Tag: authors

Why not…

I’m taking it from scottynola, who took it from docbrite…

Five things I did for the first time this year:

got a two-book contract on my own
evacuated for a hurricane
sold a short story
talked to Greg Herren on the phone
met five new (to me) authors in person

Five things I’m looking forward to in ’06

the release of Someone Like You
the release of my first solo novel
Saints and Sinners
two new great-nieces and/or -nephews
more rest, less stress

Best household additions in ’05

River
digital camera
wireless
little couch in office
wooden blinds

Five things within my grasp that delight me

Margot and Guinness
coffee
mouse & keyboard
Another Janet Evanovich mystery
photo of Timmy, Jim, and Tim

Five things I lost in ’05

sleep
five more pounds
hope for a certain manuscript
the setting for Three Fortunes in One Cookie
red reflector on my car bumper

Six people who really had my back this year

Tom, as always, but there is no way I can limit this to six. My support system is phenomenal.

Six things I should be doing rather than writing this list

Writing
Reconciling my bank statement
Paying bills
Calling my mother
Answering e-mail
Putting decorations away

Huh?

Tim just pointed out that amazon.com is suggesting that readers buy The Communist Manifesto with Three Fortunes in One Cookie.

Now there’s a connection that eludes me. Was Karl Marx gay? Did he develop his philosophy from fortune cookies? Is it because Alyson used red font on our cover?

Good morning, America, how are you…

So tonight is the night when we join with New Orleans writer Greg Herren at our Meteor/Borders signing to raise money for the New Orleans AIDS Task Force (NO/AIDS)–or we get drunk and wonder where everybody is.

Actually, I’m VERY moved by the donations we’ve received in the mail, and by my personal friends who, though many of them can’t make it, have sent checks so I can buy copies of the books for them tonight (since Borders donates a portion of book sales to NO/AIDS). And then there are the friends who used their extensive e-mail lists to get the word out, and friends who made sure we had plenty of flyers…and the list goes on.

Meanwhile, Greg rolled into Houston last night, and Tim and I finally got to meet him face to face after these many months of talking online. Did we like each other? Was it everything we dreamed it would be and more? Did we stay up talking until nearly 5 a.m. even though we were all exhausted? Why yes, and that answers the first two questions. We laughed, we bitched, it was better than a Jacqueline Susann novel.

And–I SCORED a cover of Greg’s next Scotty book (coming in March) because Greg got mail from Kensington just before he left New Orleans. So unless you get a Kensington catalog, you’ve SEEN IT HERE FIRST!

Procrastination

I am a procrastinator, and one of the things I’ve put off doing for eleven months is organizing my photos and putting them in albums. This can get overwhelming when there are a lot of them.

But I did it today, finally, and found photos I’d forgotten ever taking.

Like this one. I love potatoes, though we don’t get together as much as we once did. It’s not their fault; I love them a little too much and had to learn moderation. I think it’s sweet that they send me secret messages letting me know that they still love me.

Isn’t it strange that people who write murder mysteries are the nicest people in the world? Maybe they spend their aggression on their fictitious victims. Here are two absolutely charming Houston authors, Dean James and Julie Wray Herman.

Books and paintings

Today I read Greg Herren’s Bourbon Street Blues, our introduction to Scotty Bradley, dancer turned personal trainer turned detective. I’d read the second in the series, Jackson Square Jazz quite a while back, and it was fun to see how it began. Scotty lives life on his own terms, a quality I always appreciate, and his parents crack me up. It was a little disquieting to read about the levees and Scotty’s visions of New Orleans under water, since the book came out in 2003.

I looked again for the cover of Greg’s next Scotty novel, Mardi Gras Mambo, to put it here, but it’s still not floating around the Internet.