by Janis Susan May/Janis
Patterson
By the time you read this, the Labor
Day holiday will be over, and I say thank Goodness!
Whoever started the canard that
Holidays were for a holiday, a respite from work? I work harder on a
designated Holiday than just about any other day. Like this last
weekend – THE EGYPTIAN FILE officially released on the 30th,
so there was all the attendant announcement publicity to do.
A digression - WHY does each
book/readers site have different rules on publicity? Different days;
different things accepted. Some will accept a post any day; some
allow them only on certain days or on one specific day. Some will
take only a simple announcement; some want everything – blurb,
excerpt, links, cover, websites, everything but your blood type. Some
take links, some don't. Some take cover shots, some don't. Some want
blurbs, some don't. Some want excerpts, some don't. All seem to want
something different in the subject line. Why don't they get together
and make one set of rules for all that will be easier for writers and
readers both?
Back to holidays. As I said, doing the
basic release announcements takes a great deal of time and attention.
Plus, The Husband is home, which at the least means more cooking.
Plus, we're redoing the garage. The actual hammer-and-nails
remodeling is done (thank Goodness, and before there was physical
violence) but now we must clean out our various storage rooms and
decide what to keep and what to give away. Worse yet, it seems that
we each regard our own stuff as precious (mine is mostly antiques, by
the way) and the other's as simply stuff, or worse, junk.
My head had barely lifted off the
pillow on Saturday before The Husband began prattling about Let's
Work On The Garage This Weekend. (When he asked me early in the summer what I
wanted for my birthday, I told him two whole weeks in which he
neither said nor wrote the word 'garage.' Instead I got a trip to Vegas and a
huge kunzite ring. Sigh.) Of course, we were to start working right
after I fixed breakfast. Normally cooked breakfasts are reserved for
Sundays.
It's late summer in Texas, and ten
minutes after dawn the sky is on 'Broil.' Needless to say, our garage
is not air-conditioned. Neither are the storage rooms, and neither is
our ancient but still (barely) running pickup. I keep telling myself
I'd be paying money to use a sauna in some health club to be just as
hot. It doesn't help.
The Husband doesn't seem to understand
that when I am sitting in a reasonably cool room (who can afford to
keep a room truly comfortable with today's abominably astronomical
electric rates?) typing on a computer that I am truly working.
Believe me, I am. I have blogs to write. I have release publicity to
do. I have publicity on previous releases to do. I have future
releases to get ready for my formatter and cover artist. And sometime
– I don't know really when – I have to write on the next book,
whose deadline is galloping steadily closer.
Thank Goodness tomorrow is Tuesday and
his job will once more devour The Husband for the better part of the
day. Don't get me wrong – I love him, he is the most wonderful man
I have ever known and I love being with him, but he does have a
fixation. Garage, garage, garage... I'm even coming to hate the sound
of the word. I do love being with him. I will love it even more once
the garage is finished.
We did work most of the weekend and got
a fair amount done. At this rate we should have the job completed
just when the weather finally gets cool enough to be outside without
my becoming a fountain of perspiration. I do, though, have the
dreadful premonition that when that day occurs his repetitive
vocabulary will evolve from 'Garage' into 'Yard.' Help me...
Holiday? Phooey.
UPDATE
This
fortnight's release is THE EGYPTIAN FILE, a contemporary romantic
adventure which takes place in my beloved Egypt. Like
THE JERUSALEM CONNECTION, my 30 July release, THE EGYPTIAN FILE is a
brand new book, not a backlist rerelease.
I got the idea for THE EGYPTIAN FILE
during my last visit to Egypt and it would not leave me alone until I
wrote it. Luckily I was blessed with the research help of two good
friends, Dr. Stephen Harvey (perhaps the world's most acknowledged
authority on Ahmose I) and Dr. Dirk Huyge (Director of the Belgian
Archaeological Mission to El Kab). They were both most generous with
their time and information, and Dr. Huyge even allowed me to add a
tomb to the El Kab site – mainly because things go on in that tomb
that should never go on in a real one!
THE EGYPTIAN FILE tells the story of
Melissa Warrender, who is sent by a telephone call - which may or may
not have come from her dead father - to retrieve a mysterious file in
Cairo. Others who are willing to kill for it want the file as well,
and Melissa's only ally is a handsome Cairo cabby who may not be what
he seems. As they flee across Egypt they know they must translate the
cryptic message in the file if they are to survive. An unimaginable
treasure is at stake if they can live to find it.
