First of all, it’s Mel’s fault.  I’ll get to that momentarily.

Second, everybody is someplace else.  I mean, half the universe is at RWA San Fran, which is why, if you nose around the blogosphere, you’ll notice that there probably five bloggers left in the entire writing community. We’ve been hoarded, bullied, and bribed into covering for all the people at RWA San Fran.

Now, originally I was supposed to blog about Finding Mr. Right and Romance. Ok.  I found Mister Right-now-you’re-fine-but-don’t-push-it.  I write Romance.  Basically I write about him, only if I’d been the engineer on the original job.  You know what I mean?  Like, I write my hero in Ahmed-colors, but I brighten and sharpen them.  And my heroes don’t bend over, grab their butt cheeks, rip a stanker, and run away shouting “run for your lives, it escaped!”

I’m just saying… Avon would most likely frown on that scene.  Oh, it’s familiar… but not exactly mood setting in a good way, you know?

So I was fine with re-doing the whole concept, since Mel (and I did tell you this would be her fault, you will recall) started us off here on The Novelty Girls with snark and sarcasm.  Swell.  Great.  Everybody is in San Fran except MEL, who is funnier than me.  Perfect.  Now I have to follow THAT.

So, thinking that my job was done and my Tuesday was typical, with the slight alteration of a missing man (he’s in Chicago for 10 days), I settled in to have a latte and some time to goof off.  Then my phone rang.  A very, very small voice said:

“Murgle ablah snrd.”

“Hello?” I replied.

“Argl.”  *shufflebump thump* DIALTONE.

Okie dokie.

Back to goofing off.  Then my phone rings again.

“Hello,” I say, with a great deal of hope in my heart.

“Christine?”  (Nobody calls me Christine and I don’t recognize the voice or number but I’m game.)

It was Dayna Hart.  I love Dayna Hart.  I heart Dayna Hart.  She’s a mom, btw.  Which should give solid clues about the first call.  And I’m completely mortified to learn she called my home number, got my mom, who is paranoid and weird, and told her there was “no Christine” at that location. Which was technically true, but a bit misleading.  I was just somewhere else.  And she is convinced that every call from a strange number, featuring a new voice, is a bill collector or the mob.

Ok.  This is going someplace hysterical.

After a brief little chit-chat with Dayna-Hart-the-Hearted I agree that if I am going to follow Mel (and, again, let’s remember this is her fault) I will have to re-arrange some things and be snarky.

You know… this week I doubt that will be an issue.  Because I am, yes, a writer of romance.  And I am, yes, a woman in love.  And I do, yes, belong to the wonderful writing community online.  But this week my man is in the Windy City, probably stuck in a roadblock because he hit town the same time as Obama.  And this week most of my go-to-girls are in San Francisco having a LOT more fun than me.  And this week my mother has taken another trip to wackyville, but god love her, she’s sharing the crazy with everyone. There’s plenty to go around.

So yeah… I have to follow snark and pictures of girl-on-girl boob grabbing action.  Great.

Yeah, it’s going to be one of those weeks.  And it’s Mel’s fault.  But then, it usually is.