Tomatoes and manuscripts

Last weekend I took my two oldest kids to Baltimore. They had an event they wanted to attend and I had the brilliant idea that I would hang out at the hotel and write. For those of you who are wondering, so far Janessa and Garrett have been talking the loudest so by the end of the weekend I actually had 25 pages written on a sequel to Royal Target.

When I took a break for lunch, I checked my email to find a couple of unexpected items of business. First, the release date for my next novel, Smokescreen, may be moved up to January 2011 rather than the spring. This news definitely changes my timeline for my upcoming projects. Instead of trying to get a new novel finished in the next six weeks, I now have to take a quick break to edit Smokescreen again. Thankfully, my editor is fabulous and has already sent me the fixes that need to be resolved and they are pretty minor.

The second bit of news was that I have been invited to be a presenter at The Book Academy, a writers conference at Utah Valley University on September 30th. I am really excited about it. I was already planning on coming out to Utah to participate in a book signing or two for conference weekend so the timing worked out perfectly.

Anyway, back to Baltimore. Despite my excitement that I would be attending Book Academy and that I might be able to wrap up a project early, I got back to work and even took an hour or two off to take my girls to dinner at The Cheesecake Factory in the inner harbor...on National Cheesecake Day. (The Reese's cheesecake was fabulous!) When I returned to the hotel, I had the chance to talk to my husband. After talking for a couple of minutes, he told me, "I have a bone to pick with you."

Of course, I instantly wondered what I had done that I shouldn't have...or hadn't done that I should have. Then he continued, "Or rather tomatoes to pick...." He had gone out to check on my garden for me, a modest 10' by 10' backyard garden, and picked 32 tomatoes. Now, in my defense, I only planted six tomato plants, and I just picked some the day before (8-10 of them), but these tomato plants are producing like crazy. I'm giving tomatoes (and cucumbers) to my friends, my family, my neighbors. I even took a couple of dozen to church on Sunday to share the wealth.

So now I get to balance my energy between editing a book, trying to keep up with my overachieving garden, and creating a new novel. I wonder which project will win my attention today.