I’m trying to get back into the swing of things, but I’ve had a case of the blahs. I’m working on it. Sometimes the blahs just happen.

In great news, we finally got our stuff from Chicago! It’s SO nice to have our own things again. We did get rid of almost all our furniture but the few pieces we kept we’ve mostly been able to put into our flat here in London (except our massive old hall tree). And Max is SO excited to have a bunch of his old stuff too — stuff he’d forgotten about completely! It was like a second Christmas. I’ve also got my supply of my own books again, so might have to figure out something to do with that. Like I have some hardbacks left and I don’t think you can buy those anymore (just paperbacks in the stores now, from what I understand). So if people are interested, maybe I’ll list ‘em (signed, of course) for sale here. Very limited supply though. We’ll see.

And in EVEN BETTER NEWS, I’ve got two blurbs for CAT GIRL’S DAY OFF now! One from the awesome Saundra Mitchell:

“When I need to read something smart and funny and completely original, I turn to Kimberly Pauley. CAT GIRL’S DAY OFF is a manic, madcap adventure that satisfies from the first page to the last.”—Saundra Mitchell, author of Shadowed Summer and The Vespertine

and one from the equally awesome and lovely Alex Flinn:

“I read and enjoyed Cat Girl’s Day Off and would really like to provide a blurb.  How about “Cat Girl’s Day Off was such a fun, adventurous romp!  I couldn’t stop reading it . . . with my cat.”—Alex Flinn, author of Beastly and Bewitching

I just love that! And, by the way, if you haven’t read any books by either of them yet…what are you waiting for? Love, love, love them which makes getting blurbs from them that much better.

And I also realize that I have not yet posted an (ahem) December Sneak Peek for CAT GIRL’S DAY OFF yet. Er. So I owe you one. And one for this month. But since I’ve been so terrible, I will, in fact, post THREE sneak peeks this month. So stay tuned.

How do you get through Writer’s Block? Is there any such thing? Or is it just a bogeyman myth to frighten writers?

Who's a pretty bird?

In other news, Happy (American) Thanksgiving! It was strange celebrating it over here in the UK since they don’t have the holiday (really — it goes right to Christmas here as far as decorations and holiday stuff).

But we did the whole thing here in our flat — turkey, mashed potatoes, stuffing, saying thanks… I do love this holiday. It’s not about taking (other than taking another helping), it’s about thanking and appreciating.

We’ve also got up our Christmas tree now and it’s starting to feel real joyful around here. Happy everything to you and yours!

For one, I came up with an idea for a new website, talked some of my author peeps into going into it with me and Shazam! made a website and launched it. In like a week and a half. Booyah!

I’d like to invite you to take a gander at Read It and Laugh, a brand spankin’ new website dedicated to funny books, funny authors, and funny readers. I hope you’ll take a look! It’s kinda my response to the whole “O woe is me, all YA books are DARK and EVIL now” thing that’s been going around. And those other authors I talked into going along with me? Some seriously funny people. I ain’t kidding. (Plus, you know me. There’s chances to win stuff. Go check out the Funny List, for one).

Let’s see…other than that…

Well, The Max is off school for two weeks for what they call “half-term” here. So my writing time is kinda shot anyway. And now he’s gone and gotten himself some kind of lovely virus and an evil-wicked temperature (103 F or 39.7 C). So there’s that. The poor Max.

I’m not even gonna mention the spit up that accompanies said illness. Not. Gonna. Do. It.

And I joined a gym. Been trying to get back into shape and people, let me tell you, it’s gonna be a LONG haul. But I’m working on it. The gym has a pool too, so I’ve taken The Max swimming a few times (when he was still well and you couldn’t cook hot dogs on his forehead).

And I finally went to an eye doctor and got my eye checked out. This is where the blog post title comes in. See, about 7 or 8 months ago, The Max accidentally got me with a Lego brick right to the eye. He stuck it out the same time I turned to look at him. No chance to blink. Nothing. Lego straight in the eye. Hurt like…well, hurt like a lotta words I don’t want to use. For like an hour. And almost every morning (and sometimes randomly during the day), when I first open my right eye, I feel like someone is stabbing me with a serrated knife. It’s been so long though and it’s so weird that it’s only in the mornings that I was starting to wonder if I was crazy (not my normal crazy, but crazy-crazy).

Turns out it’s perfectly normal. Apparently I have this huge jagged gash in my cornea from when he got me with that brick. STILL. From like 8 months ago. And overnight it starts to heal and put new cells or whatnot together. Which then sometimes adhere to my eyelid. And then when I first open my eyes in the morning…kabang! I literally rip those shiny new cells right off my cornea. Hence the pain.

And my husband wonders why I hate mornings.

The bad news is that it can take (obviously) a long time to heal. And last night while The Max was thrashing around in a feverish daze, he got me IN THE SAME FREAKING EYE. *sigh* I may start wearing an eye patch. (kidding) (mostly)

In writing-ish news, the copy edit phase is now complete on CAT GIRL’S DAY OFF. Woot! Now it’s the publisher’s turn to go do all their fancy stuff. I’ll get one more look at it in the final proof stage and then…book baby! Probably in April.

Now *that’s* better than a Lego brick to the eye.

Let me explain.

Back before I was a PUBLISHED author (and yes, you should read that in a big booming voice, because that’s how it feels to you before you’re published), I had a blog. In fact, you could call me an early adopter. I’d had a blog for years. The majority of those posts have actually been imported into this blog now (under the category My Old Writing/Personal Blog — it’s all from when I lived in Kentucky and Florida and was writing but not published).

I was interesting (some of the time). Funny, even (not always intentionally). Random people I didn’t know read my blog. But most of all, I was me, warts and all (I don’t literally mean warts, because that would be kind of gross–no offense to anyone who actually has warts or anything–I mean it in a metaphorical kind of way…and here I’ve figured out I should probably just have skipped the warts thing entirely. Oh well.). I didn’t sugarcoat things (much). When I was feeling ambivalent or scared or excited or whatever, that was how I posted. Nowadays, there’s the pressure to put up a good front. We’re not supposed to talk about the bad things (oooooh scary shivers). We’re supposed to put a positive spin on things. We’re not supposed to piss anyone off.

So when I had to share with fans that (some of whom write me on a daily or weekly basis) that my old publisher would not be publishing any more Sucks to Be Me books, I had to do it in as positive a way as possible when, if I’m being honest, I feel really sucky and miserable about it (don’t get me wrong, I love my editor and I don’t blame her at all…it comes down to business decisions and publishing is a business. And they’ve gone back to just publishing their core D&D stuff.). And when I talk about possibly releasing the third book in serialized eBook format myself, I’ve tried not to let on how much that really terrifies me and worries me that it will be a complete waste of time, even if it would make some diehard fans really happy.

Or, on the flip side, when talking about the new book I’m working on, I’m supposed to keep it all close to the vest and not let out too many details. So I’ve talked about my Sekrit Project or the dark thing I’m working on rather than actually coming out and saying, hey, I’m working on a new book. My working title is Ask Me. It’s quite dark, but I’m pretty excited about it. It’s got a girl heroine who starts out really kind of paralyzed by her situation and her otherworldly abilities and it’s got a couple of hunky guys, each of whom may or may not be a murderer. It’s got some funny moments, but mostly it’s dark. I kinda worry that it’s different than what my fans are expecting, but on the other hand, it may open doors to me because, honestly, it’s got a really good hook and could probably be considered really commercial. There’s one big publisher potentially interested in it already based just on the hook alone which, yeah, I didn’t actually share just now, but that’s because even though I’ve decided to share more, I do have to keep some things back and this is the big wild and wooly Internet.

So. Anyway.

I really am going to try and be much more me. There may be more sentence fragments and there’s definitely an excellent chance there will be a plethora of parentheses.

Feel free to ask me any questions. I’d love to answer ‘em. You know, in the spirit of openness and whatnot.

Grace

We named her Grace
because there was not a graceful bone in her body.
As a kitten, she would fall off of everything,
a skinny pile of soft black fur and big eyes.

She grew into herself
and became a diva of a cat
with a tummy that swayed as she swaggered
and moves that would put a wrestler to shame.

She was not a delicate cat…
no lithe, undulating tabby
padding through the night on tip-toe paws.
She was the opera singer of cats.

That is how I want to remember her,
larger than life,
vocal and insistent, but still sweet and soft,
always wanting to be near, but not too close…

A true cat.

He really loves it. And me, I get some writing time in the morning now! This week is still kind of unusual though — my husband’s mother is visiting and he’s taken off work, so it’s not “business as usual” around here by any means. But great for Tony, since he can actually have a chance to walk The Max to school (it’s just around the corner from our flat, which is AWESOME).

The Max also has his very own blog (and twitter) now. Kinda crazy, I know.

Never said I was sane, did I?

As for me, I’m working on the FINAL revision pass on Cat Girl’s Day Off. I am attempting to add some more Impending Doom per editorial order. Just about done.

Yay!

AND I also have a shiny new pile of Still Sucks to Be Me paperbacks that my publisher sent to me last week. Shiny, shiny.

So. Good mood + stack of shiny new books = a giveaway!

Want to win a signed copy (plus some tattoos, etc? and who knows what else I’ll stick in there)? Do any (or all) of the following to get an entry:

• Tweet: #stillsuckstobeme unless I win the signed copy of @KimberlyRPauley ‘s book! RT to enter!
• Post a link to this blog post on Facebook and/or MySpace and/or on your own blog
• Sign up for my newsletterand email me at kim (at) kimberlypauley (dot) com to tell me you did
• and, oh heck, anything else you can think of that you think should get you an entry (just tell me about it)

(And hey, if you happen to be a Spanish speaker, I’ll send you a copy of the Spanish version (signed) instead!)

Open internationally (or wherever people read books). Enter by August 5th 2011 (a completely random date I picked out of my head and holding no particular significance).

Luck to both of us!

So I had the bright idea (ha) a few weeks ago that it would be cool to make him a light out of Legos. I looked online and saw some examples and even a few you could buy, but ultimately decided to just try my (our) own hands at it.

We tried with regular sized Legos first, but we didn’t have enough. We’ve mostly got sets (Kingdom ones or Star Wars ones) and I wasn’t about to break a set to make the light. Heck, it took Tony three hours to put the big castle together. So yesterday the light went on (ha) and I realized we had all these Lego Duplo blocks that he only plays with occasionally since he started getting into “real” Legos.

So this is what we came up with. The beauty of it is that you can always remake it again later if you want. Our first try was a lot smaller and not quite as interactive.