Song has been Kindlefied

Up for some summer reading on your iPhone, your laptop, your Kindle?
It's finally up and available.  Hip Hip! Go on, download it and share it with a friend!

I know a few of you are waiting for the iPad version, which should be available in a few more days.  Or the Nook version.  Or the Sony Reader version.  They're a'coming!

That's the publishing news of the day.  I do have some different publishing news, which basically fills people in on my strange and tense journey through publishing this book (as a hard back) with a very small publishing house.  You'll notice that Amazon only has one more copy available for sale?  But that's for another blog entry.  It will be a difficult one to write, but I think will be very instructive to authors who are looking for a traditional publisher.

As for writing: I'm deeper than ever into my YA novel, and now I'm at that delicate stage called "I've Just Read a Fantastic Book and How Can I Ever Compete with That Piece of Brilliance?" Also called, "Don't Read The Hunger Games and Think You Can Keep Your Writer's Ego Intact." Wonderful read, my friends.  And it will scare the heck out of you if you're in the middle of your manuscript and thinking about how well your plot pacing holds up. 

Still, I'm have a helluva fun time writing this manuscript, and I sense the end drawing near. 

It had better!  I only have one week left until I have to take off my author cap and put on my scholar cap. The fall semester is soon upon us.

This. Is. Hot.

Bread, as weird metaphor of me.

Dallas, Texas.  I walk outside and I feel like a bun in the oven.  Not pregnant, no.

Really like a bun. Baking. In. An. Oven. Ugh, it's so hot. Our pool is like a giant cup of tepid tea.  The only way to enjoy it is to sit on the steps with the water hose turned on, perched right over my head.

Have I whined enough?  Because now I'm going to gloat: I'm ditching this hot popstand and heading to Michigan tomorrow.  Whoop!

This morning, I realized I hadn't written any posts for a while, and felt I really needed to post before I hit the road, Jack, and don't come back until I'm good and ready.  But I have been a good girl.  I have been writing.

Actually, when it occurs to me that I haven't posted in my blog for a while, that's a good sign that I'm being productive in the fiction world.  I'm in the middle of my next novel manuscript, a Young Adult novel, and I'm SO EXCITED.  I get all jittery inside when I'm sitting in front of the computer.  It does take a while to crank out the pages (they don't write themselves, you know), but a lot of the scenes are flowing pretty easily, and my Beta Reader keeps me up to speed: I send her a chapter every evening, and she is also SO EXCITED.  (Can you hear my voice getting all thrill-y and eager?)

Thanks to the wonderful folks at Back of the Book Reviews, who held a Read-a-Thon over the Independence weekend and a contest tied to my manuscript, I now have several characters named after real people. The names are perfect. Perfecto. Couldn't have imagined better names!

Is it bad luck to get so excited about a manuscript?  I don't care!  I feel like I'm nesting on this fantastic mysterious egg, and I can't wait to see it crack open.

I hope you all find a way to escape the heat that has descended on the U.S.  I'd invite you to our little cabin by the lake if I could.  Cheers!