Serendipity

I am wearing two hats right now. On one hand I am working hard to finish my next manuscript which is due December 1, and at the same time, since I had two books released last week, I'm making the rounds of local bookstores to sign stock.

It's always an adventure. Sometimes more than others. I am lucky someone in my family comes along. More than comes along, they do the driving, the routing, abd figure in coffee and ice cream stops. It is surprising how tiring going to four bookstores in a day can be.

On Tuesday, we went to the Barnes & Nobles in and around the western part of L.A. It was exciting to see Behind the Seams on an endcap at the Marina del Rey store. The Santa Monia store had You Better Knot Die displayed on the tower. When we left that store, we decided to get a little food before moving on and picked a place across the way. It turned out they were filming a TV show in the restaurant. We figured why not and signed a release and had our picture taken and sat down at the sushi bar. They had been pretty vague about what the TV show was and just said there would be some singing and dancing.

I was thrilled because the book I'm manuscript I'm rushing to finish has a TV shoot in it. So, I was checking out the crew and their equipment. The restaurant is supposed to look like a couryard somewhere in Southeast Asia. So there is a center square and what looks like a veranda running around three sides. The veranda portion had a few booths filled with people. The center square had a number of table and they were all filled. If we turned around at the sushi bar, we had a view of the whole place.

Anything with TV seems to take forever. I'd long since finished my vegetable roll when a guy I assume was the director said something about it being a hot set. I turned around to see what was going to happen. A woman had a microphone on a tray and put it on the table right in front of us that had a couple sitting at it. The man picked it up and started to sing. Someone wisked their table away as all the people at the other tables got up and started singing and dancing in a what could only be described as an elaborate productrion number. Even the sushi chef turned out to be a performer. It seemed like the only people not singing and dancing were us.

The woman who'd been sitting with the man who became the lead singer, was helped up on a table as the production number continued. Finally the guy singer took out a ring box and proposed.

The music stopped and a man I suppose was the host of the show joined the happy couple. Of course, she said yes. They were joined by a singing and a dancing coach who'd prepared the guy for the production number. Then we found out what was going on. The guy was a comedian and had told his girlfriend someone was making a documentary about him, but it was all a set up for the production number proposal.

The one good thing was that since it was a set up, they could only shoot it once.

I don't know what the show is called. We just remember it was something the musical. Anyway, we had fun.

And then we went on our way to the next B & N.

And I had some happy news. You Better Knot Die was #7 on the Barnes & Noble mass market mystery bestseller list and Behind the Seams was #21 on the Barnes & Noble hardcover mystery bestseller list.

This Week

What a week!

My son’s wedding was Sunday. The food was wonderful, and I think everybody had a great time. I got through the dance with my son without tripping over my feet. I gave my toast and got a laugh from the audience and a hug from my new daughter.

Monday was Halloween. The neighbor down the street who rents his house out for movie and film productions had gone over the top decorating for Halloween. I mean really over the top. The whole front yard is hidden from view by extensive greenery and they had created a creepy entrance by putting a castle sized gray gate over their driveway. Next to the entrance there was a car up on the curb as if it had been in an accident. There was a fake dead cow underneath the car. I didn’t actually go in their yard, but I saw a lot of life sized skeletons. Out front, a cherry picker held up a big screen that something was being shown on.

Their house must have gotten on one of the TV news shows or all over Facebook, because the crowd this year was a record breaker. We had 683 trick or treaters. I handed out candy and my husband kept track. For the first time in our personal Halloween history, we ran out of candy - and it was only 7:45.

Later that night we began to notice Goldy, or Blondie as she is called in my books, wasn’t well. She kept skittering around all night, going from one spot to another and then back again. When I got up in the morning, I found her laying in my closet. Anyone who has pets knows that isn’t a good sign. I wrapped her in a towel and we took her to the vet. I was afraid it was going to be a one way trip. We had to leave her because the vet was in surgery and we had to take my brother to the airport. We got the call just as we reached Burbank airport. Thank heavens Goldy wasn’t as bad as she seemed. He thinks she had some arthritis in her spine and gave her some medication.

She is back home and seems okay. I have written about Goldy before and what an unpredictable dog she is. Apparently she liked that first night she spent in my closet because now it has become her sleeping place of choice.

Tuesday Behind the Seams came out in hardcover and You Better Knot Die came out in a paperback edition. Wednesday I began making the rounds of local bookstores to sign stock. I have to say it was pretty cool when I walked in Bookstar in Studio City and saw Behind the Seams on display right by the cash register.

Starting on November 7, I’m going to be one of the featured authors on the Barnes & Noble Mystery Forum. I would love to have you stop by and leave a comment. To get there you go to BarnesandNoble.com. If you click on books, a menu drops down. At the bottom is Blogs and Forums. Click on that and look through the list until you come to Mystery Forum.

I am also guest blogger today at Cozy Chicks www.cozychicksblog.com and Dru’s Book Musings http://notesfromme.wordpress.com.

Updating My Website

I am trying to get everything together to update my website. I have a webmaster, but I have to send him all the stuff to master onto the web. Some of it is easy. Sending him the book cover for Behind the Seams is no big deal, nor giving him the quote from Vanna White, so he can put it in the space next to the cover.

Typing in an excerpt from the book is just tedious, but not hard. I have to use the ARC (advanced readers copy) and hold it open with my elbows so I can copy the first few pages.

Then comes the I’m not sure how to do it part. I think there’s an Amazon associate code that goes with my books., but I’m not sure how to find it. I can’t even figure out how to get into my Amazon associate account. I’m sure there’s a way and if I spend enough time fiddling around, I’ll figure it out. But I don’t look forward to doing it.

I include at least one pattern in my books and since there are just instructions with no visuals, I like to include photographs of the finished items. Something I call impatient crochet is featured in Behind the Seams. The book has patterns for a cell phone sock, an eyeglass case and a small purse. But when I went to look in the room that has all my crochet stuff, I couldn’t find the samples I’d made. So, I had to make new samples. That was fun, sort of. I worried that the pieces wouldn’t turn out to be perfect. But then if they were perfect, they wouldn’t look handmade.

My son was nice enough to photograph them, but then he said something about each photo being huge file and that my web guy will have to compress them or something. I’m hoping Mr. Web Master knows what the “or something” is because I don’t know what to tell him. I had enough trouble trying to get the photos off the card from the camera and save them on my computer. I just hate those screens were none of the options they offer are what you are trying to do.

I think starting to get everything together was really the hardest part. Once I get past that obstacle, I know I will finish. What about you? Do you find it harder to start something, or to finish it?

Oh, and I’m including the photo of the cell phone sock. It is in it’s huge file state, so who knows what will happen. And if anyone has suggestions about the Amazon associate code, I'd love to hear it.

Falling for Fall

October is my favorite month in Chicago. And it’s not disappointing. I left a surprisingly soggy L.A. Wednesday for crisp blue skies, golden leaves and temperatures in the 70's. True, the rain in L.A. was an oddity. It usually only rains in the winter, but a storm snuck in early. And by the weekend, the rain will probably be forgotten as the forecast calls for sunny skies and warm temperatures. But even so, that L.A. weather won’t have the same fall magic I always find here.

The ground was littered with fallen leaves as I walked to the market and I noticed that the drying leaves give a distinct scent to the air. In the old days, people used to rake the leaves into piles in the gutter and burn them. I can still remember the pungent smell. At the store, the summer fruit was just about gone. Instead of peaches from California, there were bins of honey crisp apples from Michigan.

I was a little apprehensive about this trip. When I was here in July, it was in the 90's and my air conditioning didn’t work, there was plumbing work going on that required ripped out walls and teams of men here all day. The final touch was the arrival of the fire department at midnight the Sunday of my visit. From my front porch I watched them go in the building. I was in my nightgown, though thankfully one that looked kind of like a dress, and grabbed my flash drives and my purse. Then I waited. No one came through the building telling me to leave. I didn’t hear any neighbors in the hall. But I also didn’t hear the fire trucks leaving. Adrenalin was pumping as I wondered what to do. Finally when I went back on the porch, the firemen were coming out of the building and I could see they were packing up.

It wasn’t a false alarm. The neighbor on the first floor had a fire in his dryer.

But as soon as I got here this time and felt the pleasant air and realized that no plumbers were going to pound on the door whenever they decided to arrive, I relaxed and began to enjoy my favorite season. I also don’t think the fire department is going to show up. At least, I hope not.

So, hopefully I can focus on finishing the first draft of crochet mystery # 7 and painting the porch door. Well, painting after I get the old paint off, which I understand is the hard part. Then there is the wrap I’m crocheting to wear for my son’s wedding at the end of October. If only I could crochet and type and the same time.

I’m using this beautiful pumpkin with flecks of gold colored yarn for the wrap. It is both a souvenir from the Summer Knit and Crochet Show where I bought it and a reminder of fall. I should probably put some great final line here that ties everything together, but I can’t think of one. I keep thinking about the typing, the crocheting and the painting I need to do. And that’s not even mentioning that my sixth book, Behind the Seams, comes out in a couple of weeks. Didn’t Bette Lamb, our guest blogger, say something about wishing for more hours in the day. I’m with her.

Do you have a favorite season?

Behind the Scenes of Behind the Seams

It’s time to get bookmarks made for Behind the Seams. It comes out in November along with the mass market version of You Better Knot Die. I have been so focused on writing my seventh book, I just put the two releases in the part of my mind marked “future.” But there’s this thing about the future I always seem to forget. Eventually it becomes the present.

So now it is hustle and hurry to write the back copy for the bookmarks and then get them to Arnold, the wonderful printer Linda recommended. I want them ready for me to take to the Fall Knit and Crochet Show and the Writers Police Academy.

I’m going to donate a couple of ARC (advanced readers copies) of Behind the Seams to the Knit and Crochet Show silent auction.

I love the cover of Behind the Seams. The art department always manages a little sinister touch. Can you find it on the Behind the Seams cover?

Getting Ready to Go

I am trying to get ready for my next trip, which is really a trip within a trip. I’m feeling a little distracted. There is the first trip to Chicago. I’m concerned with the weather which sounds uncomfortable to put it mildly, a malfunctioning air conditioner which thanks to the Internet I think I know how to fix, and some plumbing work being done to my place which will require holes in the wall and probably lots of banging.

Then there’s the trip within a trip. I’m going to Minneapolis for the Knit and Crochet Show. Thanks the a newbie list I’m on, I have gotten some idea of what to expect and what to wear, etc., but there are the two classes I signed up for and the supplies I need for them. I sort of know what roving is, but there’s no place around here to get it. Surely I can buy it there. Then I need to cancel one hotel reservation because the sold out host hotel suddenly had rooms. I need to bring bookmarks to give out, but how many?

The dog and cats are already giving me dirty looks because the suitcase is out.

In the midst of all this preparation, I got the first pass pages of Behind the Seams and You Better Knot Die from my editor to proof read, which they need back August 1 and August 3, respectively. Guess who will be lugging manuscripts and reading on the plane? And when all those holes are being made in the walls and the pipes being banged on, I’ll be sitting in front my hopefully working air conditioner, reading.

I hadn’t really thought about it until I read the messages on the newbie list for the Knit and Crochet Show, but apparently everybody wears some of their own creations. Uh oh. Most of the things I’ve made for myself are wooly and warm and not at all right for the weather in Minneapolis. I came up with a cool idea for an evening scarf. It’s light and airy and should look really pretty when I finish it, which I have to do before the first banquet. So, when I take a break from proof reading, it’ll be crochet time. I won’t even go into the hank of yarn I had to make into a ball so I can make a light weight cowl as well to wear during the show. It’s kind of double duty because the cowl pattern will be in the book I’m writing now - Knot What It Seams.

And to top all of it off, I am planning to work on Knot What It Seams, too. You can see why I might be a little distracted.

How do you center yourself when you feel pulled in a lot of directions?

Getting Out the Kinks

It felt like forever since I’d taken a yoga class, but it was more like three weeks. What with Chicago and Printers Row, then Yosemite and things I had to take care of on Thursday evenings, I kept missing class. I have been taking yoga with the same teacher for around fourteen years. We meet in the multi purpose room a church and the room looks out into the branches of a beautiful tree. That’s the peaceful part. The church is on a corner and it seems shrieking fire engines, sputtering motorcycle or yipping dogs are always going by. But then a big part of yoga is learning how to center your mind. Being able to overcome those noises is part of the challenge.

I have discovered from talking to people in my yoga class and at my gym that it seems like most people either do yoga or some kind of aerobics. Not that many do both. The aerobic classes I go to are more or less dancing to uptempo music and are fun. Yoga is slow. You do a pose and hold it. The music in my class is ethereal and merely there for background.

Aerobics ends with everyone sweating and high on their endorphins. Yoga ends with final relaxation which is more or less a meditation. I always leave in a happy serene mood.

The combo of classes works for me. I get benefit from both kinds, but tonight I needed yoga.

I was feeling scattered when I got to my class this evening. Yoga is good at fixing that. Before we even did any poses, we did an opening meditation which is all about centering your mind. As we started, my mind was flitting from one thought to the other. I remembered I needed to get a legal size envelope to send back the contract for my new series - then my thoughts jumped to the book I’m working on and what crochet projects I want to include - then I was reminded I need to update my website for Behind the Seams. On and on it went even to whether or not I should stop at Trader Joe’s on the way home and if I did, what was I going to buy.

But while my thoughts were flipping around, I started to focus on my breathing and being in the moment. The flipping went into slow motion and finally stopped completely and I had that moment of an empty mind. Pure bliss!

The poses we did stretched my leg muscles, worked on balance, and released tension in my back. The poses were hard and sometimes hurt a little, but by the time we were ready for final relaxation, I could feel the difference in my body. It was as if all the kinks had been straightened out. By the way, there’s a name for how we lay for final relaxation. It’s called corpse pose.

One of my classmates brought chocolates to share to celebrate her birthday. She’s turning ninety tomorrow. You could say she’s certainly a testament to the benefits of yoga.

What do you like to do as exercise?

Flash Trip

A week ago, I was busy fighting with Word 2010 and going over the copy edit of Behind the Seams. And then, a last minute business meeting came up for my husband and son in Las Vegas. Yay, for laptops. I packed mine up, along with some crochet stuff and Monday we were on our way. I'm never one to turn down the chance to go somewhere.

We have driven there lots of times, so I know the road almost by heart. Their meeting wasn't until Tuesday, so we took our time and stopped at the outlet mall in Primm, Nevada. It was nice to walk around after the being so long in the car. The Williams Sonoma store was fantastic and everything was at a discount. I got this interesting gadget that cores and peels apples at the same time and will come in handy as I make the recipe for Apple Bumble Crumble one more time before it goes into Behind the Seams.

We stopped for dinner on the way into town at a hotel called The M. The air was breezy and pleasantly warm as we walked in from the parking lot. This is about the best time of year for weather in Las Vegas. The buffet was amazing. I was happy to find vegetables in all different cuisines. For the rest of my meat eating family, there were plenty of choices, too. And the desserts - how about mini ecairs and cannolis, along with all different kinds of cakes, gelato and even espresso drinks.

The next day my husband and son went to their meeting and I set up my work in the hotel room. With an occasional glance out the window at the action on the strip, I went back to going through the copy edit. I just think it is so neat to be able to do my work anywhere.

Their meeting was a success and we celebrated with dinner at my favorite, the Grande Luxe Cafe.

I did some more work on my manuscript in the morning before check out time. Then it was off to my son's favorite restaurant Joe's and a brief stop at the Bellagio to check out the conservatory (they change the elaborate plantings every ten weeks) before heading back toward L.A.. I crocheted until it got too dark to see.

I feel like I'm just home for a pit stop before heading to Chicago for the Printers Row Fair. I'll have my trusty laptop with me and get back to writing my seventh book, Knot What It Seams. I love it. Have laptop, will travel.

BTW, anyone in the area, I'm going to be on a cozy panel, Saturday, at ten thirty, in the Harold Washington Library and I'll be in the Mystery Writers of American booth from noon until one thirty. I'll be in the Big Sleep booth from two until three.

Anybody else love to take off and go somewhere at the drop of a hat?

;Me and Word, Again

I sent in the revisions for Behind the Seams a couple of weeks ago. And now I already having the copy edit back to go through. I had been working on my laptop and thought once I got the revision done, I'd finally get all the programs installed on my new desktop.

Of course, I procrastinated and then the copy edit showed up, waiting to be downloaded and worked on. I finally put in WordPerfect, a backup thing, and Office so I would have Word since that is the program the copy edit is in.

Up until now I had just been doing some emails on the desktop. I knew there would be changes to deal with and well, changes usually lead to problems which lead to frustration. Not my favorite thing.

WordPerfect was no problem to install. The backup thing took some time, but that was all. Office installed without a hitch, too.

But when I started to go through the copy edit, the problems and frustration showed up. I don't know if it is Berkley's version of Word or my 2010, but deleting is all screwed up. Before, if I deleted something, it all went into a balloon on the side. Now, it stays put and gets lines through it. Not a problem really unless you goof up like I did and things get mark deleted you don't want to delete. I couldn't figure out how to undelete and thought if I hit the delete key again it would reinstate the marked section. It didn't. It only marked up more stuff I didn't want to delete.

It was one of those awful moments when whatever I did seemed to make it worse. I was trapped in delete hell. Since I'm not a fan of the newer versions of Word,anyway, this mess only reinforced my negative feelings. The only alternative seemed to be to close the file without saving it and open the original again. But that would have meant losing the work I'd done on the first fifty pages.

Somehow, I found a little thingy in the lefthand corner that undoes things. I kept hitting it and watched everything twitch around and finally go back to the way it was supposed to be before I screwed it up.

What will happen tomorrow? This editing stuff in the new version of Word is making me nervous. It's just the way I feel when I try to knit. In both cases, I don't know how to fix mistakes.

Done!

I am done with my revision. Well, almost. I just have to make the recipe for Apple Bumble Crumble (one of the recipes included in Behind the Seams)one more time to tweak it. Terri talked about disconnecting from her computer. Even though I've been spending hours staring at mine, I have avoided email and the Internet in general while I was busy revising.

I noticed that just checking my current emails - we won't even go into the other 3000in my mail box - and reading an article or two on the Internet, and viola, an hour is gone or maybe even more.

Once I make the recipe and put in any changes, it's off through cyber space to my editor and right on time. Much as I'm glad to be done, I felt a certain tug saying good by to that story.

But even as I was finishing the revision, scenes from the next book were going through my mind. I love it when my characters show up and surprise me.

Before I get lost in the new book, I am looking forward to a few days to let my mind air out. And there is that pile of laundry -

Time is Running Out

I'm going to have to make it short this week. I got Behind the Seams back for revision and about two weeks to do it in. I didn't think it would be a problem as my editor only had a few concerns, so I let it go a couple of days. Then when I began to read the whole thing over, I started to freak out. I wasn't happy with a whole scene and sentences were awkward. It's not changing the plot or anything drastic, but lots of little things. All my plans for going through 50 pages a day went out the window and I spent two days working on five pages.

I have until a week from tomorrow and I have another 200 or so pages to go through. Needless to say, no more two days on five pages.

In the meantime, the moderator for the panel I'm going to be on at Malice Domestic in Washington DC at the end of this month has been communicating about our panel. We're going to be discussing holiday books, which should be interesting. One of the challenges of writing You Better Knot Die was to make it a holiday book, but then be able to sell it all year. One of the things Berkley did was to keep the holiday touches on the bookcover subtle.

And the plans for Printers Row in Chicago the first weekend in June are coming together. I'm going to be in the Mystery Writers of America booth again and on a panel with some of my writer friends Julie Hyzy, Kate Collins and JB Stanley also know as Ellery Adams. You never know what the weather is going to be like. In the three years I've taken part in it, it's been hot and stormy, cold and stormy and just plain chilly. Who knows what it will be this year.

I was so busy this week, I didn't even get back to my last week's blog to comment on Planner's comment. You are right, Planner, I do manage to enjoy most things. I certainly enjoyed the trip to Santa Fe.

That's it, back to my manuscript.

Happy Today!

Terri’s post about not saving things for something special, but using them all the time made me think of how I feel about celebrating.

Why save it for a special occasion? I celebrate anything and everything. If someone makes a left turn right in front of me and I narrowly miss hitting them, I think about how great it is that the accident didn’t happen. I think how my day would have been ruined and am so grateful it wasn’t. So, for the rest of the day I celebrate.


If I do any chore that I keep putting off and don’t want to do, I celebrate.

It the sun is shining and my backyard looks beautiful, I celebrate.

Pretty much any day of the week or month of the year, I can find something to celebrate about.

Yesterday, I got some muscle spasm in my back from the drumming class I took at the gym. When the pain was gone after only a short time and I felt great, I celebrated.

Today I saw the cover art for my next book, Behind the Seams. It's beautiful and I wanted to celebrate. I'd show the cover, but t's still being tweaked, and not ready to share.

And what is it I do to celebrate? Mostly, it's just to savor the moment.

Believe it or not all this celebrating everything came from the 1994 earthquake. I didn’t take the earthquake well. I didn’t eat and barely drank anything for a week and lost ten pounds. I slept in my shoes with my purse next to me. The endless aftershocks were frightening. But then something happened. I began to feel grateful for every moment the earth wasn’t shaking. Eventually the aftershocks ended, but my feelings of gratitude didn’t.

It still amazes me how something so good came from something so scary.

Do you celebrate all the time or save it for things like birthdays and anniversaries?

It's Vegas, Baby

This week it seems like everyone has been writing about fall and fall colors. When I think of fall – Well, I think of Las Vegas.

For the past fifteen or so Septembers, my husband has gone to a convention there. When my son was younger, I’d spring him from school early and we’d head to the Burbank airport and catch a flight to Vegas to catch up with my husband. Since my son was under 21 and couldn’t go in the casinos, we’d walk the strip, stopping in all the hotels. We’d ride every tram, check out all the inside shopping street, stop at the indoor rainforest, and watch the pirates battle in front of Treasure Island. That night we’d go to the convention award show, and then the next day we’d leave my husband to finish his business and we’d fly home.

Now my son is part of the business and we both go for the whole trip. When I used to fly, I’d look down on the 15 (you can see it from the air) and think yuck, who’d want to drive through all that beige.

It’s always good to have an open mind. When we realized the cost of all of us flying, and how long it really takes to fly if you consider getting to the airport early and flight delays on top of the one hour flight, we started to drive Vegas. Now I look up at the planes flying overhead and think they don’t know what they’re missing.

In my head its broken up into parts. The first takes us out of the San Fernando Valley and along the San Gabriel mountains. It’s all towns with Walmarts and Best Buys until the huge housing development in Rancho Cucamonga.

The road turns and instead of stores and houses, there’s just open brush before it twists into the El Cajon pass. All the signs with warnings about brakes overheating always makes me a little nervous. All you see is mountains for awhile and then we’re into the high desert with towns like Victorville, and Hesperia. By the time we’re going through Apple Valley it looks like the backdrop to an old cowboy show which might be why Roy Rogers lived there. This part of the journey ends when we reach the vast expanse of fast food places outside of Barstow and make our first stop. After we eat, we pick up Starbucks coffees and head on. It’s nice with good music on the radio and my family together.

After Barstow it really is desert, though on the ground it doesn’t look as monochrome as it does from the air. There’s a reason they call them the Calico Mountains. It’s most empty with a few signs for towns that are barely visible. Sometimes we stop in Baker which is the gateway to Death Valley. It has a giant thermometer which offers more information than you want. There’s also a place called the Mad Greek that has great butter cookies.

Now the road goes up to 4000 feet and then down to a dry lake bed, and up again. There are places for runaway trucks to try to stop. And lots of hills with rocks on them. It goes on like that until you leave California and enter Nevada at Stateline. The road instantly gets better and there in the middle of nowhere is an outlet mall that goes in a circle and a couple of casino hotels with huge signs bragging about their entertainment and high paying slots. We usually stop at the mall for a bathroom stop and a little shopping. Who knows what you might find?

From here it’s just a hop skip and jump past a distant prison and a town named Jean. The road turns through some mountain and suddenly Las Vegas spills out in front of us
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This trip I’m not sure how much time I’ll have to spend smelling the rainforest or watching the gondoliers. There are some parties to go to, which gives me a chance to see the kind of places I would never otherwise get to - trendy bars with girls in gold paint dancing on tables. But most of the time I’ll be pulling my computer bag to a coffee spot. I’m planning to finish rewriting Book 6 now called Behind the Seams. Nothing like the din of a casino to get those creative juices flowing.

So, I guess my fall color is desert beige. How do you feel about road trips?

And the winner of last weeks contest is Chicken Herder. If you’d contact me at Hechtmanbooks@aol.com and give me your address, I will send you a signed advance reader’s copy.

Work-cation

This week we’ve been writing about our favorite vacations. I wouldn’t exactly call this my favorite, but it’s what I’m on now. And it’s not exactly a vacation since I packed up my laptop and a hard copy of my manuscript and came to Chicago to do the rewrite on my sixth crochet mystery which is now called Behind the Seams.

I like to think I’m at my own personal full service writer’s resort. After all that sitting reading my manuscript and sitting in front of the computer, I need some exercise. Who needs a gym when I walk everywhere, carry groceries and have three flights of stairs to go up and down numerous times. The beach is a short walk away if I’m interested in swimming.

And for eating - there are restaurants up and down the street offering a whole selection of cuisines. Though I took my shopping cart to the grocery store and bought all my favorites.

I have a whole stash of yarn here and hooks of all sizes, so when I’m not working on the book, I can work on the crochet projects I’m including. If I need amusement, there is a stack of some of my favorite DVDs and books all over the place. I can even get a steam bath if I want it. All I have to do is step out on the front porch. With temperature in the mid eighties and the humidity around seventy percent, I’d be drenched in sweat in no time. Did I mention it’s close to midnight? Luckily there is something else I have here. Window air conditioners.