Escaping Mimi

Today's t-shirt: A "nice" solid color fitted T, since I had to run errands this morning and have choir practice tonight.

I went to Target today to visit my book, and I was greatly disappointed. The little tag with my title was on the shelf, but there were no books to be found. I would love to claim that they've sold out already, but since that entire endcap was practically empty, with copies of only three books there, and the rest of their bookshelves looked rather depleted, I suspect that a lot of their book shipment for the week hasn't arrived yet. That, or there's a plague of book locusts swooping into stores and snatching up every single book (or maybe rampaging hordes of book clubs -- now, there's a mental image). I'll try again tomorrow and see if the matter is rectified.

Last night I got to visit with a book club that had read Enchanted, Inc. One of the members is a former client from back in my PR days, and she actually knew my "Mimi." In fact, when someone in the group was asking about what inspired the various characters and if they were based on people I knew, I said the only characters who were consciously based on or inspired by specific people I know were Gregor and Mimi. My former client immediately said, "Oh my God! I know who Mimi is!" And she was right. It was really funny (and we got in some great gossip). I actually heard from "Mimi" a while back. The day after I wrote her cameo appearance in book 3, I got a call from her (and immediately thought, "EEK! I summoned her!"). She wanted me to do a project for her, but as I am now a terribly busy and important author-type person, I sadly had to decline. And then I promptly did a Dance of Happiness and Victory.

Do you know how incredibly good it felt to be able to turn down work from someone like that? I've been able to do that a lot lately, including turning down projects from the agency that laid me off. So, keep buying those books so I can keep saying no to the Mimis of the world.

Anyway, even though I never imagined my books being book club material, I'm really having fun meeting with groups who've read them. I like chatting with people who love books and hearing what it is in my books that seems to resonate with people.

Let's see, in other news ... I need to take some time out on the writing to outline the rest of the book. I did have it all outlined, but with the story having changed so much along the way, the last quarter of the book the way I planned it no longer fits the story. Not that I'd really pinned it down that much. The synopsis I gave my publisher had a lot of handwaving at that point, just something along the lines of, "And then they beat the bad guys, save the day and live happily ever after (until the next book)," with no detail of how, exactly, they go about doing that. And now I've come to the point where I need to know so I can write it.

I forgot one important little detail about Joshilyn Jackson yesterday: She's met Dick Francis!!!! I'm so jealous because he's one of my favorite authors, but it's probably for the best that I haven't met him in person because I'm sure I'd have a massive dork attack and run screaming away from him for fear of sounding like a drooling idiot if I tried to speak to him. I can't seem to convince myself that I should now count as a peer to these famous authors, that I have the same job in the same industry, just at a slightly (okay, majorly) different level.

One more thing: Can anyone come up with a crossword puzzle clue and answer relating to me and my books? It's something one of my writing groups is trying to put together to help people be familiar with our members' books, and even though I'm a major crossword puzzle addict, I don't have a clue (in more ways than one) of what to do to represent me. My understanding is that it should be something pretty general and not requiring in-depth knowledge of the nitty-gritty details of my books. I'd try to offer a prize, but until I can find something suitable (or find my frog pins again), I'm at a loss as to what I could offer. They seem to have some kind of software that will take all the clues and answers and create a puzzle (I'm drooling at the thought).