Happy New Year!

I just wanted to take a moment to thank everyone for all of your support in 2007. It was a wonderful year, and I appreciate all of you so very much.

I’m sharing a personal story of my journey toward publication on Tote Bags n’ Blogs tomorrow. I’ll be giving away a signed copy of Her Warrior King, so please stop by and say hello!

In the meantime, I wish everyone a Happy New Year filled with joy, good luck, and eight hours of sleep!

Closing in on the New Year

First, I wanted to send out a huge congratulations to my buddy Anna Campbell, whose first book was chosen as book of the year by Lifetime TV. Way to go, Anna! See the details here: http://www.mylifetime.com/lifestyle/entertainment/romance-b-u-y-book/hottest-romance-books-2007 I met Anna in Atlanta, before I sold my first book, and her book had not yet been released. We shared stories about playing the Waiting Game on editors and publishers, and she has the best story. After waiting for many years (I think it was eighteen??), she sold her first book at auction. Every writer dreams of this, and I’m so proud of her that she’s accomplished so much. If you like alpha heroes and emotionally-charged historical romances, go check her out!

I’m visiting relatives in Raleigh, NC this week and will be stalking the local Brier Creek Wal-Mart to sign Her Warrior King. Such fun. Thanks so much to those of you who have bought it!

In these next few days before the New Year hits, I’m starting to pull together my own list of goals. Obviously at the top of the list are completing two new books and losing my pregnancy weight, but beyond that, I like to set personal goals as well. Writing them down truly does help, as well as breaking your goals down by month and checking to see how you did. But most of all, you have to believe in yourself and celebrate the accomplishments along the way. I like to buy a bottle of champagne during the New Year, one that I don’t open until I’ve met a particular goal. It’s fun to toast success. I replace the bottle afterwards, in case I meet another big goal. You know, gratuitous alcohol never hurts…:)

Before we get into true goals, think back to this past year. What was the best thing that happened to you? For me, it was the birth of my new little boy.

Santa Baby

Merry Christmas from all of us to all of you!

‘Twas the Night Before Christmas

Christmas Eve is probably my favorite day of the holiday season. Even more so than Christmas Day, because of the sense of anticipation. I love watching my children get excited, especially when they stare out the window, looking for Santa. Yesterday my son remarked that there weren’t many presents under the tree, to which I replied, “Santa hasn’t come yet.” He nodded his head in understanding, the little wheels churning around. And then this morning, without being asked, he went and got a broom to sweep beneath the kitchen table. Because Santa is watching.

And dude, you’d better believe I’m going to milk this one. Hmm, there are bathrooms to be cleaned, floors to be mopped, oh yes, I can think of PLENTY of ways to make Santa happy. Bring on the child labor!

But I have to brag for a moment. I have the best husband in the whole world. Why? Because yesterday he told me that he’s going to give me one of my Christmas presents early. My job is to make several bottles, and tonight he will sleep in the baby’s room and give me a full night of sleep. Is he great or what?

We’re going to attend 4:00 Mass today with the kids dressed up in their finest. There’s something special about getting all dolled up for Christmas Mass as a family. Baby will wear his first Christmas outfit, which will be fun. Then afterwards, we’ll have Prime Rib for dinner. Mmmm…

At night, my husband and I will watch “It’s a Wonderful Life,” or maybe “White Christmas,” one of our holiday traditions. And you can bet we’ll be up at the crack of dawn tomorrow, just waiting to see what the kids think of Christmas. Seeing their joy and excitement just makes the holiday complete for me.

Merry Christmas to all of you!

Time to Go Book Stalking…

I found out that Amazon is no longer pre-ordering Her Warrior King…they’re shipping it! This means that it will begin showing up on store shelves any day now! Which means, it’s time for me to book-stalk.

I thought it would just be a first book thing, obsessing over when it would go on sale in stores. Nope. Any time a new book is out on store shelves, it’s incredibly exciting. I will admit that I hunt down the retail places that stock my books and when I see them on the shelf, I get a giddy rush. Then I pet them, and talk to them. I even took out my camera phone and took a picture of a book display once. That photo is still on my phone because I can’t figure out how to get it off the phone and onto the computer.

I will admit to counting shelf copies, and then coming back a week later to see if any have sold. Now how sick is that? I’ve had friends call me from various parts of the country, saying, “Hey! I saw your book in Borders!” to which I reply, “How many copies were there?” Sad, sad, sad.

Man, here I am spilling out the darkest author secrets. See, we obsess about these things. And we won’t even get started about Amazon rankings. I confessed to another author friend, admitting that I did check the rankings once a day. She was aghast. “You only check them ONCE??” I felt much better after talking to her.

So if you have a last minute shopping run between now and Tuesday, and it HAPPENS to be in a bookstore, go and see if Her Warrior King is there yet. Then you can report back on how many copies were there. Or, you know, you could buy one and put it in someone’s stocking.

In the meantime, all I want for Christmas is not my two front teeth. Here’s my version of the song:

All I want for Christmas is eight hours’ sleep
Eight hours’ sleep
Eight hours’ sleep
All I want for Christmas is eight hours’ sleep
So I can be a human being again!

Drowning in Laundry

I cannot believe how much laundry one extra person in the family generates. My laundry baskets are bulging, and I swear, I just did a load of whites yesterday! There must be little laundry gremlins who cackle and multiply exponentially.

Now, I grant you, a newborn baby tends to mess up clothes pretty quickly. I think I could have an entirely separate load of burp cloths and receiving blankets. Today my son went through three changes of clothes in the space of three hours between spitting up and leaky diapers. Yikes. But sweet heavens above, the laundry has tripled. And somehow after I finish it all, the baskets will magically be full again. I have a load of regular towels, dark towels, bleach clothes, off-white clothes, dark clothes, and delicates. Um, and yes, we really do have 6 laundry baskets. Hey, I’m married to an engineer. He believes in separate facilities for each form of laundry to save on sorting.

And now, I’m reduced to blogging about laundry. Do you see what having a newborn does to brain cells? This morning, after a night of feedings at midnight, two a.m., and 4:15 a.m. (each of which lasted an hour and I just stayed up after the last one), I was attempting to make sugar cookies for my son’s kindergarten class. I decided to just use the Pillsbury refrigerated dough that was already rolled out into sheets (could I BE any lazier??). Anyway, I was in the middle of pressing cookie cutters into the dough and was talking to my mom on the phone at the same time. The act of cutting out a cookie and holding a conversation was almost beyond me. I swear, there were moments when my mom must have wondered where my brain had departed because it was just too hard to press the cutter down and answer a question at the same time.

Tomorrow (Dec.19th) I will start tackling the loads, but I will also be hanging out at eHarlequin for their Christmas Open House. It will last all day, and almost 100 Harlequin authors will be participating. There will be book giveaways galore! I’m offering up a signed copy of Her Warrior King and it should be fun. All you do is click here or you can wander around the different Harlequin book imprints here. Come and visit me over at Harlequin Historicals! The boards will be set up, and you just post a comment or two, participate in the discussions, and the authors will be around to answer questions. If you have any burning questions about the MacEgan brothers, or the Irish Warrior books, bring them along! Free books! You can even ask me how many loads of laundry I did! (Or…not.)

And because I will likely be operating on less than four hours of sleep while I’m there, to help me prepare for the discussion, are there any questions you have about the books? Characters? Things you’d like me to chat about? Recipes? Thanks in advance!

Walking in a Brainless Wonderland

Sadly, my blogging has gone south in the past week or so. Right along with my newborn’s sleeping patterns. I’ve thought about posting, but really, with the pitiful state of my brain, it would come out to a bunch of gibberish. Something along the lines of Mylicon, Christmas baking that hasn’t been accomplished, Christmas cards unmailed, a house that is threatening to bury me, and playing Bessie the Moo Cow to an infant. Every hour and a half. Oh sweet God, shoot me now. But I have about 68 pages left to revise on the book. I hope to mail it off next week.

I did manage to get my kids’ picture taken with Santa on Wednesday. All three! At first, Santa was cruising around, talking to the toddlers and walked right past my daughter. Little Miss was NOT about to let the big man ignore her, and she trailed behind him. At one point, she reached up as though she were going to tug on him to get his attention. Then she glanced back at me and realized that it probably wasn’t a good idea to grab onto a strange man’s pants. Finally, she managed to explain to him how important it was that he bring her a princess dress for Christmas. He told her that he could probably manage that. Then I asked him to take a picture with the kids.

We won’t mention how I was tempted to beg Santa to take the baby back to the North Pole for a while so I could sleep. I think Santa was slightly afraid I would make a run for it.

This weekend, the plan is to decorate Christmas cookies and mail the Christmas cards. We baked gingerbread men yesterday and a few batches got a bit…er…crispy. Maybe with enough frosting no one will notice.

What about you? How is your holiday shaping up?

What to Buy the Folks Who Have Everything

Little Man and I are still settling in. Some nights are good, others not so good, but that’s part of being a Mommy. Last night definitely was among the not so good ones, but it’s nothing that a good cup of coffee can’t fix.

I’m slowly chipping away at my Christmas shopping list, but it’s really hard when Little Man is still nursing every two hours during the day…and each feeding lasts about 45 minutes…it gives you an hour and 15 minutes to play with. Add in the transportation time, and you end up with only 45 minutes to shop. That said, I’m doing a little more online shopping than I normally would. Yesterday, I finished shopping for my grandparents. I really feel so lucky that 3 out of the 4 are still living. My maternal grandmother turned 90 this past September, and my paternal grandparents are also in their 90s. It amazes me how well they’re doing, and I hope they keep enjoying a good quality of life as time goes on.

It does seem that there are always people on the shopping list that are difficult to buy for. Sure, you can always do gift cards, but it does seem a bit impersonal. I thought I’d brainstorm some of my top gifts for the People Who Have Everything, and maybe we could all offer up our favorite gifts in the comment sections. It might help all of us!

So, here we go:

1. Towels–Have you ever noticed that towels eventually get “crunchy” as the fluff factor deteriorates? You can always use new towels, especially the soft Egyptian cotton or Turkish ones.

2. Food–The old standby still works. I’ve sent stuff from Hickory Farms, Gethsemani Abbey bourbon fudge, Harry & David fruit, Swiss Colony chocolates. Do you have any personal favorites?

3. Music–This one is a little riskier, but my grandparents have often enjoyed CDs by Josh Groban, Celine Dion, etc.

4. Handmade gifts–If you’re talented at quilting, needlepoint, or cross stitch, sometimes personalized gifts can be really special.

5. Tickets to see a broadway musical, concert, or theater event.

6. Gift certificates for airline tickets or restaurants. Yes, gift cards are impersonal, but if you make it part of an event, it’s not quite the same.

What do you buy the folks who have everything?

A Day in the Life Of…

As I’ve been on maternity leave, it truly does amaze me how quickly time is passing. I want to bottle it all up and hoard it. It’s a bit frightening how fast my days go, and I thought I’d share with you a play-by-play of my mornings.

4:00 a.m. Grunting and bleating sounds emerge from the baby monitor. Time to feed the sheep newborn son.

4:45 a.m. Stagger back into bed, savoring the flannel sheets of my own bed and praying to God I can get a few more minutes of sleep.

5:15 a.m. Get up with the hubby, wake my daughter and get her dressed for daycare. Pray that the newborn stays down in his crib a bit longer. Feed daughter and husband breakfast while contemplating whether Coke and Hershey’s nuggets would constitute an appropriate breakfast for myself.

5:45 a.m. My son wakes up and comes downstairs to join the crew. Newborn wakes up and wants a second feeding.

6:00 a.m. Feed newborn while simultaneously directing my son to get his own breakfast, kissing my daughter goodbye while realizing that I haven’t combed her hair and she looks like Alfalfa. She has her coat hood pulled up, so I decide to blame it on hat head. Husband and daughter leave while I continue nursing the newborn.

6:30-7:30 a.m. Help my son finish his homework from the night before (cutting out five pictures that start with the letter P, glue them down, and then compose five sentences with P words. Inform the kindergartener that “pee” and “poop” are not appropriate P words for his homework, even as I change the newborn’s diaper.) Realize that I still have not showered or gotten dressed.

8:15 a.m. The kindergartener gets on the bus for school and newborn decides he wants to nurse. Again. I ponder why there is nothing on television except for home shopping and aerobics shows. Ha. Like I’m going to begin working out (she says, as she dives into the bag of M&Ms).

8:30 a.m. Finally discover an old showing of the Matthew Broderick and Denzel Washington movie “Glory.” Continue nursing the newborn while sobbing like a moron over the inequities that occurred during the Civil War. Change the newborn’s diapers again. Debate on whether I would be a candidate for bad motherhood if I simply rip off the umbilical stump that’s hanging by a thread and looks like a mummified raisin. Yep. Probably Child Services would come after me.

9:30 a.m. While the baby settles down for a nap, I open up my manuscript file and begin editing. As luck would have it, the chapter I’m working on involves some very detailed sexual tension between the hero and heroine. Start muttering to myself that the sexiest man in the world would gain some serious brownie points by letting the heroine sleep for eight hours straight in a soft bed with flannel sheets and tranquilizers.

10:00 a.m. The baby wants to nurse again. Again, nothing on tv except talk shows, news programs, and children’s shows. Am beginning to feel like a heifer after all this nursing. Just call me Bessie. Change the baby’s diaper again.

11:00 a.m. The husband comes home for lunch and wonders what I’ve been doing all morning. Hysterical laughter on my part. He gets a canned tuna fish sandwich.

So, that’s my basic morning routine. The afternoon isn’t much better, sadly. I should probably do some online Christmas shopping, but I’ve been like the proverbial ostrich, hiding my head in the sand. Have you begun your shopping? Do you shop online or do you prefer going to the stores?

Sleep, Glorious Sleep

Having received 3 hours of uninterrupted sleep last night, today is a much better day than yesterday. The previous night, my son kept me up at all hours, and I had to grab sleep in fifteen minute intervals. There was a total of two hours sleep in all, which is making me remember why I added extra time onto my book deadline. I’ve edited 234 pages, which would suggest that I could send my book off within a week or so. Problem is, my brain can barely manage to remember how to open a file, much less process what I’ve written on the page.

In these early weeks, it’s a miracle I remember how to wash my hair and dress myself. Thank goodness for my husband, who has helped immensely with my older two children. Honestly, I would be a slobbering wreck if it weren’t for him. Let’s just say I should not be operating heavy machinery at this time.

My son is now developing gas pains, the same as my older two. When they reached that point, we had to start giving them simethicone (Mylicon) gas drops to keep them from screaming in pain. It got to the point where we nicknamed it Baby Crack. Honest to God, we survived their infancy by squirting those drops down their throats every two hours. We determined that babies should have one of those hamster water dispensers mounted onto the crib, loaded with gas drops. Either that, or a pacifier hooked up with a medicine dispenser.

No, really. I’m not kidding. There’s nothing worse than watching your infant howl in pain, jerking his little legs as the gas pains hit him. Nobody wants to see a baby suffer, especially when there are ways to help them. So, I’ll be making a pilgrimage to the drug store today, to buy my child his supply of liquid relief.

I did finish making the bourbon balls yesterday, and sadly, a few of them (okay, a dozen) did not turn out very well, with the chocolate sauce slightly melting the candy interior. Darn. Those will have to be consumed by our family so as to hide the evidence. I also plan to make homemade ginger bread, fruit cake (yes, really), snowball cookies (shortbread with confectioner’s sugar), banana bread, and possibly pecan tassies.

For those of you who subscribe to my newsletter, I sent out information today about Her Warrior King which is now on sale from eHarlequin. I also included the fruit cake recipe. If you want the recipe but aren’t a newsletter subscriber, just scroll down and enter your e-mail address into the subscriber box. You KNOW you want to try it. It’s delicious.

What’s your favorite holiday treat? Which one is your least favorite?