Shiny Shiny Shiny!

The blog title accurately reflects my head at this time of year. You, too, I bet. I sit down to write and suddenly I'm watching various YouTube renditions of Leonard Cohen's Hallelujah song (for the record, KD Lang's is magnificent) and realizing that I had no idea that I had this song MEMORIZED. How did that happen? When did my monkey brain do this for me?

So this morning I have written some and wrapped some gifts and made a note of THINGS THAT STILL NEED TO BE PURCHASED/BAKED/PLANNED and let the dog out again so she could do her dog thing and now I need to achieve the word count of the day.

And I'm a feeling a tad sluggish because people keep feeding me candy and cookies and I made these amazing things where you put a Hershey kiss on top of a square pretzel and melt the kiss just a little and then smoosh it down with an M &M and it is a bite of yum. It looks like this (although I used multi-colored dark chocolate M&M's):

Plus last weekend, we went to a wedding where during the cocktail hour there was a MACARONI AND CHEESE BAR (yes. such things exist). A waiter puts mac and cheese in a martini glass, hands it to you and lets you add diet toppings like bacon bits.

So I am now drinking green tea and telling myself that this shall suffice for like what? A week? And contemplating that diet that Anne Hathaway went on for Le Miz -- the one where she ate a square of oatmeal a day?

But no matter. I am writing the sequel to THE SWEET DEAD LIFE. And soon I will start filling your heads, dear readers, with talk of the angel world in this new series. And I am hoping that you will love my narrator Jenna as much as I do. And her brother Casey, who doesn't quite give up his marijuana habit when he becomes her guardian angel. And I am hopping with excitement about the new SOHO TEEN imprint that will launch in January and lead up that book in May.

And before I forget: Thanks to the fabulous folks, including publicity guru John, at Murder By The Book in Houston, where I sat for a lovely hour this past Saturday, signing with the equally lovely Sophie Jordan, who always makes me laugh and always has the best and most interesting recommendations for romance novels to put on my Kindle. But I'll save that for another day.