Where is Sandy?

No, I'm not ignoring you all on purpose and still haven't fallen off the edges of the earth. (And still haven't been kidnapped by hunky, sexy alien either -- duh!) In the days since I returned home from Dallas, I've not only tried to catch up with corrections and preparations for my class, but I've also been kept busy by two ill cats. And now the whole stress of the past weeks and months seems finally to have caught up with me and gave me a tenseness of epic proportions in shoulders and neck. To make matters worse, I managed to fall up the stairs and jar my shoulder. The result? Lots of pain. Duh. Duh. Duh. I'm applying deap-heat salve on a regular basis, smell like bubblegum as a result of it, and will probably have to teach with one of these stiff ruffs-thingies around my neck.

Sometimes life really sucks.

And of course, my Muse chose this time to return home from her holidays.

Shall I tell you what my editor sent me yesterday?

The cover blurb for BEWITCHED! Wheeee! (I'll post it as soon as I've got the final version.)

And another wheee! because this time we kept my title!

And yet another wheee! because it's going to be an April 2008 release!

And one more wheee! because it looks as if I might get the cover pic soon!

A Sad Day

Today one of the furry babies, Pünktchen, had to be put to sleep. We got her from the animal asylum 14 years ago and I've never met a more stubborn, thickheaded cat. She was also easily annoyed, which she usually showed by sinking her claws into parts of your anatomy. She disliked most humans (as well as other cats), but came to love the members of my family. She was the one who ripped the wallpaper in my new flat to shreds and spread snot across the whole flat (my windows look lovely). She insisted on sitting more or less on the keyboard when I used the computer and grew angry when I insisted that I needed said keyboard. Being kept out of the bedroom also made her quite mad, which she showed first by hollering outside the bedroom door for endless minutes, before jumping against the door (probably after having sneezed at it).

I will miss her very much.

65 Books

Not too bad, eh? :)

Back Home

I hate that last day in a foreign country, when all you do is sitting around waiting. Waiting for the airport shuttle, waiting for the plane, then sitting in the stupid plane for hours on end. Departure days are really endlessly depressing; in fact, I nearly started to bawl in the waiting lounge at the airport. (Okay, so maybe I was a tat tired, too.) (But it is sad: I won't see all my writing friends and the lovely people at Dorchester for at least a year, if not two, because I'm not so sure I'll attend next year's RWA National. San Francisco? Talk about a horror flight!)

After a nine-hour-something flight I'm finally back home, have petted all the furry babies, will shortly take a shower and then start to unpack.

And count books. *g*

Pictures will follow soon.

Live from Dallas: Beau Monde & Big Booksigning

Went shopping on Tuesday, spent 150 $ in Bath & Bodyworks, was hit hard by jetlag in the afternoon.

On Wednesday I went to the Beau Monde Conference, and I"m happy to say that this year my workshop went absolutely fine! :) When I browsed the RWA goody room I wondered why Dorchester had sent books to the goody room when they've never done it before. Wellll, it turned out that those books in the goody room where the books intended for the Literacy for Life signing in the late afternoon. As a result of that, I didn't have any books to sign. Luckily I had brought CDs and coverflaps, and people still stopped by to chat. The highlight of the signing was certainly meeting John Charles, who had reviewed CASTLE for the Chicago Tribune.

Due to the amount of books in the goody room, I've already got, like, 20 books. My suitcases are going to be sooooo-hooo heavy!

After a 10-hour flight, I arrived in Dallas yesterday afternoon (and once again, while I was sitting in the plane, I was wondering why the heck I'm doing this to myself - 1o hours is just sooooo long!). Hotel is lovely, room is nice, view is strange (highway), food in the hotel is expensive (but burger was yummy), and today is SHOPPING DAY! Yay!

And for some mad reason Blogger doesn't let me type in a title for this post. Grrrr.

RWA National Preps #4: Packing the Suitcase

Today was packing day: Suitcase is still empty -- but that was to change soon!

Important: spread things you want to take with you across your bedroom -- and panic.

One of the infamous socks (dark blue instead of black):

The new skirt:

More things spread out: big plastic box contains most of my promo stuff.

FINISHED!!!!! Yay!

Socks Update #2

Those socks I bought yesterday? They're not even black! They're dark blue!!! Grrrr.

The Socks Update

Have I already mentioned that I went to Frankfurt today in order to buy black socks? I figured the MTZ (the nearest mall) would be too busy and there wouldn't be any parking place to be found, hence I took the train to Frankfurt.

(Okay, so I also wanted to find out whether Hugendubel had Christine Feehan's latest release in stock.) (They hadn't. Duh.)

As I walked up the street to the British Bookshop, I noticed two guards positioned at the entrance of the carpark of the stock exchange.

"Hm," I thought and continued walking up the street.

Next thing I saw were three policecars (full of policemen and -women) coming down the street.

"Hmmm," I thought and proceeded to step into the British Bookshop. (They didn't have Feehan's SAFE HARBOR either, but I discovered Rupert Everett's autobiography. Looked interesting, but somewhat too expensive. Will have to order online.)

Afterwards I walked back to the Zeil (the main shopping mile in Frankfurt) and thereby passed by the stock exchange: the entrances were all blocked and several guards stood, well, guard in a rather worrysomely serious way.

Now I became really nervous -- if there was a demonstration somewhere (but for what sort of demonstration would they close down the stock exchange??), I really didn't want to be caught up in it. Especially considering all those guards around.

Still, I decided I would buy some black socks first before I went back home. Looked at bags, bought socks, went into the underground station -- and there were more people than usual. And several trains were postponed or cancelled.

And then finally, I found out what was wrong in Frankfurt today: there was a NPD demonstration in one of the suburbs (NPD is the name of a German party; they are basically right-winged radicals) and a counter demonstration. And it was thought there might be some riots and unrest in the inner city afterwards.

ARGH!

And what's more: when I finally came home, I found out what happened to my old black socks: they were all still in the Newcastle suitcase. *head desk*

RWA National Preps #3: Of Bags, Socks and Shoes

Whenever I leave for a conference, I get all panicky beforehand about the number of black socks I own as well as about the size of bags I'll take on the plane as hand luggage. I usually also worry about which shoes to take with me and which shoes to wear on the plane (it will be rather cold on Monday so sandals are out of question -- I really don't want to freeze my feet off even before I get to Dallas!). Oh yes, and which shoes to wear when we go shopping: sneakers or sandals? It will be warm in Dallas, but probably also raining. And besides, most likely it's going to be fricking cold in the mall. So, what to do-hoo-hooo? (she moans in despair)

Duh. By now, I'm halfway convinced that it's going to be awful and that I'd better stay at home....

RWA National Preps #2

I've just finished preparing my workshop for the Beau Monde conference. The notes are a bit shorter than they ought to be, but after last year's desaster (members of the audience shot the workshop to pieces) I won't prepare more stuff.

Still got 50 CDs to burn. Hooray.

But I guess, I'll take the evening off and watch PARADISE with Melanie Griffith and Don Johnson. And a 10-year old Elijah Wood (who's absolutely adorable).

And ... *drumroll* ... I've started to miss the writing!!! Which is a good sign! The Muse is coming back!!! And even though I so won't have the time for writing-related research this year because I want to finish the PhD thesis, I'm thinking very strongly about the paranormal historical set in 1860s Paris which I started to plan almost ten years ago. Hence the recent purchase of two 19th-century guidebooks of Paris.

On the other hand, I'm also thinking strongly about revising the very first novel I ever wrote in English, a contemporary romance set in Scotland. (Excerpts can be found in the Members Section of my website.)

Decisions, decisions!

But for now, I get some food first. :)

Preps for RWA National #1

Spent yesterday morning putting stickers on CD covers (see above). Spent the afternoon working on the paper (sadly, it's still not finished) for the Beau Monde conference. Spent the evening burning CDs (to be put into the lovely, sticker-adorned CD covers). Fortunately, I've already finished putting together all the other promo material (cards -- as in you-know-what-kind-of-cards-if-you've-read-the-book -- in little cellophane bags with excerpt and bookmarks), so now I can concentrate on the paper and the CDs. And, of course, on the clothes.

Clothes.

*sigh*

Each year, the question what to wear on the conference, results in a frenzy of dieting and clothes shopping among several thousand romance writers. I am no exception. Only my diet wasn't quite as successful as I had hoped for this year. Soooo, I went clothes-shopping today, which was almost as depressing as walking around Berwick-upon-Tweed in the rain. Seriously, I tried on dozens of trousers, but do you think any of them fitted me? No, of course not. *sob*

The sad result of 4 1/2 hours of clothes-shopping: two tops, one skirt, two DVDs, one CD ("The Best of R.E.M.").

Smart Bitches Review, or Wheeee!!!

While I was away, I got a lovely, lovely review from the Smart Bitches, which included several mentions of the word brilliant (as in "[Cissy]'s freaking brilliant" or "Schwab’s use of multiple legends and fairy tales to parallel the protagonists’ story is particularly brilliant . . ."). To say I'm thrilled would be an understatement. :)

Schwab’s storytelling also has tight turns that drop the reader like a rollercoaster from merry heights of whimsical happiness for Cissy into plunges of holy shit terror and uncertain fear - which make it bloody hard to put the damn book down. The mix of nefarious characters, mystery, intrigue, and deep, churning sexual attraction don’t help either when you might be trying to get something else done.

You can read the whole review here.

Back Home

Northumberland and Newcastle were mostly wet and miserably cold, but apart from that, I had a lovely time! I did some serious sightseeing on Wednesday and Thursday (Newcastle, Alnwick, Berwick-upon-Tweed) and upheld the honour of romance fiction at the Feminism & Popular Culture conference on Friday and Saturday.

The Three Musketeers of Romance Fiction:

An Goris, Laura Vivanco (one of the founding members of Teach Me Tonight) and moi

After that, I was bent on doing more sightseeing (Jesmond and the coast), but mostly managed to get lost (several times).