Imogen Howson's Blog, page 4

The weekend in terms of products

Friday:

For youth group: Toilet roll, balloons, shaving foam.  Pasta, chocolate-cake-in-mugs.

For Gloworm: E45 Cream, antihistamine tablets.

Sunday:

For everyone: Steak and Kidney Pudding, roast vegetables, gravy, treacle tart, custard.

For Gloworm: E45 Cream, antihistamine tablets.

Monday:

For Gloworm: Chicken Cup-a-Soup, tinned tomato soup, calamine lotion, paracetamol.

For me: Paracetamol, wine.

Tuesday:

For Gloworm: Chicken Cup-a-Soup, tinned tomato soup, ginger beer, Dairy Milk bars, paracetamol, calamine lotion.

For me: Paracetamol, coffee.

Yes, what looked on Thursday like eczema, and turned on Friday into what looked like really bad eczema, on Sunday was clearly not just eczema but hives, and on Monday was diagnosed as neither eczema nor hives, but Hand, Foot and Mouth Disease.  Which is a virus in the same family as chickenpox, and the only cure is waiting for it to go.

I don't have Gloworm's symptoms, but I am feeling kind of flu-y, so either I'm fighting off the virus…or I'm working my way towards demonstrating that I didn't fight it off at all.  I do most sincerely hope it's the former.

 

Hopscotch

So I went to the doctor and explained I hurt my knee playing hopscotch, and he told me that as long as it didn't swell up (it didn't) or lock when I bent it (it doesn't) I just had some bruised cartilage and it would get better by itself.

I asked if there was anything I should be doing to help it heal.

And he said, "Don't play hopscotch."

Spiced cider

It's a horrid cold day here – no frost or anything interesting, just that damp cold that goes all the way through you.  I felt bad for my daughters having to come home from the bus stop in the cold, so I had spiced cider waiting for them when they arrived.  Now my whole kitchen smells of Christmas.

And in case it's cold where you are, too (which it is, unless you're Serenity Woods), I include the recipe for you.

Spiced Cider

4 pints/2 litres dry cider
juice 2 oranges
8 oz (220g) soft brown sugar
2 sachets mulled wine spice or 16 allspice berries (optional)
24 whole cloves
8 cinnamon sticks
half of a whole nutmeg, grated

Place ingredients in saucepan, warm gently until piping hot but not boiling. If you're going to keep this for longer than a couple of hours, take out the spices or it starts to taste like cough medicine!

Juggling again

Entering into a time of extreme busyness (oh good, just before Christmas).  For all excellent writing-related reasons (in really good news, I'm at over 18,000 words on Linked-the-sequel, Mirrored, and I finally like the damn thing!), but I feel a little frantic all the same.

Right now, I'm catching up on some work while Abstract cooks dinner (tuna noodle casserole from my American cookbook), and tomorrow I need to phone Merry Maids to see if my fabulously thorough cleaner can come for a bit longer every week.

I also need to phone the surgery.  Falling down the stairs didn't hurt me, beyond making my triceps very sore (I reached behind myself as I fell and grabbed the bannisters, which saved me from falling all the way to the bottom but did my arm muscles very little good), but in the same week I played impromptu hopscotch with the youth group, and have done something bad to my knee.  A week later it's no better, so I have to go see the doctor.

Is it really bad that I don't feel I have time to see the doctor?

Playing with the cool girls

In between doing edits for Linked, and editing a (fabulous!) manuscript for Samhain, and struggling with the hell that is Telepathic Twins Save the World, I've joined The Lucky 13s, a group blog of YA and children's authors debuting in 2013.  I just spent far too much time reading about their books, and oh my goodness, 2013 is a long time away to wait for some of these stories!

Who else wants to read The Assignment by Elsie Chapman, for instance?  Or Bruised by Sarah Skilton?  And yes, the first is about (sort of) twins, and the second has a heroine with my name – how cool is that?

I hope to blog regularly over there in the new year, and 2012 will be filled with luck and excitement and squeeing over cover art as we prepare for our debut year.  Well, I expect, anyway.

In other news, I went to a chocolate tasting and demonstration, and tried out the new Indian restaurant in the next-door village, and read lots of Kindle books, and fell down the freaking stairs.

Overheard at home

Various things said over the last few days:

"Don't lick it.  It's a systemic flea killer."

"If I'd known it was meant to be funny I'd have fake laughed."

"I want a laundry chute!"

"My food is problematic."

(Yes, the funniest one was a quote from Firefly.)

The beauty, the beauty

Emerging briefly from my editing cave, it strikes me that I should update my blog.

But every time I come here all I can do is admire my beautiful new graphics, courtesy of Hot Damn Designs.

I have matching business cards too.  Oh the happy.  When I was ordering them at Vistaprint the other day I had to restrain myself from ordering matching pens and mugs and banners and…wait for it…car magnets.  How awesome would our dull dull blue estate car look with huge magnetic business cards all over it?

Celebrating MYSELF

So, half my advance arrived, in a cheque (in dollars) that caused some consternation at the local bank.  (Assistant to colleague in hushed voice: "There's a customer with a very large cheque.")

I'm investigating accountants, and talking to a web designer who's going to design me a custom header for my website (and matching business cards!).  I've bought some new RSI gloves and am going to be buying a new computer chair and possibly a new desktop computer–and laptop when this one dies.  All sensible, career-oriented, business-expensey type things.

And, as a not sensible, not career-oriented, definitely not business-expensey, purchase, I bought myself a charm bracelet.  I love them anyway, have never had one, and it seemed like the perfect way of commemorating career-related milestones.

So now I have a little silver charm bracelet with four silver charms: a champagne glass to commemorate getting my (fabulous!) agent, a red-enamelled apple to commemorate my manuscript getting to New York publishers' desks, a book to commemorate Linked's sale, and a piggy bank to commemorate receiving the advance.  You have no idea how many times I mistyped commemorate in that last paragraph.

I'm coming up to a super-busy time.  I've got edits for Linked coming this week, I'm writing hard on the sequel, Telepathic Twins Save the World, I've got a partial and synopsis for another book in with my agent for her thoughts, I've offered a contract on another of my Samhain authors' books and so need to be editing that as soon as the paperwork is all through, and I'm doing a critique for one of my critique partners.  Plus all the usual work/life/family stuff.  And – oh heavens – Christmas is coming up.  And I have to take all three cats to have their teeth cleaned.  I still have scars on my hand from the last time they needed a trip to the vet – in July.  Yes.

But it's okay.  Because I have my charm bracelet.  It says, See what you did?  Bet you can do it again.

Pizza and cake

The last couple of weeks have not been the best ever, I'm sorry to say.  The girls did get their weekend with The Model Auntie and Dr T-shirt, but Abstract and I didn't spend the weekend in London.  No details, sorry, mostly because it's not my place to share.

We did end up spending a couple of nights with Abstract's brother and sister-in-law, which was nice, and I came to the conclusion that they must be some of the most useful people to have in your family.  His brother is a chef, and his sister-in-law is a lawyer.  You have an emergency and they're pretty useful to have around!  Abstract and I, hah – strategic comissioning manager and SF/F writer?  Not quite so useful.

Positive stuff is that everyone has now signed my S&S contract, and I should be going into edits with my new editor, Navah Wolfe, in September.  I am very kindly disposed towards my new editor.  Not only does she love Linked, she sent me the Very Exciting Huge Box, and just last week she sent me the sequel to one of the books in the Very Exciting Huge Box.  Dust and Decay, the sequel to Rot and Ruin.  I read it.  I hope there'll be another sequel!  Really good post-apocalyptic zombie books.  I totally recommend them.  In fact, they've kind of got me hooked on zombies (SO much scarier than vampires), so now I need to find more zombie books that are equally good.

Other positive stuff (specially for a YA writer!) is that as of today I have two teenage daughters!  My Gloworm, who used to stomp around in a nappy, trailing an armful of minkets (translation: blankets), is now an impossibly slim and elegant Goth girl with shiny dark hair, eyeliner up to here – and, well, legs up to here too.

She had a sleepover party tonight, and I have to tell you teenage sleepover parties are so much more civilised than the ones they had when they were little.  We ordered pizza, and while Gloworm and friends ate Meateor and Cheese and Tomato pizza in the sitting room and watched Glee, and Sparkler and friend ate a customized-beyond-all-reason Half-and-Half pizza in our bedroom and watched Harry Potter on my laptop, Abstract and I drank red wine in the kitchen and shared a Firenze gourmet pizza.

And then we had cake.  And this was the cake.

That's what you have when you're a thirteen-year-old Goth girl (and assuming your older sister can wield a piping bag!).

Happy birthday, Gloworm.  And thanks for decorating the cake, Sparkler.

The Very Exciting Huge Box

After my super-exciting time in mid-June, I'd hardly begun to calm down yet when, one morning, a van pulled up outside the house and a man walked up my drive with a Huge Box in his arms.  I'd just recently ordered an iPod for Gloworm, so first I thought, "Huh, that's a very big box for an iPod."  Then I saw Simon & Schuster written on the side.  At which point, insanely, I thought it must be my contracts being delivered, for some reason, in the Very Exciting Huge Box.  And then, even more insanely, I thought it must be my author copies of Linked (even though the book hasn't been edited, has no cover art and isn't due to be released for nearly two years).

I signed for the Very Exciting Huge Box and took it into my kitchen, determined to find out what Simon & Schuster were really sending me.

The Very Exciting Huge Box was well wrapped up with lots and lots of tape.  Clearly my fingernails would not, in this case, be up to the task.  Stronger measures were called for.

The Very Exciting Huge Box was full of books!  With a note from my new editor!  It wasn't contracts or as-yet-non-existent books – it was a present.

This is my Very Excited Face.

I took the books out.  It took a little while, because there were twelve.  Twelve new books!  For me.

This is me holding my twelve new books.

And this is me sharing all twelve with the internet.