Holiday? Huh?

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 30^th, 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.

Writer, Interrupted

by Janis Patterson

Our family has always been keepers. Not hoarders, but keepers. Things that are parts of our family history. Things that might be useful someday. Or simply, things that are simply too good to get rid of. That’s how we ended up with a garage full of stuff. And when I say full, I mean full! This oversized two car garage was packed so tightly we couldn’t have fitted an anorexic mouse in there.

Over the years periodically we’d decide to do something about it. We had plans to make it half into an organized storage facility with shelves and steel pallets and half into a workshop (I call it a ‘Boom Room’) for The Husband. We’d make a concentrated but short-lived attempt to get it cleaned out. The local animal-benefit charity shop loved us, because with every attempt they got a nice haul of stuff. But then other things – trips, rocket meets, gun shows, writer’s meetings, that sort of thing – got in the way and the garage would once again slip into oblivion on our radar.

Then not too long ago we realized how long we had been talking about doing the garage and, in a moment of bravado, booked the contractor to arrive on a certain date. Then we looked at the garage and ALL THAT STUFF! Gulp.

Well, there was no way we could sort through all those boxes and bags and suitcases in time to have the garage cleared before the contractor and his crew showed up, so we did the next best thing. We rented a storage room – a rather large storage room – on the edge of town and have been frantically moving things there willy-nilly for the last ten days. We? The Husband goes to his job Monday through Friday and can only work on the weekend, leaving guess who to haul stuff around during the week. Of course, I have a job too – I write, you know – but in the light of the present emergency my computer is getting a nice rest. I’m not. Sometimes life just gets in the way.

My mother did not raise me to be a stevedore, but necessity drives, so during the week I load up my SUV (which seems to be rather ashamed to be carrying such a shabby cargo), drive to the storage unit, unload, return and repeat. And repeat. And repeat.

Did I tell you I’ve discovered one of the great secrets of the universe? Boxes breed. They really do. After a day of moving I swear there are more boxes in the garage than there were when I started. Sigh.

It doesn’t help that we are dealing with four households – mine, The Husband’s, my late parents’ and what my mother had from her mother’s house. You can name almost anything and we have at least three of them. To complicate matters, my late mother was the family historian who kept all kinds of family memorabilia from photographs to a pump head to plow harrows to an ancient scythe (I’m fixed for costume parties from now on!) to an 1830 blanket box which strongly resembles a recently dug up coffin. We have furniture that came to Texas in a covered wagon in the 1840s and a settee and two chairs that date from my great-uncle’s first term as a State Legislator back in the twenties. I think we are the only house on the block to have our own anvil.

Not all was lost during this last weekend, though. The Husband and I took an entire pick-up load of stuff to the charity shop. And there is method in our madness in carrying stuff away to storage. That way we ensure that only things we wish to keep will come back to the house… and the charity shop is conveniently located between home and the storage facility!

I may not be getting much writing done, but it is a good feeling to know that our dreams of the garage are actually coming true and that our discards are benefiting the scores of homeless animals who so desperately need help. It’s also sad in a way, because I am getting rid of things I would rather not, but have no need of nor space for. There are some things I’m keeping, though, like the anvil. It might be useful someday.