Jennifer Crusie's Blog: Argh Ink

So I’ve been kind of all over the place this summer (you may have noticed the “12 Days of Lavender” only lasted eight days), and I thought I should tell you why.

Moving:
When I found out Lani was moving in, I cleared out the third floor and renovated it into an apartment for her and the girls. It made good sense from a real estate point of view–there was a lot of wasted space up there–but it meant that everything I’d had stored up there, fifty years of stuff in three different rooms, went down to the first floor in stacks. A year passed and I decided for many reasons to move from the second floor (main floor) to the first floor (the dachshunds shouldn’t be climbing stairs, I wanted a smaller space for my stuff, we could share the second floor as community space with the big kitchen, living room, and dining room, my old master suite would make a great guest suite, etc.). Then I went downstairs and realized the scope of my folly: fifty years of stuff down there. I moved down anyway, and I’ve been living in a landfill for about a month, moving stuff out as I could, scrubbing and painting and putting up woodwork. I love the space, but the mess is driving me crazy, so every spare moment, I sort and clean. Goodwill is about to get very lucky.

Writing:
Lavender is six weeks overdue and getting more complicated as I write it. I like this book a lot, and the complications are making it a lot richer, but I have to FINISH THE DAMN THING. I’m at the white board stage now, so it’s looking good, but jeez louise it’s taking forever.

Rewriting:
Some of you may remember the Trust Me On This cover post. I thought we were good to go and so did Bantam, but a major distributor hated the cover and cut its order by 35,000 copies because of that. Thatsa lotta copies, so we went back to the drawing board. The kicker: They liked the dog on The Cinderella Deal cover. They’d really like another dog. There is no dog in Trust Me On This. We thought about just slapping a dog cover on the book, but that would be dishonest. So instead, I edited the book and put a dog in. I know, I know, but you know what? I think it’s better with the dog. His name is Walter. Well, I like him.

Promotion:
Maybe This Time is out in six weeks, which means we’re in overdrive working on promotional stuff that will hit in about a month. (From the middle of August to September first, this blog will be Maybe This Time, 24/7. Fortunately, you’ll be on vacation so you can avoid it.) I perfected Andie’s banana bread recipe–at least Lani said, “This is the one,” but that might just be because she was so damn sick of banana bread–rounded up the soundtrack, did an interview with SEP on Amazon, wrote a piece on stealing from The Turn of the Screw, took pictures of the finished collage . . . well, you get the drift. I’d like to work on my current book, but my last book is vampiring all my time.

Popcorn Dialogues:
I love this project. I can believe how fast Friday comes around, but I’m learning so much from it. I want to do a summing-up podcast for the first six, but I have this book to write . . .

Kids and Dogs:
And then there’s family dinner and spending time in the sun with the pack and discussing Mega Jump and the Theodosia books and playing Uno and Go Fish, not to mention the trauma of slashing a dog while trying to groom her (she still trusts me, god knows why).

So my apologies if the blog has been uneven. I’ll get pics up for the downstairs as I finish the four rooms (they make the old office pictures look like a minimalist hospital). I’ll show you the new cover for the new Walter-added Trust Me On This. I will even show you the horrible job we did trying to trim Mona (she looks like Lyle chewed her up and spat her out). And I’ll keep you updated on Lavender (I’m rewriting the Mom scene now). So nothing but good times ahead.

Sorry for the disorganization. Argh.