Another excuse not to write...

...or clean the house, or pay attention to my children, or chisel the gum (I think it's gum) off of the floor next to my daughter's booster seat...

Just what I needed: another distraction! Other than reading or organizing the linen closet (a hopeless ambition). I tried knitting, too, but it just gave me eye strain and carpal tunnel syndrome. My first project was a baby blanket. I just went to the baby's first birthday party on Sunday, and I'm still only 2/3 done with the stupid blanket.

The writing is going much better than the knitting, fortunately... Murder on the Rocks, the first book in the Gray Whale Inn series, comes out in May (I just saw the cover art, and I love it)... I'm also waiting to hear back from two proposals my agent sent out, and plugging away at the second GWI mystery, Dead and Berried. Fortunately, the book is set in fall in Maine, so as long as I sit in an air conditioned room and don't look outside, I can pretend it's lovely weather for an hour or two each day while I write.

The reality is that it's 107 degrees at the end of September. SEPTEMBER. Fall started SIX DAYS AGO! (Are you listening up there?) I am very fond of Austin, but months like this tend to strain my affection. I become addicted to "Places Rated Almanac" (I get it out from the library every August), and my husband starts getting nervous, reminding me that all of our family is here, and our kids like school, etc. And on the plus side, they don't have to wear winter coats over their Halloween costumes like I did as a kid in upstate New York. Instead, I ask the neighbors to hose them down from time to time to prevent heat stroke.

Although the weather doesn't seem to be aware that it's fall, the plants are changing, and that gives me hope... the Turk's Cap's red flowers have given way to red berries, and the frostweed is blooming (I'm looking for monarch butterflies now; hopefully they'll be down on the first cold front, if one ever comes).

Well, duty (and dinner) calls...