Conferences and Deadlines and Pizza...

As both Jayne and Susan mentioned, we're all just back from the RWA conference in Orlando. I don't know what it is about conferences, but I always come back totally exhausted and somewhat rattled--it's like my thoughts don't want to get their act together. For instance, tonight I made pizza for dinner. It's one of my favorite things to fix--I make the dough from scratch, make fresh pesto for one side, fresh tomato sauce for the other, top one with one kind of fixin's, top the other with something different. It's absolutely wonderful--unless you forget to add the yeast to the flour when you make the dough.

I didn't even realize I'd forgotten it--my head's still spinning from the travel and the frenetic pace at the conference and the book I'm writing, and when we sat down to eat, my husband took a bite and frowned, and I took a bite and had a serious "oh...YUCK" moment. And then I glanced at the kitchen counter and noticed the little packet of rapid rise yeast was sitting there--unopened.

It was not a stellar moment. I couldn't even eat it. Husband first gazed hopefully at me and said, "Can you fix it?" Uh...no. Then he manfully choked down four or five pieces--when I say "manfully," it's because I've discovered that most men, if hungry enough, will eat just about anything you put in front of them. I figure tomorrow I'll scrape the yummy toppings off and make fresh dough--with yeast, this time--and roll all the stuff up in them and make pizza pockets. Gotta do something to hide the evidence...

I actually know what happened--I've been working on my final Wolf Tales--the deadline is looming every closer and today something happened that was so unplanned and unexpected that it threw me for a loop and sent the story in a totally new direction. Not a bad direction, just a new one, which means a lot of things I thought were going to happen probably won't. At least not in the manner I'd originally thought they would which probably sounds a bit weird, but since I write w/o any kind of plan when I start a book, it's not really that unusual. Except that I really thought I KNEW what was going on with this one. Seems I was wrong, but I was so busy trying to figure out what was going to happen next that I think I was dealing with shapeshifters and wondering how I'd ever make my deadline around the time I should have been adding the yeast.

I've got a new book coming out in a couple of weeks--HellFire, the second book in my DemonSlayers series. This one is so much fun--I've got a Lemurian hero who's almost seven feet tall and VERY blond, and a sharp-tongued 911 operator who doesn't take anything off anyone, least of all a guy who shouldn't even exist. Ginny and Alton met in DemonFire and mixed it up from the very beginning--I really had fun writing this story and I'm hoping readers will enjoy it.

The week after HellFire comes out, I've got another release. Nocturnal is an anthology with my story, Crystal Dreams in it. That one is also part of the DemonSlayers series, so that makes three books in three months. (Wolf Tales 10 released last month)

No wonder I can't keep track of ingredients. But, if you click on the highlighted titles above, you can read a full first chapter of each book.

Have you ever done something totally stupid? I mean, like when you're putting the groceries away, you stick your purse in the freezer, or carried on a conversation with a complete stranger, convinced you know who they are? And yes, I've done both those things, so if I can spill, so can you. C'mon. I need to hear I'm not alone...really. I'm not, am I?