Susan, that exactly matches with Ruth says; she's 86 years old and her eyes are still probably as good as mine (reading glasses only), and she says she'd like to keep them that way, so nice large courier, please. Oh! And YAY! on the 100-page mark.

I'm spending Saturday reading erika's finished novel, and I'm hoping to hear whether or not my series will continue at St. Martins soon - Jenn said Ruth hinted at something, and since Ruth isn't a tease, I suspect we're good to go for at least Cruel Sister. It's weird; with the proposal on Ruth's desk since January and me not knowing what's going to happen, I've felt sort of in limbo. But now I want to get back to the book, since I'd like it done by August at the latest, and since the insane renovation project from hell - aka "The Victorian That Ate My Life" - is done to the point of being at least manageable, I can concentrate again.

Just trying to make those all those marks in Times is tricky. There's truly not enough room. And Times runs shorter, too, so when I hear I'm getting a copyedit that's near 400 pages and in Times, I'm groaning. (Although, also, happily anticipating a bigger bill to submit.)

Deb, Romancing the Blog features another column by Jenn today, just FYI. It's here.

Amy, the link is broken.

edit: Oh, and I nearly forgot: I got a nice review of Famous Flower in the Tampa Tribune:

THE FAMOUS FLOWER OF SERVING MEN. By Deborah Grabien. Thomas Dunne Books. 215 pages. $22.95.

Two characters from Grabion's previous book, "The Weaver and the Factory Maid," reappear in this new tale to deal once again with unrequited spirits and old folk songs. Penelope Wintercraft-Hawkes, a theatrical producer and actress, receives a bequest from an old aunt of a run-down, long-closed Victorian theater in London near the banks of the Thames. As Penny and her musician lover, Ringan Laine, set about restoring the decaying old place, it soon becomes clear why it has been abandoned all these years. It comes with a ghost. Not a harmless, beneficent ghost, but a real terror of a malevolent, murderous, angry ghoul who conjures up fire, mayhem, the flooding river and the scent of decaying corpses to keep humans away. Guided by the verses of an old song, "The Famous Flower of Serving Men," Penny and Ringan set out to discover what it is that chains their restless spirit to this time and this place. Their search takes them deep into the past - the Peasants' Rebellion of 1381, the French royal family, Richard II and the incarceration of prisoners in that long-ago time. It all makes for an entertaining and at times frightening read.

Reviewed for the Tribune by Maryhelen Clague.

I fixed it. Stupid missing quotation marks.

Heh. Just read it - I have the same problem. I read damned near zero new published fiction anymore, not for pleasure. Only real exception is Michael Chabon. I'm curling up with "Werewolves in Their Youth" sometime soon; I have a signed copy.

I can't not read. But when I was editing so many romances a month (sometimes seven or eight, no shit) I definitely couldn't read romance for pleasure. And I wouldn't have read much else without the train commute, because I was just too tired. But now the only thing I don't read is the genre I'm writing, while I'm writing. I have to read.

Amy, I read nonfiction, or in fiction I revisit old friends, like Simenon or Stout or Hammett.

You like hardboiled and like Simon...you should read Pelecanos, too. And I think he's a liberal that likes Greek carrots. Sorry... Hard Revolution just rocked my socks. Swoon. One day, I need to thank him, too, if I get a chance because after the election I was tempted to throw out Model Citizen as a project because it struck me as insufficiently socially conscious. The political thread in those mysteries kept me from doing that.

I go through phases in what I read. Last year I was so busy racing through the Aubrey-Maturin series I hardly touched a romance, or really any other fiction. This year I've been reading mostly what I write. Historical romance. And it's been good, because I've been discovering there are more good authors out there than I thought. The one thing I'm not letting myself do is go anywhere near the Sharpe series (book or film) or Georgette Heyer's The Spanish Bride. I figure that since I couldn't resist writing about the Rifles, I need to stay away from the well-known fictional versions just to be sure I'm making them my own rather than commiting fanfic or plagiarism.

(I do make an exception for still images from the Sharpe series. Research purposes, you know. To remind myself what the uniforms look like on real people. Yeah, that's what I'm doing. Research. All research.)

Susan, I have a deep fondness for Heyer, which I know you don't share - but I love her acknowledgements at the front of her amazing novel about Waterloo, An Infamous Army. It's basically an acknowledgement of stealing from Thackeray. Not sure if she meant it to be funny, but I found myself nodding and laughing.