Heather Foeh

In the grand tradition of blogging egomania, I am going to tell you a few tidbits about myself. These categories were sent to me by my friend Deb - and rather than answer her via email and only share these fascinating answers with her, I decided to share them with the whole internet community (meaning all three of you who read my blog). Drumroll please…

Five Jobs I’ve Had In My Life
1. Raspberry picking machine worker
2. Grocery store checker
3. Breakfast chef at a B&B
4. Technical Writer
5. Webmaster

Five Places I Have Lived
1. Boring, Oregon
2. Portland, Oregon
3. Troutdale, Oregon
4. Austin, Texas
5. Fredericksburg, Texas

Five TV Shows I Like To Watch
Okay, I don’t mean to sound like an uppity bitch, but I really don’t watch TV. I would rather read, read, read.

Five Places I Have Been On Vacation
1. The Grand Canyon
2. Paris, France
3. Coursegoules, France
4. Kuwait
5. Ruidoso, New Mexico

Five Of My Favorite Foods
1. Raspberries
2. Sweet Potatoes
3. Mashed Potatoes
4. Bread - all kinds, especially with a chewy crust and soft middle
5. Canadian Bacon and Pineapple Pizza

Five Places I Would Rather Be Right Now
1. France
2. Ireland
3. Italy
4. Fiji
5. On the Queen Victoria cruising the Mediterranean

Five Places I Like To Shop
1. Target
2. Nordstrom
3. J. Jill
4. Book People
5. Whole Foods

So my fellow bloggers…if you post your Fives on your blog, comment back and let me know!

Hooray hooray hooray! I’ve always known that my friend Shannon Belletti is an amazing photographer, but it seems many other people know it too. Belletti Photography was just voted “Best Photographer in Atlanta“. That’s quite a feat for a gal who’s only been in Atlanta for a year!

Treat yourself to some of her wonderful images - check out her blog or view her portfolio. (Here’s one of my favorites…and I’m lucky enough to have an actual print!)

When Shannon comes to Texas for Thanksgiving, she’s going to take my headshots that I can use when I’m published. Yes, I said “when”, not “if”.

I live in a small town — there’s no Barnes & Noble, no Borders, not even a Hastings. We do have a new bookstore in town called Berkman Books and I try to frequent there when I can, but sometimes their selection is limited. I’m a member of Amazon Prime so whenever I get the urge for a book I often buy it from Amazon and have them ship it to me for free (”free” as in “I paid $72 this year for the privilege”). But a new day has dawned here…  Our local HEB grocery store has completely revamped their little book and magazine section! They have added in a bunch of wooden-looking bookshelves that are about shoulder height and have a ton of books crammed on them. They also replaced the shelves along the wall for the magazines with these cool looking new ones. And best of all - they have started carrying Harlequin Blaze books! All of the Harlequin/Silhouette books are right up front on the end piece of one of the shelves, directly facing the checkout lines, and the Blaze books are on the top shelf. I felt a little giddy because I could picture my book right there someday! Woohoo!

Since one of my favorite things to say is, “I don’t do math” I laughed hard at this quote which appeared on my Google homepage today:

In real life, I assure you, there is no such thing as algebra.
- Fran Lebowitz

I spent the weekend at a writer’s retreat with my Austin RWA chapter. We went to McKinney Roughs for two days and it was wonderful. The weather was lovely (although I’ll admit I was hoping for cooler temperatures), and the scenery is just perfect there. Native plants, hummingbirds, a huge great room in a soothing green color. I worked on plotting my new story – actually, I worked more on getting to know the hero and heroine. What type of people are they? How do they talk? What do they wear? When I got stuck with that, I wrote a random scene and let the two of them speak to each other. What a wonderful way to learn about them! Jack is a little more predatory than I had envisioned, but I like it. Laurel is confident and clever, but I already knew that about her from her appearance in my first manuscript. It’s so exciting to start on a new project!

Before, during and after dinner Saturday night we had wine, then we moved on to Lemon Drops – oh my. I haven’t laughed that long and hard in quite a while. We have some darn funny ladies in our group! What a treat to get to know them more. We have such a good, supportive, smart group of women. I’m proud to be a part of them.

Before we launched into the Lemon Drops, I had a Tarot reading that altered my world view. No, not my world view. My view of myself and my future. It helped me put into words things that I hadn’t been able to express before. It helped me understand that my path is knowable. It was intensely personal and I’m so very glad that I had it done. I’m sounding metaphysical and woo-woo here, but I think it’s because I can’t convey how truly amazing the experience was for me.

I think the fact that “storm” is part of the word “brainstorming” is quite fitting. I’ve got two new characters milling around in my brain creating quite a storm at the moment. They’re rather un-formed yet — especially the hero — but they’re starting to get voices of their own and I’m having a blast.

I read The Complete Writer’s Guide to Heroes and Heroines this past week and it helped me start to get a handle on the two people I want to pair up. I think she’s going to be a “boss” archetype and he’s going to be a “chief”, although I haven’t fully settled on that yet. Next weekend our Austin RWA chapter is having a two-day writing retreat and I plan on doing some hardcore plotting and brainstorming work on this new project and getting it off the ground. My ARWA buddy Lexi Connor is starting a new manuscript too so we’re going to “storm” together. Stay tuned for the results…

Okay, not really. (Well, yes twice really - but that was thankfully a long time ago and I’d rather not do it again at my age.) But I have given birth to my manuscript. I finished all of the revisions on Thursday night and I’m so glad that I took the time to work hard on them before sending it off to Michelle Grajkowski. I think the story has a better flow now, the point of view issues have been taken care of, the “mystery” is a bit more sneaky, and Alex speaks more like a man. I owe tremendous thanks to Michelle McGinnis and Kate Williams for being such wonderful critiquers.

I finished at 9:30 on Thursday night and I wanted to cry - both with relief and with a little bit of sadness. Yesterday (Friday) morning I printed out all 257 pages (60,389 words), wrote my cover letter, bound it all up in a non-rip envelope then took it to the post office. It’s now winging its way to Wisconsin — let the waiting begin!

Finally I can let the new manuscript rattle around in my brain freely. I’ve been tamping it down until this other one was outta here. Hooray! It’s time to be pregnant again.