Big Newses and Small Newses!

Best of 2012

Not sure why saving this on the Mac made it green...

First, because I can hardly contain myself… (and my apologies to those already inundated with this via Facebook)  last week a friend of mine, Mark Sadler, who is one of the staff writers for Suspense Magazine  informed me that The Azalea Assault was chosen one of the best cozy mysteries of 2012!!! I’m so excited! If you go to the magazine and click on it, it will download and I am on page 40!


Medium Wrong Edits DONE

For now, anyway… I’ve sent it off to two of my FABULOUS, reliable beta readers for the ‘big feedback’ and will get back to editing it over Christmas break. In the meantime, I need to find my latest version of What Ales Me and work on THAT. The ANNOYING piece of this is I have to do version magic to get it from my old hard drive where it is in Open Office into Word when none of the computers I have at the moment likes to talk to each other that way. The one that will read the old hard drive has too OLD a version of word to convert… So I need to send it all over, convert from work… all that irritating stuff…

Best Book of the Year

I downloaded this a few months back, but only managed to get to it recently and OHMYGAWD… I will do a full review when I finish, but I am humbled and amazed to know someone who wrote such a fabulous book. So if you are looking for a read… or have someone on your Christmas list who loved The DiVinci Code (but are maybe more of a stickler for real facts to back up the story)… Helena Soister’s The Compass Master is your book.


And Lastly… Tree is up… first set of cookies baked (have an exchange at work today, so I had to do that—will tell you what and share pics FRIDAY as part of Angela Felsted’s Book release cookie exchange!)… I even got a significant dent made in my shopping…

And now I need another weekend.

Twenty Years

That's a long time, eh? Today is my (our—but since HWMNOMOTI must not be mentioned on the internet, I will stick with 'my') 20th wedding anniversary.

It is a little strange... HWMNBMOTI had to work yesterday. Today. Tomorrow. When he works, it is 12 hour days (three this week, occasionally he picks up a 4th) so... no romantic dinner. Heck, we will barely pass each other in the hallway. Our money situation is meager... depressing even... so there are no gifts. I did find a perfect card, but having no scanner at home, I can't share it.

HA! (but I sort of found it)  This is the image—Bad to the Bun... when I met him he was all badass—leather jacket, dangling cigarette, sort of tough... but a softie... he was nursing his mom who was dying of cancer, for Pete's sake. So the thumbs up on the bad boy (who doesn't love that?), but I knew there was a good heart in there, no matter how much posturing he did.

And that is what I've got today, other than an addendum to my ineptitude: That accepting changes? NOT what I was supposed to do... was supposed to leave them as changes. *dies* in process of merging the two versions and will end up two days late. MAN, there is a learning curve.

ALSO had some bad news in the last few days on publisher interest... before Thanksgiving I'd gotten one no, then Monday another and Tuesday two more. I am still at 4 more and Amy was wonderful—if we get narrower on our list, we will send to more. Not the end... not remotely. But it is still sort of pout-worthy.


BUT I am doing well on NaNoWriMo. I technically won a week ago. I am at 66.5K. I can finish this week. I wish I could finish today, but my ending is more complicated that I'd thought, initially. I t just may take a little longer. I SHOULD be done in maybe 5000 words.

So I will leave you with my favorite thought for the day and call it good.

Happy Hing Day!!!