Holding my breath for spring

We're in that odd time here in Minnesota. It's too early to look for spring but we're so damn sick of winter, we have to look forward.

To help me look forward, I've dug out my Easter decorations and put them up. I've got clings on the door at work (my cube faces a balcony) and on my windows at home.

It's amazing what the sight of those pastel cartoony things does for a person -- I am so tired of seeing black, white, gray, and brown. Give me pink! Give me yellow! Give me red!

I feel like I need a similar kick in my writing. I've been a bit stalled on my current WIP (of course, I've been busy like crazy, too, which doesn't help). But this weekend I am going to carve out time to just sit and THINK about my plot, my characters, and where I want it to go. Once I do that, I know it'll zip along.

I have to admit, snow is good for one thing: it usually keeps me in the house and pinned to my chair. No snow in the forecast for the weekend, so I'll have to rely on my own motivation to do it. I'm 1/3 through the writing, and I want to wrap it up by the end of March so I'll have some free time in the spring.

The good thing is, I hired someone to do some promo for me for the Pig Book, so I don't have to spend every waking minute for the next month doing promo for the book. Yea! This might be the best money I ever spent.

Stay tuned. I'll report back on results. Until then ... THINK SPRING!

Jumping the gun, but ...

I just had to put up my book cover for the Pig Book, which releases next week.

This book has been through such travails ... I'm sort of holding my breath until it releases.

It's an odd feeling to see Max & Layla's book (If Not For You) get pushed down one slot. I wonder if I'll ever get accustomed to seeing books relegated to the next spot on the list. I love each book as I write it and I so like my characters -- it's tough to see them leave the spotlight.

Of course, they can come back into the spotlight the way Your Saving Grace has. It's up for an Eppie award, it's going into print, and I'll be signing it at the RT Convention. And that was my second book out last year.

Maybe there is no such thing as 'back list' in e-publishing? If so, that's a good thing, because I want to enjoy the satisfaction of these books over and over again.

They're like bunnies ....

How can one person be away from email for 24 hours and have 128 messages waiting -- and that doesn't count the SPAM ones!

I'm in a lot of Yahoo groups, but I'm on digest for 99.9% of them. So this means that I had (approximately) 1500 mail messages, all condensed into digest form. Granted, I skim a LOT, but it still took me most of an hour to skim through it all and see if I needed to reply.

The Internet has become so pervasive it's amazing. I mentioned this in my last newsletter (link here for those who missed it: http://www.jayellwilson.com/Newsletters/Feb08.pdf) -- I was at a conference, and it was with a lot of traditionally print-published people. They were amazed at my online promo efforts. I was amazed they didn't do online promo.

It's an odd and interesting world out there ....

Road trip!

I'm off on a road trip so will be offline. No post this weekend!

Have a good Valentine's Day, weekend, day off, or whatever!

I'm officially tired of winter

Yes, it's true. Even me, eternal optimist, is getting tired of it. And you know what -- it's not winter itself, it's the uncertainty of winter.

I hate schlepping my laptop home in case it snows. I hate not being able to make plans in case it snows. I hate prefacing every conversation with "Weather permitting, I can do that."

Yep. It's getting loooonnnnng. Of course, it is useful in a way. I'm incorporating the brutal cold into a book, and it made for some interesting research... If a person freezes to death because of carelessness on the part of someone, is that person charged with reckless endangerment?

Involuntary manslaughter? There are fine lines between them all.

So I guess winter is useful after all. But it's still way too long.

This is one of those weekends ...

Just by a quirk of scheduling, I have to post at 6 blogs this weekend:

• here


• Crimespace


• MySpace


• Cerridwen Press blog


• Green Book Friend blog on MySpace


• Maven's blog

That's kind of ridiculous, even for me. I mean, I'm chatty, but come on ... That got me to thinking about the differnce between "I have to post ..." and "I should post". The world will continue to spin if I don't post a blog entry. I know it will. I've missed blogging before and we're still all attached to the planet.

I think that's a common problem I have .... I equate "I've set up a ToDo list and there are items on it" with "if I don't do this, my weekend will be ruined." Granted, my ToDo lists are the only thing that allow me to have 5 books out this year and stay on track, but I need to make sure to listen to that little inner voice that says, 'hey, you can skip something today if you need to.'

I just can't listen to it all the time {insert smiley face here}

Back from the conference ...

... and anxious to write because I have a new publisher! Yep, a third publisher is interested in my work. I haven't signed the contract yet (we're negotiating a couple of points), so I don't want to say anything, but I'm pleased. And they want 'a next book' so I'm busily plotting Murder at the Casino!

The conference was fun -- these mystery folks really know how to party, let me tell you! I did a lot of networking and a lot of talking.

It was a good time, had by all. Luckily my flights were only delayed a few hours becuase of weather, so that was good, too. It was fun hanging out with some mystery Biggies (Tess Gerritson, Kent Krueger, etc.) and chatting with them, and also good to talk to other writers in small press publication, and talk to them about promo, etc.

Now on to Murder at the Casino. I may have a July release with that Other Publisher, and they'll want the follow-on book soon after.

Fingers, fly across those keys!