Am I the only one obsessed with Bo?

Are you kidding me? As if there weren't enough to make the Obamas the perfect family...

Dear Obamas,
Baxter makes a great play date companion.
Call any time.
xo,
Sarah

Baxter Says 'Hey. Woof.'

5 things that are helping me stay focused.

those of you who follow me on twitter and facebook know that i'm in radio silence for the weekend because i'm trying to finish the book by sunday night. this is how it works when i get so close to the end of a book that i can smell it. i hibernate. i go underground and don't look up or come out until it is done. i try to ensure that this happens on a weekend, so i can take friday off from my day job and really power through. this is where i'm at right now. and it hurts. some writers say that the last three chapters of a book feel exhilarating...like all they can imagine doing is running a marathon afterwards. not so with me. the last three chapters of my books feel like what i imagine the last three miles of the new york city marathon feel like. ie...you're doing it because dammit you won't get this far and not finish, but you question your motives, your sanity, and your will to live the entire time. welcome to the end of a book, sarah maclean style.

so...here are the five things that keep me focused during this time:

1. Cranberry Juice. I don't know why, but I go through gallons of the stuff when I'm down to the wire.
2. Beethoven. Specifically, Piano Sonata 23, aka the Appassionata.
3. Baxter. Because warm, fuzzy dogs who love you even when you're gross and cranky are possibly the best thing in the world.
4. My bookshelves. They are full of published books. Most of them were finished successfully.
5. My friends, because they don't call me. And because they won't be mad when I finally call them. Because they will know precisely where I have been.

and...this wouldn't be an honest post if I didn't list the five things I'm depriving myself of because they are too distracting and awesome.

1. The West Wing. Because Aaron Sorkin wrote that show specifically to keep this book from ever being written. He's prescient. Its a little-known fact.
2. Mike Doughty. Because while I usually love listening to him and he did, after all, write Alex's theme song, his music is not always Regency appropriate.
3. Facebook. I should think that would be self-explanatory.
4 Lisa Kleypas and Julia Quinn novels. Because I could read them over and over and I'm just a severe enough procrastinator to do just that.
5. My bed. Because right now, I could seriously take a nap.

and, finally...here are the five things i will do to celebrate the end of my book.

1. do a little dance in my living room.
2. wear my new, custom made, yellow chucks. more on that later. but i'm too superstitious to wear them yet.
3. buy myself a bonnie cashin bag.
4. watch the entire first and second season of The Tudors.
5. play the new Quantum of Solace video game that has been in its shrink wrap SINCE CHRISTMAS because i am a goddess at resisting temptation.

but in order to do those things, i gotta leave you.
peace out, internet.

I <3 My Dog...

especially when he sleeps like this...

AS King Makes Baxter Famous!

The fabulous AS King, author of The Dust of 100 Dogs (which you should all go read RIGHT NOW), is featuring Baxter on her blog today as part of her regular feature, Wagging on Wednesday!

Go learn more about my pup...and about Amy!

Sarah Cross Sweetens the Deal

The amazing Sarah Cross interviewed me this week for her blog. For those of you who don't know Sarah, you should. Don't believe me? Consider the following five-point plan. First, she's the author of the incredible Dull Boy, which is out in May and which I have been lucky enough to read early. It's clever and funny and endearing and I can't wait to own my own copy! Second, she's super fun and wickedly funny and a blast to hang out with. Third, she knows everything (read: EVERYTHING) there is to know about superheros, comic books, and awesome gaming. And she's a girl, which is rad. Fourth, her name is Sarah. Fifth, she loves Baxter, despite never having met him.

But...I should warn you...she has a flaw. A tragic one. Sarah Cross has never read a Jane Austen novel. I know. I shall wait while you take a moment to recover...................

Admitting the problem is the first step, though. And Sarah has officially admitted the problem...and she is willing to rectify the situation with some coaxing. As part of the interview, she is giving away a signed copy of The Season! AND...if she gets 50 entries in the giveaway, this comic-book-reading-super-hero-loving-Halo-playing Cool Girl will read Pride & Prejudice. Well, at least TRY to read it. If she gets 100 entries in the giveaway, she will READ THE WHOLE THING.

So go on over to Sarah's Blog, enter the contest, and restore sense and sensibility to the world!

...oh...and to those who are wondering, of course I'm not going to make her buy her first book by Aunt Jane. I'm going to buy it for her. :)

Meet A.S. King!

Ok. For those of you living under a rock who haven't been struck dumb by the incredible cover of A.S. King's first YA novel, The Dust of 100 Dogs, here's your chance to look cool at parties. Amy has written a YA book about pirates and dogs.

Once I stopped rending my garments and asking all within earshot why I hadn't thought up this idea, I decided to contact the mind herself and ask all the questions I was dying to ask. You, dear reader, get the fruits of that particular labor. Yay for the Internet! And for generous authors!

In the late seventeenth century, famed teenage pirate Emer Morrisey was on the cusp of escaping the pirate life with her one true love and unfathomable riches when she was slain and cursed with "the dust of one hundred dogs," dooming her to one hundred lives as a dog before returning to a human body-with her memories intact.

Now she's a contemporary American teenager and all she needs is a shovel and a ride to Jamaica.

Possibly the best concept for a novel ever in the history of concepts for novels. I'm just saying.

A.S. King has recently returned from Ireland, where she spent a decade dividing herself between self-sufficiency, teaching adult literacy, and writing novels. Her short fiction has been published in a bunch of cool journals and has been nominated for Best New American Voices 2010.

Meet A.S. King

There's something about pirates...and about dogs...and you've melded those two worlds (both of which I'm totally in love with)...what came first with Dust? Pirates or dogs? Or Saffron? Or some other thing?

Oliver Cromwell came first. Emer’s story was first inspired by Cromwell’s 1649/50 invasion of Ireland. Then Saffron arrived. Then dogs and then pirates.

The cover of The Dust of 100 Dogs is a total knockout. Exactly how much did you plotz when you first saw it?

I plotzed a lot. I’m still plotzing. Not just because it’s beautiful, but because it manages to communicate the premise in a few simple images. It’s just unbelievable. I think I have at least another forty years of plotzing in me for this cover.

Writing a book about a 300 year old character in the 1970s couldn't have been easy... from one historical novelist to another...what was your research process like?

Well, Saffron isn’t really 300 years old. She’s a teenager, dealing with her parents, her brother, school, and all the other complications of teenage life. She just happens to have memories from Emer, who lived 300 years ago, and from the 100 dogs in between. So, writing Saffron was probably the easiest task, because she was born during the same era I was born, in a boring Pennsylvania suburb, just like me. Our lives were nothing alike, thankfully, except that we both, along with every other teenager on the planet, felt an urgent need to escape.

My research was a lot of fun because I actually lived where the Irish parts are set and I was fascinated by the history right in front of me. I had a few local historians offer up their libraries, and I devoured books about the Cromwellian invasion, European history and local history. Cromwell’s letters from the time were captivating as were the few books I managed to find on piracy.

Writing the three-century-old parts was simplified by having a close third person narrator. Technically, it’s Saffron telling you about Emer’s life, the same way she is telling you about the lives of dogs in the Dog Facts and her own first person life as Saffron. That was incredibly helpful. In reality, the dialog in the Irish part of the book would have been in Irish (Gaelic). Obviously, writing it that way wouldn’t have been a great idea. So, having the close (English-speaking) third person narration allowed me to describe the practical history – Cromwell, the weaponry, the daily routines, the journey to Connacht, Tortuga’s slavery, the life of pirates – and omit content that would have bored or confused readers.

The Dust of 100 Dogs is your first foray into YA. How has your experience with the YA literary world differed (if at all) from your experience with the adult literary world?

I’ve found the YA community to be a laid back, genuine and generous one. Because of my similar nature, I feel at home here. On the business side, it’s harder for the adult literary world to take risks on unconventional work, because literary books are a hard sell to start. I find the YA world more open to the unconventional, which is how I landed here, and I’m thankful for that. Still, I wish we could invent a genre for my other books, which are a mix of kooky and heavy, like D100D, but meant for my generation. (You saw it here first, folks. X-lit. Fiction for Slackers.)

You've been an adult literacy teacher...which I think is one of the hardest and most rewarding jobs there is. What's the biggest lesson you learned during your years of teaching older struggling readers?

The smartest people on Earth are the ones who know what they don’t know and want to learn more. The dumbest people on Earth think they know everything and feel they have little to learn. Humility is essential.

In your bio, it says you ran off with the circus. What's the craziest thing you ever saw in or around the Big Top? (Note: If you didn't actually run off with the circus, too bad. You'll have to make a crazy thing up.)

Keeping in mind I ran off with a circus in Ireland, where it rains most of the time, the craziest thing I ever saw on the circus is what it takes to actually run a circus. It’s insane. Over the span of one week, they could move up to six times, breaking down the entire show and dragging themselves, truck by truck, wagon by wagon, out of the deep mud [sometimes with a tractor, and usually in the dark] only to get to the next place, set up the tent (and everything else – generators, wagons, bathrooms, animal areas, etc.), do two or three shows, and break down again. The people I know in circus don’t really sleep. I’ve known hard working people all my life – restaurant owners who work 18 hour days to farmers who can calve 48 hours straight – but Irish circus is the hardest work I’ve ever seen. You have to be crazy to do it.

And, finally, AS King on:

Piratical Punishment:
Walk the Plank or Marooned on a Desert Island?
If it was me, I’d choose marooned on a desert island. Then, I could finally bring those five essential books/albums/movies people always ask about.

Irish Literary Heroes:
Beckett or Joyce?
Beckett. 

Man's Best Friend:
Shake or Fetch?
Fetch.

Tom Robbins Heroines:
Sissy Hankshaw or Ellen Cherry Charles?
Ooo. That’s tough.
Ellen Cherry Charles, I guess.
No. Sissy Hankshaw. Hmm.
Can’t decide.

Corn pie.
What's that about?
It’s the yummiest thing in the whole world. One time, I hard boiled three eggs that were still warm from the hens, picked fresh corn, blanched it and took it off the cob, mixed the pastry from ground spelt flour and made the freshest corn pie ever. I’ve just drooled on my keyboard thinking about it. Some newer recipes add all sorts of other stuff, but all you really need is fresh corn, hardboiled eggs, and salt and pepper in (and topped with) pie crust. Bake. Serve with hot milk with melted butter. Drool.

----

Thanks so much for coming over to play, Amy!

For everyone else...find AS King at her website, on the D100D website, and at her blog (where Baxter will be featured soon as part of Wagging on Wednesday!) . I also think she'd appreciate you ordering D100D on Amazon.

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Meet someone else here!

The Increasingly Less Than Friendly Skies

Eric and I are currently en route to California to celebrate Christmas with his family. And it’s been a heckuva route. We left our cozy NYC apartment on Thursday night to bring Baxter to my parents’ house in Rhode Island for a spa week while we wing our way to lovely Shaver Lake, California, where Eric’s nature-loving parents have built the home they plan to retire to. It’s a stunning place, which I’m sure I’ll have more to say about later in the week. (Hopefully they will prove less dramatic than Thanksgiving.)

Suffice to say that with a 4 hour drive to RI on Thursday night and a 3:30 am wake up call this morning (after a giant snowstorm no less) to get to the Providence, Washington, DC, and Denver airports on time, respectively, I was thoroughly prepared for things to be less than perfect. After all, this is the Holiday Season and a three-leg flight is NEVER a good idea. But, we were leaving at 6am ET, expecting to be in Fresno, CA at 2:30 PT. No biggie. A long day, sure...but I am prepared. I am zen. I am the walrus.

Yeah. Right.

As I write this, I am sitting on the floor of the Denver International Airport. I have been sitting on this patch of floor for approximately 6 hours. I'm thinking of getting a ficus tree. And maybe recarpeting.

Oh, our flight out of snowy Providence went off without a hitch, but things in DC were not nearly as well organized (I suppose we shouldn't have been surprised by that), and we ended up missing our Fresno connection by mere minutes. Like, 7 minutes. Then, there was the hour stuck Dante's 14th level of hell (United Airlines customer service--go back and check the Inferno. It's there), after which we were FINALLY supposed to get out of lovely Colorado at 6pm MT. No go. Plane delayed. Maybe you'll see California before Christmas Eve, suckers.

Back when I was preparing to be zen about the whole travel thing, I had plans. "No problem!" I said to myself. "I'll take any extra layover time I can get to write!" Yes...well...as you can probably imagine...that didn't happen. Instead, I read an entire romance novel on my new Kindle (OMG how I love the Kindle...but that's another post for another time), confiscated Eric's DS to play Super Mario World, and took the world's most impressive nap (during which a child nearby had uncontrollable, unmutable hiccups for 2 HOURS. Jeez! Get thee to a doctor, kid!). Not a lick of writing done. My editor (who hopefully is not reading this) would be le disappointed.

Boredom finally set in about 10 minutes ago. You are the lucky recipient of the product of that boredom. If all goes well, when next you hear from me I'll be in the snowy foothills of the Sierra Nevadas plotting to avoid actually going out INTO nature (Hazards of marrying a Californian--wilderness walks).

So...I'm thinking of you guys...may you have safe, speedy travels to wherever you're going this holiday.

xoxo

It isn't Thanksgiving without some drama, right?

As I write this, I'm curled up in a big armchair in my parents' house, post-Thanksgiving smells wafting through the air as Eric online Christmas shops (hopefully for me?), Baxter snoozes, and my dad reads his Daniel Silva book.  

It's warm and cozy and quiet today...about the exact opposite of twenty-four hours ago, when I was at one of those crazy wonderful giant family Thanksgivings, complete with thirteen adults, six kids under the age of 7 (and one yet to come), three dogs, an enormous bird and more stuffing than any 19 humans should be able to consume.  Holidays at our house are way too loud, way too political, and really really fun...but, as the old adage tells us, it's all fun and games until someone gets hurt.  And last night proved that saying very very true.  

In a triptophanic, apple-pie-induced food coma, my sister...pictured above, much smaller, balder and fuzzier than she is now...had a devastating meeting with a model train and a flight of stairs.  She came out of it with a dislocated and fractured shoulder.  Lesson learned.  In battle, model trains will win.  

So...Eric (who earned his keep as new husband/brother-in-law) and I brought her to a sleepy little emergency room in a small town in Massachusetts (quoth Eric: "Chiara!  We brought you to 1952!"), where my sister was wheeled into Trauma Room B and a lovely nurse pumped her full of morphine and a remarkable ER doc (v. cute...no George Clooney, but maybe Noah Wylie-esque) slowly and impressively relocated her shoulder.  She came through it like a trooper...I'm certain that was no picnic...but I was in the room and she neither lost her cool nor her consciousness, so...wow.  

At some point, I looked down at the floor and saw a lone penny, lying face up.  Just as I was about to reach down and pick it up, because certainly my sister could have used some good luck right about then, I realized that, at some point, someone in Trauma Room B would need better luck than we had.  Because while she's definitely in some serious pain, she's going to be just fine...soon able to once again wave her hands around like the Italian she is.  

And for that, I am thankful. So I left the penny where it was. For someone who needs a little good luck for themselves.  

mike doughty reminds me why i love writing...

I'm cleaning the house, so I can't really sit and chat, but I was inspired to write a quick blog post.   I have this issue with music.  While some people have music playing in the background at all times, I can't listen to it unless I'm doing something mindless, like cleaning the house...and this is because, as eric puts it, I don't actually listen to music.  I listen to lyrics. 

This is also why I tend to listen to the same collection of albums over and over...only when a song's lyrics are committed to my memory is it added to my "top rated" list, which is always played at ear-splitting, baxter-fleeing decibels while I clean/workout/chill.  Today, my album of choice is Mike Doughty's Golden Delicious.  Now, not to sound like an obnoxious music lover, but I've been a Mike Doughty fan since he was the genius behind Soul Coughing.  Soft Serve is one of my favorite songs of all time.  Long story short, he kicked several addictions and turned into what eric refers to as "the kind of music my mom would listen to." But to this I say, Mike Doughty has become a poet.  And this is ok by me.  Because, as with Ani Difranco, Fiona Apple and other songwriters whom I deeply respect, he reminds me why I can't imagine being anything other than a writer. 

Case in point: 

In his I Wrote a Song about Your Car, he asks: Will you be my friend?  Or will you be a friend of mine? 

Such a loaded question...such a perfect example of how words, in the wrong order, are weighted so very differently, have such a vastly different meaning. 

And, as your cookie for reading all the way to the end, here's a video of the man himself playing an acoustic version of this song in what I can only imagine is his living room.  enjoy!

a silly reason why i love my dog:

when he's really excited and totally crazy, you can scratch the place where his ear meets his temple in just the right way and he loses all control of his head and groans as if to say, "OH! That's GOOOOOOOD. I forgot how good petting can be."  

He's funny.  

on heat. and not the good kind.

it's about 1200 degrees in new york city today. ok...perhaps that's a bit of an exaggeration.  but it's over 90 degrees, feels like it's 105 degrees, and is sticky and oppressive and they're predicting thunderstorms and hail, which wouldn't be so bad, because anything is better than the alternative, when the blacktop virtually hums with heat.

baxter and i ventured out of the house this morning, as we do every weekend morning, to scare up some breakfast for both of us.  baxter, like most city dogs who don't have constant access to the outdoors, LOVES going outside.  he's part boxer, so he does this thing called kidney-beaning where he loses control of his entire body and wriggles around in a circle until you open the door and let him bolt down the stairs.  

on days like this, though, baxter gets outside and looks up at me with nothing short of abject confusion, as if to say, "mom...why did you take me to this awful hot place? what happened to the real outside?"  poor baby.  i'm wearing a tank top and my skin is melting off...he has a fur coat.  

so...we did our business...mine slightly less base than his...and made our way back into the air conditioned apartment.  i always feel slightly guilty on days like this, when the sun is shining brightly and i'm locked in my apartment plotting my avoidance of the outside, trying to figure out how many days I can go if i don't do laundry.

and i can't help but wonder how humanity survived before the creature comforts of the 20th Century.  

i'm working on the sequel to The Season now, which spans the summer months of 1815 in London, which I can only imagine smelled about a thousand times worse than brooklyn does today.  in new york, at the same time, people escaped the city for the country, where there was more space and some room for wind to take the edge off the heat...but in London, they actually came to the city for summer.  they put on their heavy silken ballgowns, took tea in closed of receiving rooms, danced the night away in ballrooms laden with people.  Eric once asked me why people are always threatening to swoon in the regency novels i read...one imagines it wasn't a threat so much as a reality for women locked in the twin hells of un-air conditioned rooms and unforgiving corsets. 

so, yeah.  it's hot today.  but at least i have an escape.  and i can be thoroughly unladylike in my shorts and tank top and lay spread-eagled on the floor of my airconditioned apartment.  if alex, vivi or ella tried that, their mothers would have fits of the vapors.  which is a story for another time.  :)

happy summer!

yoga. yogi. yogurt.

i am crazy about yoga. i think it's one of the most brilliant ways to exercise and to find peace on days when you're stressed, busy, sick or feeling generally out of sorts. the problem is, i don't do it nearly enough. i am making 2008 the year of yoga, though...because i'm turning 30 this year and, at 30, my mom started feeling the aches and pains of the hereditary arthritis that courses through the gene pool of the maclean women. for generations we've all been over 5' 10" and...well...let's just say that we're not small people. we're scots, we like to say, but who really knows? :)

so...i'm committing to doing yoga as often as possible...not just because it's good for me, or because i'm terrified of arthritis, but because i enjoy it. once i've finished with a day's practice, i feel peaceful and calm and rested and ready to take on the world. even if baxter feels it necessary to show off his incredible skill at downward facing dog...as if to say, "you're not doing it right, mom. woof."

to show his support of this commitment, eric loaded our new apple tv up with a bunch of video podcasts of yogis from around the country. my favorite is YOGAmazing, a podcast from Louisville, KY, hosted by a cool-seeming guy named Chaz who doesn't beat around the bush like all the other yoga videos do. He expects you to work hard and keep up. And I love it. I (heart) Chaz. (Apparently I'm not the only one...he's got millions of viewers, I just read.)

here's an example of one of chaz's podcasts...it's shorter than usual...but i totally recommend checking him out!

Other musings you might enjoy...

Yoga for Creativity

Poetry for Karma Repair

baxter the dog

so...it's no secret that i have a dog...baxter...who is my pride and joy and who i'm completely stupid over. seriously. he's my baby. and it's silly, i know...but just looking at him makes me 12-14 times happier than before i looked at him. :) here's a photo (yes, the nickel is there for scale :)):

he's a boxer/rhodesian ridgeback mix, we think...but because he's such a mutt, we call him a "brooklyn brown" which makes him sound like much more of a pedigreed dog. our wedding photographer understands his obvious breeding and took this glamour shot of him on the big day. i confess, it's my favorite shot in the whole bunch!

right now, b is sitting next to me on the couch, sweet and darling and not at all judging me for the fact that i'm on myspace instead of working on the next round of edits on the season. i'm in this funny place with the manuscript--I've done all the small things that my editor asked me to do, but now I have to bear down and do the real work. instead, i've been procrastinating, and not just on myspace. i've gone through the entire manuscript, changing a word here, a punctuation mark there. i've tagged the whole thing with little stickies where "big work" needs to be done. i've read and reread. but i haven't done a thing that needs to be done. i need to add a chapter, rethink a character, and hone the ending...and i haven't worked on that stuff at all. i'm such a slug!

maybe if the book had a sweet-faced brown dog, that would make it even better?

ok. now i'm REALLY going to work. REALLY. kick me out if you see me lurking around.

Haven't Done One of These in Ages!

1. Where's the person you have feelings for?
that depends on the kind of feelings you're referencing. if you mean my guy, he's working over at blip.tv. at least, i *think* he's over there.

2. What are you doing Friday?
ooh...we talked about this last night. and, of course, it's gone from my mind. something "new media" related. wow. not even thirty and can't remember.

4. Do you sleep with the TV on?
not on purpose...but sometimes that dog is so warm and he puts me right to sleep on the couch!

5. What are you doing right now?
writing a blog while i should be working.

6. What did you do yesterday?
work, dinner with friends, home to edit.

8. Do you have a job?
sadly, yes. :) i actually love my job. even though i dream of being a full-time writer.

10. Have you ever been suspended or expelled from school?
yes. in the fifth grade. no. i'm not telling you why.

12. Have you ever crawled through a window?
hehe. yes. what a weird question! but yes!

13. Who knows a secret or two about you?
i don't have that many secrets. i find that if you share them, they're much more fun.

14. Can you handle the truth?
*sigh* oh...aaron sorkin...how you must love knowing that your words have become part of everyday speech. yes. i can handle the truth. but that scene still gives me chills.

15. Are you too forgiving?
no. in fact, i'm rather vengeful. it's a major flaw.

16. Are people too forgiving to you?
i hope not!

17. Olive Garden?
I don't understand the question. I neither have an olive garden nor eat at them.

18. Are you closer to your mother or father?
that changes as I grow...growing up, i was much closer to my mom. and in college, i was much closer to my dad...now they're both equally important to me.

19. Have you ever wanted to be a teacher?
yes. i always thought i'd kill at being a social studies teacher

20. Do you have trust issues?
why do you ask? i'm not telling you! *she looks about, cagily.*

21. Would you live with someone without marrying them?
i did...but then he "bought the cow" (she shudders)...what a terrible phrase!

22. Have your friends ever seen you cry?
yes. something that comes of having too much drama in my soul. :)

23. Who was the last person you cried in front of?
i wept like a child at the on sunday. in front of eric and hank azaria. is that weird? rhetorical question. don't answer that.

24. Have you ever wanted to strip naked in front of someone?
ack! no thank you.

25. How many people can you say you've really loved?
depends on what kind of love. if you count my friends and family...a lot.

26. Do you eat healthy?
i try...but it's hard in new york city!

27. Do you still have pictures of you & your ex?
of course...you have to remember how much you (and your taste) have grown.

28. What are you listening to?
right now, the person in the next office...talking to a reporter.

29. If you could pick one person to disappear from the planet, who would it be?
the person in charge of the genocide in the Sudan.

30. Have you ever cried because of something someone said to you?
are there people who answer 'no' to this question?

31. How often do you go to church?
on christmas eve.

32. Speaking of church, are you going to heaven or hell?
i try my best

33. If you're having a bad day, who are you most likely to go to?
my bff

34. What is your biggest fear?
homelessness. and cruise ships.

35. Are you confident?
never. but i have an excellent game face.

36. Are you a good driver?
depends on who you ask.

37. What will you be When you "Grow up"?
older and wiser.

38. Do you have any pets?
my dog, baxter

39. One person you're sure will be in your life years from now:
eric

40. One person You Miss?
my friend, Sarah, who moved from NYC to Denver in October. boo! come back!

beautiful days

today is a gorgeous day...70 degrees and beautifully sunny...and i am, of course, trapped inside--a writer on deadline (we've all been there). 

poor baxter, my brown dog, is looking pathetic and sad--he's lying in front of an open window, listening to the sounds on the busy street, smelling the smells of one of the first days of spring. unfortunately, i've got obligations to alex, vivi and ella, so baxter is forced to suffer for my art along with me. :)

what he doesn't know is that i've got a surprise coming--one of his favorite people is about to knock on the door...lisa ann sandell, who is on her way over for a writing date. if you don't have writing dates yourself, i highly recommend them. 

lisa's a great friend, a fantastic writer, and it doesn't hurt that she's also inspiring, thoughtful, and a genius. her second ya novel, The Song of the Sparrow, is in bookstores now. it's a retelling of the story of The Lady of Shallot, from Arthurian legend, and it's lyric and beautiful and romantic. i'm not afraid to say i cried when i read the manuscript. 

i'm not just saying all this because she's my best friend. i'm saying it because it's true. for reals. anyway...we'll probably spend much of this afternoon chatting and being girly, but i'm working on a scene where three best friends are having an afternoon of doing the same, so it should all work out for the best.

and baxter will have another person to distract him from the fact that he's inside.