Mad Ravings....

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I'm so excited with everything going on right now. This Sunday marks the beginning of my art shows and festivals and such, since i'm pretty much booked out from Nov 1 through mid December.

I emailed my book revisions a little over a week ago and anxiously awaiting to hear back from my editor. I thought once I sent the revisions off I would be more relaxed. Nope! Just the opposite. I'm sititng here worrying now about whether she'll like the reivisons or if they're good enough and I'm totally second guessing myself. But I suppose these are all normal feelings since this is my debut book.

In other news...

My 20 pieces of artwork, for the 20-20 Show, at the 20th Street Gallery (get it?) will be opening Nov. 11 and running till December 24th. There are some amazing artists that will be showing. You can see some of the art that will be there on the website: http://2009-20-20.blogspot.com/. And you might just happen to see my name there on the right side of the page. And if you just happen to click on my name it just might happen to bring you to my art samples too.

My art will also be at The Sun Gallery in Hayward and the show opens Dec. 1 and runs till Dec. 19th. I can't wait! They also have a VERY COOL annual children's illustrators exhibit that runs four months out of the year! I'll be talking with them more when I go down to drop off my art at the end of this month.

AND...my art and products (such as cards, magnets, bookmarks, etc. all made from my art work) will be sold at the Itty Bitty Boutique in Downtown Campbell! I'll be going down there soon and will post pictures when it's all set up :)

As always, you can check out my latest art happenings at www.RoCoInk.com!

*Today's post was brought to you by the word Happen*

I'm finally able to announce my wonderful book news! I had to wait on a title change, but now it's official!

From Publishers Market Place:

Rose Cooper's graphic novel debut, BLOGTASTIC!: Gossip from the Girl's Room, in which a sixth grade girl "accidentally" overhears gossip while staking out the girls room, but then not-so-accidentally embellishes the facts on her blog, to Wendy Loggia at Delacorte, by Rosemary Stimola at Stimola Literary Studio. rosemary@stimolaliterarystudio.com

The 2nd Saturday Artwalk at Zelda's last night was great! Thank you to everyone who came out! I loved meeting new people and seeing all my wonderful, supportive friends too. You guys are the greatest!

My monkey (4yr old son, Alex) picked the winner for the Art Giveaway from the bucket, after I shuffled all the pieces it up. It went something like this...

Me: Pick just one.

Alex: Okay....

5 minutest later

Me: Um, you can pick one now.

Alex: I am! (still moving all the paper around with his hand)

5 more minutes later......

Me: Just pick one!

Alex: ok. Here! (with a big smile, proudly gives me one of the slips of paper, then claps). Tell me the name!

Me: The name is Kari

Alex. Oh, I'm not sure about that name. Lemme pick another one...

Me: Um, no!

So with that being said, the winner is Kari Ripplinger!

Yay! Congrats Kari!

I will be at the 2nd Saturday Art Walk this Saturday (Sept. 12th) from 6pm-10pm outside at Zelda's Pizza http://www.ZeldasGourmetPizza.com. The address is 1415 21st Street in Sacramento. I'm going to be doing an art giveaway too, so if you're local, stop by my table and say Hi and enter the giveaway. Details on my art website www.RoCoInk.com.

I just redesigned my website (yay!) but still trying to figure out how to make my wordpress blog so for now that is still not up and running.

I posted all the latest news on my webpage, and an author interview with YA Author of Prada & Prejudice, Many Hubbard!

So if you get a minute, check out the site or the interview--or hey, both!--at Rose-Cooper.com

Yes, I think I will start calling this my Good News Blog since everything lately has been good news related.

I am STILL waiting to post the TOTALLY EXCELLENT NEWS that I promised before. But, in the meantime...

I was just accepted to illustrate childrens books for an new iPhone app. How cool is that?

And yes, It's totally weird that I did not write the books, but will be illustrating instead. I never imagined I'd be stepping outside my little area of writing to do something else. I've really been into my art lately. In fact, so much so that that brings me to the next bit of good news...

My art will appear at the 2nd Saturday Artwalk in midtown.

I've been doing mixed media. Using charcoal pencil & ink for my drawings. With a touch of color with oil pastels. Then I decoupage that onto painted or textured canvas that I do ahead of time.

My style is mainly characters that have a Tim Burton feel to them. My new website will be up soon in which I'll be giving an art giveway (one of mine plus a guest artist!) and of course unique greeting cards too. Yay!

So, does anyone wanna see a sneak peek at some of this? If so, leave me a comment or email me (email (at) rose-cooper (dot) com) and I'll send you the link to the super secret page.

Dontcha just love secrets? Even if they happen to be the temporary kind...

Have you seen this story?

A woman named Jordan Scott fired off a cease and desist letter to the publisher of "Breaking Dawn" -- the fourth book in the series -- claiming the Twilight tale contains a "striking and substantial similarity" to Scott's book, "The Nocturne."

http://www.tmz.com/2009/08/04/twilight-author-accused-of-biting-vampire-story/

If you go to the site, you see the actual letter that was mailed, containing the details of the copyright infringement. It provides side by side comparison of the paragraphs from both books. I read this and didn't see how they can even compare the two. Stephanie Meyer's paragraphs are NOTHING like the ones they are being compared to "ripping off." I can't believe such an accusation was made. This other author, Jordan Scott, wants to be compensated for this. What do you think?

http://www.aolcdn.com/tmz_documents/0803_meyer_infringement.pdf

As you know, there are a ton of "Diary" books out there, ie. Princess Diaries, Diary of a Wimpy kid, Dork Diaries, Dear Dumb Diary...etc. Now, these books have all been very successful and some even appearing on the NYT Best Seller list. So, do you think there is room in the market for more "Diary" titled books? Or is this an overused title term we're ready for something new? If yes, would new books to the market be as eye catching and possibly successful if they (other books of this nature) were titled differently?

Would love to hear opinions on this subject!

Good:Okay, so I lied. I don't have good news. I have GREAT news!

Bad:The bad news is that I can't say what the good/great news is yet.

Great:So, it's really super great fantastic news! I mean really, I'm all bruised just from pinching myself so much. Well, that and from trying to rollerskate.

I should be able to announce the Great News soon-so stay tuned!

Yes, i'm super excited! I'm having my blog re-designed (or actually designed since i'm only using a generic LJ template right now). I'm going to switch over to WordPress which I have and didn't even realize. *sigh* I AM wordpress challenged.

Other things that i'm challenged with:

*Twitter Challenged: like really, what the heck does all the # and @ mean? ?!$#@!

*Walking in Big Shoes Challenged: I love wearing big shoes that add inches and make me look only a little short instead of way short. Except I have problems just walking on flat surfaces barefoot, so we'll just leave the big shoes alone for now...

*Heathly Food Challenged: I can be eating great and healthy all day..until I spot chocolate. Or anything that contains sugar. Which leads me to--

*Giving into Sugar Tempation Challenged: Yep, no explanation needed.

So I slightly got off my topic of my almost new soon to be blog. So it got me thinking--is Wordpress better/worse than Blogger? I know both have pros/cons, but anyone have a stronger prefernce for one of them? Yeah, sadly, I am Blogger Challenged too.

This was something interesting I heard on the radio.

You can tell how old a person really is by looking at their hands. Even with all those actors/actresses that never age with the help of plastic surgery...their hands will usually be wrinkled (if older) or not match the age of their face lol.

Okay, so one way we can find out how old/young our hands are is by doing this simple test.

1. Take your hand, palm down, and place on a flat surface.

2. Looking at the back of your hand, locate the middle.

3. With your other hand, take your index finger and thumb and pinch the loose skin on the back of your other hand (in the middle).

4. Now let go. Watch how quickly/slowly your skin bounces back. The faster it bounces back, the younger you are.

yay, I have hands like a 20 year old! lol

How fast does your skin bounce back?

Okay, so I'm a bit behind. I posted that I had great news, but then lots of stuff took over and my life has been kinda hectic, so I forgot to post. Oops =) Better late than never, right?

So, the most incredible thing happened to me...

I GOT AN AGENT!!!

It was so amazing because my book generated a lot of agent interest and I even got a few phone calls based only on a partial. But there was one agent who was so on top of things and was so quick and easy to communicate with and, well...a dream agent. My agent! I signed with Rosemary Stimola.

I think I'm still trying to get past the "Who, me? an agent? No way!" feeling. Or maybe I'll just wake up and it will have all been a dream. But a fabtastic dream...

I'm trying to embed my LJ into my website and it Will. Not. Work. I have a paid account, I've used the info from the developers page regarding the ways to embed, when when I add the html or javascript it just shows up as code writing on the actual webpage. So frustrating!! Can anyone spare a moment to help me with my LJ disability?

Okay, the last few days have been a complete roller coaster of emotion. I've been mentally drained from it all. Here are a few things that my good news is NOT about:

1. babies or being pregnant or anything medically related.

2. hubby related. nada. nope. zip.

3. juicy gossip. If it were, I would've immediately posted the news :)

4. fruit, actual roller coasters, bugs, computers, or any inanimate objects.

5. lottery although some amount of luck is definitely involved.

Yay!

Totally excited. Thrilled. In shock.

That's all I will say for now.

Current Passions:

Tattoos. Just got one on the top of my foot. OUCH! x a million.

Facebook. I've had an account for awhile, but actually using it now. Add me if you're on there.

Reality TV. I'm totally addicted. And my world would suddenly come to a screeching halt if I didn't have my DVR.



Currently Wondering:

Twitter--What? Am I just behind on things or is this really the newest "cool" thing to do? Maybe I need to work on my coolness.

Okay, so the most incredible thing happened. About five months ago my mom told me I have a sister. Somewhere. My fathers daughter. Just for quick background info--my father died when I was 3yrs old and he had been married one time before my mom. Anyways, I'm thinking, me? a sister? yeah right! But she gave me the girls name and I Googled. The power of Google is so awesome!

The first link in the search was to the ancestry.com site. I clicked it and there, right before my very eyes, was a post from a girl with that same name looking for her sister, Rose. That's me! all the info she posted was true about my family so I knew it was her. I emailed her but it bounced :( So I left a post with my email address hoping she would someday go back to that site and see.

Well, that someday happened a week ago!! I got a myspace message from my sister. She ended up finding me on there. Long story short, we talked, we met, and we're a part of each other's lives. We talk or text almost every day and it's just so incredible finding her. Oh, and she has spent 20-something years looking for me. She is a little older, so she remembered me when I young.

So in the end, Myspace brought us together :)

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Saturday October 4th was not only my anniversary (wedding) but a live dvd taping for stand up comedian, Jimmy Turner. My husband and I attended this show at the Geery Theater in downtown Sac and I can honestly say I ached from laughing afterwards. My hubby used to work with him back in the day, before he was funny and got paid for it.

I got to interview Jimmy and another headlining comedian at the show-Rick Pulido, who's a great guy too. I'll be posting the interview shortly, along with a review of the show and dvd. It will be up on my website and my humor site BellaOnline. I'll include links when it's up. DVD's are for sale on Jimmy's website, and I'll be giving away a dvd to one lucky person :) Did I mention I managed to get on camera? lol

You can learn more about the comedian by visiting his website LaughatJimmy.com.