Woohoo!
For those who might possibly have missed my mass emailing, my cover is now up at RuneStone. Here's the link, if you want to take a look: www.runestonepublishing.com. I'm thrilled with the cover art. Gina, the artist, did a great job. And my thanks to RuneStone for allowing me to be involved and give feedback on the cover and the back cover copy. I think both are excellent!

I'm home today, having the new garage door opener installed. (We're having the worst luck with stuff breaking since we put our house on the market. One of the garage door openers failed, the sliding glass door handle broke and last night, Snostorm scratched up a door frame.) Which is great because that means I have most of the day to myself to focus on writing stuff. I just make some tea and throw myself into the chair behind my computer, still in my pajamas. I never turn on the television or allow myself to check email first. If I do, I'm done for. Days off are pretty rare and days off where I don't have to be somewhere else, doing something else, are even more rare. So, if I don't watch it, the temptation to spend an extra hour or two in bed will take over. It's not like writing is an unpleasant task--I love it--but it is work. And staying in bed is a lot easier, though it leaves me feeling much guiltier : )

So today, because my pink heart pajamas are not appropriate clothing to greet the garage door repair guy in, I had to get up and put my staying at home clothes on. Slightly less comfortable than pajamas, flannel sleep pants and an old Valpo sweatshirt. Again, anything that keeps me from turning that computer on first thing brings more temptation to do something else instead. Like watch television, or read a book. But I didn't give in today. Partially because I stayed at the computer in my pajamas until the repair guy called and said he was on his way.

So, now that I've got some work done on my current project, I can work on other stuff this afternoon. I need to finish up the results for the Valpo Wordfest short stories. I'm really impressed by the talent they've got going on there, as well as the variety of stories. It will be difficult to choose, especially because no matter how I look at it, I will still like something about the stories that won't make it.

I also desperately need to update this website. I haven't forgotten! The blog gets update daily (most of the time!), but the rest needs to have new info.

Plus, I've got my next project waiting in the wings. I love all parts of the writing process (except rejection, of course, but even that can be used to learn new things), but this is probably my favorite part. Nothing is down on paper yet, so you have all these ideas freefloating in your mind, playing like movie clips. And you refine and focus on different bits of them until you can figure out exactly what's going on and why. Once you start putting it down on paper, it automatically becomes harder. It's impossible to capture the vividness of those mind movie clips. But I think that's what keeps writers writing is trying to get that much closer to what they see in their heads. I just love it! And I'm so grateful that I'm being given the opportunity to do it : )

Talk to you tomorrow!