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I can’t believe it has been so long since I have blogged. Time really funs when you’re having flies, or so I hear. So many things have been happening. The most exciting thing that has happened is I sold my first book at Borders!!!! Can you believe it? A total stranger saw my book on the shelf and actually bought it! I still can’t believe it. I think it is because it was next to Paula Deens book. Thank you Paula.

We were audited for 2005 taxes. I just finished copying all of our documentation and mailing it off to that bastard uncle we call Sam. We shall see how that plays out. Hopefully that’s the last we will hear of it.


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I have been doing the graphic design and layout for a wonderful children’s book, Haberdashery and Henry by a fellow writer who has become a good friend. It is so bizarre to find out all that we have in common. And oddly enough, we found out that her oldest daughter knows my son and her boyfriend is a good friend of my youngest son. In fact, apparently her daughter has been to my house many times in the past when my youngest was living here. Small world. Anyway, we just got the final edit done on Rosemary’s book and the ISBN number has been applied for. She is having a book signing and pitch-in this Sunday.

Another friend, Deb, is moving into an awesome house that she and her husband just closed on. I want her new house. It really is the sort of house I would pick if we were to ever sell this house and move. So I helped Deb move some things to her new house and that has been keeping me busy.

And I went to the Indiana’s Best Book award last week. That was exciting. In fact, I even requested to be a judge myself next year. I got to meet the authors who wrote the books and that is always exciting for a bookworm like me.

Another thing keeping me busy has been my own book, The Night watchman. Writing on that is progressing nicely. I have quite a few chapters down on paper. Still a ways to go, but I hope to have everything completed by November.

I have been bitten by the Myspace bug unfortunately. I never got the whole hype and couldn’t see the point in Myspace. I got an account though and suddenly I get it. Oh do I get it.



But the main reason I have been too busy to blog? Harry Potter. A movie and the final book, all out within ten days of each other? Need I say more? Damn you Harry! You are cutting into my blogging time.

I am in the middle of writing a romance story that has yummy ghosts in it. I am so excited about the story, but where do I find the time to finish writing it? Between making blue raspberry snowcones, playing Barbies, watching Sponge Bob and coloring inside the lines I barely have a minute to myself. In fact, I can't remember the last time I went to the bathroom by myself. Seriously, I have a just turned seven year old reading Captain Underpants stories to me while I try to pee. Is it any wonder I am getting shy bladder?

How do other writers fit their writing into their schedule? Is there a trick to it? Do you get up in the middle of the night when the rest of the house is asleep in order to do your writing? Please, someone share the secret with me.

In addition, I had the great fortunate of being asked to do graphic design and editing on a new Children's book by a fellow author... whose not a fellow by the way. I always thought it was confusing to call your writing peers "Fellows". I digress though.



What a sheer joy! I predict this author will go places. Her Haberdashery and Henry series is going to be another "If you give a Pig a Pancake." Yes, she is THAT good! Keep your ear out for the name Rosemary Lalamas because she is going to be one of the great ones. And I will be able to say "I knew her when." Don't take my word on the books greatness though. Head on over to the books website and read the books description.

http://www.lulu.com/content/1006578
Click on the book to see a ten page preview of it.

Haberdashery and his faithful Airedale Henry are soon parted when a tornado hits. Taken in by Stella Sophie Thoren and her thirteen children, Henry has to choose if he should stay or go back to Haberdashery. Book one of the Haberdashery and Henry series, teaches us the lesson of good hygiene and the importance of family. A delight for any age!

Haberdashery and Henry will be available to the general public in about another week. Right now Rosemary is waiting to receive her "dummy" copy so she can approve it and the ISBN number can be assigned.

Bad blogger, bad! Don’t bother doing it for me, I am slapping my own hand for neglecting to blog. I have been wading in the swamp we call Myspace for the last week. I never got the obsession with Myspace. I get it now. I have even been guilty of parking my seven year old granddaughter in front of Sponge Bob re-runs so I can browse just a few more minutes on myspace. The problem is everone has a Myspace account so how can you not try to look up everyone you went to high school with or ever dated. Damn you Myspace, you time thief!



Something else has reared it’s ugly red, white and blue head in my life. If you are one of the people that read my old blog you may remember that last November I had the displeasure of being audited. It came at the worst possible time too. Not only was it Nano month (National Novel Writing Month) but it was also a few weeks before I was to go to Germany to visit my daughter. Nobody ever said uncle Sam was a considerate uncle. In fact, if you ask me, Uncle Sam is an ass of an uncle and I don’t like him anymore. Yes, we are being audited AGAIN! In November we were being audited for 2004’s taxes. Now we are being audited for 2005’s taxes. So what, will we be audited this November for 2006’s taxes? This is getting to be frustrating. The hubster thinks we have bad Juju. Does anyone know what to do for bad juju? I really need to do something to change our juju because our current Juju is cracked. Yes, we have a crack in our juju. Forget the ozone, fix my Juju instead. Yes, I just like saying Juju.



In writing news, cookbook two has been put in the dusty coffers for the moment while I work on the breakout novel of the century. It’s the exact sort of book I would want to read. So if it’s something I would want to read, of course the rest of the world would want to read it. I won’t give exact details on it yet, but I will admit our trip to North Carolina was partly due to research I was doing on the book. Gawd I love research. Speaking of which, I need to get back to. I will try to update every day again. I know, bad blogger, bad!

What’s that sound? Silence! Jas and her dad went to a friends house on a lake to spent the night and hang out all day. So silence once again presides. Ah... isn't it great. Silence is something that has been in short supply these days around Casa El Daisy. Since my oldest son moved in there has been constant noise and activity around here. I miss my quiet peaceful existence. Now the phone is constantly ringing, people dropping in and out, constant noise. How can a person write in conditions like this? They can’t! So I put a small computer desk in a corner of my bedroom with the hopes of sneaking away for a few hours to write each day. That was three days ago and I haven’t found the time to write even one line yet. This morning I got another bright idea. I would get a small handheld tape recorder and when brilliant lines hit me I would record them. Then, after Jas goes to bed I could sit down with the tape recorder and transcribe all of my brilliant thoughts into a book. So far the only words I have recorded are “testing, one two three.” But the day is young.



When the hubster, Jas and I were on vacation we happened upon a lovely country store that had the cutest gift shop and yummy snacks like roasted peanuts, peanut brittle, the best molasses cookies on the planet and something we had never tried before; boiled peanuts. The young girl behind the counter sold us on the virtues of a boiled peanut and before you could say peanut butter we were sitting at a picnic table on the front porch of Mackey’s Ferry Peanuts munching on boiled peanuts and washing them down with ice cold cokes. And they weren’t just any cokes, they were the old fashioned cokes in the small green bottles. You know what cokes I am talking about. The best cokes in the world! It was a damp rainy afternoon but it turned out to be one of our favorite moments of the vacation. It was so relaxing sitting there eating those yummy boiled peanuts and drinking cokes that we remembered from childhood. When we got home from vacation I emailed Mackey’s Ferry and asked them for the boiled peanut recipe. The owners Chris and Sharon were kind enough to send me the recipe. I ordered a five pound bag of raw peanuts and when they arrived yesterday afternoon I was ready to cook! The method Sharon told me of was using a pressure cooker. In an hour or two you had boiled peanuts. I wanted to experiment however. You know me and cooking experiments, lest we forget the six lemon icebox pie recipes I tried in my search for the perfect lemon icebox pie. I found the Paula Deen method of making boiled peanuts online. They involve a pound of peanuts, a cup of salt (yes a cup) and three hours of constant boiling. I boiled the peanuts five hours last night using the Paula Deen method. They were still crunchy. I let them sit in their water overnight to hopefully soften and I continued to boil them today. They have been boiling for a total of seven hours and would you believe those peanuts are STILL slightly crunchy! The moral of the story is if you want to try boiled peanuts (which I highly recommend) email the owners of Mackey’s Ferry and ask them for their famous boiled peanut recipe.

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July already? Time certainly funs when you’re having flies. Speaking of fun, that was the topic of today during our trip to a certain department store. Jas decided she wanted to ride the pretty pink horsey. We put in our penny (Hey, it’s the Midwest – life is cheap here), and off she rode into the sunset with Gwanma chirping loudly “Aagghh, that horse is trying to buck you off Jas, WATCH OUT!” Yes, people were looking as they walked by. Yes, they thought I was waiting for the short bus. Yes, I probably was waiting for the short bus.


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One of our purchases at Meijer’s was a huge pack of sparklers. You can’t have 4th of July without sparklers, everyone knows that! We couldn’t wait until 4th of July, or that matter even until dark. So off we went to the back yard, when we got home, to light up some sparklers. The doggies love it when Jas is around and hover around her because not only does she drop food accidentally, but she also gives doggie back rubs. (I’m not kidding on that one either). When her sparkler lit up though those dogs were out of there like a shot. I think I got a bigger kick out of watching the dogs freak out than I did of watching the sparklers sparkle.

Something exciting happened yesterday. I mean really exciting. I am talking “pee your pants” exciting. The local Borders here put five copies of my book on their shelves. They put two in the local authors section and three in the cooking section. I feel bonefied!