A Great Book

I'm reading A Swift Pure Cry by Siobhan Dowd, one of my mother's favorite authors.

It makes me want to put myself on ice for one hundred years and learn to write like that. I'll never read another book again.

What a Week!

Well, Tuesday was my Six-Months-Out Day, meaning only half a year until my pub. date. Not the kind where you meet some guy from match.com for a beer in an establishment that has corner booths and brass railings. NO! Not that kind of pub. date. I know: hardy har har. The release date. So that was a good day and I celebrated wildly, mostly in my head.

One way to celebrate was to launch my website. I cut the ribbon with a pair of giant scissors and smashed a bottle of champagne on the bow. What a waste of good champagne...I know. Sad really. Just think of all the thirsty people in some far-off land...tsk tsk.

Another piece of the celebration was getting the official okey-dokey to include the links for Audible and Brilliance on my website. They're the nice folks who are going to bring you Three Rivers Rising on audio; downloads and discs respectively. At the end of the summer, over a lovely lunch, we talked about what the characters would sound like and what qualities the voices would need to convey. A whole new industry for me to learn about!

Last but not least, the caboose on the good-news train: I think I'm done, I think I'm done, I think I'm done. My work in progress. My book #2. Whatever you want to call it. I think its done. I will continue reading about the Bridgets and the Fairies and the Typhoid Marys while my mentor has it, but I'm hoping its pretty darn ready for its close up!

Where Do You Get Your Ideas?

Good Tenners Tell All today: comments will be pouring in all day I'm sure. The question is "Where Do You Get Your Ideas?"

And scroll down if you want a free book. I extended the deadline.

Six-Months-Out Day!!!! And a Surprise...

Happy October 13, 2009---six months from the release date of Three Rivers Rising!

I'm calling it Six-Months-Out Day, like a half birthday only in advance. To celebrate, I'm giving away a book* (not my book obviously, if you were paying attention oh, like one sentence ago!!). I read an excerpt on the author's website and it made me leap out of my chair to go buy it. Now I can't wait to share it. (And I'll throw in some of the bookmarks I just ordered.)

I'll give 5 hints. Then I'll tell you where to send your guess. If more than one person guesses correctly, then it's names in the hat for the winner.

Good luck! I hope you win! Not you, the other one...behind you.

1. The book is by a 2009 Debutante, buddies of the Tenners.

2. It is a beautiful upper-YA hardcover.

3. Now charades. Three fingers. First word. *tugs on ear*

(Second word of image.)

4. Still charades. Second word. *tugs on ear*

5. Last hint. Still charades. *tugs on ear*

Everybody's got it? Now, make your guess at contact@jamerichards.com

What? Jame, you don't have a website...SUPRISE!! Guess who's been secretly building her new website. It wasn't meant to be a secret---I just thought I'd take a crack at it and if I hated it, I would at least have the domain and hosting taken care of. But I'm pretty darn happy with it, if I do say so myself. And what better day to launch that sucker than SIX-MONTHS-OUT DAY!?!

Please hop over to

http://www.jamerichards.com/

after you make your guess and have a look around. Also, if you have a link to my blog anywhere, please update it to the website. You can still access the blog from there.

Edited: Contest will close at midnight Friday and I'll announce the winner Monday! Yay!

Thanks for playing and thanks for stopping by!

*Sorry, U.S. only.

A Half-Birthday

Little Leaf #2 was very excited about her half-birthday recently, so we decided to run with it. We had a half-cake, with half-candles. It was fun---it made an ordinary weekday a little bit special.

It got me to thinking: Tuesday is six months from my release date! I'm gonna call it Six Months Out Day. And to celebrate, I should give something away, shouldn't I? Here's my idea. I just splurged on a beautiful upper-YA hardcover and it is on my nightstand this very minute. I finished it last night. To assuage my guilt at being so extravagant, maybe I should give it away. Maybe I should throw in some of the shiny new swag I just ordered.

So, I have a contest in mind. I'm not gonna say what the book is...cause that might be part of the fun. There'll be clues. And maybe some sekrits revealed. So check back October 13 for the Book Off My Nightstand contest. Kinda like the Shirt Off My Back contest, but I'm pretty sure nobody wants that stinky old thing.

Hen's Teeth

My Grandpa Richards used to say:

Whistling girls

and crowing hens

always come

to some bad end.

He was a cheerful guy, always spreading joy like that. My sister was usually the one whistling, so it didn't bother me that much.

My Old Man uses the expression "hen's teeth" to mean rare. Like today, after he left at 5:45 a.m. in a downpour to get to work early, I stumbled downstairs to start the day...before I absolutely had to! When I'm up early, he says, "That's in hen's teeth territory."

Another thing that's super rare, so I hear: second-pass galleys. Yup. Guess who's getting them. Why? It's that pesky verse thing. (Cue the aw-shucks gesture and head tilt.) Line breaks. Line spacing. You just can't be too careful. So, once again I will have 3RR in my hot little hands and hope I can still see the trees in the forest. Forest. Trees. Hmm. Let's make a new poem:

A whistling sister!

Crowing, toothy hens!

Let's hope my treeless forest

comes to a swift and happy end

* Blogger is not allowing me to create the correct line spacing! AHHHHH! Is that a bad sign?

Revisionist History

Ok, first of all, I can't get SuperFreak out of my mind. Not only that, but now I hear Morgan Freeman narrating my life choices. And I wonder if anyone is filming my frequent spontaneous dance moves around the kitchen while folding laundry. All right, I always think that, who am I kidding? (Did I grow up to be Tina Fey or what?)

But, still, I thought it was just me. Meaning it isn't happening to my neighbor. She does not have SuperFreak stuck in her head when I thought the whole world did. Just to validate my worldview, though, a guy behind me in the grocery started singing OUTLOUD:

do do do do
click click
do do
do do

do do do do
click click
do do

Ahhh, thank God. I'm not alone. Surfing the wavelengths of the collective unconscious. There are others, similarly afflicted.

Moving on, if there's not much in the way of exercising, or showering, or stocking the kitchen with healthy produce or even identifiable foodstuffs...then that can only mean one thing. Revision time. And I ask you this, if you're revising historical fiction, does that mean its revisionist history? Hmm. This just tells you how tired I am and how fried is ye olde brainpan. (I started referring to my mind/brain that way after reading Chains by Laurie Halse Anderson. Not the ye olde part. That's just silly.)

My good friend from Diet-Coke Fueled Life was threatening to go off the sweet brown poison as of Oct. 1 if she doesn't finish her own revision (YA contemporary, about a girl named Hazel) and I'm gonna check in with her now and see how it went. Come on back if you want to hear.

I'm not threatening to give anything up, except beets, but I'm hoping to finish around Octoberish myself.

Just one more Wa-Wah-Wowwww...she's superfreak-ay! And if you're picturing Rick James, like I'm picturing Rick James, let me just say that Charlie Murphy is a HELL of a storyteller! Like the storytellers of old. Like the days of ye olde brainpan.

Don't Read This!

Don't spend any time here: where you really want to be is over here at Blog-toberfest by author Jeri Smith-Ready. Fun stuff to read. AND amazing giveaways! Including a grand prize of untold proportions!