This is how out of it I am. I had to get an email from a friend in Chicago (hi, Julia!) to learn that a major national news story right now is the man missing in the mountains of Southern Oregon -- practically my own back yard. How did I miss that? The good news is though his family was missing with him, the mother and their two daughters have been found. Now the search is down to the father, James Kim of San Francisco. I hope he is found soon, and found well. Conditions are not friendly to a man on foot in that area.
I'm distracted by things like working through the edits of lost dog, which are wonderfully thorough and often humbling -- but thank goodness for editors! Day job work has picked up in December, which is exactly upside-down of what usually happens this time of year. I like that, actually, because summer was dead as a doornail and nothing wrong with making up some lost ground in the billable hours department.
And yet, book two, which was once called Death With Dignity and then became Skin and now might be The Five Dead Men, or perhaps just The Dead Men, fills my thoughts. And after writing a sentence like that last one, clearly my thoughts are dangerously discombulated. The shower is especially dangerous. Did I lather, or forget to lather because I was so busy ruminating on whether or not to pull the trigger in chapter twenty-five. Hmmm.
And there's this whole holiday thing. I like pretty lights, and egg nog, and fruit cake, but I'm not real hip on the burdens of expectation that come with the season. I guess if I don't get my ass in gear the cards won't go out. Oy. But the lights did go up on the house this weekend, and they're purty. I like 'em. So does my son, who on Saturday and Sunday night both wanted to go out every ten minutes into the frigid night to look at them. Not that I can blame him.
With all this stuff to do, I admit I cheated a bit last week. I had the chance to read an ARC of Baby Shark's Beaumont Blues by Robert Fate, and I took it! And let me tell you Beaumont Blues kicks some serious ass. Robert Fate has raised the bar and then leaped right over it. If you liked Baby Shark (and if you haven't picked it up, oh it's a must) you will love Beaumont Blues!
So now I'm back to work. On. Um. Whatever it was. Can someone remind me?
