Big Fun Concludes -- More on New Novels

Month of Fun Concludes

It has been a great month celebrating the 47th birthday. Most of the Moth of fun involved consuming a wide variety of my favorite foods and beverages. There was the amazing chocolate truffle cake that was also a work of art, and the cinnamon cream cake from the Corner Bakery. We even made a batch of wonderful ginger spiced cookies and chocolate chips to end the month. But I didn’t gorge myself on sweets alone. I am a carnivore who had a really fun month. I made my own Carpaccio to share with Marie. I steamed Alaskan King crab claws to have with champagne on the night of the actual birthday. I like to think that the crab came from Sig Hansen and his crew on the Northwestern. The odds are pretty good that it did. Wherever it hailed from, it was delicious. I really like those crazy Norsemen on The Deadliest Catch. I also like the Norsemen on New Scandinavian Cooking, but that’s because one of them looks like Sean Bean. But I’m digressing.

Back to the food. I also had a papusa from the local El Salvadoran bakery café. I got hooked on that tasty snack while temping at a factory where a lot of Salvadorans worked. I also learned to make Hungarian Goulash there, but that’s another story. Finally, we managed to visit the French Bakery Café a few times for their wonderful breakfasts and sandwiches. I’m surprised that I didn’t gain thirty pounds for 31 days of fun, but there is a long walk as part of most of my commute during the week and also on the weekends. I haven’t made headway in the wait loss area, but I’m not losing ground. There were some big fun events like the movie screening and audition I wrote about earlier. I became an anime character with a great figure! But I also had some really fun quiet moments with friends watching old movies on TV at home. Considering how upset I was at the beginning of the year, May was a really fun month.

Writing Updates

We were really tied up with a new title release this week. Our author, Rachel Kann, has a hard deadline she has to meet. Her book was part of that deadline, so we had to focus on getting the galleys corrected and to the printer. I haven’t had time to input any of the Soldier’s Choice sequel, so no new excerpt this week. I hope to have the time this week. Meanwhile, I was confirmed for panels at Dragoncon. One of them happened largely because of Richard Hatch. I wrote about him in the Dragoncon blog last year. That panel would be an ideal place to talk up the Surrender novels. Thus, the third installment is underway along with everything else. It has no title yet, but I have half the plot worked out. It’s Kirsi’s story, but her brother Alkarin will be prominent. There will be more fantasy magic in the story as well. I’ll share the story when it’s fully fleshed out. May has been great for writing as well. The Muse attack has not relented, but somehow the stories are advancing at a respectable clip. This makes me very happy.

It’s time to do my cooking for the week. If I can, I will post excerpts mid-week.