After a lot of thought, I've decided to move my blog to Wordpress. It's more customizable and more organized. Eventually I'll be installing Wordpress on my site, but for now, my blog address has changed. *g*

I'll be posting on my new blog later today, and I'll also be announcing the contest winner, so don't forget to check it out!

http://elisaadams.wordpress.com

It's that time of year again. The time where motivation wanes. I usually have trouble keeping myself focused from September all the way through January, but this year I've been lucky. I've been able to keep working at a pretty steady rate...until now. The past couple of days, I haven't gotten much done. I keep thinking about presents I need to buy, and cookies I need to make--not to mention laundry that needs to be folded and the near-constant stream of dishes to be done. If I let it, writing could very easily take a back seat.

I've hit the 50% mark on my anthology contribution, so I think I'm still doing okay. My production isn't nearly where I want it, but at least I'm working.

For the writers out there, how do you handle the holiday slump? For the readers, do you find you read more during the holiday season, or less?

If you haven't entered the contest for a print copy of STS yet, there's still time. See the post below for details.

I got my print author copies of Settling the Score via UPS a little while ago. This is the first time I've gotten author copies of my print books, and it's a surreal experience. *g* I keep picking them up and leafing through the pages.

I'm giving away a signed copy. For anyone who's interested, send me an email (elisa@elisaadams.com) with Settling the Score in the subject line, so I can keep these entries separate from my regular monthly contest. I'll draw the winner on Friday.

I just finished reading this book on Saturday night. I have to say, the first few pages were a little slow for me, but once I got into it, I couldn't put it down. So many twists that every time I thought I had the story figured out, I was wrong. I really appreciate a suspense book that keeps me guessing until the very last few pages.

I didn't really like Elise at first, but I think not really knowing whether she was a victim or a liar was part of the fun of reading the book.

I'm reading Sleeping with Fear by Kay Hooper right now. So far, it's really good. Lots of unanswered questions, so it's keeping me reading. I just ordered a bunch of new books, including Thomas Harris's Hannibal Rising. I've read all his other books, and I'm really looking forward to the new one. It seems like it'll be an interesting read.

What have you been reading lately? Any upcoming books you're looking forward to?

I hope everyone had a great weekend!

Whew. I'm wiped. Mini-diva is wiped...and decked out in brand new dance shorts and a wrap top we bought from the vendors. She did get to meet Travis Wall, and she got his autograph, but someone stole it during lunch time. Pretty sad, in a room full of 7-10 year olds, that someone would do that.

There were just a couple of mishaps of note -- Yesterday morning, my father--who drove in with us--backed his brand new car into a parking garage support beam. No damage, surprisingly, and we're all still laughing about how it happened today. *g* And then this morning, after we'd made it to the 3rd floor to drop the mini-diva off, the fire alarm went off. We made it down to the first floor before they told us it was just faulty wiring and we were safe to go ahead back upstairs. Sigh.

I'd been hoping to get some writing done each night this weekend, once we'd gotten home for the evening, but it didn't work out that way. Tomorrow, it's back to work. Sometime in the next week or so, I'm going to be blogging about some of my favorite holiday ebooks, so stay tuned. :)

The mini-diva has a 2 day dance workshop in Boston this weekend. She was chosen as a showcase dancer in her age group, and from what her teacher tells me, she was chosen because she's the highest level dancer her age at the studio. She's very excited, and I thought it was pretty cool, too. :) Plus, Travis Wall from So You Think You Can Dance is teaching the hip-hop class she'll be taking, and she's a little starstruck already.

My middle one went to his father's house for the weekend, but my oldest wants to come into town with me. It's about a 45 minute drive, and we'll be down there for 6 hours each day. Unfortunately, the 70 degree weather we've had for the past few days isn't going to be around tomorrow. It's going to drop into the 40s. So we'll be bundled up as we're walking around looking for things to do. *g*

What does everyone else have planned for the weekend? Anything exciting?

I've been working on polishing my first/third person paranormal for way too long now. Most of it was written over a year ago, but then set aside while I worked on other projects. Now I've taken it out and dusted it off, and managed to get all but the last two chapters (which aren't written yet) revised. By tomorrow, I should have it finished, and then I've got a couple of novellas to write before I go back to work on my Ghost Writers anthology story. One of my editors is interested in taking a look at the paranormal ms, so with any luck I'll have some good news to post about it soon.

Working on something I hadn't looked at for a while was interesting. There was a lot about my writing I had to fix. I don't want to say I've matured as a writer in the past year, *g* because I really don't know if I have, but some things have definitely changed. I cringed more than a few times when making corrections, but there were those moments, too, where I thought the writing wasn't too bad.

I'm not one of those writers who can love everything they've written...in fact, once I finish edits on a book, I really prefer not to look at it again. Ever. ;) This can cause a few problems when they galleys come in and I have to force myself to sit down and look at them.

It's raining tonight. And cold. One of those nights I feel like curling up on the couch and wrapping up in a blanket. I didn't get much writing done today, since I'm still catching up from missing a night of sleep over the weekend. I read for a little while instead--Sandra Brown's Ricochet. I've been on a suspense kick lately and bought a bunch of new books I really didn't need, since my TBR shelves are already full enough as it is. *g*

Have you read any good books lately?