So Now It's Flooding. And That's Alright, Too.

I love the rain! It makes me feel like I am home. I don't necessarily love the flooding in the streets, but it's manageable. I'm drinking hot chocolate and trying to figure out computer issues. All in all, not bad of a day. I'm sad that I'm missing my sister-in-law's baby shower (We love you, Ali!) but Luke had to go in for training, and we couldn't make it up north. Sometimes these things happen.

So Niko's brandishing a kitchen ladle and watching the rain. Nina is sick and down for a nap. I'm taking a break from query letters (curse you, query letters!) and I'm looking up homemade marshmallow recipes. I despise cooking, most of you know that, but baking and treats are completely different. In some other parallel universe, I'm a chocolatier.

Niko's eye is looking a bit better. I can't tell you the feelings that it triggered in me, seeing him come home hurt like that. I was flashing back to the abuse investigation from last year. I was talking to my friend and I told her, "I don't know if I can do this again!" She caught me in an extremely vulnerable moment, to say the least. And she said, "You can. And you'll probably have to. Niko is most likely going to be a target for the rest of his life." Well, ouch. But so true. She's absolutely right, and she said what I needed to hear. So thanks, Jan! I can pull myself together when I really need to.

I received some positive feedback on "The Boy Who Hangs The Stars". It's a tough thing, because it's in print (which is more desirable) but then nobody can read us unless they buy the anthology. I'm sorry in a way because I think it's a lovely story about friendship and hope, and I wish that you could all read it. But at the same time, not a lot of people buy books anymore. I could wax on about the sad state of the economy and how people don't read like they used to, blah blah blah, but who is really interested in that right now? Not I. Anyway, it was nice to hear that somebody liked it, even if it wasn't his usual genre. It made me smile a little to think of a huge bear of a man, a horror writer, pawing through a story about stars and feathery wings. Just goes to show that we can all use some whimsy, yeah?

The querying is tedious. (More about that at www.abrokenlaptop.wordpress.com.) But as soon as I get it going, I think that I'm ready to start thinking about another novel. Do I finish my demon one? Do I rewrite my second in the Ray series? Do I start the third, which I've been thinking about lately? Or do I veer off into something completely new and different? It's delicious. It's getting me excited about writing again!