I love what I do for a living! I love sitting at my computer, spinning out stories, and, after I've completed a scene, I enjoy reading what I've written. Hanging out all day in Fantasy Land - does a job get any better than that?
    Wonderful as all that is, my favorite part of this job is when I get to go out and plug a book. I have so much fun throwing parties at book stores, meeting readers and generally being a ham.
By the way, here I am, being my hammy self on A.M. Northwest, which airs out of Portland. This is a favorite TV show of mine because everyone who works on the show is incredibly nice. They always make me feel welcome.
    And speaking of nice, I think I have the greatest readers in the world. Some, like my friend Myssie, even bring their daughters to signings, and it's great to get a chance to meet the next generation of readers.
    The last couple of days I was in Oregon. This Saturday I'll be in Bellevue, WA, and next week, more places in Washington. In fact, next week, we'll be kicking off the release of "Merry Ex-mas" with a huge bash at the Silverdale Mall in Silverdale, WA. That will be a total immersion holiday party, complete with Santa. I can hardly wait!
I can't tell you how much fun I have hanging out with readers. And, to all of you, who come out time and again to this crazy stuff, I just want to publicly say, "Thank you." Without you, where would we writers be?!

We harvested apples off our apple tree this week. It's finally beginning to produce and we got 14 whole apples. How exciting! How thrilling! How... expensive. I'm big on growing your own food, and working edibles into the landscaping, so in addition to our apple tree we also have several blueberry bushes, raspberries, two cherry trees and another apple tree. Also strawberries for ground cover and a veggie garden. Doesn't that sound like natures bounty? Oh, yes, in many ways it is.

Except.... somehow, I never got to the three cherries on the baby tree in time, a marauding neighborhood pit bull thought the deer sprinkler in the veggie garden was a toy and tore up the entire garden playing with it. Twice. Yes, I persisted with the garden but I'm not sure it was a very cost effective one this year due to having to go out and repurchase seeds. And as far as the other edibles went, well, those all got a little pricey this year. We tried rigging up an automatic watering system with a timer and over-watered. Poor Gerhardt almost had a heart attack when he got the two-hundred dollar water bill. He called the water company, sure there had been some mistake. The nice lady asked, "Do you have an automatic watering system?" Ummmm. Not any more. After that Gerhardt got stingy with the water.
    I can't say as I blame him. With a two-hundred dollar water bill how much were those fourteen apples a pound?! We could have bought a lot of organic produce for that price.
    Oh, well. I'm not giving up. I do love being able to grow my own food. I just have to find a way to grow it more economically.