Oh MAN, it’s been days since I posted anything here. How the hell did that happen?

Well, um, er, um, my dog ate it?

It’s not been a shining week in the Hedgehog Firmament (emphasis on the last syllable for all you fans of Lina Lamont.)

It’s been a week where, never mind what the weather has been, I’ve had a kick-ass backache – at least an 8 to 8.5 on a scale that goes to 10) almost daily and am having to rethink how much pain stuff I take because it’s not touching it which means having to either increase or switch (I can safely take 2-3 more pills a day than I do, “safely being defined as “maxing out on the damn TYLENOL” in the pill, NOT the hydrocodone part.) It might be time to start thinking “oxycodone” but not too long ago I had some for only a few days and I am not sure my body tolerates it. This has led to less-than-intelligent-functioning the last week.

I wrecked my cell phone – only a few months old and I was clumsy and need to replace it. Have had total hysterics over it imagining what my mother would say about how I don’t look after things.

Phone calls, emails, etc. are going unanswered because except for you and me, EVERYONE is at Book Expo aka ABA, aka the big book thing in DC; that seems to include (so far that I have counted) bookstore folks, librarians and of course publicists and editors of books/magazines/anyone I have needed to talk with about either Left Coast or a deadline or a book.

I have had the consolation of a) a stash of books arriving many of which are readable or look interesting or whatever – right now, it’s a combination of some library books about words, the new Janet LaPierre, a new book by Fred Ramsey and gods, I don’t know. I’m spending too much time, as is my wont, playing computer games because concentration is not exactly my big thing.

In an hour or so, Stu and I go out to dinner celebrating one of our anniversaries.

This week, Linda Barnes will be in town and I hope to have a chance to actually catch up with this lovely nice person and old friends whom I haven’t seen in a while (except for that surprise appearance at Bouchercon in Chicago last year).

The week after I get to hyperventilate and finally get to see Cornelia and the Read/Child (there MUST be a joke in there somewhere) tour comes to town.

With help because I am a bear of little brain, we organized the program questionnaire for LCC 2007 and it actually went out by email to something like 60 people. Including apparently some people who did not want it – we’re not sure but we think they might have checked a box they didn’t intend to. But the ones who write and say “I’m not an author” make me grit my teeth because it still means still still still still still after I do my damnedest to get the word out that people don’t get it and still think that one must be an author to be on convention programming. Despite how many different ways I try to inform them otherwise. And I really want to explain but I really don’t have time any more but it shows that even having something that says “how to be on program” as well as something that explains a convention on your website doesn’t mean anything.

So just remember “If we bring a little joy into your humdrum lives, it makes us feel as though our hard work ain't been in vain for nothin'.”