Is this Tea?

You know it's going to be one of those Mondays when you realize that you've poured the orange juice into your tea mug. Fortunately, I hadn't yet put the tea in it. It was just sitting on the counter, waiting for the tea to brew, and I suppose orange juice in tea wouldn't be so bad, as I like orange spice tea, but still, it wasn't what I was supposed to be doing and it took me a while to realize that what I was doing was wrong and what was wrong about it.

However, I'm actually feeling much better because I got some sleep and rest over the weekend. I hadn't been sleeping well because of the cough. I didn't even really need to cough anymore, but had that lingering cough reflex so that I was waking up coughing every hour or so. I finally broke down and broke out the prescription cough syrup, and that worked to stop the coughing and let me sleep. I must have been really tired because I nearly slept the clock around two nights in a row. Now I'm close to having my normal energy levels. I was even able to sing a little bit yesterday.

That means I'm ready to start writing again today. Once I send the last book off to the editor, I'm ready to dive in and finish the book I've been working on. All that cover concept brainstorming helped pave the way toward getting back in the mood to work in this world.

And my agent and I finally found a concept we agreed upon. I won't tell which series inspired the idea because I hope it won't be obvious in the finished product. Now to see what the designer has to say about the matter … I've been searching the Internet for reference images to give the designer to give an idea of what's been in my head. The funny thing about this book is that a lot of my mental casting came up after I wrote the book. I did have mental casting for one character, but for the others, it was a case of seeing someone on TV after I wrote the first draft (in one case, after entirely finishing the book) and saying "Hey, that's my character!" Strangely, having a more concrete mental image hasn't at all changed the way I see these characters as I write them. The people I saw after the fact were that close to what I had in my head. Freaky.

Now I need more tea. Without orange juice.