Well, no, not really...I just can't help throwing in Bangles allusions every so often. :)

This was a good weekend. We picked blackberries on Saturday, hung out with a friend, watched our DVD of In & Out (possibly my favorite Kevin Kline film), and watched Nika speed across fields, racing other dogs (and winning). We ate a lot of strawberry yogurt sprinkled with fresh blackberries. Sadly, we had no internet or phone line, but--surprise, surprise--I, at least, don't seem to have gotten any major, earth-shaking emails anyway. (I have a constant paranoia that someday someone--whether an editor or an agent--will send me an email that begins, "I want to accept your story/novel, BUT ONLY if you respond to this message within twenty of your Earth Minutes!") (So far, this hasn't happened. But I tend to check my email a lot, just in case.)

And I even got some writing done. I wrote about two pages of the new just-for-fun story, "Now You See Me" (intergalactic operatives in Leeds), and wrote out the first page of a new YA fantasy novel set at a music school in a pseudo-Southern Italy. I'm going to try to hold off on this one and get back into the groove of my adult Vienna/Istanbul novel--sadly, after taking off a couple of weeks for the wedding/honeymoon, and then another month for M&S revisions, I've lost some serious momentum on it. But I still love the idea, I don't want to get permanently derailed...oh well. Having too many novel ideas is something I keep reminding myself to cherish, because I know that there will be a time fairly soon when I look back with bitter laughter and only wish that this was still my problem. I know because I repeat this cycle, over and over again....oh well.

In the meantime, I'm finally going to send out Draft 1.1 of Masks & Shadows to my lovely volunteer readers, and try very hard to think about other things.

Happy Monday!