Jennifer Crusie's Blog, page 30

Happiness is an Inflatable Play Tent

Okay, stay with me here. The ad for an inflatable bubble-like play tent popped up, and I could immediately see it on my back patio (very small patio) with a mattress inside it, and me inside it, too, with a book watching the rain fall. Of course it would be insufferably hot in the summer and bone-chillingly cold in the winter, so there would probably be three days a year I could use it, if ever, but for the five seconds I thought about reading in there while the rain fell around me, it was heaven. I think it’s time to find a psychiatrist. In the meantime, I’m going to pretend it floats, so I could be reading inside it with cookies and milk as it floated down a nice river. Yes, that could never happen, but it’s a writing rule that knowing it could never happen does not mean you must stop thinking about it. In fact, I think it means you must think about it.

Happiness is no forbidden thoughts.

What made you happy this week?

You know, it was only later I realized there was no way to get into this thing. Maybe you put the kid in first and then blow it up? This idea needs work.

This is a Good Book Thursday, May 16, 2024

This week I read short stories about murders on trains from the Golden Age. Because that was about all I could handle.

What did you handle in reading this week?

Working Wednesday, May 15, 2024

The white board has been launched and I have post-its with writing on them. Need I say more?

What are you working on? (Extra points if there’s a white board.)

Crusie’s Guide to Art 6

“Numa Pompilius receives the laws of Rome from the nymph Egeria,” Felice Gianni, 1806.
What I want to know is, what was a nymph doing with the laws of Rome, and who are those guys watching them?

Happiness is a Plan

I’ve been sitting in my living room trying to figure out where I want things. I did manage to switch the couch and the long table around so the couch is up against the window, and got everything cleared off of it so Veronica and I can sit there while I work, so that’s been a win. But I still have furniture in the wrong places, in particular two tables with shelves, a console, and TV cabinet and four walls they go on, and I’ve been switching them around in my head, trying to figure how they’d best work with the problems in the room, and then it came to me, exactly how to fix all of it, and I made a plan. Which is so much better than, “There’s a problem here, what am I going to do to solve it?” Same with Very Nice Funerals which is a damn good book, but it has problems–we’re on the truck draft now–and I’m trying to figure out how to fix my part of it–Bob has his part in shape already–but I have a white board and I am sure that by tomorrow night I will have a plan and that will make me happy

Happiness is a plan.

How did you find happiness this week, planned or unplanned?

This is a Good Book Thursday, May 9, 2024

I’m reading Bob’s revision of Arresting Anna (remember that one? the pick up in Vegas that led to the FBI art crimes unit?) and making notes. We’re thinking about doing a series on art crimes with a mixed community of agents, consultants, and general miscreants, but that’ll be next year. Tonight, I’ll be reading Bob’s revision and continued writing on Very Nice Funerals with the idea of finishing it, or at least coming close because I’ve been a real drag on this collaboration lately and I need to stop up.

I also kind of want to reread some Michael Gilbert and, if I can get my TV moved and hooked up again, watch some Leverage, which Bob was not impressed with but which I adore. I think art crimes novels with a Leverage vibe would be great, so I have to do my research.

What research/books did you read this week?

Working Wednesday, May 8, 2024

I had an epiphany last night. I was rereading a hockey romance because that always relaxes me–I know what’s going to happen so I can leave the book at any time, and it’s a hockey romance so I know it’ll end okay–and I started to think about the list of things I had to do. The epiphany? I wanted to do all of them. They were all things that were going to make me happy: cooking for the freezer (vegetable soup and stir fry so I can get fast healthy meals), getting the Damned Boys’ stories started now that Rocky Start is off my plate, doing the self-portrait steps that Rose does in RS to see if those will work for the day break pages, going back to VNF tomorrow when Bob sends it back, painting half of the back of my folding white board gold so I can collage with a print of St. Lucy, painting one of stained footstools blue (I think I’ll do that outside, it’s so beautiful here), rearranging the last of living room furniture so I can put up a progress photo, sorting and counting my yarn, getting the guest room rearranged into a more usable craft room . . . I could go on, there’s more, but it’s all stuff I want to do. Okay, I also have to do my taxed, but it’ll be a thrill when they’re done, and I have to take out the trash, but I love going outside here at night because it’s so safe and quiet (no bears) so I can take the trash out at 3AM and it’s not a problem. Most of it is out there, but there’ll be at least another bad that I can just toddle out there in the still of the night and I do love that.

Key takeaway: Work at what you love. Yes, I know, easy to say, hard to accomplish, but when you’ve got it, it’s not work at all anymore. Like going to the grocery with a good pal, it’s more play than work even while you’re searching for snow peas and annoyed because there’s no baby bok chop AGAIN. (Thanks for going shopping with me yesterday, Pat. You’re the best.)

What work did you do this week?

Crusie’s Guide to Art

The Beguiling of Merlin, 1874 by Edward Burne-Jones, at the Lady Lever Art Gallery

Argh Author: Anne Stuart’s Return to Mariposa

Never ask a good friend to blurb her own book because you get this: “Krissie’s got a new book out, a modern romantic suspense called RETURN TO MARPOSA. She made me read it and it wasn’t half-bad, so go out and buy it.” Okay, Krissie, aka Anne Stuart, does have a new book out, and it is a romantic suspense called Return to Mariposa with a gorgeous cover, but it was excellent (I got to beta) and you should go out and buy it. As Krissie says, “. . .it has all the Stuart requisites, a dark, brooding hero, hidden identities, a soupcon of violence and a happy ending. It’s available at all the usual suspects, including Amazon. Oh, you wanted more detail?

Kitty Whitehead has never gotten over her banishment from Mariposa, the family home in Spain. When her glamorous cousin Bella comes up with the daring suggestion that they take each other’s place, she reluctantly agrees for the chance to say goodbye to the house and her estranged family.

But turning mousy Kitty into the glorious Bella is harder than she thinks, even if everyone seems to be fooled. Everyone but her hateful almost-cousin Ian, who’s getting too close to the truth and too close to Kitty, as he invades her dreams and makes her question everything she’s ever known to be true.

Someone is out to kill Kitty…or Bella. Who wants her dead, and why? Could Bella’s old enemy turned lover be the greatest danger she’s ever faced?

A modern story of romantic suspense and masquerade, where no one is as they seem.

Happiness is a Sunny Couch

So I’ve been working on the living room (and doing a last rewrite on Rocky Start and organizing my books and researching another novel and doing my taxes and . . . ) and I decided to move my couch to the front window, which involved rearranging the entire living room/office and which turned out to be a brilliant idea. Because now I can stretch out on my ancient couch, comfy on the memory foam mattress I replace its cushions will and work in the sunlight. Lots more cleaning and sorting and putting stuff away, but my couch makes me very happy.

What made you happy this week?