A Senior Moment

My husband and I had dinner tonight at IHOP (it's inexpensive, relatively fast, and my husband likes breakfast foods at odd hours of the day), and in looking at the bill as the time arrived to pay it, I realized we'd been undercharged for what we ate. A quick check turned up why--the waitress had rung us up for the Senior BOGO deal, where one meal bought at regular price gets you a second free, for people 55 years and up. When I protested that neither of us qualified for the discount, she smiled and said, "That's all right!"

Now, I know my husband and I both have gray hair mixed in with the brown, but I had no idea we looked that old!

It's amazing that we're nearly halfway through the final month of the year. My son is almost 21. In just a few days over three months from now, my first book comes out. At this point, my publisher is already in the process of arranging reviews, and advertising is being arranged as well. The time is going to both drag and fly, which sounds like a contradiction unless you've been in this sort of situation.

Winter has arrived, and with quite a kick. We didn't get hit as bad as people further north did, but it was much colder than what we're used to. It was only a year ago, the end of this month (I think) that we had that massive ice storm that knocked out the power for days and broke trees everywhere. You can bet it's on a lot of people's minds this year, as we watch temperatures sitting on average 10-15 degrees lower than what's normal. There were a lot of trees trimmed back after the last storm, but if we get as much ice as we did last year, the weight of it is sure to pull some of the lines down. Folks are holding their breaths. You can also bet those who got generators last year are probably going to laugh at those of us who didn't, if it happens again this year.

Just read Margaret Frazer's new Joliffe the Player mystery, A Play of Treachery. It's the fifth in the series, set in the 1400's in England and now in France. Joliffe is an interesting character. I'm glad she's spun him off into his own series.

Okay, enough for now. Until next time~~

Life's Mysteries

Life is full of them. Like, for instance, where the whole of this last month went. I assume I didn't sleep through the whole thing, but there are times when I wonder.

So among the things I can remember from November--

Got the galley done for Blood Money. Found one error--but considering how often that manuscript has been combed through, that's probably about all there was in it. Not that there can't still be something lurking unfound in all those words, but that was the only one that jumped out at me.

Read some. Finished two by Georgette Heyer--Death in the Stocks, and They Found Him Dead, and one by Thea Phipps--The Doll in the Wall.

Finally gave up on a book that I'd been trying to read for months--the author writes well, but the constraints of the genre require that the main characters behave in certain ways, and they finally got too much on my nerves. I choose not to name names, because for some reason, authors aren't allowed the same freedom to point at books they didn't enjoy that other readers are. It was an historical mystery/romantic suspense, which isn't a sub-genre I normally read in. I really wanted to like it, because I enjoy historical mysteries.

For all those doing NaNoWriMo--

Congratulations if you made your goals! And congratulations even if you didn't--50K words during a holiday month is a lot to tackle, and you were brave to try it.

Okay, I'm brain-fried for now. More later~~

Post-conference recovery

I always think I'm going to do a post about the Muse conference once it's over, and I never get around to it. I was tentatively diagnosed with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome a number of years ago--I say tentatively, because by the time I'd gotten to see a doctor and we'd had the second blood test done, the titer levels for the marker virus had gone down, and she wasn't prepared to make a firm diagnosis based on that. It would be handy to have the label to point at, but subsequent years have shown me that she wouldn't have been wrong to make the diagnosis.

As a result, intense activity can leave me flattened for a while. The Muse conference is a pretty intense experience. The conference runs twenty-four hours a day for seven days, with instructors and students coming together from different parts of the world. Students and instructors come and go as life and available time allow. The message board the conference is held on is always available. The first couple of years, I tried taking some workshops because there were three of us involved in teaching the suspense workshop, and we really didn't need three of us for that. I have a three inch binder filled with information gleaned from the first conference. The second year, I really overreached, and took so many workshops that it took me nearly a month to recover from the stress of trying to do too much. I believe I took one workshop last year, and none this year. Last year and this year, there were only two of us teaching the suspense workshop, so that's where my energy had to go.

JD Webb, my workshop partner, and I give a lot of feedback in our workshop. We both try to reply to all the participants' assignments, but since I don't touch horror or the supernatural, JD is the one who handles those. We encourage everyone to look at everyone else's feedback as well as their own, since we've only got a week to help them see what makes suspense and how to incorporate it in their own work. It can be draining, but it's worth it to see those little virtual light bulbs coming on when they get it and start working it into their assignments.

We'll be doing the workshop again next year, of course. We'll also be doing a workshop for a chapter of the Romance Writers of America. The pace should be a little less hectic, since we'll be spreading it out over a two week period instead of trying to cram it all into one week. That workshop is scheduled for mid-December 2010, so we'll have time to recover from the Muse conference beforehand. More on that at a future date, though.

If you're interested in the Muse Online Writers Conference, hop on over to the conference website and take a look at the workshops that were offered this year. Take a look at the testimonials. Sometimes people will register for the conference, and then back out at the last moment, pointing to the fact that the conference is free while reciting that old standby, "You get what you pay for." And that's true. You get the efforts of a whole lot of industry professionals, who volunteer their time for a week to help those coming along behind them. All it costs you is a little time and effort of your own. At the end of the week, when you've got that binder full of notes, you won't think that's a bad trade-off.

New Book Drawing

Thea Phipps's second book in her Bella Wildeve humorous mystery series, The Doll in the Wall, is due out in November, and she's celebrating with a giveaway. Three signed copies of the new book will be given away, one each to three winners drawn from among those who register on her forum or leave a comment on her blog. The drawing will be held November 7, so if you enjoy mysteries with humor, an interesting heroine, and a cast of quirky supporting characters, get over there and register for a chance to win.

Thea's website

Blood Money Cover Art

Somehow it all feels more real when you've got that cover art. Of course, it will be even more real once I've got a copy of the printed book in my hands.

If you click on the cover, a slightly larger version of it will come up.

And we have a cover!

I just got my first look at the cover art for Blood Money. As soon as I know that it's all right to go ahead and post it, I'll put up a thumbnail of it here.

Muse Conference starts on Monday. I doubt I'll be posting much during that week.

~~Until later...

Picture Imperfect is online

Mysterical-E's Fall 2009 issue is up now, and among the stories on offer is "Picture Imperfect", by yours truly. The story comes in at around 20,000 words, so make sure you have a few minutes before you head over to read it.

Current read: Just started All Shots, by Susan Conant. Haven't gotten far enough into it to know if I like it yet or not.

~~'til later...