Today is my first day of blogging over at the Harlequin American Romance Authors blog, so swing by and give me some love.

Merry Christmas! I’m probably actually the only person who looks outside and says, “Yay! No snow!”

After you’ve opened the presents and eaten yourself silly and manage to park yourself in front of your computer to play a bit, check out I Can Has Cheezeburger for some funny pictures. Mary puts these on her blog each day, and I crack up quite often. Here’s an example:

moar funny pictures

Here’s another, in honor of that classic Christmas movie, A Christmas Story.

moar funny pictures

At 8:36 p.m. tonight, I finished and e-mailed the full manuscript of Heartbreak River, my first contracted book, to my editor. Wahoo! Now I can enjoy Christmas before getting to work on my second novel for Harlequin American, The Willow Creek Cafe, on Thursday. The only thing I’m doing the next three days that remotely looks like work is jotting down ideas for my Web site redesign.

If you’re traveling for the holidays, be safe and have fun.

If you enjoy elaborate holiday light displays, you’ll like this slide show.

And you know what’s great about today? Since it’s the shortest day of the year, starting tomorrow the days start getting longer. Yay!

I went through Heartbreak River (aka the book due Jan. 1) today and input all the simpler editing changes suggested by Mary and my agent. I just printed out a clean copy and am going over it carefully again, making any type edits I missed and addressed the slightly larger edits like adding some more dialogue earlier in the book and cleaning up a couple of other things. I want to be done with this by Monday morning so I can send it off to my editor and not have to think about it over Christmas, so nose planted to grindstone.

Oh, I meant to also mention that when hubby and I went to eat Chinese today, the fortune from my fortune cookie read, “You will become more and more wealthy.” Hey, I like the sound of that.

Well, it’s 11 days until my first book is due to my editor, so I’m in revising mode based on comments sent to me by my agent and the fabulous Mary. I’m hoping I can get through with it over this weekend and actually send in the manuscript early so I don’t have to focus on it during Christmas. We’ll see how it goes.

Here’s a fun little Internet game to fill a few minutes of your days off from work or school. I made it through all the levels and earned my certificate from Buddy the Elf.

Fellow Bandita Nancy Northcott interviewed me on her blog today since round three of the American Title contest voting is currently under way. Come over and keep me company, and if you haven’t voted yet, I humbly ask that you think about scooting over to the Romantic Times site to cast your very important vote. Thanks!

My friend Kim, a fellow fan of Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight series, e-mailed to tell me that they’ve begun casting for the film version of Twilight, the first in the book series. Appropriately, they’ve cast the leads of Bella and Edward first, and I think they did a fantastic job. Check out who won the roles here and tell me what you think of the casting.

No, I’m not one of the lesser-known presidential candidates headed into the Iowa caucuses next month. But I am one of six remaining finalists in the American Title contest, so once again I need your votes to move on to Round 4. The two people with the lowest amount of votes this round will be eliminated as of the end of voting on Dec. 30, and I really don’t want to start off the new year by having to say bye-bye. So check out the latest round, including my story summary for OUT OF SIGHT, here:

http://www.romantictimes.com/news_amtitle3.php

In addition to your vote, it would be fabulous if you could garner votes from the following:

1. Family — husbands, children, parents, siblings, your third cousin twice removed
2. Friends — ALL of them. Hee hee hee.
3. Co-workers — Seriously, they need something to do besides work anyway.
4. Fellow members of committees, your RWA chapters, PTA, basically any group with people with e-mail addresses.
5. Your local librarians and booksellers
6. Your neighbors
7. All your kids’ friends — You know they’re all online all the time anyway. May they spread the info through the MySpace and Facebook and text messaging universes!
8. Any online communities of which you’re a member

Thank you SO MUCH for all the support!

Over at the Romance Bandits, I’m blogging about how I miss my grandmas this time of year and how I’ve adopted my husband’s grandma. Scoot on over and tell me about memories of your grandmothers.
~~~
In exciting writing-related news, I got my release date today. The first Harlequin American will hit store shelves next September! Wow, it felt cool to type that.

Things I’ve done in the past few days that make it seem more real that I’ve actually sold books:

1. My Harlequin editor contacted me for suggestions of alternate titles for Fanning the Flames. After brainstorming with the hubby and fellow writers, I sent her 13 suggestions. Oh, and hubby’s suggestion? Burning Down the House. Please, try to get that Talking Heads song out of your heads. LOL!

2. I sent my author bio and photo to Harlequin.

3. I’ve read through the material on how to access Harlequin’s online system for things like art fact sheets (i.e. information on what I think would be good on the cover).

4. I finished the first two drafts of my first young adult book and sent it off to Mary and my agent for reads.

5. I e-mailed with the lady who is going to do the redesign of my Web site. Set up time to call her tomorrow.

It’s all pretty exciting and definitely cool.