Friday, July 28, 2006

Summer Slowdown

I now have three teenagers in the house, with my daughter home from college, and a French exchange student, who arrived last Saturday. Keeping them happy, healthy, fed, and (in the French student's case) entertained has REALLY cut into my writing time. Right now, I'm sitting very gingerly at the computer with a sunburned back, from taking six teenagers to Water World today. I have to admit I had fun, too, though. Love those water slides...

Still, I'm feeling very guilty about not touching my work-in-progress since before the Alaska trip. I did, however, review the edits on my Murder Cache short story for the Map of Murder Anthology. I answered the editor's questions, made a few more edits, and sent the story back. So, that's one writing task done. Summer is always this way for me, busy with the kids but guilt-tripping and feeling anxious that I'm not doing more writing. Sigh!

Monday, July 17, 2006

A BIG Short Story Sale!

I signed a contract a couple of days ago with Wild Blue Yonder, the inflight magazine of Frontier Airlines, to publish a short story in their September/October issue!! With this sale, I've hit the BIG TIME for short stories, with more than 10 times the pay I've gotten for any other story and a huge potential readership, who will all read in my biography about my mystery novel coming out in March. :)

This same story appeared in the Kansas Writers Association's Words out of the Flatlands anthology. In that anthology, the story was titled "Global Domination," but the folks at Frontier wanted a less terrorism-related title, so it will be retitled "Power Play." It's a story about a mother who uses playing a game of Risk to resolve some issues in her family. I'm almost as excited about this as when I got my book contract!

Thursday, July 13, 2006

Back From Alaska

My family returned from Alaska the day before yesterday, and after slogging through laundry, mail, and email, I'm ready to hit the blog again--and to start dieting! My husband took a photo of our table on the cruise ship with 6 desserts for 4 people. My daughter and I had a thing for those souffles! Hubby can't complain, though, because one night, he ate 2 entrees: crab legs and lamb chops. We saw lots of 4-legged wildlife in Denali (moose, caribou, dall sheep, grizzly bear sow & her cub, fox with an arctic hare and a squirrel in its mouth) and sea wildlife in Prince William Sound (seals, sea lions, whales, sea otters), and glaciers calving into the sea. My son loved the stay with my husband's cousin in Valdez, who let my son ride his ATV, shoot his guns, fish for salmon on his boat and shoot $30 worth of fireworks off at the bay near his house. A real macho experience! The romantic moment for me was on the last night of the cruise, sipping a bottle of champagne (won in a trivia contest) with my hubby in a hot tub on the stern of the ship and watching the beautiful mountains, glaciers and waterfalls slide by as the ship sailed from College Fjord into Whitter.