Today, I worked on the writing. Things went OK. But I hit a problem chapter. There's stuff going on, but nothing's happening. Drats. And, I know this chapter should totally rock, if only because of who's in it. But I'm not sure how. I slightly exceeded my minimum word count, and then had to go grocery shopping before it got too late. I was kind of hoping I'd have a far-away-from-the-writing moment and come up with a solution, but no such luck. Still, I made excellent progress in working on the mood I want. I'm not there yet, but I can feel it getting there. Chances are good I'll hit on the answer at the gym tomorrow morning.

I've been reading more. Eloisa James has been in my To Be Read pile for a long time, and this weekend I finally read Much Ado About You which I totally enjoyed. I discovered I also had Kiss Me Annabel, also very enjoyable. So today in the grocery story I saw Pleasure for Pleasure and bought that. My hand just kind of shot out all by itself. I don't seem to have the Duke one which I really want to read, so I'll have to get that.

I took my son to our local independent bookstore so he could spend his gift cards ($60.00) for books. He came back with $90.00 worth of books so I told him to start adding up the prices and come back when he wasn't over his limit. My sister came along, and we're all there in the store, perusing our various sections and calling each other on our cell phones: Are you done yet? Where are you? What did my son get? Well, they didn't have any Bone Comics (a book, not paper) that he doesn't already have -- isn't that a reader frustration? but he got lots of Asterix and Obelix and the next two Golden Compass books. That put him only a little bit over, so I gave him the gift card and my frequent reader card to get stamped and off he went to the cashier. My sister was behind him with her mysteries, and as usual, I ended up undoing any progress in the TBR pile. Oh, well.

Strange thing in the Romance section of the store. The section is tiny, which I've mentioned before, and now the books are shelved all weird and sh--- stuff. On the very top shelf where you'd have to be 6 feet tall to reach, the books were stacked on the sides 5-6 books high, then right-side up and spine out across the top of those. It was impossible to see what was there. And on other shelves, a bunch of books were laid side-down across the top of the row of spine out books and a few were face out directly OVER books that were not the same. Anybody with more books than shelf space knows exactly what I mean. And then, at the very bottom, there were two shelves of westerns. Partially blocked by the back of a display. So, now westerns have the very worst shelf allotment in the store. But, they did seem to have more authors than just Nora Robers and Danielle Steele. The actual selection was pretty good.

I bought Jeff Lindsay's Dearly Devoted Dexter, Haunted by Chuck Palahniuk, Dead Man Rising by Lilith Saintcrow, Stephanie Laurens's An Unwilling Conquest, The Witch of Cologne by Tobsha Lerner and Night Pleasures by Sherrilyn Kenyon. Where to start?

Well, I have to go to work tomorrow so I guess I'll start by getting my files backed up, logging my word count, and then getting ready for bed.

Oh, and hey, Happy New Year!

Labels: reading, writing