Okay, I didn't get back to you yesterday, but it's only Thursday, so I'm not that behind, right? I'm having a hard time thinking right now, because for some bizarre reason I woke up at 5 a.m. and started writing and wrote until 10:30 (interspersed with mucking, which oddly enough helps me write), and so my brain is a little fried. Also I've started fretting about last minute things to do for the party (get cranberries and popcorn for the tree, and ribbons and boughs to decorate the house, and a tree, don't forget, and maybe some sheet music so we can sing a little 'round the piano, and it would be really cool to have some traditional holiday games, but the last time I saw that sort of thing was, I think, in one of the G.K. Chesterton Father Brown stories, so I have to go dig those out, or you guys could send me your ideas/memories, and I have no idea what's appropriate for Kwanzaa (I have Christmas and Hanukkah and Winter Solstice and the Hindu Festival of Lights stuff, but nothing for Kwanzaa, which is too bad, 'cause I wanted this to be an interdenominational holiday party :-), and I'm not sure the trifle recipe is going to work out, so I want to make it early (besides I think it's better if it sits soaking up the sherry for a day, though *please* tell me if I'm wrong), and there's the eggnog to spice and the cookie ingredients to buy and I'm sure I've forgotten something or several somethings), so I'm a little flaky right now.
But basically life is good and I'm happy, though someone should explain to me someday why it is that I can be utterly upset one moment and perfectly fine the next, and exactly how this relates to telephones, 'cause I really don't understand this phenomenon and it's causing much confusion in my life. No, I'm not going to explain that. It would take too long, and you probably know what I mean anyway.
I'm babbling. I'm babbling a lot. I hope you guys are at least amused by my babbling 'cause it would be awful if nobody got anything out of it. Heck, I'm amused, so I suppose that's enough.
I discovered something amazingly cool today -- an ambigram generator. I'm not going to try to explain -- just go play -- it's fun. 'mary anne' acutally works fairly well as an ambigram.
And okay, you may find this hard to believe, but I actually have a fan club now. That's right. And you can join if you want (what's next, a Usenet newsgroup?? :-), and receive lots of cool nifty stuff. Well, maybe some cool nifty stuff. Maybe none. Maybe just a lot of advertising blurbs. Or maybe I'll be inspired and mail you guys everything I write each week. Hundreds of pages of unpublished material delivered to your very mailbox...okay, I'm a little manic today, you can tell. It's definitely a crap shoot, but it'd be kinda nice to think that someone actually bothered to JOIN my fan club. :-) And I think Dale is a little stumped for ideas on what a fan club actually does (and the last one I joined (okay, I admit it, it was the Misty Lackey fan club, but I was in high school, okay?) was so long ago that I don't quite remember what we did other than exchange letters saying how much we liked the author, which seems a little silly in retrospect, so I don't have much of a clue either), so could probably use any ideas you wanted to shoot his way. He likes getting mail. (Dale is my publisher, in case that wasn't clear. Dale Larson, dale@iam.com, super nice guy. Feel free to write and tell him. :-) (If he starts getting flooded with mail he's going to kill me, but it might be worth it....:-)
The general pages on the book have also been expanded quite a bit, including quite a few lovely new reviews, and a detailed description of the censorship problems we faced. Interesting.