The Power of Suggestion

Last week I worked on the next book in The Seaview Series. In one scene, Rose makes chicken tacos for supper and I even put in the simple recipe. I couldn't stop thinking about them, wanting to eat them, so today when I went to the grocery (again), I got chicken breasts, a jar of salsa, and low-fat shredded cheese. I microwaved the chicken breasts, chunked them up and made chicken tacos. Naturally there's a lot more than one meal's worth so I ate one, put one serving in the fridge, and tucked three servings into the freezer for later. So good.

 

Once again, I've never heard of the tree that produces today's flower. It's called American Fringe and, according to the book, it grows in the eastern US. It was a bit of a challenge with all the petals crisscrossing each other but I managed.

 

 I finished re-editing The Seaview this afternoon and uploaded the last four manuscripts to Atticus. I had a little moment of panic when it wouldn't load one of the files, but it didn't take me long to realize that it wasn't a .docx file which is the only one Atticus accepts. Easily fixed. The funny thing was the uncooperative file was for the newest book, Anneke's Legacy. It should tell you how old parts of that story are that they're in a 2003 version of Word. Yikes.

 

A copy of Anneke's Legacy was delivered today. I'd thought I was one short but then thought maybe I'd miscounted since it'd been a couple weeks but here it was on the porch today. Oh, and all of the books from yesterday's festival of packaging were printed and shipped from the same place. I sorted through the piles and checked. I don't understand but I'm just happy that they're all here and in good shape. 

This morning I got brave and signed up for a 5-session Novel Intensive online seminar in April. I've taken this before and it's very helpful and I get valuable critiques from the participants and the leader. As soon as I paid for it, I thought that maybe I'd made a mistake because each person submits 25 pages for critique every week which means up to 75 pages to work through before the next session. I'll be focused, I can tell you that, but I look forward to the input of other writers. 

I got an email from GetCovers with the invoice for the last four covers--three that they're calling corrections (just adding the blurb & author info and converting to PDF) and one full cover design. They only designed the audiobook cover for Island Dreams so they've got to basically start from scratch and build off that single design. To be honest, I like their audiobook design better than the eBook and paperback one that The Book Publishing Solutions designed so it can only get better.

No rain, freezing rain, or snow yet. Maybe it'll miss us? We can only hope. They keep pushing the blizzard warning back. Now it's from Sunday 4pm to Monday 4pm. Only time will tell.

-- Barbara