I just posted the Julia Quinn interview on Examiner.com.  You should go read it.  AND you should come to the Tucson Festival of Books and see me and the other Quills and all of these awesome writers.

I hope I see you there…….

If not, this blog will be rife with exciting stories after this weekend since I’ll be teeming with exciting stories.

I AM SOOO EXCITED.  So excited in fact that my sheer and utter, bone crushing exhaustion can keep me down.

too tired to check punctuation or spelling.  even to form complete sentances. very tired.  I am posting this a 12:50 am.

the edits are off to the publisher.  I have no idea what comes next.  the cover is done.  my bio is dozzzzzzzz. 

Sorry, i dozed off a little.

The interview with Brenda Novak is up on examiner.com.  Go read it.  She’s cool.

Julia Quinn’s will be up on Thursday.

I’m going to crawl off to bed now.  I’ll post more tommo….zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.

I have some really terrible news.  Roscoe ate Canada.  More on that later.

I am trying desperately to get my edits done under the deadline my editor has given me.  She sent me my manuscript with all the words highlighted that need to be reworded or removed entirely.  These are important words like “was”, “of”, “go”, “it”.  I’m here to tell you, “of” is the hardest.  I’ve been working night and day over this – and you people know me, that should read as “I’ve been working night and night over this”.  I haven’t been to bed before 2:00 one day in the last two weeks.  And don’t think I can sleep in either.  Kids must still go to school and I still have a job that prefers I attend.

My Honey has been very understanding.  I’m hard to live with right now.  If I’m not at the computer whimpering, then I’m staring off into space without the capacity to form sentences.  In a desperate attempt to make myself concentrate I’ve started listening to opera.  I can’t understand the words so it doesn’t distract me but the music pulls me away from the rest of the world.

Today was my day off.  The day I had planned to chain myself to the desk and finish if it killed me.  It’s 9:10.  There are still technically enough hours that the day might do me in.

The following are all the distractions I had to deal with today:

• *I had to go to a funeral.  And then the reception.  Where they were doing shots of tequila.  I did not partake.  I got My Honey to bring me home early to edit (hahahahaahahahahaha or screw around, whatever)
• *I decided I wanted a cup of tea.  Not just any tea, but the loose leaf tea.  I had to search everywhere to find the tea diffuser and then my special cup and electric cup warmer.  I heated up the water in the microwave but the darn diffuser wouldn’t fit into the cup.  Or the other cup.  Or the third one either.  Now I had to find the tea pot and start over with the water.  I went to plug in my electric cup warmer at my desk which meant I had to pull everything out from under it to get to the socket which meant…
• *I swept the floor in the office.
• *I cleaned and organized my desk.
• *I read and re-read Julia Quinn’s interview when she returned it to me today.  It’s really good.  I’m going to post it on Thursday in anticipation of the Tucson Festival of Books.
• *I played with the dog, which is good because he might be dead by tomorrow.  More on that later.
• *I started the laundry.
• *I texted Ava and Isabella at least a hundred times today.
• *I ate three pieces of cake.  Three.  Lemon cake.  It was glorious.
• *I googled Canada.  More on that later.
• *I wrote a bio at the request of my publisher that was really bad because I can no longer string more than six words together and have them make sense, so Isabella fixed it for me.
• *I tried really hard not to laugh in exhausted hysteria when Sassy dragged her brother into the office to tattle that he had just peed in the cat bowl.  Yes, you read that correctly.  The Bandit peed in the cat bowl.  When his father asked him why, he said he had to go really, really, really bad.  Apparently walking the other twelve feet to the bathroom was out of the question.  I do not understand that boy.  (later he asked me if he could have any “round money” because he couldn’t think of the word coins)
• *I worked on creating an outfit to dress Sassy up as a Royal Canadian Mounted Police Person.  More on that later.

So, this is later.

For Sassy’s project on Canada, she and her father have been working very hard on her “float”.  It’s a giant shoe box that they turned upside down and decorated.  It looked awesome I must say.  They spent several days making paper mache mountains.  Today they painted the mountain brown and snowy, then added felt grass and water, mossy bushes and trees, and Canadian animals.  Sassy drew a Canadian sky line for the side of the box.  It looked awesome.

Really awesome, until we were getting everyone ready for bed and Roscoe ate it.  There were tears and yelps and considerable yelling.

The kids are in bed sound asleep.  Roscoe is outside pouting.  My Honey is making a new paper mache mountain.  And me, what am I doing?  I’m doing my editing silly.  Just like I’m supposed to be doing.  Right?

This is so funny….

From the brilliant people at Shoebox.

I belive I’ll have another piece of lemon cake.

I just posted another great interview with a New York Times best selling romance writer.  This time with Rachel Gibson who’s work I have really enjoyed.

She’ll also be at the Tucson Festival of Books this coming weekend.  I suggest you show up – the Festival will be amazing this year.

BESIDES – all the Quill Sisters will be there.

Sassy has to do a school project for her first grade class on a country of her choosing.  They need to make a parade float out of a shoe box, wear clothes that represent that country, and make food from that country to share as a snack with the rest of the class. 

Sassy chose Canada.  Canada?  Of course, I have nothing against Canada.  It’s a lovely, quiet place.  But I defy you to think of one thing Canadians eat besides Canadian bacon (which isn’t Canadian by the way) and beer.  If you’re a fan of Bob and Doug Mackenzie comedy routines you might also suggest donuts, but really – that’s it.

This is what I suggest we do:  Dress her up as a Royal Canadian Mounted Police Person, but a bunch of John Candy and Michael J. Fox movies in a shoe box.  We’ll play Rush and Bryan Adams music and have a six pack of Moosehead beer. 

Do you think that will be a problem for the first grade?

So My Honey took her to the arts and crafts store and they picked up some trees and some moose and beaver and bear statues.  They also thought they’d make some paper mache mountains.  Then they decided that the easiest thing would be to use the plastic volcano mountains that came with The Bandit’s giant dinosaur box.

“So, Bandit, what would it take for you to allow us to use your mountains for Sassy’s float?” My Honey asked.

“What for?” Bandit asks.

“We want to use them for mountains.”

“But they’re volcanoes.”

“Well, you see, if you allow us to paint them green like mountains, then after we’re done, I’ll repaint them them brown and instead of just having lava on top I’ll make the lava flow all the way down the mountain.”

“But they’re not mountains.  They’re volcanoes,” The Bandit insists.

“I know, but we’re gonna pretend.  How much would that cost us?”

“Sixty elventy trillion hundred dollars.”

Have I taught that boy the art of negotiation or what?

Alright – after a few tizzies and a rather loud nervous breakdown…….

This is my actual cover.

**snort**

Actually, this is my very dear friend Kurt.  I’ve mentioned him on these pages before.  He very sweetly offered to pose for the cover. 

When I got this picture, I was…..stunned.  Yeah, let’s go with stunned.

He’s going to die when he sees I posted this.  That’s a major part of our relationship. 

Kurt – remember that time you helped me move into my first apartment and you rode in the back of the pick-up truck with my dresser and I looked in the review mirror and saw you waving my underwear to the traffic.  Do you remember that?  I do.

xoxoxo – I think that you’ll all agree that his wife is one lucky lady.

I love you.

I left for work way too early this morning.  It really irritated me when I got to work and realized it, too, because the whole time I was rushing thinking I thought I was running late.  I didn’t want anyone to know I was there because then they’d want to talk to me….ick.  So I went back out to the parking lot and read my book.  I get so little down time lately. 

So I was sitting in my car, reading away (a new author I found and really like – I’ll be posting a funny interview with her on examiner.com very soon) and all of a sudden the sky grows dark and there’s a really loud noise.  Startled, I look up and there are about 40 pigeons and doves converging on my car.  My car.  Not any of the other cars.  They’re all milling about on the hood, peering in at me.  There is not one single bird on any other car in the parking lot.  Weird, huh.  It was creepy.  I felt like Tippi Hedron.

When I got through washing the dishes tonight and walked into the living room to see what ridiculous back-biting was going on on Survivor, I found that all of my lamp shades were on the floor so that Army men could hide in them.

Later, I was trying to wrestle The Bandit into his pajamas and he said, and I quote, “Don’t challenge me.  I’m not a murderer.”  I can only quirk an eyebrow at him and wonder.

Also, in the spirit of one of my favorite blogs, Theblogess.com I am giving myself this award:

And lastly from Shoebox.com – because I thought it was funny: