Enchanted nursery

Ambleside, central NJ. Okay, so maybe I don't get out enough but I felt like I was in an enchanted forest.

Seriously.

Laced With Magic - sneak peek

Chapter 2 is up and waiting for you. Enjoy!

Our wildlife preserve

See that little guy over there? We spotted him hanging out under the Topsy Turvy tomatoes in the far corner of the back yard. His mother put up a major fuss when we got within ten feet of her baby so we backed off and used the zoom to take the photo.

He's tinier than my thumb. Thank God R spotted him; I'm not sure I would have noticed him in the grass. Looks like there will be no lawn mowing until all the fledglings are established.

Two sparrow fledges popped up on the top step of the deck, all fluttery and open-mouthed as their mother (or maybe father; birds can be egalitarian) swooped down to feed them. I got all mushy inside as the baby birds filled their crops. It reminded me of when we hand-fed Grouch and Squirt years ago. (Insert big sigh here.) There's something about baby birds that's irresistible. Same with puppies and kittens and the little groundhog who trotted across the deck the other day, struggling to keep up with his mother.

And what about the bunny twins (no, not the Hefner kind) who camp out under the bird feeders, sprawled on their bellies, back legs extended, munching seed, talking trash, not a worry in the world.

I love it here. I really do.

Nostalgia

Memory Lane can be a dangerous place to visit. I was going through old journals and photo albums today and pretty much feel like someone ripped my heart from my chest.

I found this photo of my dad and me, taken around the summer of 1951 "between the houses." That's what we called the little private alleyway that ran between the two-family house where we lived and the two-family house next door. It was maybe six or eight feet wide and sometimes we'd set up beach chairs and sit there. A ground level version of the city dweller's Tar Beach.

That's my dad. And that's me. But I'll bet you figured that out for yourself.

And yes I was a daddy's girl. How did you guess?

Mrs. Mike, my rite of passage

Photo: Marko Metzinger/Studio D

That's pretty much how my first copy of Mrs. Mike looked when I married and moved to Omaha many years ago as a teenage newlywed. The badly worn blue cover, the line drawing of the young bride and her handsome Mountie, the pages all creased and bent, stained with hot cocoa and endless tears. Suddenly I was Mrs. Mike on my way to my own adventure far from home. My new husband wasn't a Mountie but he was a man in uniform and the trip from New York City to the plains of Nebraska seemed every bit as exciting.

Someone once told me that the books we read as children are the books that stay with us for a lifetime, the books that most influence the men and women we become, and I agree. Okay, so maybe Nancy Drew (girl sleuth), Cherry Ames (apple-cheeked nurse), and Vicki Barr (post-war stewardess) weren't exactly what she had in mine but there's no denying that inside this 58 year old writer lives all three of those characters.

And, of course, there's Mrs. Mike. I was ten years old the first time I read Benedict and Nancy Freedman's book. A day-dreaming, book-loving only child who liked nothing more than to disappear into a great story. Some kids dreamed of growing up and moving to NYC. I dreamed of getting out. (The truth? I would have kicked the Big Apple to the curb for the chance to live in suburbia.) And you couldn't get much farther away than the Great North. You can keep those sun-swept beaches; give me the Canadian wilderness in the dead of winter with a gorgeous Mountie to push back the blizzards and keep you warm at night.

I'll admit it. I fell head-over-heels in love with Mike Flannigan. The way I remembered the book, he was the perfect romantic hero. In my memory, Mrs. Mike was the love story to end all love stories, the one that swept me off my feet and kept me that way for over forty years. I write romance for a living and I read it for pleasure and nothing I'd encountered, no matter how wonderful the book, came close to the dazzling tale of Kathy and Mike.

And the best part? It was true!

Or at least I thought it was right up until an issue of O Magazine (12/07) hit my mailbox and I devoured Peggy Orenstein's wonderful article Mrs. Mike Changed My Life and discovered that not only was there no Santa Claus, my beloved Mrs. Mike was fiction.

Yes. FICTION. Like Orenstein, I'd paid no attention to that very telling word on the spine of my paperback. I'd swallowed the book whole and made it my own. I believed every word like it was the Bible handed down from the Mount. Mike and Kathy Flannigan were real. They lived and breathed and loved.

Except they weren't. Mrs. Mike was based on Kathy Flannigan's real story but it was still a novel. My heart was broken. Silly, isn't it, to be so invested for so long in a book and feel so betrayed to discover that the Freedmans had plied the novelist's trade in telling it.

So I did what you would probably have done too: I sat down and re-read Mrs. Mike. I expected to be swept up again into the romance of it all same as I had been as a child. I expected to empathize with Kathy, fall madly in love with Mike, make lots of happy friends in my frontier town.

Hey, wait a minute! What's going on? This isn't the sweet love story I remember. This story has hard edges. People get hurt in this story. Children die. Towns burn to the ground. Terrible illnesses sweep across the range. Marriages don't always work out quite the way you expect them to.

It all seemed new to me. Somehow over the years I'd air-brushed the book into a glossy (snowy) love story with the kind of perfect happy ending we all dream about. The kind the fictional Kathy and Mike really didn't get. (Neither did the real life Kathy and Mike, for that matter.)

My memory retained the sparks and the passion and discarded the rest. Yes, I still like the book but do you want to know the truth? Right now I wish I hadn't re-read it. I miss the Mrs. Mike of my dreams.

Squirrel-proof feeder meets feeder-proof squirrel

Guess who wins?

NINC blog post up

I have a new blog post up on the Novelists Inc blog. It's titled Fear Factor and it's about writing scared. I hope you'll stop by and check it out if you have a chance. Thanks!

Edith Layton

Edith Layton and her beloved Georgie Girl

www.edithlayton.com

Superfreaky - a visual definition

Introducing the Daniel Craig popsicle, a limited edition courtesy Del Monte in the U.K.

Talk amongst yourselves. I'm going out to have my retinas repaired.

You Say To-may-toh . . .

. . . and I say WOW! Four -- yes, 4!! -- new tomatoes on one of the deck plants!

Is it possible to love produce a little too much?

Slacker

I didn't do any gardening today. (This turned out to be a cooking day.) I did, however, spend an inordinate amount of time hovering over the tomato plants, whispering encouragement and issuing stern warnings to the strange iridescent winged creatures I saw darting about. I want to do this pesticide-free which is why I'm planting marigolds like a madwoman. (Back in my gardening days on Long Island, marigolds seemed to be the answer to a multitude of buggy problems.)

The basil is growing like crazy. This photo was taken last week and, trust me, the plant has easily doubled in size. I think there's a pesto in our immediate future.

Lost in Lowe's

Lowe's and Home Depot and Ambleside and Central NJ Nursery, to be specific.

We spent yesterday afternoon going a little nuts in various garden centers. The original plan was to stop by for some chicken wire and a bag of topsoil. Unfortunately the original plan lasted until we climbed out of the truck and encountered a huge display of yellow and orange marigolds begging to be transplanted.

The marigolds were followed by some yellow daisies (I love daisies), Japanese eggplant, globe eggplant, Texas thyme, tarragon, mint, cucumbers, zucchini, and yellow squash. Our restrained, toe-in-the-water gardening plan for 2009 clearly went up in smoke.

"We went crazy," he said as we drove away in our plant/chicken wire/topsoil-laden truck.

Looks like our $45 tomato is going to have company.

My Topsy Turvy Life

A confession: I'm a sucker for tacky Sold On TV ads. You know the ones I mean: miracle hair replacement regimens, Sham Wow (is that guy scary or what?), super choppers that put sous chefs to shame, and the Topsy Turvy.

I fell in love with Topsy Turvy last year. Unfortunately my love affair began near the end of the growing season so all I could do was pine over that goofy green plastic bag and those upside-down tomatoes spilling out of it. My repressed gardener's heart yearned for my own Topsy Turvy. I wanted it the way I used to want Paul McCartney when I was fourteen years old.

I thought about it all winter and pounced the second the snow melted. It took a little convincing to bring Himself on board but I prevailed and two weeks ago tomorrow we took our first leap into upside-down gardening.

The Topsy Turvys are in the far corner of the back yard, midway between the stand of pine trees and the shade trees Roy planted for my 38th birthday. We bought four shepherd's poles at Cost Cutters (which has since closed its doors; sob), tied them together for strength, et voila!


The planting itself was strange. Our tomatoes had grown a tad larger than optimum size for insertion and I said a few rude things as Roy pretty much shoved them through the opening with all the finesse of a sadistic proctologist. Turns out they're tough little plants and they survived the trauma. Within days they started vining upward in search of the sun.

I'm completely obsessed with these tomatoes. I tell you that freely. All I want to do is dash outside every hour on the hour and stare at the plants. I ran out first thing this rainy morning in PJs and clogs to see what was going on and my shriek probably echoed up and down the street.

We have a tomato! Okay, so it's the size of my thumb nail but it's a real live tomato-in-progress and I'm so excited I can hardly stand it.




You can see it, right? Follow the stem upward from the bottom of the picture, look slightly to the right under a canopy of leaves. That little round green blob is A TOMATO!

A $45 tomato unless the rest of the plants kick in and start producing . . .

Le Wrath di Khan

This will make you love opera. I promise!

Laced With Magic

You're the first to see it! Enjoy.

Winners of Totebags 'n' Blogs book giveaway

1. kimmyl
2. Pat Cochran
3. housemouse88

Hooray! You're the winners in my Totebags 'n' Blogs book giveaway. Please send me your mailing address and I'll ship your goodies ASAP. Congratulations!

Warmly,
Barbara

Fang-tastic Book giveaway winners

Drum roll, please! The lucky winners are:

1. Melissa...Shh I'm Reading
2. Hockey Vampiress
3. carolsnotebook
4. luvdaylilies
5. Rita

Please drop me an email at barbarabretton@gmail.com with your mailing address and I'll ship off your book ASAP. Thanks so much for the wonderful comments. And thanks, Roxanne, for inviting me. I had a ball at Fang-tastic Books.

Contest! Blog post! Hello!

Is that cool or what? It's the Knit Kit (you can read more about it here) and one lucky knitter will win one on Saturday when my new Human Random Number Generator plucks a number from the cosmos. (Translation: "Hey, Goldisox! Pick a number between 1 and 8372.") (Trust me, 8372 is a wildly inflated number. Your chances are much better.)

All you have to do is send me an email here with KNITKIT in the subject header and I'll do the rest.

It's been a crazy couple of weeks around here. First I finished the sequel to CASTING SPELLS then I sent it off. Then the copy-edited version came back to me. Then I sent that off. Now the page edits are screaming for my attention this weekend. Add to that a ton of promo stuff (script for video; Author Buzz info; answering mail that's been languishing longer than I care to admit) and new proposals and I feel like my head's going to pop off.

I've been longing to knit but it's been relegated to car time only which means not much is getting done. I hope to remedy that over the weekend and cast on some new, fun stuff. (Meaning: enough already with the Lion Brand spiral socks. This girl needs some spice in her knitting life.)

Now here comes the confessional part of the program: I've been cheating on you with other blogs. Honestly, it's not you, it's me. But the truth is out there and you can see for yourself.

Part 6 of my grandmother's story is here and available now at Totebags 'n' Blogs. (Book giveaway in progress.)

Where ideas come from -- CASTING SPELLS specifically -- will be up and running here at Fang-tastic Books tomorrow. (And another giveaway.)

I hope you'll stop by and say hi.

Don't laugh but I'm going to plant tomatoes next week. It'll probably go as well as my attempts to knit lace but the gardening urge is irresistible this year. Now if we can just keep the deer and rabbits away we might get somewhere . . .

More to come on that tomorrow.

Another contest at Romancing the Yarn

We're holding another yarn giveaway at Romancing the Yarn: 4 skeins of Elann Pure Bamboo in a shade poetically called Devonshire Cream. Drop by and take a look. (And don't forget to enter.)

And I forgot to mention that GIRLS OF SUMMER will be re-published in July as a trade paperback. The cover is fabulous! (That's leading the witness, isn't it? You can see for yourself right here.) GIRLS was published originally back in November 2003 in mass market size and I'm delighted that Berkley decided to give it a new lease on life. It's a loose spinoff of A SOFT PLACE TO FALL which appeared back in October 2001. (You can read excerpts on my website. Just click Sneak Peek.)

GIRLS OF SUMMER was a bestseller in Germany. I think I'm up to eight or nine printings and delighted about each and every one, although I'd love to know what it was about Ellen and Hall that struck a chord with German readers.

GIRLS was one of those writing experiences you long for. I sank immediately into the characters and couldn't wait to hit the laptop each morning. (Okay, each afternoon. I'm a night person; I can't help it.) The material was so rich (religion; step-families; medicine; the arts; loss; class distinctions; 9/11) and the characters so real to me that what we laughingly refer to as reality ceased to exist for the time it took to write the book.

Which I guess is my way of saying if you didn't read GIRLS OF SUMMER when it first came out, I hope you'll give it a try in July.

New installment

If you've been following my grandmother's amazing story, installment #5 is up today at Totebags 'n' Blogs. I hope you'll stop by and take a look.

Laced With Magic

My editor emailed me my new cover on Friday and I'm ecstatic!

LACED WITH MAGIC is the sequel to last year's CASTING SPELLS, the second in the Sugar Maple series featuring Chloe the knitting sorceress and Luke the all-too-human cop.

Pub date is August 4, 2009.

If I manage to get myself organized, I'll post the first chapter on my website later this week.

Watch this space!

What I did during my Christmas vacation

Nobody has ever asked me what I do for a living when I look like I might actually be gainfully employed. Usually they ask the question when I look like I just spent three weeks crawling on my belly through a dense jungle far from civilization and modern hair products.

Years ago, right around the time when my parents were both very sick, I was so overwhelmed with all the things that needed to be done that good grooming fell by the wayside. Who had time? Raggedy jeans, ratty sweatshirts, old clogs. No makeup. My natural I-am-the-love-child-of-Bernadette-Peters-and-Don-King hair. My priorities had shifted and everything else fell by the wayside. This one particular day I had to stop by the bank and deposit a check. No way was I going inside looking so hideous. (I still had at least a little pride.) I figured I'd use the drive-through and nobody'd know I looked like I dressed in a Dumpster.

So there I was, sitting behind the wheel, waiting for the teller to shoot back my deposit slip when I hear her voice through the intercom: "Barbara?"

Me: Yes?
Her: Barbara Bretton?
Me: Yes. (It's on the deposit slip, lady. . . )
Her: The Barbara Bretton who wrote the "balloon" books for Harlequin?"
Me: Okay, shoot me now.

No, I didn't really say that but I thought it. The poor woman peered at me through the wall of glass and clearly wondered how it was I'd fallen on such tough times. And me? I started babbling things like, "I usually brush my hair and wear makeup but my parents are sick and I'm an only child and --"

Yeah. Please. Shoot me. I couldn't shut up. I was like a verbal train wreck. And the poor teller probably never read another one of my books ever again. I was that pitiful.

Well, as it turned out, I managed to top that miserable experience on New Year's Eve.

Remember the last time I posted back in December? I mentioned something about Goldisox and I having bad colds. No big deal, I said. A cold is a cold is a cold. Which is true as long as the cold in question isn't actually some freakish flu that laughed in the face of the flu shots we got back in November. We were flat-on-our-backs sick before Christmas, during Christmas, and after Christmas. The sounds of merriment in our home were limited to growls of "pass me the Kleenex" and "what do you mean we're out of juice, bread, milk, eggs, and the will to live?"

Cut to New Year's Eve. My nose is bright red and chapped. My eyes are watery and bloodshot. My hair's a disaster. I feel like hell, But damn it it's New Year's Eve and we're going to at least give the holiday season a chance before it slips away. Late afternoon I hit the shower, hoping that hot water and steam will make me feel more human.

I still don't know how or why it happened but I sneezed and seconds later noticed that the water swirling around my feet was a weird shade of pink. A nosebleed!? I had a nosebleed!?!?!? WTH?

Again, no big deal. You pinch your nose shut for ten minutes and end of story. Except ten minutes turned to fifteen then twenty then an hour and the blood was flowing faster than I could stop it. I called for Goldisox to come upstairs. "There's a lot of blood," I warned him. "Don't be shocked."

He was shocked. I didn't blame him. It looked like a crime scene in the bathroom and I looked like the victim. (The writerly side of my brain was taking notes the whole time. Trust me when I say blood spatter goes everywhere. I can't even begin to imagine how a murderer would cover his or her tracks against modern forensics.)

Him: You're going to the ER.
Me: Like hell I am.
Him: I'm taking you right now.
Me: Over my dead body.

It wasn't exactly Masterpiece Theatre around here. He was scared and angry. I was scared and . . . well, scared. I mean, it was only a bloody nose but suddenly it was so totally out of control that even I knew I had to do the adult thing and get myself some help.

Except I couldn't do it. Twenty-nine years earlier, just about to the day, I'd miscarried and ended up in (you guessed it) the ER. Two days later they told me I had cancer. So spending the holidays with medical types stirred up a lot of emotion I'd rather not deal with.

We argued for hours. We ran out of towels to absorb the blood. (Sorry for being so graphic but that's the way it was.) Finally I agreed with him and off we went to the ER with me wrapped in sheets and plastic.

I must say I looked adorable. A full head of frizz. PJ bottoms. Clogs. And a maroon sweater (maroon? was I nuts??) with a Santa Claus on the pocket.

And I brought some knitting. I laugh now at my optimism. What the hell was I thinking? I couldn't unpinch my nose long enough to knit a single stitch. But I brought it with me just the same.

Fortunately the ER was empty and I had everyone's full attention. It was no big deal. They could fix me up in no time flat. I wasn't going to face the humiliation of seeing the words "Cause of Death: nosebleed" on my death certificate. Not that I'd see it, you understand, but I swear it would ruin eternity for me.

Goldisox filled out the endless insurance forms while I was poked and prodded by various medical types. Then he went off to see someone in billing or some such while I sat alone in a cubicle with my blood-soaked garments, the slasher movie towels, and a totally embarrassing metal spit tray held under my small but dangerous nose. I challenge you to find a more pathetic fifty-eight year old woman anywhere on the planet.

The clerk from the front desk popped up. "You're a writer?"

I nodded. Please, God, take me now before this gets any worse.

"Published?"

I nodded again.

"What kind of books?"

"Romance," I manage through the wads of cotton and anaesthetic and humiliation, "and women's fiction."

She looks at me as if she can't believe her eyes. "You mean like those steamy books Danielle Steel writes?"

This isn't the time to tell her that Danielle doesn't consider herself a romance writer. I nod again.

"Have I read anything of yours?"

Now really. How on earth would I possibly know her lifetime reading list? I shrugged and gave her what I hoped was a sophisticated smile. Assuming, of course, you could look past the clogs, the PJs, the Santa sweater, and the blood.

"Hey, Marilyn!" she bellowed across the emergency room. "The bloody nose in 3A writes those romance books you love."

Remember how you felt when you first learned there was no Santa Claus? That was pretty much how poor Marilyn looked when she met her first real live romance writer. I tried to make it up to her by sending on a few signed books but the damage had been done.

And that's the story of how Goldisox and I ended up toasting the New Year in cubicle 3A with Patti and Marilyn and four bottles of Poland Spring.

Things can only get better, right?

Right!

Grandma and the Prince - part 2

The second installment in the saga of my grandmother and the Indian prince can be found here. I hope you'll stop by and take a look.

With our usual great timing, the Husband and I have managed to come down with something that's a cross between the Colds from Hell and a low-grade flu. I must say our red noses could give Rudolph a run for his money!

Wherever you are, whatever you celebrate I hope you have the merriest, happiest, most joyous ever!

I Was a One-Legged Swedish Coalminer

Got your attention, didn't I? If you want to read about my adventures in past-life regression, visit me at Novel Talk's blog.

See you there!

And one more thing . . .

Because when all is said and done, the gifts we remember are the handmade treasures and the books.

But Roy Blount, president of the Authors Guild, says it better than I can:

Holiday Message from Roy Blount Jr.: Buy Books From Your Local Bookstore, Now

December 11, 2008.

I've been talking to booksellers lately who report that times are hard. And local booksellers aren't known for vast reserves of capital, so a serious dip in sales can be devastating. Booksellers don't lose enough money, however, to receive congressional attention. A government bailout isn't in the cards.We don't want bookstores to die. Authors need them, and so do neighborhoods.

So let's mount a book-buying splurge. Get your friends together, go to your local bookstore and have a book-buying party. Buy the rest of your Christmas presents, but that's just for starters. Clear out the mysteries, wrap up the histories, beam up the science fiction! Round up the westerns, go crazy for self-help, say yes to the university press books! Get a load of those coffee-table books, fatten up on slim volumes of verse, and take a chance on romance!

There will be birthdays in the next twelve months; books keep well; they're easy to wrap: buy those books now. Buy replacements for any books looking raggedy on your shelves. Stockpile children's books as gifts for friends who look like they may eventually give birth. Hold off on the flat-screen TV and the GPS (they'll be cheaper after Christmas) and buy many, many books.

Then tell the grateful booksellers, who by this time will be hanging onto your legs begging you to stay and live with their cat in the stockroom: "Got to move on, folks. Got some books to write now. You see...we're the Authors Guild."

Enjoy the holidays.
Roy Blount Jr. President Authors Guild

Books Make Great Gifts!

Better than chocolate! Better than a new pair of PJs! Better than just about anything!

Happy Thanksgiving . . . and a blog notice

<==The secret to great stuffing!

A quick note to wish those of us who celebrate the holiday a very Happy Thanksgiving. I'm guest blogging today at Tote Bags & Blogs. It's the first in a series of true stories about my Grandma El. (The woman who taught me the importance of Bell's Seasoning.)

Fair warning: it's not a heartwarming holiday story complete with recipe. It's about the night before Thanksgiving in 1996 when I found photos of her in the arms of a man named Prince Mohindin and stumbled upon my family's Biggest Secret.

I hope you'll stop by and check it out if you have a moment.

Simply Irresistible

I love Philip Scott Johnson's work! Enjoy his WOMEN IN FILM:

Writers Write - a NINC Blog

I'm ranting (a bit) over at the Ninc Blog today. If you have a moment, please drop by and take a look.

On-Line Chat Tonight

I'll be chatting on-line tonight at Mo's Book Buzz (Romance Reviews Today) with Harlequin Intrigue author Gail Barrett at 9 pm EST. Hope you can join us!

Just Leave Me At the Side of the Road

I would rather be left to die at the side of the road in a blinding snowstorm than to ever ever be a patient at Seattle Grace. My chances of survival would be a hell of a lot better.

What in the name of Shonda Rhimes is going on with that show anyway? Have they taken leave of their senses? First they totally screw up the Callie/Erica storyline by turning it into a bad joke when they might have actually managed a real life, non-stereotypical love story. Then they take a legitimate conflict (Erica's fury over the stolen transplant heart and Seattle Grace's cavalier handling of the incident) and gloss over it in forty-five seconds of air time. Of course Erica Hahn left Seattle Grace. Wouldn't you? Would you want to be on staff with that group of crazies?

And now I'm watching Thursday's episode on line and a nut job intern stripped off her top and dragged a scalpel over her shoulder. If this is what goes on in med school I'd rather take my troubles to a vet. I'll bet the level of compassion and sanity would be higher.

Enough already with Dead Denny. If you're going to dump Izzy, do it and get it over with even if you are messing with the best chemistry in the show. (Izzy and Alex, of course.)

I like so few shows. I mean, what have I got on my list: Dancing With the Dopey Stars, Desperate Housewives, and Grey's Anatomy. Is it so much to ask that they keep from jumping the shark?

Writerspace Chat - tonight at 9 pm ET

I'll be chatting (I hope not with myself!) at Writerspace tonight at 9 pm Eastern Time. If you have a minute, I hope you'll join me. I'll even give out candy bars . . .

TALK OF THE TOWN by Sherrill Bodine

Sherrill Bodine's latest novel, TALK OF THE TOWN, will be hitting the bookstores soon and I wanted to give you a heads-up. I had the pleasure of reading TALK OF THE TOWN quite a few months ago when I was lucky enough to receive an advanced review copy. It came at a time when life was difficult and filled with sadness and I was worried that I wouldn't be able to let go of the real world and sink into Sherrill's fictional world the way I wanted to.

Well, I shouldn't have worried at all. Sherrill does a smashingly terrific job with TALK OF THE TOWN. I fell in love with her lead character, Rebecca, and happily followed where she led straight through to the very last page.

And there are fabulous recipes scattered throughout. I mean, what more can a reader ask?

This book is pure delight. If I were you I'd make sure I had a copy tucked away for the long Thanksgiving weekend. I can't imagine anything better. You'll love it!

From the back cover:

GOSSIP QUEEN DETHRONED!

Darlings, what a to-do at the Daily Mail today! After fifteen years as Chicago's gossip guru, Rebecca Covington has been demoted from divulger of secrets for the city's elite to headlining recipes in the Home and Food section. Apparently, a touchy senator is threatening legal action for Rebecca's latest extramarital scoop. But Windy City rumor has it that new CEO and dreamy Pierce Brosnan look-alike David Sumner downgraded Rebecca in favor of fresher, younger blood on the social beat.

Industry insiders expect Rebecca to fight her denouement, and inquiring minds have already seen the feisty maven trading quips and searing glances wtih her arresting new boss. Rebecca swears she'll reclaim her shining star status, but can the dishy diva even cook? And how can she ignore David's arousing effect on her sensibilities?

Don't miss a trick, darlings. Sparks are going to fly.

Now appearing at Barnes & Noble online

I'm a guest-poster on the B&N bulletin board today, talking about writing, knitting, and my new book. If you have a moment, stop by and leave a question or comment. I'd love to see you. Here's the link.

See you there?

Hopeful

It's been a week for hope, hasn't it? No matter how you voted, you have to be hopeful about the future. Despite the meltdown of our economy and all the other bad news, we managed to elect a new president by a healthy majority (no recount, no bitterness)and make history in the bargain. Nothing to complain about there! I know this is the honeymoon period but after the long election we need a few weeks to just feel good about the fact that at least this part of the system still works.

I try to avoid politics here because it's become such a viciously divisive issue in our country. The second you open your mouth you've alienated half of your friends and family without even trying. But I think we're in agreement that we wish Barack and Michelle Obama and their daughters all the very best this world has to offer.

I did a little digging around in our township's records and found out that over 80% of our registered voters consistently turn out during presidential years while over 50% turn out in non-election years. The 50% needs work but that 80+ is worth celebrating.

By the time we reached the last week of campaigning I had turned off our phones and barred the door. Don't even get me started on Frank (I'm 84 and I hate all of you) Lautenberg's run for re-election to the Senate. No more Leonard Lance's Trenton Dance! No more Linda Stender is a Spender nursery rhymes to the tune of Yankee Doodle Dandy! I was so deeply disgusted that I ended up voting for the Independent candidate, Greco, who was running on the Full Breakfast Party. And no, I'm not kidding. The man likes his ham and eggs. To paraphrase his website, "The only place pork belongs is on your breakfast plate."

Judge for yourself:

Anti-Leonard Lance




Anti-Linda Stender




Pro-Dean Greco




And people wonder why NJ politics has such a bad reputation.

One other thing before I close the politics vault for another four years: what's with these ridiculously long and expensive campaigns anyway? I started thinking about the absurdity of it and this thought hit me: let's say you work at McDonald's. You hear about a job that might be opening up at AT&T for lots more money and prestige. You go to your McDonald's manager and say, "I'm going to try for the job at AT&T so you won't be seeing me for awhile. It will probably take a year or two until I know whether or not I get it. So hold this job open for me, 'kay? And by the way, keep those paychecks coming."

Something is very wrong out there. Three senators on the presidential ballot and all three were absent from the Senate for most of the last two years while they pursued bigger and better. That's 's another change we need to think about somewhere down the road.

But for right now, three cheers for us! We did ourselves proud.

Blogging Today at Novel Talk - please visit!

I'm guest-blogging today at Novel Talk.

Do you believe in ghosts? Come visit and tell me your ghost stories.

And I totally forgot to tell you about my NINC blog a few weeks ago about age and writers. Please stop by and add your two cents to the discussion.

Unexpected benefits

One of the best parts of having a new book published is getting back in touch with friends. Today I heard from Catherine Anne Collins, a wonderful writer I had the pleasure of critiquing a few years back. Catherine made a bid at a charity auction and (poor woman!) won me. Well, my critique of her manuscript.

I'll tell you in three words what I told her in three pages: I loved it.

Today I found out it's going to be published. How cool is that?

Go ahead. Click on her link up there and take a look. It won't be too long before you'll be able to say you knew her when.

Factoid: WELCOME TO MOOSEPORT was filmed in Catherine's small Canadian town.

Michael Crichton is dead

According to his website Michael Crichton died today after a battle with cancer. You already know my feelings about cancer so I won't bore you with them but damn it. We need to win more of the battles.