Archive for January, 2010

After the Rains

Tuesday, January 26th, 2010

Ok, so I’ve been living in Los Angeles for about six months now, and I think I figured out why A. so many other people live here and B. they shoot movies here:

Its freaking gorgeous.

Seriously.  I mean I knew it was nice.  Temperate.  There’s a beach.   But its been raining for a week, and this weekend, when the sun came out, it became paradise.  The smog was cleared, the hills and ground were this verdant green that rivals emeralds, and you could see clear to the ocean.

Oh, just look:

verdant landscape

This was taken from the trail that hikes up Mt. Hollywood.  See?

back of Hollywood

That O and H are the back of the Hollywood sign.  Try to climb it and the sheriff in his helicopter will come after you.

In other news, now that the release of The Summer of You is a little over two months off, I’ve been thinking a lot about promotion.  I’m going to be setting up some guest blogs and hopefully some website reviews, but I can tell you that one personal appearance I will be making will be at Lady Jane’s Salon in New York the first weekend of April!  It’s a great cause and it seems like so much fun:  Can.  Not.  Wait.

And other than that, I’m typing.  Typing typing typing.  Sigh.  Typing.

That’s all for now, so until next week – Happy Reading!

A Life in Pieces, or Why I Now Think in Facebook.

Wednesday, January 13th, 2010

I blame Twitter.

No one felt the need to be concisely witty before Twitter.  Oh sure, we were short and sweet in our Facebook statuses (statusi?) but we tended to simply state our purposes, saying “going to the store, need tomato sauce for mom’s lasagna,” or “seeing a movie tonight, so excited!”  But suddenly, with the birth of Twitter, we all feel the importance of our declarative statements.  They need to be catchy, intelligent, cheeky, thought provoking, and hilarious all at once.

On the one hand, I now have faith that the next generation will be funny.

On the other, I have completely lost the ability to think in sections longer than a Facebook status update.

Let me give you my day, in status update form:

“Woke up ridiculously late.  So the morning becomes the afternoon.  Ah, me.”

“The West Wing soothes me as I eat my breakfast.  Speechifying lends turkey bacon gravitas.”

“Typing.”

“Typing.”

“Holy cow, that’s my word count for the day!  How shall I spend the rest this glorious evening?  What’s that?  The mall is still open, you say?”

“I lost five pounds and the only size I went down is my shoe size. How…?”

“More typing.  Can’t let it go.  But this time I have Conan to keep me company.  Forget team Jacob, I’m firmly team Coco.”

So while I truly enjoy social networking and all of the access they afford us to our friends and fans… I think I should apologize in advance if, in my next book, my chapters are only 140 characters long.

Happy Reading Everyone!