Sunday Summary

In tour news, today I’m being hosted by the fabulous Sharon Gerlach at Writer Unleashed, where I’m talking about the craft books on my keeper shelf.

Today is a continuation of the Memorial Day Write-a-Thon (or whatever I called it yesterday).  It’s Sunday morning and I’m up early since I had to take hubby to work.  I went back to bed yesterday and still managed 1172 words as a total yesterday.  I’m quite pleased with that.  Now I’ve got today and tomorrow to duplicate that performance, and despite all the setbacks, I’ll meet my MayNoWriMo goal, which was to finish plotting Revelation and get another 10k written on it.

After this past week, I was on schedule to sell 100 copies by the end of the month.  Except I forgot it was Memorial Day Weekend, when no one is reading and everyone is cooking out and socializing.  So I’m sitting at 90 copies.  Still not shabby.  That’s 20 more than I sold last month.  A 60% increase.  I feel like things will pick back up next week, so I should make the 100 mark by next weekend. My conversation rate has been slowly ticking up all month from a low of 48% to a current 61%.

So I am still sitting at 15 reviews. There are at least two of you I know of who left reviews that have not shown up yet.  Of course when I emailed Amazon directly, they said they were sorry, there was nothing wrong with the system that they were aware of and they could only speak with individual customers about their particular review.  So, if you were one of those folks who were kind enough to leave a review and it hasn’t materialized, I suggest you email Amazon customer service to have them check into it.  You should be able to see all reviews that you left from your customer account.  And if you would like to review Forsaken By Shadow and be entered into a contest to win a $10 Amazon gift card, I’m giving away FREE REVIEW COPIES.

I have been fighting a rash from poison oak all week and the itching is driving me mad.  It’s not as bad as it would be if it were poison ivy (I would be totally covered) but I have several small patches on my arms courtesy of last weekend’s yard beautification efforts.  I totally thought I was pulling Virginia creeper out of the tree…  In any event, after a week of benedryl anti-itch cream and the stuff just continuing to spread, I declared war.  Combined a bunch of methods I read about and had an oatmeal/epsom salt/clorox bath, which helped tremendously, though I nearly keeled over from heat stroke because one shouldn’t take long, hot baths in Mississippi in the summer.  Of course the mama type figures at last night’s family gathering said you’re supposed to take COLD baths, not hot ones (though Google said otherwise).  Who knows.  Then used oatmeal poltices on my arms all day.  I looked completely ridiculous, as there was the oatmeal, covered by bath rags, which were held on by the ace bandages left over from hubby’s splints.  After that was more cortisone cream.  Since the rash is just on my forearms, today I think I’m going to try the same treatment, but using my giant roasting pan, so I can sit on the sofa and watch TV and be distracted.  If you know of any genius treatments that will zap this stuff, PLEASE SHARE as I am REALLY tired of itching!

I got confirmation from my source inside the psych department at my university that they did get approval to hire two full time instructors (the posting will go live in a week or two).  I am desperate to get one of those positions.  I stand a good shot.  I already teach for them part time.  I graduated at the top of my grad school class from there.  And I was already offered that exact job once before, but I was forced to turn it down as I had just taken my current job THE DAY BEFORE (talk about timing!).  So I would appreciate all the good karma and prayers you can throw my way.  It would narrow me down from 1 full time and 2 part time jobs to 1 full time and 1 part time job.  And most importantly, it would get me away from the crazy that is my current boss, who tends to make me stabbity stabbity angry on a routine and weekly basis.

I finished a bunch of books this past week.

• Maggie Stiefvater’s Lament (was awesome)
• Nalini Singh’s Archangel’s Kiss (also awesome and I am in total mourning that I must wait until MARCH for the third one)
• Holly Black’s Valiant (which was beautifully written but I am on the fence about because I didn’t like the heroine)

I have a pile of awesome just waiting to be read.

• Maggie Stiefvater’s Ballad
• Sarah Rees Brennan’s The Demon’s Covenant
• John Connolly’s The Book of Lost Things

But my own words must come first! So it’s time to get to work.