I woke up this morning and remembered that it was New Year's Eve. Filled with optimistic energy, I thought: You know what I should do? I should pull out that notebook I got for Christmas and make a list of all the good things I did accomplish this year, to remind myself that actually, there have been a lot, no matter how self-critical I get.Then I ( Read more... )

We spent yesterday having a belated but very wonderful Christmas celebration with family members we hadn't seen on Christmas Day...which made me realize that I'd left out an important section in Monday's Christmas book list: the books I got for other people ( Read more... )

OK, I am just mature enough not to list all my (so awesome!) presents here. But I am going to list the new books I got, because I am overflowing with GLOAT and need to let it out somehow. (I have been carrying my stack of books all around the house with me every time I move from upstairs to downstairs and vice versa. Sadly, I am not joking. I ( Read more... )

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It's a beautiful, snowy day. I had my first writing session in several days, and I've passed 50,000 words on the dragon novel, hooray! It was so great to finally get back to that after two weeks off. MrD is out having fun with a relative who adores him, I have yummy homemade broccoli-stilton soup to eat ( Read more... )

It's bad enough to be woken at 6:30 by your cellphone beeping at you. But when it's announcing a text message that tells you there will be no childcare (and therefore no writing session!) this morning, that's even worse. And when you then call up a friend to set up a playdate for you and your kids, only to discover that their family is also sick ( Read more... )

Sometimes I feel really frustrated that I'm not better at being a grown-up. You know what I mean...being good at all the grown-up jobs that any responsible human adult surely ought to be able to manage, like getting important practicalities sorted on time, remembering what day the trash gets picked up, etc., etc ( Read more... )

There are so many things I've been wanting to blog about, but I just sent off my rewrites for Kat Book 2, A Tangle of Magicks, to my UK editor, after a crazy-intensive week of staring at 18th-century maps and early 19th-century Bath tour guides, desperately trying to work out how exactly the King's and Queen's Baths must have been laid out in 1803 ( Read more... )

I am such a Christmas tree addict. Now that the lights and the ornaments have been hung on our gorgeously big, fat tree, I would spend my entire life in our living room if I could, with those bright, colorful lights shining 24 hours a day. My feet dragged pathetically as I left the room for the last time last night, blowing imaginary kisses to the ( Read more... )

Today I went into town with the best of intentions. I had uploaded Kat Book 2 (known in the UK as A Tangle of Magicks and in the US as...TBA as soon as I know it!) onto the Kindle. I was going to re-read through it, on the way to doing Serious, Important Rewriting Work. (I'd spent the morning re-reading issues of the New Bath Guide from 1798, 1799 ( Read more... )