A quick note on where I’ve been: I arrived home from the writing conference very late Sunday night. Monday, I took my daughter up to Seattle to get settled in to her apartment, because college starts Wednesday. I got home after 11 PM and was just too shot to blog.

I’m in the middle of catching up on 5 billion emails that arrived in the last week. (While at the conference, I could only answer the 1 billion emails that were truly urgent.)

I should be back in the blogosaddle later tonight, so we’ll resume our discussion of creating characters then.

… to my wife.

Yes, today is our 25th anniversary, so I am blogging early today.

I’ll tune in again tomorrow with some comments on how I organize my novels on my hard drive so I always know where everything is and can always retrieve it.

See y’all tomorrow!

Hi All:

Just a quick note to say that I’m desperately trying to get back into the groove on blogging. July was a tough month — I was gone for 12 days, and seemingly spent the rest of the month catching up from being gone. My email stack is MERCILESS, and I’ve been trying to knock that down before I get blogging in earnest.

I’m also playing catch-up on a couple of other fronts. Our homeowners’ assocation bought us a stack of wood to use to replace the old fence that runs along the back side of our lot. The fence is about 180 feet long, and I’ve discovered that 180 feet is a long way to go when you have to rip out old fencing, cut the new to fit, and then hammer it in! I don’t have to replace the posts — just the horizontal bars — but that’s enough. Luckily, my wife and kids are helping out a lot, but it’s burning the hours.

We’re also in the market to buy a pellet stove. It gets a little chilly here in the winter. We have a heat pump, but its efficiency goes down when the temperature goes below about 40 (Fahrenheit). We’ve got a fireplace, so we’re looking to buy a pellet stove insert that will fit in and will keep us warm. August is a good month to do that, but we’d like to get it done before September hits. And I HATE shopping. But we gotta get it done. If any of you have caveats or warnings about pellet stoves, email me privately. (No need to comment here on an off-topic subject.)

I also have to mow the lawn in the next few days. We’ve got about an acre and a half of grass-like substance that needs mowing. I haven’t mowed since before I left for the last writing conference, so it’s starting to get a little shaggy out there.

There! I actually wrote a blog today! Tomorrow, if all goes well, I’ll write a blog on WRITING. Post a comment here with some suggestions on what you’d like to talk about next. I’ve kind of lost momentum in the last few weeks, but we should be back up to full speed here in a few days.

I’m finally getting back to blogging after two weeks of vacation. The first week was on that Alaskan cruise I told you about. Then when I got back, there was the new Harry Potter book to read and a TON of email to read and answer.

First, about that cruise: It was GREAT! We really had a good time. I’ve never been on a cruise before, but as we were getting off the boat, John Olson and I were already thinking about where we’ll go for the next one.

I suggested the Amazon. John was astounded that anyone would consider cruising a warehouse full of books. But I meant the Amazon River, and Princess Cruises really does do a cruise up the river. In any event, we’re thinking about it.

John and I gave 10 hours of lectures, and each of us did 5 to 10 hours of small-group and individual critiquing. I learned some cool things from John’s lectures. He’s already heard all my lectures, but I hope he picked up SOMETHING new.

Some pluses on the cruise:
1) Food is “free”. Not really of course, because you pay for it up front when you get on the boat. But that does mean it’s competitively priced, because before you get on the boat, you could go with another cruise line.
2) The food is great. OK, I don’t recommend eating the sorry, soggy, excuse for a vegeburger. That should never have happened. But generally, the food was terrific, and the buffet is open 24 hours a day. Can’t beat that.
3) Great people. The crew was very friendly, and the folks who came with us for our writing seminar were an excellent crowd.
4) Alaska! Alaska is cool. I didn’t know there was a rain forest in Alaska. Juneau’s in the middle of it. It gets about 100 inches of rain and about that much snow most years. This year it got about twice that. The trip up the Tracy Arm Fiord was worth the price of the cruise.
5) Eagles, whales, seals, otters, salmon, and other varmints. We saw a LOT of all of the above. We saw too many bald eagles to count in the wild, and a few injured ones in captivity. In Juneau as we were driving back to the boat on the bus, the eagles were as thick as seagulls are in San Diego.
6) Glaciers. Glaciers in the wild are blue. Aqua, actually. Very cool. The ones we saw are in full retreat. Global warming and all that.
7) Desserts. Lots of ’em. I had intended to eat one desert for each writer in a group I belong to. It has 170 writers. Unfortunately, about halfway through the cruise, it became clear that my goal was far too short-sighted. So I had . . . 2 deserts for each writer friend. They had to roll me off the boat. OK, I exaggerate a little, but I doubled my lifetime intake of cholesterol, I’m sure.

Some minuses:
1) Those wretched vegeburgers. Gack! Vegeburgers should never have potatoes as the main ingredient. This should go without saying.
2) Drinks are not free. The first day on the boat, we learned this when about 9000 crew members offered us a special deal on drinks–a refillable container that could be had for only $31 that would get us all the sodas we could swill for the rest of the cruise. We declined all 9000 times. Then we found out that it was a pretty good deal, because they way overcharge on drinks. A small bottled water cost me a couple bucks. That is not competitive. But hey–once you’re ON the boat, they’ve got a monopoly on drinks. Not a drinking fountain to be seen anywhere. The buffet had orange juice in the morning, and you could get coffee or tea or hot water free. But cold water? Uh-uh.
3) I’ll take one more kick at those vegeburgers, just because there’s not much else to complain about.
4) Well, there is ONE more thing. I had hoped to blog on the cruise. I did have time. But the internet access cost $.50 per minute IF you brought your wireless laptop (I did). If you used their internet cafe and their computers, it was $.75. And the connection was slow and not terribly reliable. At those prices and with that kind of speed, I had to settle for grabbing my 100+ emails per day and only answering those that were true emergencies. Not a chance to blog or do real email.
5) Phone calls on the ship cost about $10 per minute. My wife made one 5-minute call before we discovered this. The rest of the cruise, we only called home to the kids when we were in port and could use our cell phones.

I had a chance to read some. I took along Harry Potter books #5 and #6. I was kind of fuzzy on #5 and could hardly remember anything in #6. I read both books on the boat, in time to pick up #7 the day we got off the ship. Good timing, because my kids would have KILLED me if we’d been still gone on the day Book #7 came out.

I read HP #7 pretty much straight through and finished it last Sunday afternoon. I’m a slow reader and I wanted to savor it. I thought it was GREAT. Fabulous. A worthy end to an epic tale. Now I’m rereading the whole series so I can read all those little bits and pieces in the earlier books and know what they really mean.

Anyone else read HP #7? How’d you like it? DON’T post any spoilers here, but I’d love to hear your reactions in general on the story.

I have not been able to blog the last couple of days because of the last-minute rush to get ready for the Alaska cruise that I’m going on. My buddy John Olson and I are running a writing seminar at sea and will be gone for seven days. John is bringing his whole family. I’m bringing my wife, leaving the kids and cats and dog at home to hold the fort.

The branding tagline for Princess Cruises is “Escape Completely.” I’m not sure if that’s possible. I’ll have internet access. However, as part of that escape, I’ll not blog about writing. If possible, I’ll blog a bit about the cruise and post some pictures. My wife forgot the USB cable for the camera, but we hope to scrounge one so we can transfer pictures to my laptop.

I’ll be getting on the boat in a few hours. Feel free to continue the discussion of writing while I’m gone. I’ll be back the day the next Harry Potter book comes out. See ya then!