I have so much work to do.

1. I have a blog tour to assemble 
2. Subsequent guest blogs to write for already booked tour sites (more to come)
3. Live signings to book for here in town
4. I’m trying to find reviewers for Lady Belling’s Secret
5. I have a bunch of work to do on the first round of edits for Book #2 – Miss Goldsleigh’s Secret
6. I have blogs to write for this site
7. I have to figure out this social media nonsense and it’s giving me hives
8. That stupid, soul-sucking day job at Bank of No Forks

And the problem is I’ve become obsessed with my Amazon rankings. So obsessed, I’ve created a spreadsheet. Great Zeus – seriously – an Excel spreadsheet to keep track of my sales and rankings. I have to make a concerted effort to limit myself to checking in no more than every four hours.

And then I’ll get a Tweet like this from my writer friend, Tara Simone:

Ur book rankings are awesome!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Of course, that just sent me right to Amazon to see what happened since the last time I was there. Tara says it’s perfectly normal. All authors go through it. The problem is I can’t manage to do ANYTHING ELSE. The book has been making a steady climb up the charts. At this very moment it’s ranked 5,021 in Amazon and – here’s the really, really exciting part – #92 in Amazon Regency Romances.

I guess my diet will go better when I stop eating altogether because I’m too busy stalking myself.

It snowed in the desert today. It’s snowed here before. I remember five distinct times in my 44 years here that it has snowed. What made this day different was that it snowed during the day. It started around 11:00 and stopped around 12:30. Real honest to God snow. From the sky. Usually what happens here is that the weather man comes on in the evening and hints that it might snow that night and the homeless people should find shelter and you should let your dogs in the house. Then all the school children pray for snow. Pray pray pray – to God, Zeus, Odin – anyone who’ll listen. I talked to Odin a lot when I was younger figuring if anyone knew about snow it would be a Norse god, right? It rarely happened, but some mornings you’d wake up and there would be a very thin layer or snow on the ground. Not enough to make a snowman out of or even a very good snowball, but that wouldn’t stop us from trying. We’d run to all the neighbor’s houses and scrap all their snow up and cart it back to your own yard. Often we’d build a mud man and then cover it in snow. It was a feeble attempt, but we weren’t swayed from our plan.

So now Ava and I are wondering where the hell is Global Warming?

First – the most important thing.

MY ACTUAL “BOOK” BOOK IS UP FOR SALE ON AMAZON! So if you were holding out for a print copy, now’s your chance.

Next, and not nearly as important, is that it’s possible the end of the world is here.

Several of us got a very weird texts this evening from the National Weather Service. Suddenly our phones started screaming an alarm we’d never heard before. It was piercing and painful and certainly attention getting.

Emergency Alert

Blizzard Warning this area til 11:00 PM MST Wed. Prepare. Avoid Travel. Check Media, – NWS

What the hell? I live in the American Southwestern Desert. DESERT. At the time of the message it was 65 degrees and we think THAT’s chilly. If there is a 35 degree drop in temperature from tonight to tomorrow morning and there is indeed a freaking blizzard in the ARIZONA desert, it’s the end of the world. I promise you.

I mentioned this potentially disastrous development to My Honey (who was wearing shorts at the time) and he informed me that if that was the case, he was going out for beer.  I’m going to need cake. There is no way I’m going into the apocalypse without cake.

You might need something to read, too. There’s nothing worse than sitting through a blizzard with nothing to read. Don’t, worry, I have a suggestion.

I popped over to the lovely site of R.E. Hargrave and did an interview. I answered in my usual way, so you can assume there was goofiness involved.

I also ordered 50 copies of my first book, Lady Belling’s Secret, today so I’ll have plenty at the Tucson Festival of Books in March. You’ll be able to purchase your own print copy this week. I’m just waiting for Amazon to do their internal stuff…  Don’t think about it too hard, the minutia of publishing is mind boggling.

Anyway, If you want to know where I’m hiding an elephant, hop over to the interview.

Tra la la la la. It’s the Friday of a three day weekend. That makes us enormously happy. And why shouldn’t it? Any time we’re not spending more time at Bank of No Forks is a good time indeed. This week has been completely horrendous. Awful. If we were crying kinds of people, there might possibly have been tears at some point in the week. Instead, we tried to think happy thoughts and sang songs from

Admit it – this is a hell of a hat

Mary Poppins but changed the lyrics. We did find some things to chuckle about. Don’t worry – we’ll share.

1. Pope. It’s clear now that no one thought the Pope was allowed to quit, but apparently he can because he has. Quit. Even if he’s not allowed to quit, who’d going to tell him? Is there anyone around with the official capacity to boss around the Pope? What he needs is a bossy best friend. They’ve worked wonders in our lives and I’m sure that he would ultimately see the benefit. Nevertheless, he’s retired so now the whole world is wondering who will be next. Ava is absolutely certain her phone will ring by the end of  the week. If Ava’s the Pope then Amylynn gets to be the Camerlengo. If you don’t know what that is, look it up.  Amylynn has interpreted that to mean Boss of the Pope. So now that we have that established, we’d like to

I borrowed this from TheWriter’sCat. Follow on Twitter.

know, do we get new hats or do we have to use the old hat the other guy wore? Does the retiring Pope get to take the cool robes and stuff with him? All we’re saying is that when WE retire as the Pope et al, we’re cleaning house. We’ll be able to retire on an island after all the sales on Ebay.

2. Cat’s are evil geniuses. In Brazil the authorities at the jail in Arapiraca thwarted a cat who had snuck into a prison with a cell phone and drill bits strapped to his back. Unfortunately, the article we read was sadly ill informed. There’s never enough information in these stupid stories. Did the cat have any indicator which prisoner he was sneaking the contraband in for? Or was any inmate who could catch him allowed to use the tools? Why just drill bits? Is there some way we can’t fathom where you can use a cell phone as a drill? Is there really an app for that? Or was there an earlier cat who snuck in with the drill and they failed to mention him or he was never nabbed? Damn it, people. This is important stuff.

3. Scotland is hysterical. We love ponies. We love sweaters. It only goes to serve that we’d ADORE ponies IN sweaters. Isn’t this the cutest damn thing you’ve seen in ages? Ponies in sweaters. Holy shit people. And these sweaters are freaking adorable, too. They have buttons. Sweaters with buttons on ponies. What kind of geniuses thought up this travel-to-Scotland campaign? We’re booking our tickets next week. Do you think a Shetland pony will fit in a cat carrier for the plane ride home?

4. Richard Burton. The Sisters have never professed to be lovers of great poetry. Of course we can appreciate the famous Sonnets and we really adore a little Suess-ian level rhyming. What we generally don’t find the appeal in is poetry of the love-sick variety. We came upon this little doozey by Richard Burton for Elizabeth Taylor. “My blind eyes are desperately waiting for the sight of you. You don’t realise of course, E.B. how fascinatingly beautiful you have always

been, and how strangely you have acquired an added and special and dangerous loveliness.” We understand the words. We understand the pining sentiment. Perhaps we’re the only people on the planet who are not tangled in the enthrall of this poem. Well, he was often drunk, right?

5. Bonuses. Sing it with us, won’t you? Give us a B! Give us an O. Alright enough of that nonsense. Still bonuses totally rock. Bank of No Forks actually pulled it off. Everyone let’s go shopping! In Scotland!

Clearly, our sense of humor is a bit skewed.

So My Honey has a new truck. Well, new to him anyway. It’s really beautiful. And big. Really big. Gigantically, monstrously, big.  He found and fell in love with a Ford F350 3/4 ton diesel with a crew cab, four doors and a long bed. The thing is like riding in a semi. The Bandit can stand up and walk to the front seat.

The new truck is a very pretty blue – kind of a cross between royal blue and some other color blue. Now that you know the color, it will make sense that he named the truck Babe. As in Babe the Big Blue Ox.

Now the problem is that I never know if he’s talking to me or the truck. All I’m saying is it’s best if he doesn’t refer to me as a big, blue anything.

You know there are moments of surrealism in life that are just too funky not to share.

On Friday, I tweeted

Then right afterwards… AnnaCampbellOZ retweeted me. If you aren’t aware, in the world of historical Romance, Anna Campbell is huge. HUGE.

So then I tweeted…

Honest to Zeus, the woman’s book is in my purse.

After five long years of …writing and rewriting and rewriting AGAIN. Round after round after round of submitting to publishing houses in New York.  More rewriting. A bountiful amount of whining, crying, moaning and feeling sorry for myself. A hard wrought decision made with my agent to self-publish (“Because why the hell not?” she said). Interviewing and hiring a professional editor. More rewriting. Finding the MOST talented cover artist to make that gorgeous cover.

Then finally — finally…

It’s available on Amazon as an ebook and because I will require a print copy it will be available in paper in the coming weeks.

So faithful readers, click any one of the eight zillion links I’ve set up here and buy Lady Belling’s Secret.

Francesca Belling is torn between two worlds—her past infatuation with her brother’s best friend and her future obligations. She never intended to end up in the bed of her longtime crush, Thomas Wallingham, but that’s exactly where she finds herself.

Unfortunately, mail is slow during a war. She thought he knew everything. He had never suspected.

Thomas has always wanted to be a part of the Belling’s family but he was too foolish to grab the chance when she threw herself at him before. Instead, he ran off to war. Emboldened by his new-found appreciation for a grown-up Francesca, he finds that dream is within his reach.

If she thinks he’s running away this time, she has no idea what she’s in for.

Leave a review if you feel so inclined.

And before you even knew you wanted to know — the second book is due back from my editor for the first round of edits – the worst round, the round that sucks out your soul, crushes your ego, and sends you to crying in the grocery store – in the middle of this month. So it will be coming out very soon.

Keep your eyes open for a contest giveaway in the next day or so for the launch of Lady Belling’s Secret. Keep in mind, the Sisters never do anything small.