Taking a breather…

I spent my three day weekend writing up all the posts for my Blog Book Tour for (get ready for shameless self-promotion here) my murder mystery MURDER FOR HIRE: The Peruvian Pigeon.  By me.  Dana Fredsti.

Google alert?  Are you paying attention?  Pingoat?  Say you’re there!

I have not had such a focused period of writing for ages.  It felt great, but dang me, my fingers hurt!

I’m saving my big thank you email till the end of my tour, but I just have to say that my blog hosts and their blogs are all awesome.  Or is ‘awesome’ too late ’70s/early ’80s an expression?  Oh well, too bad!  ‘Cause they are.  Please scroll down a post and check out the tour schedule, bookmark those blogs and visit them often!

I’m currently reading Smoke and Ashes by Tanya Huff.  She writes urban fantasy/supernatural..er…not romance, but…well…okay, I don’t know what genre this is.  But she’s now up there with Barbara Hambly as one of my favorite writers.  The books are funny, horrific, smart, and just plain fun to read.  My favorite line to date in reference to a character who’s a vampire (I’m paraphrasing here ’cause I left the book at work):  ‘Henry wore his blandest expression; blood wouldn’t clot in his mouth.’   I laughed out loud when I read that.  On the Muni.  People moved away from me on the train.

I just finished Curiosity Killed the Cat Sitter by Blaize Clement and give it two thumbs up for mystery afficianados and animal lovers alike.  It’s easy to tell the author has spent a lot of time with dogs and cats and an equal amount of time honing her writing skills.  Can’t wait to start the second one in the series!

Speaking of series… Time for me to get to work on MURDER FOR HIRE: The Big Snooze!

Mr. Fabulous’s Kareoke Duet Night and Hot Chocolate to Die For

One of my Blog Book Tour hosts, Mr. Fabulous, is having a special evening of kareoke duets with some of his peeps (his word, NOT mine) tomorrow (Sunday) night at 6:30 EST. Yours truly is showing her love for Mr. Fab and his wonderful, irreverant blog Pointless Drivel, by doing LEATHER AND LACE with him. I, like the other duet partners, pre-recorded my part to a karoeke version of the song (may I say I HATE this friggin’ song! What does ‘give to me your leather, take from me my lace’ MEAN, anyway?!) and sent it in MP3 form to Mr. Fab, who will sing along live with each song. He is either very brave or very foolish. Perhaps both.

And now for something completely different.
For the best hot chocolate ever, take two squares of Belgian chocolate (bittersweet is best), melt into a cup of milk (I prefer a tablespoon of cream cut with water – no carbs, no sugar, with the flavor of cream instead of skim milk!) in a saucepan over medium-low heat, stir it constantly with a whisk and then, when it’s melted and hot, give it an extra minute of whisking to insure the frothiest, richest hot chocolate ever. Top with whipped cream and chocolate shavings for extra decadence. Peppermint oil can be added (take a toothpick, dip it in the oil, then dip that in the hot chocolate. If you’re patient, you can also infuse a batch of chocolate beforehand by chopping it up into small pieces, adding a drop of the oil into the chocolate and stirring/shaking it to spread the oil) for some extra zing. Grated orange peel and/or cinnamon and other spices are other options.

Dates for my Tour!

Yes, the tour for Murder for Hire: The Peruvian Pigeon, is slowly coming together. I will have an official page for this on my website under The Goods section, but what’s the use of a blog if I can’t further promote myself and my lovely host bloggers? I’m very excited about this, but the coolest part is the wonderful blogs I discovered when researching the tour and meeting some incredibly talented and nice people. Please take a look at my list of tour stops:

Sunday, January 20th

Elysabeth’s Emerald City

Monday, January 21st
Blogbooktours.com

Tuesday, January 22nd
Kat’s Random Thoughts

Wednesday, January 23rd
Chrysalis Stage

Thursday, January 24th
Kitty Litter

Friday, January 25th
Pointless Drivel

Saturday, January 26th
Redzilla Attacks!

These are all on my blogroll, which got ate by WordPress when I added my RSS feed and link to the blogbooktours group on yahoo. My lovely and talented website designer, Leslie Keats, is working on recovering said blogroll and my blog archives. If you need website design, I cannot recommend her highly enough! And aside from her web design talents, she surfs and enjoys drinking wine while watching bad movies. My kinda gal!