Thanks so much to everybody who's commented and emailed in the last couple of days! I am still completely giddy about the news. :) This is the wrong time of the financial month for any expensive celebrations, and of course I'm not allowed any alcohol for another 8 weeks, but on Wednesday I made myself my first-ever homemade chocolate ice cream milkshake in celebration, and ohhhh...it was SO bad for me to learn how easy those are to make! (Danger, danger, Will Robinson!)

The most fun thing I've done over the last couple of days was to join 2010: A Book Odyssey, which is a livejournal community made up of YA or middle-grade authors whose debut novels are all due out in 2010. There are so many fantastic-looking novels from all sorts of genres coming out from that group, and it's been really fun to become a part of it. It also makes 2010 not feel nearly so far away! I posted my intro for the group yesterday, and I'm really looking forward to participating in it over the next couple of years.

I also found something online that made me squeak out loud in fan-girl glee: Robin McKinley has posted the first two scenes from her upcoming novel, Chalice, on her blog! And they ROCK. She's gone back to the kind of high-fantasy setting she started out in, but the tone in the first scene of the novel is dark and haunting and feels much more similar to her Sunshine (my favorite vampire novel ever). And the combination of those two elements, together with her usual beautiful writing style, makes for something really, really exciting. I can't wait until the novel is published, so I can read the rest...just one more month to wait!

Yesterday was my official UK citizenship ceremony (hooray for dual citizenship!), and this morning was devoted to chores. First, we made a trip out to Leeds's biggest furniture thrift shop, where we were determined to buy two chests of drawers and two bookcases, and, oh, yeah, maybe a couple of chairs, too, but those would just be an optional extra. Of course, when we left the store, half an hour later, what we actually walked out with was: two chairs and two paperbacks I'd spotted in their book racks. (Lovely old Mary Stewart suspense novels, yay!) So...our shopping trip didn't go exactly to plan, to say the least. But! It did give me something to read while Patrick went into the big DIY store on the way home. (Such a good husband to let me wait in the car while he went in...it's not as if he enjoys those places either!)

This afternoon, after a few days of exhileration and celebration and distractions, my plan is to sit down and revise through at least another couple of chapters of Kat by Starlight. And not to let myself make any more milkshakes!