a little bit of everything

We’re back!

Actually, we got back yesterday morning, but we spent a few hours in Dublin, then trained home, and I spent most of the evening answering interview questions for a guest blog where I’ll be featured in April, so I didn’t get to posting.

Monday we went into NYC and went to the Donald Maass Literary Agency to sign contracts and meet people, which was plenty good fun. Very nice offices, LOTS of books (I love going into business offices of book-related people; it’s like walking into a very, very specialized library), very nice people, and they let me call Jenn up to ask a couple questions about the contract, so we chatted for close to half an hour and had a darned good time. :) Contracts signed, we decided we’d just head out for the airport, so we did, and the rest of the day was very quiet.

I don’t think airline seats should be allowed to tilt back, though. :P The invasion of personal space is so huge and uncomfortable, and if you’re trying to do ANYTHING, it becomes physically impossible. *grumpy* And it’s a horrible domino effect, because the only way you can get any goddamned breathing space is to tilt back yourself, which puts you in the next guy’s face, and… *grr*. So no writing. :P No sleeping, either, except a fitful hour of closed-eyes while listening to my MP3 player, during which I had a few minutes of lucid dream awareness stuff which was generally unpleasant. Poor Ted was pretty much white from exhaustion by the time we got to Mom and Dad’s, so he went to take a nap and I hung out with Mom and the little boys for a few hours. Cute little boys. *laugh* Anyway, by the time we got on the train for Cork, I’d been up something like 26 hours, and when I turned Little on to write, my eyes kept crossing and my head kept falling over, so no writing there, either. Total words since I left last week: 5500. Oh well; I knew it wasn’t going to be a good writing week, and we certainly had enough fun to make it worth it. :)

(In retrospect, I should’ve written at the airport in New York, but I really thought I’d be able to get some work done on the plane and I didn’t want to use my batteries up, so…oh well!)

Getting more emails from booksellers wanting to know what’s up with URBAN SHAMAN. I did talk to my editor about it but still don’t have an exact ETA on the arrival of reprints in the stores. Apparently the initial print run for the book was fairly close to the number of covers they’d printed, too, so they had to go back to print for the covers as well as the book, and that’s delayed things some. But the reprints should be available before THUNDERBIRD hits the shelves. *crosses fingers*

Ooh! I’ve gotten all the rough pages for Chance, now! Out of 22 pages, there are about 4 panels that weren’t *quiiiiite* what I wanted, or that needed a few changes, but I swear Ardian’s roughs were just so bloody close to perfect it’s amazing. *laughs helplessly* Ironically, the page that I think will take the most work is the first one, and that’s because I’m trying to wrap my mind around a little bit of rewriting, so a couple frames will probably change. That’s *me*, not my artist, which is pretty awesome. He done good.

And dear lord, the two guys in Chance’s life are diametric opposites physically, in build, in features, in coloring (which, I swear to God, I hadn’t mean to do, but seeing Ardian’s sketches of them makes me go AHAHAHAH LOOKIT THAT!), and they’re both gorgeous. I have no idea how she’s going to choose between them someday. *laugh*

‘k, must give Ardian a bit of feedback, then SHOWER and EAT and WRITE.

I have a lapLucy. What a nice kitty. :)