Donuts and a Booksigning. Also, Seeking Reviewers

Donuts . . . see, here's the thing. We have the tradition of making homemade donuts sometime in October. I loved it when my mother would make them when I was a kid, and we've started doing it once a year. It's not the sort of thing I really want to do more than once a year, since, hey, do I really want dozens of greasy, sugary, delicious donuts waiting for me to devour them? (Maybe . . . ). Plus, it's a production and leaves the kitchen and dining room coated in flour, grease, and sugar, and the sink and counter stacked with dirty dishes. So, once a year is good.

But--I know this is shocking--I'm thinking of crossing the October donut-making off the list. With my two older daughters gone at college and my very slim and disciplined husband controlling his intake, there are just not enough people eating enough of them. He did eat a bunch last night, but I don't think he's had any today (!!) I don't think my older son is that keen on them. And in an unfortunate twist of fate, my younger two children felt icky with colds today, so they weren't consuming much. But never fear--I made up for EVERYONE. I will not tell you how many I ate today but it was a HUGE NUMBER (okay, I don't actually know the number, but I know it was huge). And there are some in the freezer, and some not in the freezer that are going stale even as we speak, and it's like, man, that's it--if I'm the only one pigging out like crazy, it's time for a new tradition. Next year we will line carrots up on the table and decorate them with flax seed and balsamic vinegar, after which we will do pushups. Or maybe I'll change my mind by next year . . .

And now, moving on to other news that doesn't involve the oddity of whining because my family didn't eat enough junk food. I was able to do a booksigning at the Beehive Bookstore in Campbell, CA as part of their Ladies' Night celebration, and it was super fun. The staff there was so nice and the customers were great, and I got to try a Tres Leches cupcake. One of the staff made them from Josi Kilpack's recipe, from her new book of the same name. Here's a picture (not of the cupcake--I ate the cupcake; I didn't pose with it).



And lastly: I'm looking for a few people who would like to review Shadowed. If you are interested, email me at emailstephanieblack (at) gmail (dot) com.

It's Here (in Actual Physical Form This Time)!

My books arrived! It's always exciting to see a new book for the first time--hold it, flip through the pages--a real book with my words in it! The book that grew from story ideas that emerged from the haphazard process of brainstorming and developed through that messy first draft . . . the story that passed through revision, revision, test reads, more revision . . . then the submission process, the editorial process, proofing, not to mention graphic design and all those other awesome things--it's all done and here's the culmination of all that work, the finished product. It's a book!! It has a cover! And pages! And an ISBN! It's going to be in bookstores, and online, and in libraries! Somebody might read it! People I don't know might read it! If you think about that long enough, it's kind of mind-blowing. 

 

Photographic evidence---it's here! My new book!

It's also an unabridged audio book. Oh unabridged audio, how I love thee!

And it's a Kindle book! Lots of choices.

Shadowed is my sixth novel. Whew. Six books! I wrote six books! Six whole books, full of words! I can't parallel park, I stink at reading maps, my socks are never all folded, and heaven knows what's living under my fridge, but I wrote six books. I'd celebrate with chocolate, but I already ate chocolate, plus three huge chocolate chip cookies. I should celebrate with wheat germ or garbanzo beans, just for a change of pace.

The book is now for sale at Deseret Book online and the Kindle version is for sale at Amazon. It should be listed at Seagull Book soon, and I hope soon to hear reports of a bookstore sighting.

Goodreads and Labor Day

I got my new book posted on Goodreads. Hooray! Also, as my two-year-old niece would say, holy yikes. Why oh why was I so eager to get the book listed there? That's just asking for trouble.

Yesterday on Labor Day, we wanted to do something fun, so we headed up to San Francisco, where it was going to be a lot (think 20-30 degrees) cooler than it was where we live. Travel motto for San Francisco: bring a jacket.

It was very sunny in this part of SF yesterday, but the Golden Gate bridge, which we should have been able to see from here, was shrouded in fog. It was weird how the sky could be so clear and the bridge so obscured by fog. 

Here is a view of the remains of the Sutro Baths--seven swimming pools built on the coast in the late 1800s.  In this area, it was foggy, as you can see. You get accustomed to foggy and chilly at the coast--it can be 100 degrees inland and 62 degrees and overcast at the beach. 

Here is the Lands End Labyrinth. Be careful not to get lost in the maze!  

Yay! It's Here!

I mean . . . it's sort of here. I don't yet have my physical copies of Shadowed, and it will probably take a few days for it to hit bookstore shelves, but as of today, it is available on Amazon as a Kindle ebook. Yes, right this minute someone could be reading it. Do they like it??? Maybe I should start nervously checking Goodreads every thirty seconds, except last time I looked, the book wasn't listed yet, so maybe it's a little early to get obsessive. 

Hang on, I need to go see if it's on Goodreads yet. 

Nope, not yet.

Ahem. Anyway, if you live near an LDS bookstore and happen to drop in sometime in the near future, let me know if you see it on the shelves. 

In other news, I won a $10 Amazon Gift Card on Debra Erfert's blog. Woohoo! Thank you, Debra. The gift card is to purchase a copy of Sariah Wilson's new book, The Ugly Stepsister Strikes Back, which looks like a totally darling book. Sariah and I used to blog together; she was the founder of Six LDS Writers and a Frog. Congratulations on your new book, Sariah! And since her book is available for $3.99, that leaves me another six bucks to buy another ebook too. Books! Books! Yaaaaay books! What should I buy? Any recommendations? 

Good News Wednesday

Good news: my website is up and running! Somebody please click on it so it will have visitors and The Googles will start to like me again (and let me know if there are any problems). There are still some issues--namely, through efforts to make it work, we managed to create a sort of Star Trekky parallel universe situation, with other stephanieblack.net websites existing concurrently with the real one. But we'll get that cleaned up at some point and right now, the link above will take you to the right spot (caution: if you get to a stephanieblack.net that depicts me as someone who returns her library books on time and did not eat a large chocolate chip cookie for breakfast this morning, that's not the right universe). 

Other fun news: I will be doing a Ladies Night booksigning for Shadowed at the Beehive Bookstore in Campbell, California on Saturday, October 6th. I'm so excited! If you're in the area, come see me! (I'll post details later when I get them).

My Website and Other Assorted Topics

*My website (www.stephanieblack.net) is down at the moment. My old website host stopped hosting, so I got a new host (now I'm starting to sound like a parasite), but I haven't figured out how to upload my site. This is not surprising, because I'm very un-techy--I have to ask my children for help for anything complicated, like using the remote control--but I don't feel too bad that I'm clueless this time around, because my husband was having trouble with it too, and he's a genius. But never fear: tech support will save me. I suppose I'd better get that website up soon, since Shadowed will be released in September, which is coming up fast, and how sad would it be if someone got interested in my new book and wanted to check out my website, and they typed in the URL and all that showed up was a blank, white page (which is what comes up now) and they're like, gee, that was underwhelming.

*Speaking of Shadowed, it's now available for pre-order from Deseret Book. Yay!

*For her birthday, my oldest daughter got a 1500-piece puzzle of Van Gogh's "Cafe Terrace at Night."

It took her and her sister two months to put the puzzle together. Since it was such a complicated puzzle, she figured she wouldn't want to do it again, and I suggested hanging it on the wall, like my mother does with puzzles (she has a bunch of completed puzzles decorating the long hallway in her basement). My daughter liked the idea. Sadly, it turns out I lack both skillz and common sense when it comes to turning a completed puzzle front-side down so you can put packing tape on the back (the method my mother uses). The puzzle is now, um, not as done as it used to be. The question is: do I try to reassemble the broken parts, or do I just go online and buy a Van Gogh poster, which I can get for way cheap?

*I wrote something! After a long dry spell when it came to writing new things, I finally started a story yesterday while my son was at his trumpet lesson. I've been brainstorming this project for a while now and almost have the basic story figured out, but I've been stumped when it comes to figuring out who the villain is and what his/her motive is. So this time, I decided to start writing without knowing the villain and see if ideas develop along the way. I have trouble brainstorming for too long--I love writing stories, not brainstorming stories, and tend to get bored quickly when I'm brainstorming. But I need to get moving on this project, so we'll see what happens. Will I come up with a good villain idea while I'm writing or will I get all the way to the end of the project (it's a novella, so I'm aiming for around 100 pages) and realize there is no villain--in fact, everyone is peacefully fond of each other? Oooh . . . maybe it could have alternate endings! Choose Your Own Villain! If you think the ex-boyfriend did it, turn to page 92. If you think the long-lost grandmother did it, turn to page 102. Could be a fun idea . . .

Growing Pains

My two older daughters left for BYU this morning. After they drove away and I was crying, my twelve-year-old son said, "It's not that sad! They'll be home for Christmas." I said, "It's a mother thing." He said, "Good thing I'll never be a mother." I'm sure my daughters weren't crying either, unless it was tears of joy at being able to quit their two summer jobs and head back to school. They were very blessed to find great summer jobs this year, but let's face it--even great summer jobs tend to be boring, as well as good motivation to get your rear back to school and get studying.

It's always poignant when a child leaves for college, but last year when my younger daughter started her freshman year, I learned that the mother-pain of saying goodbye to children is cumulative. This is in contrast to the difficulty level in raising children, which I didn't find to be cumulative--i.e., having five children is not five times as hard as having one; each new Wild Thing adds incrementally to the rumpus. But I've found that saying goodbye to two children is twice as hard--or harder--than saying goodbye to one. Not only do you have two children to miss, but it provokes more of a Ticking Clock personal crisis--they're growing up so quickly, it won't be long before they've flown from the nest for good, the family size has now shrunk dramatically, your other children are growing up so fast as well . . .  Last year when my college daughters went back to school after Thanksgiving, I was saddened by the realization that it was only eleven years until all our children were grown. Eleven years used to seem like a long time, but man, it sure didn't anymore. Of course, I was rather off-balance at the time, since they'd left us with a cat, which might explain the mental melodrama. As they went to pull out of the driveway this morning, I said, "You forgot the cat!" but it didn't work; they left her here. Actually, I'm accustomed to the cat now and quite fond of her, even if she is rather contemptuous of us and a suspected demon to boot.

When the kids were young, it seemed like life would be that way forever. Even the thought of having them all in school during the day was remote--it would be ages before they were all that old. Ages and eons! But nobody told me that time accelerates. No, seriously, it does. You're in baby mode, toddler mode, preschool mode; time is making its leisurely way through your life. Then elementary school, and junior high, and high school and . . . BAM. As soon as one kid graduates, that's it--life starts shooting forward like you're on the downward slope of a rollercoaster.

I absolutely love having older kids; it's a tremendous joy watching them grow and mature and develop into adults. But as a mother, I can't help but be sad when they drive away and wish I could keep them with me a little longer--even as I'm happy for them, extremely grateful for the opportunities they'll have at school, and definitely wouldn't have it any other way.

So now, it's time to go get ready to take my older son to school registration. He's turning sixteen soon . . .