She interrupts me. I interrupt her. Elle A. Muse is unfortunately not amused…
Eldest Son flies back to university tonight—unless he gets snowed in again, heh, heh. Then he’ll have to stay another day.
At any rate, I’m nearly ready to return to the world of blogging. Keep checking back. While you’re at it, let me know how your holiday went. Did you have a good time?
“Tonight I’m gonna party like tomorrow’s 2009.”
Have a safe and wonderful New Year’s Eve!
Happy holidays to all my blog readers!
I’m getting caught up in the Christmas rush and need to devote all my “spare time” (ha, ha, what’s that?) to my WIP, so I’m going on Blog Holiday for the rest of the year. You never know, I might pop in again if I have industry news to pass along or if something major happens in my writing life, but don’t count on it. I think 2008 has given me all it can writing-wise, and I’m looking forward to a productive, beneficial, and mile-stoney 2009.
See you in January!
I had a panic attack when I woke up this morning. Not a real panic attack, but a Holy-Crap-Now-I’ve-Done-It moment. You see, my work-in-progress is set in November, in the United States. Canadian Thanksgiving falls on the second Monday in October, but because American Thanksgiving is occurring now (as in yesterday), I happened to hear or read that American Thanksgiving falls on the fourth Thursday of November. Frankly, I can no longer remember if I heard or read that information sometime yesterday or if my muse decided to torture me with it upon waking.
The point is, I had to do a mad scramble to Google, because I always choose a year to set my fictional stories in, so I can print out a calendar and ensure I’m not forgetting something like, oh, that Americans celebrate Thanksgiving in November. And then I keep track of my scenes according to the calendar dates.
My WIP is set in 2007 (I don’t mention the year, I just use 2007 for plotting purposes). Last year, November had five Thursdays. This year, November has four Thursdays. Thanksgiving and Black Friday figure into my plot, so you can imagine my mini-moment of freak out. Ack, do I have to revise the entire freaking manuscript so that Thanksgiving falls a week later? Thank God for Google, because typing When Was Thanksgiving in 2007? assured me that I had properly researched American Thanksgiving dates last year and wasn’t just making up the extra Thursday after the holiday! (Forgetting what you have and haven’t researched is an unfortunate side effect of setting aside a manuscript to work on another manuscript, as was the case with this particular story late last year).
Of course now I’m obsessing over—how often does November have five Thursdays? Do I need to worry about this/mention it in my story? When (note the confidence) this book gets published, will American readers think, that stupid Canadian, she set Thanksgiving in the the second-to-last week of the month?!
Halloween also figures in this story, and I do mention several times that Halloween falls on a Wednesday, which should alert a clever reader that November 1st falls on a Thursday, which is how my WIP’s November winds up with five Thursdays… Is that clear enough?
And, by the way, yes, I do have PMS, thanks for asking.
Happy Thanksgiving to all my American friends! I hope you have a great day surrounded by friends and family and that, despite the economic situation, you have plenty to be thankful for today.
We had our Thanksgiving 5 or 6 weeks ago, so today is a regular day for me. I didn’t get a chance to write yesterday, but had lots of fun babysitting my two great-nephews. With the help of my little sister, I walked/strolled them all the way (it was a fair distance) to the adventure playground park where I used to take my kids. We got all the way there and discovered the adventure playground was GONE. Only the swingsets remained. You could have knocked me over with an ice cube. I have no idea what happened to the playground. I loved taking my boys there when they were little. Luckily, the great-nephews were happy with just the swings, although the oldest (3) insisted that he get to ride in the stroller on the way back, and the 20-month-old walked verrrrrrrrrrrryyy slowly. But they were so cute! And, yes, the cutest part was getting to give them back. 😉
If you haven’t entered my BOX ‘O BOOKS HOLIDAY GIVE-AWAY yet, there’s still time. I’m taking entries until midnight, Sunday, November 30th, and I’ll contact the winner December 1st for her/his snail mail address so I can mail out the books ASAP. However, I won’t announce the winner on the blog until Wednesday the 3rd, as author J.L. Miles is blogging Tuesday, and I’ll be telling you all about her book, DIVORCING DWAYNE, on Monday.
Oh, and if anyone noted the other day before I edited the post that Susan Lyons’s guest blogging date was listed for December 9th, due to unforeseen circumstances, Susan will now be blogging Wednesday, December 10th. Hope to see you there!