~~ "She has so many aliases, you'd think she was a spy!" ~~

Thursday, August 16, 2007

Outside, in the rain

Hello from sultry Virginia! It’s been warm here, but tonight there are glorious thunderstorms, the likes of which we just don’t get in southern California. Occasionally, briefly, but that’s it. We get a fair amount of winter/spring rain on the coast, but it’s cold and grey. Here, the water droplets are fat and warm, and I kept going outside into the dark night and just standing, smiling, exulting. Amazing cloud-to-cloud lightning, with the storm’s center about 3 miles away. The air hummed with energy; the energy hummed through me.

This evening, before the storms, Sarah and I escaped to a Starbuck’s and plotted out our next two novels as well as figured out how to expand an existing story for another market. Our next collab book will be Designed for Love, the contemporary erotic romance I got 40K into before just losing the threads. I think the problem is the hero; Sarah agrees. It won’t take incredibly much to tweak him, and much of what I’ve written can stay. We hope to finish this in the fourth quarter of the year, for the January 2008 novel workshop in Oregon. (I’m trying to write my urban fantasy, tentatively titled High Spirits, for the October workshop.) I also brainstormed a couple of short story ideas.

Tomorrow we’re either off to the zoo (if it cools down a bit) or a museum. We decided not to try for the caverns, which are 3.5 hours away. Saturday is our book signing and the Styx/Foreigner/Def Leppard concert, and then Sunday afternoon I head home. Ken may actually be there to greet me. I can’t think of anything better. Except that then we’re going to Missouri, where we will explore caverns, as well as visit friends and go to our annual bike get-together, and then we’ll hit Arkansas to visit Ken’s 93-year-old grandmother and Texas to visit his brother before heading home.

I’m going to read for a few minutes now, then turn off the light and listen to the distant thunder…

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Currently Reading: Hell With the Ladies, Julie Kenner, Kathleen O’Reilly, Dee Davis
Lately Listened To: Greatest Hits, Eurythmics
Recently Watched: Gowan concert and videos (I know. Shocking.)

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Safe travels and enjoy the rain, sounds great to me. Thunderstorms are definitely something I miss.