Bright & Dark

There’s been radio silence around here for the last couple of weeks — busy, busy with life. A round of updatery is in order.

Mmmm, mmmm, good.

A couple of days after the U2 concert, we had the annual Bosses Day bake-a-thon. My rowmate at work and I treated our attorneys and legal assistants to a smorgasbord of breakfast tacos with homemade salsa, peanut butter cookies, banana bread with chocolate chips and crystallized ginger, and more.

I had fun baking the bread even with my entire lack of sleep. For the curious, the recipe is here. The ginger really gives the bread some wow factor.

There has also been a spur-of-the-moment trip to the store for pumpkin makings, because the season downright demands it. So Sunday night I baked pumpkin custard (aka, pie filling sans crust — didn’t want to deal with the gluten-free crust on a Sunday night). Between that and the cold front that has swept in, it feels like fall around here.

Write On!

Slow and steady wins the race. Or at least it will.

This book looks to be the longest I’ve had the pleasure of writing, which is not to say that it’s ungodly long, just that my novels usually top out at about 350 pages and this one looks like it will go around 450. It’s a bigger book — big world, big worldbuilding, high concept, dual-moving-into-triple POV. It’s still a blast to write and I’m still writing it one 800-1,500 word scene at a time, focusing on the emotion. I can’t wait to see how it comes out.

Meanwhile, it’s fascinating to me that any intention on my part to power through large sections of this book just ain’t working. I can’t pull several hours on a Saturday or Sunday at this point. I don’t know whether it’s me rebelling because I want to be sure to have a life or whether it’s the book rebelling because the story definitely wants to told at its own pace. Either way, as long as there’s steady progress, that’s all right.

Hey — are you gonna read that?

Just finished up my friend Christy Evans’s debut cozy mystery, Sink Trap. So much fun! I can’t wait to read the next one when it’s released. I need to see what Georgiana Neverall has up her plumber apprentice’s sleeve.

Since life’s too short not to have a good story to dive into, I’ve started Stieg Larsson’s The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo. Very interesting so far. It hasn’t moved as quickly as I would normally like, but something about it holds me and it’s getting a might more interesting. Looking forward to seeing what’s in store.

How many miles can a writer run?

Still not many as it turns out. I’m getting some treadmill and/or Nia time in every day and not only do I look better, I feel like a million bucks. A well-oiled machine, even. That’s pretty cool.

The Weight Watchering is going very well, too. Down 11 pounds so far since I’ve started. This is a huge milestone for me on account of how I’ve tried and tried to make this happen and haven’t hit on the right formula — physical, mental, etc. — until now. So, down 11. Only 20 more pounds or so to go with an interim goal of 11 more because a girl’s got to have manageable goals, doesn’t she?

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There’s more, but that’s enough for now. I’ve got lots to do around here, a bunch of writing, a phone call with a friend later, and after that I’ll settle in for my weekly episode of Sons of Anarchy. Who’d'a thunk I’d fall so hard for that one?

Happy Tuesday, everyone!