I got good and bad book news yesterday. The bad news is that Don't Hex with Texas won't be published in Dutch (yet -- they are going to see if another publisher is interested). Apparently, even though the readers are very enthusiastic and even have been calling the publisher to ask about it, they don't think that sales of the previous books are high enough to merit them doing a translation in these tough times, blah, blah, you get the picture. However, it will be published in Japanese. So I guess the Dutch could all learn Japanese (or, I guess, English, which most of them do know). And Enchanted, Inc. has been published in Thai. The cover is very cute. If I can dig my scanner out from under the pile on my desk, I'll try to scan and post it someday.
Yesterday was a good/bad day in general. I finished this round of rewrites, but I need to go back over some parts because I know I got into "whatever" mode and probably wasn't as tough as I needed to be. I found an awesome new soup recipe that I suspect I'll be living on in the coming months. It's a roasted carrot soup (recipe on this page -- scroll down to the bottom, and I halved it), so if I turn orange, you'll know why. Then my knee went out on me in ballet class last night. It does that every so often, and it's annoying. It was wobbly the rest of the evening, to the point the teacher wouldn't let me do jumps. Today it's kind of sore, so I guess I'll be staying off my feet and wearing flats this weekend.
My TV Fridays have really changed in mood and theme. It's no longer really Sci Fi Friday, since all that's left for me there is Atlantis. But I really liked Crusoe last week -- we had attractive, fit men running through jungles without shirts or with flowing white shirts, we had pirates, we had all kinds of gizmos, we had cannibals. And Sean Bean and Sam Neil in the flashbacks! I suspect I will start to giggle at the number of people who just happen to manage to find their way to this uncharted island without managing to get Crusoe home or tell someone he's there, but I guess they have to bring in outside people for something to happen. I'm kind of secretly hoping for an appearance by the Harlem Globetrotters, myself. I've started reading the book, and it looks like they're going with a totally different set up and backstory with, yeah, yet another conspiracy. Still, it's a good swashbuckling adventure, and there aren't nearly enough of those. After that, there's Life, which is another good show, one of the few cop shows I can deal with.
In other news, I've come to the realization that Pushing Daisies is the TV form of the kind of book I'd love to find -- a contemporary-set fantasy with a sense of whimsy and without all the usual urban fantasy tropes (in other words, no vampires). It's sweet and funny, has a hint of romance, some suspense in the mystery plots, and though there's the issue of hiding the magical secret from the real world, the "real" world is also a rather magical place. I want to live in Pushing Daisies Land and wear Chuck's clothes. But hey, where are our musical numbers this season? I need more of them!
And now I wonder if I could pull off something similar in book form ... How would you capture that world with just words, without the visuals?
Now I have to figure out what to do this weekend. Saturday is one of those "I wish I could clone myself" days, where there are a couple of things I'd like to do during the day but that overlap, and if I tried to do them both, it would eat up the whole day. One of them doesn't require driving, so that might win. Then I thought there was going to be a Halloween party that night, but I haven't heard anything about it and no one really seems to be talking about it. I guess a lot of it depends on how the knee does.
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