I use words with usages that are no longer common, like “apprehension” to mean understanding (it has a shade different meaning than “comprehension”) and phrases like “her dress, so eloquent of her mean estate.” She reads most of them without a blink, but when the usage is unfamiliar to her, it’s REALLY unfamiliar. *g*

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Spend three days saying how you need to iron a shirt for a Big Presentation and then at 1 am the night before, give your wife sad puppy eyes and ask her to do it “because I don’t remember how to iron.”

I felt like dog breath (as my mother would so vividly say) after the conference was over, so I have pretty much spent the last few days in a state of collapse. I also have my line edits back, so I’m really busy!

I broke the top 40 on the BookScan romance list last week (yay!), which I forgot to mention. And I had something intelligent or insightful that I was going to blog about but now I can’t remember.

Instead, I’ll yap about some good reads! (Fantasy this time, mostly YA, but more will come later.)

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I attended a statewide homeschooling conference, and what amazed and saddened me is the incredible innocence of so many of the people involved in homeschooling. If you choose to homeschool, WONDERFUL. GREAT.

But it’s not for everyone.

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I’m doing my last chat until my next book comes out at AccessRomance tonight. 9 PM EST–http://www.accessromance.com/chat/index.html

Check it out!

My editor just wrote to tell me that THE VEIL OF NIGHT hit the OVERALL mass market B&N list this week at #48 and the B&N mass market romance list at #9!!!

I have now hit my first bestseller list ever!!!!! HOORAY! Ok, it’s a tiny list…but it’s a list!

I am SO thrilled at this jump because now’s when word of mouth takes over from a great cover. *g* And it’s working!

When I wrote MOTN, four chapters ended up getting chopped. (For some reason, a 500-page manuscript wasn’t what my editor was looking for… *g*) Some of what died was actually fairly well polished when it was cut. Here is my favorite scene. Sebastian and Sarah have left a masquerade that no longer exists at dawn, and instead of ordering the gondoliers home, Sebastian orders them to row to the edge of Venice’s lagoon. Sarah has fallen asleep.

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I got really, really tired of how much random crap I was eating during the day (mostly buttered toast and torillas with melthed cheese–yes, I know, don’t groan), so I decided to give TV dinners another shot after having my first unpleasant experiences more than 10 years ago. Now, there’s isn’t much that’s less appealing than “Homestyle Cooking” to me, and the entire idea of an 1150-calorie fried meal sort of defeated the purpose of eating better. So I decided to try some of the new diet lines. The food looks much, much better–much more like what I would choose to cook rather than the Huge Hunks of Low-Quality Fried Meat With Gravy And Potatoes that seem to dominate the market. So I picked up some Healthy Choice, some Lean Cuisine, and some Smart Ones selections.

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I updated lots of pages today, so there are no more references to when I get published or when TVON hits the shelves. Yay! The TMOTN cover is up everywhere, too.

“What is the pooper scooper doing on the living room floor????”