Opening Pandora

Filed in: Life | Wild Ramblings | Writing

Still in “catch-up” mode. I can’t believe how far behind I am, and not just emails and work stuff. My house has become a disaster area, and I have friends I haven’t talked to in weeks. Trying to balance two careers when both are escalating has become an intriguing adventure in forgetfulness some days.

Today, I attacked the house, raking leaves, cleaning ceiling fans, sweeping floors with a vacuum that’s almost more trouble than it’s worth. Ran errands and shredded about 100 credit card offers that had been piling up in my office.

Tomorrow – the bathrooms (shudder). And I still need to get the dog to the vet (she’s overdue on her shots), and find a really good repair person to fix some stuff on the house and clean the gutters.

Tonight, however, I’m planning a soundtrack.

On the ACFW loop recently, they have had a discussion about “music to write by.” Many writers compose with music in the background, either to help them focus or to set the stage of the book. I use it for both, and tonight I’ve been setting up radio stations on Pandora, trying out different music styles and seeing what will work for A Good Day for Murder.

If you have not used Pandora to sample different artists, you might give it a try. It has limits, but I’ve not found a better site so far to try out items for my “soundtracks” without digging out 100 or so CDs from my own collection. (Yes, there’s an iPod in my future, I’m sure.)

One of tomorrow’s tasks is to go through the contract for A Good Day for Murder, which arrived today. With a due date of March 1, I’ve got to boogie on a number of related tasks, including the art fact sheets (for the cover) and a preliminary search for photos that represent a variety of ideas for the cover. And right now, I don’t have a clue . . .

And you may think I’m crazy with this next update, but there’s a method to the madness, believe me. I now have three blogs. This came about because I need a blogger account to participate in the CRAFTIE Ladies of Suspense blog, and my publisher wants us to link blogs to our social networks. They all say the same thing (I’m not THAT nuts), and I hope it’ll make my books and me a little easier to find on the web. We’ll see.

For the curious, the blogs are this one, as well as on blogger.com, and MySpace. Only the CRAFTIE one will be unique. My first post there will be January 15th.

Finally, I have one housekeeping note, website-wise. This is the last week of my first quarterly contest. The drawing will be done on January 10th, and the prize basket/box will be sent before the end of the month.

The next contest starts January 1st, but I don’t yet know what the “guest book” will be. I’ll announce it on the website as soon as I know.

That’s it for now. On Monday, a new devotional. In the meantime, I hope you have a great weekend.

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