Long Vacation

I just returned from eight days of vacation. However, due to various circumstances (birthdays, other parties, etc) tonight if the first moment I've really had to catch my breath.

While I was on the beach at the Toronto Islands, I had a fabulous idea for a book. Or at least I thought I did. When I sat down to sketch it out, there really wasn't enough substance in there for a full length novel. It was, at best, a category romance in terms of length and story. Not that that's a bad thing, necessarily, but I've never even thought of writing a category romance before. Probably because I've always preferred a longer story, a big fat historical I could spend a few days drowning in, or an even longer epic fantasy that would take me a week to devour. (I am a voracious reader, and shorter books are over too soon!)

I may or may not write it. I don't think I'll make it a priority. I have too many other projects I should be working on. The characters voices are so clear in my head, however, that at this rate I may not have a choice!

Pategonia

Partially by accident, partially by design, I am surrounded by author friends. My good friend Rachel's third book has been spotted in the wild - if you haven't already, you can pick up The Spirit Thief and the next two books in the series at major bookstores now.

My neighbor across the street is a very nice, sweet old lady, who wrote and published her memoirs of her incredible life in With A Song In My Heart.

So it was no surprise to me that, during the course of a brief in-our-respective-garages-coming-home-from-shopping conversation, she mentioned that she would be going on vacation someplace warmer this next week. She and her late husband were frequent travelers throughout South America during their younger years.

"Where?" I asked.

"Patagonia," she said.

I blanked out. I am still rather embarrassed that I had forgotten quite where in the world Patagonia is and later had to look it up on Wikipedia. I'm still more embarrassed that, for a brief moment, I thought it was a country and not a region.

Well, she's right. You probably can't get much warmer than the tip of South America in the cold of the Northern Hemisphere's winter!

Best laid plans . . .

An annual treat for me for the last half a dozen years has been ACEN in Chicago. I've done a lot of things on the fanfiction circuit at that convention, from the fanfic panel to running a writing workshop with the late Kristine Batey. In the last few years I've switched to running the FFXI panel, since Square Enix pretends that the midwest does not exist when planning their fan festivals.

This year, the convention was considered a no-go because I quit my job to become a housewife/writer/stay-at-home-layabout, and my share of our tax refund went to 10 glorious days in the Bay Area. Well worth the trade-off to me.

Now, my husband, wonderful, talented, funny, creative, and above all, employed, moves in anime circles but strictly in the non-fiction writing sense of them. He gets invited to conventions as a guest in order to add a shiny Dr. to the guest list (great for colleges who need to have guest professors to add some legitimacy to their tiny parties.) This is why I was schmoozing in the green room at Dragon*Con last year, and that was when I made my vow that someday I was going to be the invited guest, not him.

Well, he's done it again. There's a possibility of him being invited to ACEN as a last minute VIP guest. If he goes, I go, since we'll probably drive. And here I planned on having May as a nice, predictable free month, in which to finish up my rough draft of book #2.

I'm still not sure whether I should be angry or happy.