I’m in a crappy place today. Not in real life – in real life I’m in southern California, its 70 degrees on the first day of March, it can’t get much nicer. No, I’m in a crappy place in terms of my book. I’m at that place that every writer knows and dreads, the place where you start to question everything, and nothing is as good as it was when it was bright and shiny but still solely in your brain. Where you just want to pull everything apart, or shake your characters and scream “what do you want from me???”
Of course, this isn’t practical. Or (in the case of character-shaking) feasible. Instead, you have to write through it, and eventually, you remember why you liked these characters and their story in the first place, and the pendulum swings the other way. I know my process. All will be well.
In other news, Revealed is out in mass market TOMORROW. (Or today, depending on your time zone.) Get excited people! This means that there is only one month until the official release of The Summer of You!
It’s fairly common to get two holidays in a row – after all, each day has an eve before, and for Christmas and New Year’s, they are celebrated. Three, is far less so — although we Americans tend to stretch holidays in their weekends, only one day is Memorial Day, Veteran’s Day, etc. But this week, we have four, count ‘em, FOUR legitimate, actual holidays in a row! Madness!
Here’s my breakdown:
Sunday. Valentine’s Day.
I’m not really a Valentine’s lover or hater. I consider myself Valentine’s Ambivalent. While flowers and candy are great, do you really need a specific, planned day to tell the person in your life you feel shmooshy about them? Shouldn’t you do that whenever the shmooshy feeling overcomes you? You could be thinking, “I’m madly in love with this guy/girl/frog/piece of garden statuary, but its only August. Guess I should wait 6 months to declare it.”
Doesn’t mean I’d say no to a Whitman’s sampler on February 14th. But on February 15th, its half price!
Monday. President’s Day
Day off work! In England, they have bank holidays that create these three-day weekends. In America, we feel the need to give those holidays names and specific purposes. But other than celebrating the various birthdays of founding fathers, who much like Canadian hockey players, seem to have all been born in January or February, as far as I can tell the only real use for this day is to purchase discounted mattresses and vehicles (and this year, since its Feb. 15th, discounted valentines candy).
This takes us directly into…
Tuesday. Mardi Gras.
This year, the candy-filled debauchery that began on Valentines and was briefly suspended while we purchased new mattresses on President’s Day carries over into the complete gluttony and bacchanalia of Mardi Gras. Traditionally a day when, before beginning lent, you gorged yourself on those things you would be forgoing for the next forty days. Now, it’s an excuse to drink excessively and get beads in competitive flashing contests. I don’t know about you, but I’m not about to forgo drinking OR competitive flashing in the next forty days. But it’s a fun party. And it’s too bad that those of us outside of Louisiana don’t have this day off work. Or more importantly, the next one…
Wednesday. Ash Wednesday.
Ash Wednesday is the Catholic version of this holiday (where the faithful atone in church and have their foreheads marked with ash), we Protestants just call it the first day of Lent. I like to call it “Hangover Day.” The day you affirm that you will abstain from indulgence. You will make this commitment, to purify yourself. Because, considering the way you feel the morning after Mardi Gras, You Will Never EVER, eat/drink/do the electric slide like that again!
I hope you all are enjoying your holiday week, and now if you’ll excuse me, the television is telling me it is my last chance to get a good deal on a Serta mattress…
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:
This was taken from the trail that hikes up Mt. Hollywood. See?
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!
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.
And it feels so good. I’m shocked that I’ve showered and put on real clothes. I’ve logged several hours on Beatles Rockband. Several more have been devoted to the viewing of British television. And there has been the Operation interludes (remember Operation? My niece and nephew got the game for Christmas and they got rid of the charley horse and the wishbone! The wishbone was the easiest one! With whom do I lodge a complaint?) This is what Christmas should be: one day of gifts followed by several of doing nothing but playing with your new toys or new games, reading your new books (my sis got a couple PC Cast books I intend to steal), or just enjoying nothing. I return to the regularly scheduled programming of work and more work soon enough, but until then, I plan on playing “A Day in the Life” on Hard until I get at least a 95%.
Happy holidays, Happy nothing, and Happy reading, everyone!
Hi Everyone! Quick Blog today, because I am over at the Book Smugglers being initiated into that fabulous rite of passage, Smugglivius, their year-in-review. I compiled a list of all my favorite things from the year 2009, and there’s a new Summer of You excerpt, AND a giveaway! It is my Smugglivius gift to you all, so head over and check it out!
In other non-denominational holiday stuff I am pleased to announce… I AM DONE. Done with cards, done with shopping, wrapping, shipping, decorating, cookie making. I have completed Christmas and still have ten days to go! For once in my life, I came in on a deadline early. I’m so proud of me.
I hope everyone is having a merry go of it… and if you need any last minute gift suggestions… I’ve always found a good romance novel to fit easily into a stocking.
I have been holding on to this tidbit of information for a while, I didn’t want to say anything until the contracts were signed and filed, but now that they have been, I am pleased to tell you… drumroll please…
I’ve had my first foreign rights sale! Revealed will be published (sometime in the next 18 months) in Russian! I am incredibly excited, not only to have Revealed cross the pond, but because it’s a whole new alphabet. I can’t wait to see what the titles look like in Cyrillic.
In other news, next Monday, Dec. 14th, I will be guest blogging at the Book Smugglers, as part of their annual wrap up holiday, Smugglivus (for the smuggler in all of us). They have gone all out this year, including having awesome posters:
Remember, Dec. 14th. Make sure you stop by, I’ll be having a give away, and maybe, if you’ve been good this year, a special sneak peak.
Over Thanksgiving, I went up to my sister’s place in the pacific northwest, where we partook of the noblest of all family traditions: Christmas cookie making. We do spritzes, bourbon balls, gingerbread, etc. All the cookies we were raised making. But this year I decided we have to do something else too. Something different. You gotta try something new every once in a while, right? Something that looks appetizing in a magazine, like this:
(I apologize for all picture quality, they were taken on my phone)
It’s called a croquembouche, a tower of what (after 5 hours of cooking) turned out to be cream-filled donut holes held together by caramel. The dough was pretty tasty, puffed up nicely, the cream filling was DELISH, and my version is not magazine worthy, but it still looks pretty decent:
But here’s one thing that the magazine didn’t tell me: Caramel is CEMENT. Also, in that constructing these delicious little cream filled poufs, I’m constructing something purely decorative (why they had me pipe in cream then I do not know) because its impossible to pull apart. Case in point:
Yes, I’m holding this thing upside down. I’m gonna need a hairdryer and a chisel to get it off the plate.
Oh well, you gotta try something new every once in a while, right?
As I sit here on my sister’s couch, watching football with her, as her husband fetches and cooks, I come across that rare realization that all is right with the world. I’m where I want to be with the people I want to be with, doing what I want to do. And therefore, I would like to present to you my list of what I’m Thankful for this gluttonous holiday.
(Side note: I’m gonna skip over family and friends, because, yeah, they’re handy, and obviously I’m thankful for them. But this list is for what I’m TRULY thankful for.)
1. A solid internet connection. Too often I find myself in the land of No Wifi, and the withdrawal symptoms are ugly and painful. It hurts me. It hurts me to my core.
2. That the Muppets exist. Specifically, that they exist doing this:
3. Chris Johnson of the Tennessee Titans. I may have won only three games so far in my fantasy football league, ranking me second to last, but Chris Johnson is the reason I managed to win those three games.
4. That my 4-year-old niece knows all the words to “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds” thanks to Beatles Rockband. I now have hope for future generations.
5. That my third book, The Summer of You, will be released in April 2010 (*cough* shameless plug*cough*)
And lastly…
6.That Thanksgiving calories don’t count.
7. … they don’t, right?
Happy thanksgiving, happy reading everyone, and be sure to be thankful for the important stuff!
Quick post today: I’m over at RomCon Inc today as their historical guest blogger! Stop on by and possibly win a copy of Revealed — hope to see you there!
