I certainly have been the most delinquent blogger these days.  And today’s not going to be much better.  🙂

Revisions for Book 3 are due this week, and I’m so close to the end I can taste it.  After that happens, hopefully I won’t be so MIA.  In the meantime, thought I’d share a couple of photos Lea from Closetwriter sent me, of both Just the Sexiest Man Alive and Practice Makes Perfect on the shelf in a bookstore in Burlington, Ontario.  (BTW, I’m in good company there, being next to Eloisa James, Judith James, and Samantha James.)  I’ll tell you, seeing things like this is what keeps me going during these crazy writing times… So thanks, Lea, for the photos!

Okay, admittedly, I’m swamped with these revisions to Book 3.  And hopefully I’ll have time to write more later in the week, but in the meantime I thought I’d start planning what I’m going to do with all my luscious free time once I’m done with these revisions.  So I thought I’d ask:  read any good books lately?  Seen any good movies?  I’m going to start making my lists now, of all the things I’ll catch up on in a couple of weeks.  I’m so looking forward to it…

I’ll start:  the most recent movie I watched was Twilight.  Now, I haven’t read the books, although I’m thinking about it, but I don’t think I got a sense of the depth of the connection between Bella and Edward from the movie.  There were things that happened in the film where I thought, “Hmm… I bet this is a lot more developed/a bigger moment in the book.”  I didn’t dislike the movie, though– just thought it was kind of so-so.

And–again, haven’t read the books– but does anyone see some similarities with Buffy and Angel?  He can’t have sex with her b/c he’s afraid of losing control?  Boy, if I had a dime every time a vampire said that to me…

In terms of books, I’m making my way (in my .2 minutes of free time each day) through Interpreter of Maladies, which is wonderful.  Pulitzer prize winner, so I guess I kind of expected that.

How about you?

Wow!  Got some great news last night.  First, I learned that Just the Sexiest Man Alive scored an Honorable Mention in romance at the 2009 New York Book Festival.  Very exciting!   Then, a couple hours later, I found out that Practice Makes Perfect was chosen as an Honorable Mention in romance at the 2009  Beach Book Festival.  Whoo-hoo, not a bad night!

The Beach Book Festival “spotlight[s] the hottest reads of the upcoming summer season.”  The New York Book Festival “celebrat[es] books that deserve greater recognition from the world’s publishing capital.”  I’m truly honored that my books were chosen to be part of each of these festivals.  Unfortunately, I won’t be able to attend either festival– both are in New York this weekend and I will be at Lori Foster’s Reader/Author Get Together.  On the other hand, I’m really looking forward to the Lori Foster event, so it’s pretty much a win-win situation!

So here’s an interesting “scruples” question for the weekend…

My husband and I had friends over for dinner last night, and one of our friends posed the following scenario.  It sparked a fair amount of debate between the eight of us, so I thought I’d throw it out here to see what others think.  Here’s the question:

Can you hold a parking spot?

Here’s the situation: My friend and her husband were at a crowded outlet mall over Memorial Day weekend and spent 45 minutes trying to find a parking spot.  One opened up a lane over and my friend got out of the car and stood in the empty spot while her husband drove the car around.  Another car got to the parking spot before my friend’s husband and The Other Guy told my friend she couldn’t stand there to hold the spot.   Quite angry, The Other Guy told my friend that holding a parking spot was illegal.  Said the parking spot was public property and she was illegally taking it.  When my friend wasn’t impressed with The Other Guy’s legal case, he got even angrier and threw out the Parent Card: “Do you have a son?  Because I have a kid in the car.”  Sidenote:  I have a two year-old, and boy do I ever understand use of the Parent Card at appropriate times.  (Four hour plane rides to California come to mind.)  But to me, this doesn’t seem like one…

Anyway, the stand-off finally ended when my friend’s husband got to the parking spot and “strongly suggested” (I’ll leave it at that) that The Other Guy move his car along.  

So there you go: Can you save/guard a parking spot?  Like I said, this topic spurred a lot of interesting discussion amongst all of us last night and I’d love to hear what other people think.

Note: I should mention that the photo above is NOT my friend, although that would be hysterical.  It’s just some random photo I found on the internet.

I’m back from California, but, wow, I think my brain is stuck in Napa Valley.  My first time there, and I pretty much just fell in love with the place.  So much so that I’m determined somehow, some way, to include it as a setting in one of my books.

I’ve got some work-related things going on that are taking up virtually all my time (the time not already devoted to an extremely “independent” (read: stubborn) and tantrum-prone toddler (don’t even ask about our disastrous trip to the wine store yesterday)), but I don’t want to totally neglect my blog.  So I thought I’d share some pictures from my trip.  And I think you’ll see why my brain just doesn’t want to come back to the real world.

This is the view from Quintessa, the first winery we visited.  They make incredible cabernet– my favorite type of wine.  What a way to start the trip!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A rock formation we stumbled across on one of the hiking trails at our hotel.  Not sure if nature made it look exactly like a face, or something else…

 

 

 

 

 

The view from Kuleto– the fourth winery we visited.  Incredible views, fantastic wine.  Oprah is building a house on one side of the hill, and Robin Williams owns pretty much an entire hill on the other side.  Must be nice to have such neighbors…

 

 

 

 

An outdoor tasting table at Kuleto… Seeing how it was a whopping 106 degrees the day we visited, we did our tasting inside.

 

 

 

 

 

 

More from Kuleto… (can you tell we liked this place?)

 

 

 

 

 

 

The restaurant at our hotel, Calistoga Ranch.  Appropriately named the Lakehouse.  Loved the views from the terrace at sunset.

 

 

 

 

And last, another view from our hotel.  Man, I think we should’ve made this trip longer… 😉