I've been suffering apathy regarding my garden this year. After 1)all the damage the dogs have done, and b)spring going straight to summer, I'm just having trouble getting myself out there to work in the yard.

The chrysanthemums are already blooming.

OK, the gardeners here will know that's weird for early May. My irises are already shot, and the Texas Lilacs (vitex) are setting blooms now rather than in August. That means the rest of the summer will be mostly bloom-free. I understand why the plants are doing this, but it does freak me out.

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Allergies and lack of Diet Coke are also taking a toll. Because of the humidity this year, mold is way up....and that's the primary thing that triggers my allergies. Since I've been working on cutting it back to NO MORE than 1 Diet Coke per day, my caffeine balance has been off. Between the allergies, hormones, and caffeine troubles, I'm having sinus headaches. Not congestion (so don't bother to suggest a neti pot), but swelling. I try not to overdo the sudafed, but it's been necessary...

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I've been re-reading Dreaming Death, as I'm contemplating whether to re-write it or not. So I'm not getting wordcount.

Shironne is fun to write. I really do hope I sell this novel one day. ;o)

Back from the dentist. We'll fix the chipped veneer next month....and lighten both veneers. Apparently giving up Diet Coke has made the surrounding teeth whiter than they used to be....and thus my years-old veneers no longer match.

This is probably a WIN!
....except for the fact that insurance won't pay the cost my redoing my veneers to make them whiter. Oh, well.

(I have veneers on my upper lateral incisors because they were too small...amd my incisors are huge, so this helped balance them. As I recall, Sheldon said something about his small lateral incisors indicating that he was more evolved, and by that logic, I shouldn't be able to drive either....)



ETA: I haven't -given up- Diet Coke, but I have cut back severely.

I was offline all weekend because I was travelling. Sorry if I missed you...

Agenda
I headed down to Hurst to meet up with my wonderful agent and 3 other awesome Texas authors (I was clearly the newbie there). Then I headed over to Plano to meet up with displacedtexan, then up to Denton to see friends, up to Bowie to see family, and finally back home (a little bit ago.)

GPS
The new Tom-Tom GPS is well and truly dead, so I went back to my ancient Garmin which hasn't been updated for years. There was one point on Highway 121 where the GPS showed me flying through air like the bus in the movie Speed. The construction around DFW airport is particularly...inconvenient.

ETA: Target has exchanged the faulty Tom-Tom for a Garmin, for which I am very grateful.

Karma
Mostly due to unfamiliar roads and constructions, there were two occasions this weekend when I ended up cutting someone off. I must therefore practice extremely nice driving for the next two months to get my car karma back up...

Playlist
I forgot to put in a Portuguese language CD, so I just had music for all that driving which was kinda relaxing. But it was a weird assortment:
Los Lonely Boys The Very Best of Los Lonely Boys
The Band Perry The Band Perry
Siren's Song Daughter of Ocean
Meaghan Smith The Cricket's Orchestra
Over the Rhine Drunkard's Prayer, and
Pink Martini Joy to the World (uh, yeah....I haven't changed out discs in a while)

Hay
I saw a LOT of hay baled up on my drive through North Texas and Oklahoma. This is a good thing. After the last two years' drought, seeing all that hay actually baled up is a relief.

I've been working on professional publication since 2005, and one of the things that I always said was that I would get a tattoo when I sold my first book.

Now that I'm here, I'm not so sure.

I have no idea what design I want. I'd considered getting the title of the book, but it's rather too long to slap on my arm, shoulder, or ankle. I considered just going with "Ambergris", but that would lead to endless explanations. I really don't want a sereia or a seal slapped on my arm. So probably not book-specific.

Clearly I have a dilemma, and why not go to you guys for help???

Therefore, I present the Tattoo Poll:
Poll #1840685 Tattoo Dilemma
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 38

What should I do about my tattoo dilemma?

Just a caveat here: I don't feel bound to follow the results. I did that for the hair-color poll, but this is a bit more permanent ;o)

Publisher's Weekly just ran the announcement about my book deal:

OF AMBERGRIS, BLOOD, AND BRANDY a novel of fantasy, suspense, and romance in an alternate turn-of-the-century Portugal in which races of shape-shifters live in secret, and a fantastical underwater work of art and a psychopathic killer become tangled in a string of murders that threaten the stability of the entire nation to Kat Sherbo of Ace, by Lucienne Diver of The Knight Agency.*

I'm really excited about this!!!! I think the editor I'll be working with is going to be a great match for me, and I'm actually looking forward to working on the edits (feel free to remind me of that come July).

None of this would have happened without the guidance and hard work of my awesome agent, Lucienne Diver. She was my dream agent, and the only one to whom I ever sent these novels. I'm truly lucky she said yes, despite the fact that I sent her novel 2 first**...

The first novel "Of Ambergris, Blood, and Brandy" is tentatively scheduled to come out Fall 2013, with "The Seat of Magic" to follow the next year.

Now I'm gonna go bounce around the kitchen and squee...




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*This is actually the version that my agent, my editor, and I agreed upon. The version that PW ran was about 10 words shorter....but seriously, it's hard to get all that into 140 characters!

**That's a story for another day.

My laptop's in the computer hospital. Apparently he's got a virus, a particularly nasty one which wouldn't allow me to use Word or open the Internet*...but I could run McAfee and play Solitaire. Since they could not open Windows in Safe Mode, the OfficeDepot guys think this is....well, bad.

FWIW, I did a full scan on McAfee, which reported nothing wrong. If you're using McAfee, you might want to check that your software's up to date. Mine was updated recently, which means this virus sneaked in under their radar.

I, of course, have everything backed up. The last couple of days I backed up to a flashdrive which I'm now reluctant to stick into my only working computer (especially since McAfee doesn't catch this virus). I may just sequester that flashdrive and count it a loss. (But it's my favoite, drat it all! My necklace flashdrive!).

THe OD guys will try to fix my 8-month old computer...for $160. It's a 500$ computer. The law of diminishing returns means I'm not going to spend more than $160, particulary since I think they're going with the nuclear option.

Isn't technology wonderful?


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*I'm using my husband's laptop at this time.

Watched:
The Avengers, but I already talked about that.

Season finale of Once Upon a Time.
I didn't know how they were going to pull off a second season of this show. I mean, once the curse is gone....but on the whole I think they came up with a good solution.

Ep 2 of Sherlock, S2
Not bad at all.

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Read:
Enchanted by Alethea Kontis
I thought this was a lovely story, well told. Nicely done, Ms. Kontis! I'm ready to read the next book now.

The Proposal by Mary Balogh
I'm pleased that she's started a new series. One of the issues that a Romance writer this prolific must have is not repeating the same characters over and over. Particularly when one is working in a limited time period, location, and set of historical factors. In some ways I feel like I've read most of the plot/character options that this author has to offer, but I'll continue to read them...

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Listened to:

Tuskegee by Lionel Richie
I think this is a good enough CD, but for me some of the differences between the old versions were too jarring for this to be good for me. So I'd rate it as OK. But it's not really a keeper.

The Best of Los Lonely Boys
This, on the other hand, was awesome. I have a new 'long-distance-driving' CD. Plus "Heaven" is a real earworm....

So you've seen it all already in the blogosphere, but I'll put in my two three cents.

1) Having seen enough of the protests about the treatment of Black Widow and her butt in the ads, I found myself noticing every last time we saw her posterior.

But as we went through the movie, there was something else I noticed: I think I saw Captain America's butt as much as hers...if not more.

Not that I'm complaining about that, thank you very much, Joss. I just found myself thinking that I needed a couple of stopwatches next time I see the movie so I can determine relative butt-time...



2) I must say that I'm impressed with the movie producers here. They stayed committed to a multi-movie plan. They did well with the Iron Man movies and Captain America, but some of the others (The Hulk movies and Thor) didn't do so well.

I'm impressed that, in an industry with the attention span of a gnat, they didn't give up on their master plan to make the Avengers as soon as they had a flop....



3) When we saw Thor, there's a scene where a bow and arrow is used to save Thor's hide. I feel vindicated in having wondered about that ever since. (I'm not very familiar with the Avengers universe, being more of an X-Men person. I perceive Hawkeye as being a bit like the Avengers' version of Wolverine Gambit.)

I saw these in the store today. Although I'm not truly willing to spend 35$ on an orchid that I'll ultimately kill....this one was tempting!

The color is even more amazing in person.

Overcast and rainy today, so I'm eating snickerdoodles.

(Yes, I know I shouldn't, but...)
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My two old desks have now made the journey to the consignment store (it's amazing what one can get in the back of a Volvo station wagon).

I'm inheriting displacedtexan's desk, so my office is all at sixes and sevens. His desk is higher quality, and has much more surface space than either of mine (but not both combined.) I'm going to put the old desktop in a closet for now, and drag it out if I need it for something. If I don't touch it in, say, 6 months, then I may get rid of it.

When I get the office sorted, I'll put in some pictures so everyone can see where I make 'magic.' ;o)

So this is an 'Exotic Star' amaryllis, picked up at a Walmart in Duncan, OK.

I got it to upload to Flikr from the laptop. Small victories, I guess.

I need to work on camera 2.

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I finally charged up my Kindle again and am trying to read another book on it.

For me, it definitely will not replace my desire for a real book. The advantage to it is that there are books not published in paper form at all, so I can read those without sitting at my computer. But it's heavier than a book (even once I took the case off) and I'm just not as comfortable with it.