This is finals week at my son's school, and I find I am riding herd on his studying, in between trying to write and doing absolutely no holiday shopping whatsoever. He thought his book report was due Wednesday but, it turns out, it's not. It's due tomorrow.

Anyway, I'm finishing up this side project that came up, after which I will have two weeks (hopefully) to do what will probably be a massive rewrite of My Beloved Assassin because, um, I want to be prepared when I get the editorial letter.

Tomorrow is my mother's birthday so there will be a party. I'm making garlic bread. So that's what's up with me. I rarely think about holiday shopping until after her birthday and that's why I'm never, ever prepared.

How's about you guys?

Off to post the next contest! Check it out.

Labels: holidays, My Beloved Assassin, stressing out, writing

Happy Holidays to everyone who celebrates one this time of year.

My family celebrates Christmas, so we did the Christmas thing today. I got up at 5:43 a.m. because I was in charge of bringing cinnamon rolls to breakfast at my brother's. It takes about 4 hours start to finish and we were supposed to be there at 10:00. Sigh. A bit later, presents were opened and enjoyed while the dough was slowly rising.

It's very cold here, so alas, the dough really did rise verrryy slowly to the point where being done by 10:00 am was not going to happen. My son was having far too much fun with his marshmallow blaster. Far too much. At ten my brother called and was informed that we'd be there more like 11:00 or so. Which was right. The 2nd and 3rd rising were also slow.

But we made it over there with piping hot cinnamon rolls about 20 minutes before two of my brother's kids joined us after morning with their mother. My brother from Santa Barbara was there with his wife, so we had Gramma, Grandpa, five children, four grandchildren and two daughters-in-law there. More presents. Then the white elephant gift exchange which was really really fun. Lots of stealing.

Then home to finish cooking dinner with slightly fewer people. More marshmallow shooter mayhem. I cut up green beans and peeled potatoes. That was my contribution to the cooking effort.

I did get some writing done. Every now and then I managed to sneak off and do some tweaking of stuff in need of tweaking.

Plus, I made my brother do my RAM replacement for my iMac since I was upgrading from 2GB to 4GB. Parallels is much much happier with 1 GB assigned to it. Ah, yes.

Now I'm exhausted and fighting to keep my eyes open.

Tomorrow I will blog about some books I've been reading.

Labels: holidays, reading, writing

So, yeah, Sinful is done and all turned in. I should be relaxing. Only it's only a few days until Christmas and on account of the Dec-15 deadline, I'd done 0 shopping. And my mother's birthday is Dec-15. Sigh.

But then I had to pull together stuff for a mini-book trailer for Scandal and send out the few ARCs that I got. I have one left besides the now ratty copy I read to make sure there weren't any major goof ups. My agent told a story about a client who looked at her ARC (or maybe it was her author's copies) and discovered it was the unedited, unproofed version. omg. Scandal seems to have come out very well. So, that's good.

Anyway,on Monday before I went to get my facial and massage (Oh, 2.5 hours of bliss!) I went shopping to for my Mom, my best friend in Denver and this guy whose name I drew in ZeFrank's Duckie gift thing. If you aren't familiar with ZeFrank, get over to his site and get familiar. Watch episodes of The Show and you will be in love, too. Promise.

The Marshmallow Shooter Decision

Anyway, I also chatted with another store owner about his lack of Marshmallow Shooters. He didn't order them this year. But he did recommend that the pump action model is the one to get. I thought Amazon would be the less expensive place to get them, but it wasn't, not by a long shot. I ended up back at Hammacher-Schlemmer where the pump action model was $20+ cheaper. I got two, because what fun is one marshmallow shooter? My son's other gifts color-coded, tagged and ranked out of the H-S catalog: spring loaded shoes, lighter than air slippers (or something), the above mentioned shooters and a blanket warmer thing he's not getting because ... read on:

He has requested a snuggli from my sister ($19.95 two for one plus a free booklite!! Order now, Operators standing by!!!) If you watch TV, you've seen the ad, I'm sure. Hilarious hints have been dropped. Apparently, the Snuggli has now replaced his request for a giant cheese wheel.

The Tao of The Gift Exchange

My next dilemma is a new family tradition which, I admit I started 2 years ago because it's fun. I'm sure it's familiar to you: Everyone buys a gift the price of which is not to exceed some very modest amount. Then we all get together, pile up the gifts and take turns picking. Each gift can be stolen a max of 2 times after that, the person who has it gets to keep it. If the gift you elected to open is stolen, you can steal another gift or open a new one. Etc. For us, participants range in age from 6 to 81. The kids have proven themselves ruthless and eclectic about what they steal.

The trick with this is that you have to buy a gift people will want to steal. Too silly, and no one wants it. That's no fun. Too specific, and only a few people will want it. Because of our age range, alcohol and racy things are out.

It's a responsibility I take very seriously. I bought some pirate playing cards that come with a free! pirate doubloon, but I'm thinking that may not be quite right. I think I'm going to head for the bookstore and look for something there. Just in case. My local independent has a lot of gadget type stuff.

Then there's other stuff

Plus, I have proposals outstanding. I was supposed to send off some brief paranormal proposals to my agent, but frankly, it's too hard to write brief, and I just didn't have the time while I was working on Sinful. So now I'm working on that while helping my son study for his French exam. Soccer, and dinner and also my son has mostly grown out of his pants. Rats! Also, I just remembered I told my folks I'd shop for their gift exchange things for them. Good thing I remembered!

The Future?

Depends on the proposals I have to finish. Fortunately, no chapters at this point. I imagine I'll have to pull together a new historical proposal, too. I have only the very vaguest ideas right now. But I hope to write The Dark Elf Project next. Starting in January. Which may or may not be an issue, depending on if anyone ever wants to publish me again.

Off to relax. Right after I fold the laundry.

Labels: chores around the house, holidays, proposals, writing

Yeah, it's 2008. And I'm grumpy. Shouldn't be. But I am. Why? Tomorrow I have to get my car looked at. That's one reason. I may have to drive it 50 miles away if the issue is serious, since it's under warranty. Only the only dealer is 50 miles away in the commute direction in what I believe is, in fact, the official worst commute in the entire United States of America. Sigh.

Also I didn't write a word today. I worked more on uploading the new website, which was more work than I expected and then I overlooked a typo and had to re-upload a bunch of files. There's more clean up to do. Rats.

Then I watched 4 episodes of Buffy with my son.

Now it's late.

But, it's still a spanking new year and I haven't broken any of my resolutions yet. This is good. Plus, unless Scandal gets pushed to 2009, I should have two books out this year which is a good thing.

So, yeah. Happy New Year everyone!

Please think good thoughts about my car. That could help avoid a big bill just when my son is getting braces...

Labels: big fat hoo-ha, holidays, writing

I hope everyone who celebrated Christmas had a wonderful holiday full of good times, good friends and good food. Same for everyone else, too, for that matter. My day was really lovely, all three of the above were experienced.

I just now had the most interesting thought about Xia's story. Up to now, my heroine has been the adopted sister of Harsh, a character in My Wicked Enemy (Formerly Magellan's Witch). But, I just now thought, what if she's not? Interesting thought.

Tomorrow I start hard core on Xia's story. I have to write really fast. Sigh. Which makes this the Eve of Lottsa Writing for the next 4 months.

Labels: holidays, Xia

The presents are wrapped. So, my evening is free.

This morning I notebooked Xia and went off on this tangent and after 40 minutes of that, I thought, yeah, this is great for some other book. And then I had this flash of insight, or maybe just relief because the warm down period was starting, at any rate, I worked out the backstory for my heroine. Sigh of Relief.

Merry Christmas, everyone!

Labels: holidays, relaxing, Xia

I have a cold. Ick. And right now I'm in the feeling miserable stage. To speed things along, go ahead and insert several sentences of whining bathetic self-absorbtion right here. Yeah. But I'm feeling even worse that that!

The holidays are distracting me. They should stop doing that. Miss Snark needs to stop distracting me. And other my favorite bloggers need to stop posting stuff I have to read. That's really distracting.

I'm still reading The Historian and it's pretty good, but it's not keeping me up at night like I expected. It's wonderfully written, and pretty creepy, but not really creepy, which is what I expected. In short, I expected a trope-busting exploration of Dracula, and so far, I haven't seen it in this book. But I'm not done yet. However, I am silently (unless you're reading this out loud) suspicious that the literary folk don't read enough genre novels to know when a trope has been really, truly and creatively busted wide open. Have none of them read MaryJanice Davidson? Did she not turn all-that-vampires-are on their collective pointy little fangs? Why, yes, she did. Further dissertation is probably unfair since I haven't finished the book yet, and maybe that's coming.

Last year I judged in the RITA's, this year it's the Golden Heart. My entries arrived today. I'm looking forward to reading them.

I have to get to work. Now.

Labels: holidays, self pity, vampires, writing