I had a frustrating day yesterday dealing with business stuff. I actually had to talk to someone on the phone, which is getting extreme for me. But a client not only owes me money, but hadn't sent me a new contract covering last month, which might have kept me from getting paid for work I've already done, so I wanted it resolved, ASAP. It turned out that they'd misspelled my name in my e-mail address and no one had noticed that the e-mail address they had on file for me didn't match the way my name was spelled in the contract itself or in any of the e-mails forwarded to them by the person I usually deal with. But I was friendly and perky on the phone and got the matter resolved, and then I may have indulged in a little primal screaming of the "What is the matter with you people?" variety once I got off the phone. I ought to look up their policy for what they do if someone is a month late paying a bill to them and then establish that as my policy for dealing with them. I seriously doubt that "Oh, I guess that didn't get processed when it first came in, so we forgot about it" would fly as an excuse when you owe them money.
Then later in the evening I got to break up a fight between preschool girls. It helps that I'm enough larger than they are that all I had to do was stand between them. We then had a chat about how they were friends, so why were they fighting, and I'm still not sure what was going on because I got a long, garbled explanation that seemed to have something to do with a My Little Pony birthday party and who got to be which pony. It was definitely smile and nod time because I had no clue what they were talking about. At any rate, my conflict resolution skills were apparently good enough to end up with both of them settled into my lap and not trying to kill each other. I know the very idea of My Little Pony incites me to violence, but I didn't realize it had the same effect on the target audience. I may have to do research. If the ponies are getting into death matches, that whole thing may be a lot more interesting than I realized.
Speaking of research, I was reading a list of upcoming book releases that are considered "genre benders," and it seems like the cozy mystery genre has taken a turn toward fantasy, with a number of series involving magical elements. Since I love cozy mysteries, I may have to look for some of those. I'd probably enjoy them as a reader, but that might also be something I could do as a writer. Those kinds of series are a great fit for the way I like to write romances, so it could take a number of books for the amateur sleuth heroine and the hunky cop to get together. I just can't think of a gimmick (and they seem to require a gimmick these days), and all the situations I come up with seem to turn into a strange Haven/Once Upon a Time mash-up. If I move it to Texas, would anyone notice the similarities? And then apparently you also need knitting or cross-stitch patterns or recipes. I've been known to create cross-stitch patterns (like Firefly hand towels) and recipes, so maybe I could do this. I'll need to find and read a bunch before I can start thinking along those lines. It seems like a few of those series come up in Amazon's "people who bought this also bought that" function for my books, so that's a good starting point.
First, though, I need to finish reading the new Terry Pratchett. And writing a book.
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