I have some gifts for you they're up in my bum....(not really. It's the Family Guy Drummer Boy)

I should've chosen a Thanksgiving-themed title. But there've been so many Xmas carols spouting about that I've had the Family Guy version of the Little Drummer Boy stuck in my head for days. So I used it, in the hopes it'll go away now and I'll stop randomly singing it at inappropriate times.

Returned from the lovely ALAN Workshop and NCTE conference in Boston this week, where I met some fantastic teachers. One even gave me chocolate covered macadamia nuts. It was a fun, scary time, and I may have taken a rather disturbing and unfortunate photobooth picture with my editor Mel Frain and Kristen Simmons, author of ARTICLE 5, in the Prudential Tower. Considering trying to crop it and turn it into an author photo.

On the subject of excellent teachers, got an email from a teacher in Kansas, who recently paired Anna Dressed in Blood with Beowulf to teach the classics. I'm honored she was paired with Beowulf, and hearing how the students responded to Anna and the classic novels was wonderful. This semester they're pairing Girl of Nightmares with Dante's Inferno, and I look forward to video chatting with them soon. I don't say it enough but teachers, particularly English and writing teachers, are kickass. Innovative, invested educators better the worlds of their students, and by extension the world at large. Thanks. Most sincerely. FYI to any teachers who may be reading: if you would like an author to visit, I do video chats for free, schedule permitting.

And now, a small list of stuff that needs to get done over the next few months.

-finish edits on Antigoddess 2. I'm already behind. And as I turn the corner, I spy something that still needs doing.
-finish a draft of New Project 1, currently hanging patiently at 35k. Send draft to agent, prepare for the worst.
-start a draft of New Project B, which is threading itself together in the background. Aim to finish by what? Next fall?
-write a short story for a bitchin' anthology I can't talk about yet. But the story will be road and revenge. Girls and knives.

That's the larger stuff. Day to day time tends to get allotted to emails, setting up donations and giveaways, workshops (oh yeah, crap I need to come up with a workshop for March), and getting drawn in by clever tweets and such. Sometimes these things are fast. Other times they require more legwork, like tracking through royalty statements on the trail of foreign translation deals because, while awesome, they are friggin squiggly little buggers to keep straight. Or maybe it was just that I was relying on an old paper ledger system like some kind of turn of the century banker by candlelight keeping warm off the flame of one lump of coal.

Hmm. It's a mystery.