Survival--Of The Most Frustrated

Thursday, December 15

19 days until Release of
BOUND AND DETERMINED







In a Handbasket...
Okay, so all my plans to get a lot of work done on my manuscript in progress before the release of BOUND AND DETERMINED are going to hell. Everyone wants something, and they want it now. My horoscope informs me that someone will finally realize how smart and valuable I am. Yeah, at work they realized all right--and dumped tons of work on me. I'm forced to cancel my dentist appointment--again--and be late for my girls' reunion dinner with some old friends. Grrr!

11:30 - It was our Bah Humbug potluck at the office. Good company. We all agree that, despite the sucky work situation with the reorganization, we hate it most because we're a good team with a lot of trust and we're most likely going to be broken up. Such is corporate crap.

2:00 - Meeting with new Big Boss. She reassures everyone that we have a job in the new organization and that there's plenty of work to go around. The latter, I believe. The former... let's just say that after 14 years of corporate bliss, I'm a little on the cynical side.

Bound to lose my temper...
5:00 - Why is it that when you're in a hurry, everything seems to take twice as long to come to fruition? I spend a few spare minutes between work and my reunion dinner sending emails all over the place to get chats and interviews and online promotions set up for BOUND AND DETERMINED, which is set to splash across bookshelves everywhere in less than three weeks. I'm time-pressed. It's crazy at work, it's the last rush before the holidays, I'm expecting company, I'm behind on a book, yada, yada, yada. Why does my email choose this moment to decide to go down and screw everything up? Half the people I tried to reach said they never received anything from me. Is this bad karma? Did I piss someone off somewhere along the way without realizing it? Geez!

The good news of the day:
Dinner was a blast, the Japanese food was really yummy. I quit after one fabulous Cosmopolitan since I had to drive home. But I did clean up in the White Elephant exchange. One champagne bucket and a Barnes & Noble gift card later, I'm styling. Sweet!

And Determined to beat my head against the wall!

So I'm sitting in pins and needles, waiting to find out if Berkley will be able to spice up the cover for my July 2006 book, STRIP SEARCH. It's the next book in a loosely-related series and follows some of the characters introduced in BOUND AND DETERMINED. But no word yet on what, if anything, can be done about the cover. Deidre suggests that maybe the hero's hand could be sliding down toward the heroine's...um, backside. My editor apparently laughed and said that the hero shouldn't be copping a feel. Deidre and I are confused by that remark. This hero is a guy who's all guy, if you catch my drift... Why wouldn't he cop a feel, especially when she's so dang willing? In the book, the hero is posing as a male stripper, and yet no clothes are coming off. Hmm, it looks way too wholesome for what I write. Maybe tomorrow will bring good news.

Either way, here's the almost final cover...




So another day gone and what have I accomplished?

The list said:

-Moving forward on promotion plan for BOUND AND DETERMINED - COMPLETE (Yeah!)
-A full day at the office - COMPLETE (Whether I wanted to complete it or not...)
-Child's homework - COMPLETE (But I can't take credit for this. Hubby handled it beautifully!)

-Work on existing manuscript - OOPS! (Better luck tomorrow. I REALLY need to be writing!)

11:15 pm - Now I'm going to bed. As Scarlet said, "After all, tomorrow is another day." I don't usually put work off, but at this point, it's either sleep or the coma. Comas don't sound fun.

Shelley Bradley