Summer supermoon musings.

I'm feeling kind of free and easy tonight.  The Annealed blog tour is done (and thanks to those of you who followed along); I've unpacked from vacation, paid the bills, bought groceries for the week (usually that gets rolled over into Monday night...), and finished two vacation scrapbooks in two weekends.  Yes!  Both the Danube cruise scrapbook and the Alaska scrapbook are done!  I had no idea how much those books were weighing me down until I finished the Alaska book today.  Whew.

I mean, I still have to clean the bathroom and do laundry.  But with the scrapbooks finished, I feel like there might be light at the end of the tunnel.

Hmm, maybe it's the supermoon.  Tonight's full moon is the largest of the year, because the moon is the closest it will be to Earth for more than a year.  Okay, so it's not the humongous moon that you see photoshopped into calendars, or into web graphics like the one on the left.  But still, there's a difference in size -- even if you can't see it with the naked eye.  I found a website that has a nice comparison of the March 2011 supermoon with a regular ol' full moon in 2010. To see it, click here and scroll down the page.  Kind of cool, huh?

Maybe my ease is due to the supermoon plus the summer solstice this past Friday.  We haven't had a terribly hot summer yet in DC -- just one big heat wave so far, which I cleverly managed to escape by being in Alaska that week -- and I'm hoping it stays that way.  Fingers crossed....

Or maybe clearing away all these other tasks is freeing up space in my brain to start plotting the next series.  I can tell you that it will be set in the same universe as the Pipe Woman Chronicles, but a few years after the Big Mediation.  I have written a little bit, but I'm hesitant to post any of it because it's early days and the story might change a fair amount.  The only thing I'm committed to, apparently, is that there will be a cat, or cats, in this series.  My daughter Kitty insists on it.  So there you go.  More news as it develops.

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Let's see, thanks and congrats:  Congrats to Froggarita of Froggarita's Bookcase, who won the complete set of Pipe Woman Chronicles e-books!  And many, many thanks to those of you who downloaded copies of Seized during my summer solstice promotion on Amazon.  Enjoy!

(Psst: I'll be giving away the other books in the series this summer, too.  Watch my Facebook page for dates and details.)

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So that's pretty much it for now.  I guess I'll go start the laundry.  Maybe I'll even get to bed at a decent hour tonight....  Nah.  I don't want to do anything rash....

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These moments of bloggy ease are brought to you, as a public service, by Lynne Cantwell.

It's harvest time again.

Happy autumn!  Yesterday was Mabon, the second harvest.  I wrote a post about it last year, so I won't go into a lot of detail.  But basically, this is when we bring in the final crops of the year. 

I'm writing this post well ahead of time because, if all goes as planned, I'll be celebrating the autumnal equinox aboard a river cruise ship somewhere on the Danube, having ticked off one of the destinations on my bucket list -- Prague, the ancient home of Šárka and Ctirad -- and visited a bunch more places, too.  I'll tell you about the trip and post some pictures when I get back.

This has been quite the year for me.  Since January, I've published two books and have completed the first draft of a third.  I've joined the staff of Indies Unlimited and am contributing a monthly post to the Indie Exchange.  I've met a ton of new friends -- authors, editors, and book bloggers -- and I think I've even picked up some fans.  And I've become committed to using the Oxford comma, after years of eschewing it.  (I bet you noticed, didn't you?)

It's been a fun ride, and I'm looking forward to what happens next.  Now that Fissured is out and the first draft of Tapped is in the can (yes!  I finished it before I left on my trip!  Lots of work still to do on it, but I'm over the big psychological hurdle), I am looking toward the last two books in the Pipe Woman Chronicles with a better idea of what comes next.  Oh, I've always known where Naomi would find herself in the end.  But I have to admit that, past book 3, I wasn't exactly sure how I was going to get her there.  Now, I've got a better idea of the road she'll have to travel.  And by this time next year, I'll know whether this new map will work.

Hope you're enjoying the season, wherever you may be, on land or sea.  Blessed Mabon to you all, and I'll see you next week.