Ahh, December. How I love thee so.

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I thought I'd start decorating for the holidays a little early this year, since November was such a rough month. But hey, the good news is that the first draft of Undertow is done! Whoo hoo! I finished the book with a day to spare for winning NaNoWriMo. The first draft clocks in at about 51,000 words, which is somewhat shorter than Crosswind. But I expect to revise the first chapter, and I will probably add another scene or two at the end.

The Crosswind kickoff was a great success, and now I get to start flogging the book in earnest. ("Flogging" is a good thing in this context, in case you were wondering.) Tomorrow, I'll be hosting the MasterKoda Cyber Monday Bash on Facebook from 7:00pm until 8:00pm Eastern time, and I've got some cool prizes lined up. I ran down to the National Museum of the American Indian this afternoon to pick up some things from their gift shop, and I just might be giving away one or two of them tomorrow.

On Friday, the Cabin Goddess has me back for a Fourth-Wall Friday. On December 11th, I'll be at Girl Who Reads for her Writer Wednesday feature. And on December 17th, Lucy Pireel will be asking me some pointed questions on her blog. Who knows? We might even talk about the book.  And if that's not enough, I'll be doing a blog tour in January, after the holidays.

All this, and Yule preparation, too! Aieee....

When it came to holiday prep, I used to be the most irritatingly organized person in the world. This was before marriage and children, mind you. But I used to be that annoying person who began her Christmas shopping in September when the holiday catalogs started hitting the mailbox. I'd have everybody's gifts ordered by mid-October, so that all the shipments would arrive at my house by mid-November. That would give me time to wrap them and have them shipped out right after Thanksgiving. Then I'd spend the first week of December writing my Christmas cards. I always had those in the mail before my birthday (which, if you're playing along, is December 7th). I was then able to enjoy my birthday, and the rest of the holiday season, guilt-free and stress-free.

You can stop hating me now. I am not that woman anymore.

I mean, the cards are out. But that's only because our family tradition now is to sit down after Thanksgiving dinner and have a grand signing/stuffing/sealing/stickering session. We do it then because that's the only time I can be assured that everybody will be gathered in the same place long enough. And of course, I'm one of those insufferable people who sends a holiday letter inside the card. Which, if you're playing along, means I had to pull together the cards and the address labels and design, write, and print the annual letter at the same time as I was writing a 50,000-word novel in 30 days. You want to know why I love December? Because NaNoWriMo is over!

We will not even begin to discuss the state of my holiday shopping list. Suffice it to say that I thought I could get away with getting everybody on the list a gift card -- until I saw my daughters' wish lists. And then I remembered that I really ought to get stuff for the knitting/quilting group (I am ashamed to admit that I skipped last December's meeting because I hadn't bought them anything), and that I had fully intended to knit a little something for each of the women in my book club.

And, oh yeah, I need to bake cookies.

Yule is Saturday, December 21st, this year. I've got just under three weeks to pull it all together. But hey, that ought to be a piece of cake, right? If I can write a novel in a month, I can do anything!

Right. I think I'd better go and do some knitting now....

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These moments of rah-rah blogginess are brought to you, as a public service, by Lynne Cantwell.