fictional characters are actually real, who would defend their precious books with their dying breath… We romance readers are a breed unto ourselves.

3) Entertainment. Whether the posts are funny, sad, intriguing, whatever, they take me on a great ride.

4) Knowledge. I learn interesting stuff I never knew and have to think about things I’ve never considered before.

5) Creativity. I get to express my feelings and have a creative outlet for rants and raves.

6) Escape. Visiting here is a great way to procrastinate from work. Alternatively, it provides a nice brain break when I’ve been hard at work.

7) Anti-depressant. Reading the blogs and comments cheers me up when I’m down and always, always brightens my day.

All those are great reasons to participate in The Goddess Blogs . But the foremost reason I’m here – and the reason I’ll keep coming back – is the

8 ) Camaraderie. A shared sense of belonging.

I’m not alone when I have this site to turn to. I’m part of a larger community. I can stay connected to the world. And the best thing about participating? I make lifelong friends.

I was heartbroken when my fave romance board folded several years ago. I still enjoy visiting other boards and blogs, but none have been quite so satisfying or fulfilling to me as The Romance Journal. The people I met there gave me such pleasure and joy. Which is why I’m so very glad to have The Goddess Blogs now. It’s a true pleasure getting to know my fellow writer and reader Goddesses. Without you, my teeny inferiority complex would mushroom into some hulking anti-Muse perched on my shoulder, hooting derisively and calling me unflattering names every time I tried to be funny.

But I wonder if everyone else who visits and participates has the same expectations of our site as I do? We just celebrated our one month anniversary yesterday, so this seems like a great time to ask some questions about expectations, since a blog site is only as good as its participants. The thing is, we can make The Goddess Blogs what we want it to be.

So what do you want The Goddess Blogs to be? Why do you visit romance boards and blogs? What do you get out of it? What would keep you coming back here day after day? What would make you follow every discussion and post your own comments? In short, what would brighten your day?

(And I’ll try not to feel too inferior if you come back with some funny as well as serious answers.)

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I’m a bit annoyed at the moment. The family who lives directly behind me is apparently having an entertainment wall unit put in. Either that, or they’ve loaned out their back yard to Noah, and he’s building an ark. Full sized.

It’s not that I object to noise, or to entertainment wall units. But this is the fifteenth day in a row with skill saws, power screwdrivers, hammering, some sort of board tossing and I think maybe a matinee performance of “Stomp” going on twenty-five feet behind where I sit to work. Forget going to sit on the patio, even though I live in Southern California and it’s 78 degrees and sunny today (yesterday it was 93, but that’s just wrong).

So I put on music, but it’s hard to write a funny, clever, sexy first meeting between a hero and his girl when every thirty-eight seconds or so I get pulled out of Regency England and back into the earsplitting screech of modern-day technology. Closing the back door helps, but nothing – NOTHING – makes it go away completely. It’s driving my finches crazy, too, and Atticus Finch has pulled out most of his tail. Now he looks like a puffball with wings instead of a bird. It’s very sad.

Anyway, it’s disrupting my schedule. I am a creature of habit. I distract easily. I’m becoming psychotic. I have a book due June 1st, and I’m writing the FIRST meeting between the two main characters. If that is the ark they’re building, I don’t know what I’ll do when the animals start to show up. Argh! This is worse than people not using their turn signal!

Is there just SOMETHING, some little, usually innocuous thing in your life that just drives you up the wall? What do you do to get past it and get back to work or relaxing or whatever you would rather be doing?

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The discussion the other day about bad boys got me thinking about my favorite all time heroes. The more I thought about them, the more I realized that they all have one thing in common. Unrequited love. I am a huge sucker for a one-woman man who is pissed off because the one woman he wants is the one woman he can’t have. In books and in movies, these heroes suffer so much for the love of their woman, it just makes my heart melt.

And whenever I think of unrequited love, I always think of Matthew McConaugh. I just know that Matthew is suffering unrequited love for me. Really, he is. No I’ve never met Matthew, but I like to delude myself into believing that if he met me, he’d have to have me.

I also think that Colin Farrell would have to have me too, and that would start a big fight between Matthew and Colin. But what can I do?

So tell me, who are your favorite hero suffering from unrequited love, and who harbors an unrequited love for you?

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You know what they say about prehistoric man—how he went out and hunted the big game while the woman gathered nuts and berries?  I think it is a lie perpetuated by evil evolution scientists.  I have proof that it could not have been true living in my own house. 

This weekend, my husband decided to make his very own sandwich after whining that he sure wished someone would make a sandwich for him.  Okay, I am not so mean that I won’t make my husband a sandwich, but sometimes, I am not in the mood—like when I am doing laundry and vacuuming and walking the dogs and he is enjoying an afternoon on the couch watching NASCAR.  Which was exactly what was happening this weekend, so I said, “Are your hands broken again?  Make it yourself!”

“Thought I’d run it up the flagpole,” he says cheerfully and gets up to make his own sandwich.  And then, it starts:  the hunter hunts the food.  Him:  “Hey, are we out of bread?” 

Me:  “No.  It’s right there where it usually is.” 

I hear him doing a lot of muttering that sounds suspiciously like it is not where it usually is Miss Priss, and then “Aha!” followed closely by, “Where is the cheese?”

Me, after a heavy sigh.  “In the drawer with all the other cheese.”

Fridge drawers open and shut several times.  Then:  “What did you do with the mustard?”

Me, sighing louder and realizing it would have been easier if I’d just made the stupid thing.  “I didn’t do anything with the mustard.  Think about where we usually keep the mustard…on the condiment shelf.”

Him:  “Oh yeah.  Are the pickles there, too?”

Okay, the man is standing with the door to the fridge open.  I can see him peering inside, and I can see—from my vantage point of another room and around a corner—the pickles, bread, cheese and mustard. 

And it’s not just fridge blindness.  You can put the man anywhere in the house and it’s the same.  “Have you seen my hiking socks?” he asks while staring at the underwear drawer as opposed to the sock drawer that has been directly adjacent for 100 years. “Where is my UT Longhorn T-shirt?” he asks while staring at the dress shirts hanging in the closet instead of in the T-shirt drawer of his dresser.  And my personal favorite, “Have you seen my gloves?” he wants to know while he has his jacket on and the gloves are sticking out of the pockets. 

What is it about men that makes them blind to everything in front of them?  Why can’t they remember from one day to the next that there is an actual sock drawer?  And really, how could men possibly have been the hunters?  We all love our husbands or significant others—but could they really have been the hunters, or were they wandering around the forest asking where the big game was?

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Today we unveil a new feature called, Know Your Goddesses. Okay, so the button has been up a while, but the CONTENT hasn’t gone up until today. Anyway, it’s amazing the things you don’t know about people. For example, it doesn’t surprise me in the least to hear that Karen Hawkins writes in the nude (although she won’t fess up). I mean, come on, look at her goddess picture above—if that’s not a bare breast showing, then my eyes need checking. But it worries me that she might also be one of the people who writes in a coffeehouse (yours truly being one of the others). I don’t know about HER coffeehouse, but mine would frown on nudity. I’m just saying.

I am also truly appalled to learn that a FULL THIRD of the goddesses say “blech” to chocolate. And Rachel would kill for Skittles—aren’t those the tart, obnoxiously colored things that stick in your teeth when you chew them? Who knew that someone would kill for THOSE? Remind me not to go near Rachel at Halloween—my son always seems to come home with a ton of Skittles, and we all hate them.

The one thing I DO understand is all the controversy on how to tally up the children. I agree with Karen Rose that husbands should count (maybe not all the time, but certainly occasionally). Guppies are a gray area for me—as one goddess pointed out, it would seriously skew the numbers. But a horse seems fair. They do live in barns, after all, and since teenagers act as if they too live in barns . . . you see my point.

Well, I won’t give it all away. You can go find out the fun stuff on your own. While you’re clicking through, be sure to check out the Stone Tablets (our FAQ page). And if you have any questions that need answering, by all means contact a resident goddess!

So tell me, what do YOU find the most shocking or interesting about the resident goddesses?

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I never wanted a cat. Never thought I was a cat person. Never wanted to be one of those crazy women who talk about their cat. Throughout the years, my children have adopted cats, and while I made sure they were well cared for, I didn’t particularly like them.

Then Annabella appeared on my doorstep and tricked her way into my house a year ago. She arrived on my porch in December, a small, white, bundle of pathetic shivering kitten. I felt bad for her, but I DID NOT WANT A CAT. I told her how much I didn’t want a cat as I took her all over the neighborhood trying to find her real home. Or any home, but she purred and licked my hand and acted like she really loved me. Like I was her savior, and I fell for it. I took her back to my house and made her a bed. I bought her cat food and a three-story condo and took her to the vet to make sure she wasn’t sick. The vet told me that poor Anna has an overbite and an allergy to plastic. As a teen, I wore braces on my teeth for two and a half years, so I could sympathize with her buck-tooth problem. I replaced all the plastic cat dishes with porcelain, and I didn’t let her go outside for months, afraid she had no real cat survival skills.

And she let me think it.

She acted all needy and cuddly and cute. Then when she was certain I wouldn’t kick her back out into the cold, she started acting distant. Like the bad boyfriend from high school. The one who acted as if he liked you a lot . . . then suddenly not so much. The more you hung on and tried to make him love you, the more he ran away and hid when he saw you coming. Not that I put up with that crap from a boy–well, not for long. I had a healthy self-esteem. If he clawed and hissed to get away, I figured he was unworthy and I generally let him go. So why am I forcing my love and affection on an unworthy cat? A feline I have to hold tight so she can’t get away? And how did I became a cat person?

Are you too suffering from the unrequited love of a cat, dog or indifferent goldfish? Or does your boyfriend run away at the sound of your voice?

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I don’t know what it is about House, but I love that television show. It’s not that it’s a medical drama; I stopped liking medical dramas about the time Medical Center went off the air (Chad Everett, you doll, you can take my pulse anytime).

It’s not the plot of each episode, those earnest and only slightly dysfunctional doctors trying to find a diagnosis and a treatment for the unlucky patient of the week.

I know what it is, what inspires my fascination and devotion to that show and I’m half ashamed to admit it. It’s the character of Greg House. Talk about dysfunctional! The guy is flat out unlikable.

I’m crazy about him.

It’s embarrassing. It must be true; love IS blind.

It’s just that he’s so intense. He’s extreme. He’s extremely broken and extremely smart and extremely rude and extremely relentless. Every week we get to see him self-destruct in some highly creative way. Every week he saves someone with his relentless and uncomfortable search outside the box of conventional medical wisdom. Every week we find out a little more about why and how and who broke him.

I’m hooked. He’s fascinating. I can’t take my eyes off him, even if he does scare me a little and even if the rational part of my mind knows he’s a mess.

So how about you? Any fictional characters who are so bad, so outlandish that you just can’t help being mesmerized by them?

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A truck driver in Georgia just won half of a 320 million dollar lottery pot. I’m a bit upset; that was my money.

Every time the lottery gets over a certain amount, I dream of winning. I think about what I’ll purchase first. How many cars I’d get. If I’d move to another state or stay here. How much I’d give my sister, even though she made that comment about my hair at Christmas. What sort of anniversary cruise I’d send my parents on. What I’d buy my kids for Christmas. Whether to invest the money or just spend, spend, spend.

And the really big question — annual payments or lump sum?

But the real truth is that, though I dream of winning, I NEVER PLAY. I’ve bought a grand sum of three lottery tickets in my life. Two I lost before I could find out if I’d won (Me? Keep track of a piece of paper the size of a movie ticket? Ha!) and the other didn’t have a single correct number on it.

Still . . . I love playing the lottery in my mind.

What about you? Do you play the lottery for real? Or just dream about winning? If you won, what would you buy first? Which of your relatives would benefit? And most important of all, would you go for the annual payment? Or are you a lump sum sorta gal?

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Julia London’s blog on peoples’ housekeeping tendencies got me thinking. These people – these Oprahs and Cowies – with their uber neat houses and color-coordinated toilet paper, what do they do at home? Do they relax? Do they do anything more than sleep there?

I ask this because my home is my castle. No, not literally a castle, but you get my meaning. Inside my castle is my stuff. And my stuff is the various and sundry things that interest me. And those things take up a lot of space.

For instance, I like Jim Henson’s Muppets. I always have, since I was a kid. I cried when Jim Henson died. Because I like the Muppets, they show up around me. Kermit sits with his banjo on the hearth. Animal and his drumsticks gaze down at me from above my kitchen cupboards. The Miss Piggy giant Pez dispenser is over there on my entertainment unit.

I also like fish. I have an 80-gallon aquarium with various fresh-water fish sitting in my family room. I have a 30-gallon aquarium with half a gazillion guppies in my bedroom. There aren’t supposed to be that many in there, but I’m a romance author. I’m not going to tell the guppies to stop having guppy sex. Nor am I going to give the offspring to my brother-in-law to feed to his much larger saltwater fish. Once an animal arrives in my house, it’s safe. Not fish food.

So as I said, these things that I like, take up space. They hang around for me to enjoy, for my visitors to gaze at and either enjoy or mutter “geek” under their breath. But they’re there. They’re not rare Rembrandts and they’re not Japanese glass koi art. They’re things that I’ve accumulated in the course of my life, and they’re not on the “House Beautiful” list. Not the Oprah one, anyway.

And I haven’t even mentioned my books and my Star Wars stuff and my Lord of the Rings stuff and my DVDs and CDs. So where are Oprah’s interests? Where are Cowie’s? Don’t they have interests that aren’t also, you know, art?

Is it just me? Do you have “things” in your house that reflect your interests or your personality? Is your house a gigantic work of art, or is it where you keep things that are precious to you (whether or not they’re “art”) where you can actually see them?

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Yes, she is a great humanitarian, and she’s a fabulous role model, and I watch her.  But sometimes she is not in touch with reality.   

Okay, here’s how it started:  I have wanted to clean out my closets for the longest time, but I never do it!  They’re horrible!  We have so much stuff we don’t even know what we have any longer.  We stumble on little treasures and remember how we accused each other of taking it, or hiding it, or it throwing away.  We have clothes in various sizes, enough to fill an entire Goodwill store.  We have thick winter coats we never wear in Texas, shoes that so beat up they ought to be burned, and boxes.  Empty boxes.  Because my husband lives in mortal fear of the Christmas when we don’t have enough boxes to wrap gifts.   

Enter Oprah and her pal, Colin Cowie.  For those who don’t know him, he is some mega-event planner to the stars.  She had him on one day to talk about fine living at home and they had a little tour of Colin’s

First, the kitchen.  Dishes are all white and stacked exactly in the middle of the shelf.  Matching pieces are likewise stacked, by height, in perfect little rows.  There is not a single Big Gulp cup anywhere, not a plastic cereal bowl to be found.  His stemware is arranged by color, height, and in perfect formation like little army guys.  When Colin dines alone, he believes it is important to dine well.  He sets a table with a mat, a charger, a dinner plate, salad plate, a desert plate.  And a linen napkin, two wine glasses and a water glass, as well as some candles for ambiance.  For his Lean Cuisine!    He has a gift room, and has gifts already wrapped and ready to go, because you know you should never go anywhere without a wrapped gift.  His gift paper, ribbons, and bows are all neatly arranged on shelves, and there is a table, free of clutter, for wrapping gifts.   The man’s closet is where I got really pissed.  He has an enormous walk-in with a big cabinet in the middle that they could roller derby around.  His underwear is folded and lying in drawers according to color and style.  Ditto the socks.  His shirts, suits and pants are hung according to season, style, and color.  And then—THEN—he gets out this little plastic thing and shows how “he” folds his sweaters so that they are all uniform size and will stack neatly on the sweater shelves by color so everything looks showroom neat and he can see what he has.    Oprah is gushing over his place and says, “I have my sweaters folded that way, but of course someone does it for me.”  And then she and Colin giggle.    Oprah!  Reality check!  Most people don’t have plastic things to fold their sweaters, much less anyone to do it for them!  I have plastic thingies, but my thingies are plastic tubs into which we shove everything.  What I really need from you is a tip for how to code them so I don’t have to get them all down from the attic to find the one item I’ve been looking for since 1998!   

Let’s just suppose, for the sake of discussion, that you have one of those plastic thingies to fold your sweaters.  Do you have a cabinet in a vast walk-in where you might spread out the sweater to fold it just so?  Do you have the shelf space to stack your sweaters neatly above your shoes which are all lined up and pointing toes out in a special shoe rack?  Do you get out the china for Lean Cuisine, knowing that someone will have to wash it and that someone will probably be YOU?  Do you keep your gift paper in shelves according to event with matching ribbons, tissues and bows, and a stack of customized gift cards so that you never, ever, have to stop in at Walgreen’s and find a thank you card? What does your closet look like?  If there is one thing in your house you could make sparkly clean and neat this week, what would it be? 

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