Thursday, September 24, 2009

Autumn Inspiration



Fall is my most favoritest time of year.  It probably comes from growing up in a tourist town where you never got to enjoy summer because everything was so packed with city people, but oh man when labour day weekend ended you could shoot a cannon up main street and not hit a single car.  You can actually park at the grocery store and not have to circle around for 20 minutes waiting for someone to pull out. (It's a little like trying to shop on christmas eve in a town that only has one mall.)

I always get inspired at this time of year.  There's so much to see and do that could be the basis for a story.  Studio tours, fall drives, farmer's markets, hiking without being attacked by bugs (yay!) it's like summer but without crowds or insect bites.  We try to go pick apples at one of the nearby orchards and the kids get a class trip to a pumpkin patch at school.  One of our favorite things to do is to go to the Dorset Tower, an old fire tower perched on a huge cliff.  It's best when the leaves are starting to turn, but I have some pics of our trip this summer that will give you an idea of what it would be like.

But the best part about fall?  PUMPKINS!  and other squash...I'm not going to discriminate.  I love me some maple butternut squash soup, pumpkin muffins (made some last night), pumpkin bread (made some of that last night too.)  This year I'm so gonna get the hubby to make me some pumpkin creme brulee.  He's been promising to for the last few years and hasn't gotten around to it yet.

Maybe we should have a fall contest.  I'll see what I can cook up.

Hope everyone is enjoying the nice weather and getting lots of story ideas from the season!  I know I am.
posted by Jennie Andrus at 1:26 pm 0 comments

Wednesday, September 16, 2009

Life & New Covers

Gonna keep this short and sweet. My mom is ill and will be having surgery toward the end of the month so any good vibes, thoughts and prayers would be greatly appreciated! The docs aren't really sure at this point what's wrong with her but they seem to be trying to rule out cancer, so as you might guess, the whole family is distraught. My parents are staying with me for the duration because my house is near a very fine hospital, thank goodness.

Needless to say, I'm not getting much new writing done at all. At this point, I'm treading water, just trying to meet my editing/proofing deadlines and such. Once my emotions begin to settle down, perhaps I'll be able to write again. Wish me luck. ;-)

And now for some happy stuff... I've got some new covers! It's for my next dragon book, titled DRAGON STORM, which will be out in ebook formats on November 17th from Samhain.

I also have the most awesome cover EVER, from Kensington Brava for my first big-time, NY-published novel, ONCE BITTEN, TWICE DEAD, which will be officially released in March 2010, but is already available for pre-order from Amazon (and a few other places). How cool is that cover? I LOVE it!!! :) Thank you, cover gods!!!

I've also spent a little time working on my website the past few days. (It's mindless work that I can do while I sit with my Mom.) I've updated most of the splash pages (the individual indexes to each sub-section of the site) and added new buttons for all sorts of online booksellers on my homepage side bar. It might be getting a little too complicated at this point, so if you have any troubles loading it, please let me know. It's hard to find the right balance between too much and not enough. ;-) Until next time...

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posted by Bianca D'Arc at 5:03 am 0 comments