Beth described a man in her blog and posted a challenge; tell his story. Of course I bit, and here it is, doing double duty as my daily blog entry.

Zaz stared at the primitive device, unwilling to admit he might need assistance. He was a member of House Kalor, as his clan markings clearly showed. A race and a House far more advanced than anything Earth had to offer. Still, how to make this machine produce the two-dimensional non-interactive image he required baffled him.

His failure made him surly. More surly than usual, that is. House Kalor was known for their skill in survey and willingness to travel to the far reaches of the galaxy, not for diplomacy.

Apparently he’d managed to annoy even more bystanders than usual on this survey trip as more than one Earth native had threatened to summon the Fashion Police. Fashion Police were not listed in his database of local authorities, but between the baffling machine and the repeated threats to involve him in an interstellar diplomatic tangle for reasons that eluded him, Zaz was on edge.

Nevertheless, he did go out of his way to be polite to the woman who offered to assist him with the machine instead of offering the interfering female a one-way transport to the nearest moon. Zaz thought the effort to not offend the natives might improve his standing if the Fashion Police did apprehend him. Or at least persuade his superiors not to downgrade his ranking.

The machine did cooperate after a surreptitious kick to the front panel, and Zaz walked out of the building with his copy. His mission was nearly complete. A few more details and then he could finish his report on the way to the wormhole. If Gal was with him, the forms would be complete before he departed local space.

I found the perfect pumpkin muffin recipe! It’s low fat and can be made with whole wheat flour (I did, and they were still very moist). They’re fantastic. Word of warning, the recipe calls for a very large batch, I cut it in half and it still filled both of my muffin tins. Also, I think the amount of cloves called for is a tad excessive and can be reduced.

The mailman brought me a box of Ellora’s Cave playing cards. Very fun. I need to do a give-away! Will come up with some sort of thing for that next week. Meanwhile, we’re whacking away at that To Do list.

I feel so much better. Which is good, because the To Do list is growing faster than the moss around here. Today I’ll be tackling the To Do list, starting with urgent/important first.

One of my tasks which may not seem terribly urgent or important is finishing up the boxes stacked around my desk. The thing is, the disorder bothers me and disturbs my concentration. One good day of effort and maybe part of tomorrow with the husband’s help and we’re done. I need done so I can focus.

Obviously this has a limit. I mean, I can live without having every bed perfectly made, letting the tub go another week without scrubbing, skipping the vacuuming for another day, but I do need a certain amount of order to function creatively. (If you can’t live with a speck of lint on the carpet or knowing you scrubbed the tub once this month instead of weekly whether it needed it or not, your OCD qualities are well suited to the writing life but the inability to focus that OCD tendency on priorities will shoot you down.)

So I’m focusing on getting my world ordered so that I can let loose all the chaos I want to on the page. There’s a lot of it building up. Capture Me wants to be written. Night Rhythm wants to be done, as does Only Human and Miss Lonely Hearts is willing to let go of a few more adverbs in the name of progress. And that Other Book is making eyes at me, too.

I think this is important, enough order in the Real World to function in the Creative World, because the creative world affects us emotionally. It’s impossible not to be affected, at least for me, and to let go and feel the story I can’t be hung up by the nagging reminder in the back of my head that the cat needs another dose of Advantage and the utility bills are due. Much better to just do those things, cross ‘em off the list and be free to focus.

I guess to sum up this means that writing is at the top of the to do list, but sometimes you have to do other things in order to support writing, to create the environment it needs. When the world around me is ordered, I can write a whole lot of pages, really fast. When everything around me is chaotic and distracting, I might work all day and have very little to show for it at the end of the day, when I could have produced the same amount in one hour if I’d spent the rest of the day dealing with chaos and distractions. Really it’s all about efficiency and being effective.

Breathing a little easier this morning two ways. First, I got smart and went to a doctor Monday because the flu progressed to respiratory complications, wouldn’t you know it. Lungs much happier today! And second, I’ve got the first reader reactions to Wolf In Shining Armor, which is always a relief. Nic, NJ, and Jordan all read it before the release date, so that helped ease the anxiety, but this morning I heard from two readers and heaved a big sigh because they liked it.

It’s on sale today! Hurrah! Wolf In Shining Armor is here!

I’m so excited. I love werewolves. I love medieval romance. I loved combining the two!

Errr. I didn’t figure out how to use the newsletter tool, but as soon as I do I’ll send out the newsletter which I did actually write in time.

Why is it that I did half the things on my to do list and as fast as I did ‘em, more items popped up to take their place? I bet there’s an alternate dimension somewhere where to do lists get done and stay done, and where two socks go into the dryer and come back out still a pair.

I have edits for WWW and my post-move stuff to do plus regular business to do plus writing. This is why we love to run off to the trails. Stuff will still be waiting to get done, but a break refreshes me enough to keep going. Anybody else got great tips for conquering the to do list that never ends without going catatonic?

First of all, thanks to everybody who shared their reasons to be thankful. The randomly drawn winner is Dawn Murphy, and I’ve sent her an email so she can claim her copy of Wolf In Shining Armor.

I’m sharing a release date with Jordan Summers, and if anybody has NOT seen her cover for Bacchus, go drool over it now. Rrrrrowwwwrrrr.

Otherwise, I’ve got a technical gripe this morning. When I switched from Mac to PC hardware, I got a mouse that couldn’t be set up for left-handed use. The cord isn’t long enough to reach. Grrr. And then we discovered how many mice are shaped for right-hand use and can’t be switched. I can’t be the only left mouser on the planet, this is annoying. Maybe all the lefties are Mac users.