Here are the stats for the last 24 hours:

Hours of sleep: 4
Muffins baked: 90
Calories consumed: approximately 200,000, possibly more
Words written: 0

As you may have surmised, delightful food editor (and food stylist extraordinaire) Kitty Crider and her photographer Amber came over today. I am pleased to report that the ceiling did not in fact cave in; the truth is, everything went great, at least from my perspective. Once I was sure my strata wasn’t going to bottom out and that my muffins weren’t going to implode, it was fun; Kitty has so much energy she makes me look lethargic. And that’s saying something.

Best of all, my recalcitrant lemon berry souffle muffin recipe came around. I finally found a fix at 11 p.m. last night. After 72 rather spectacular failures, two bags of frozen raspberries, and two pints of fresh raspberries. I plan on taking the less-photogenic batches to a food bank tomorrow.

I’d write more, but I’m so stuffed with muffins and strata and coffeecake I’m finding it hard to move.

Melissa, the article will be in next Wednesday’s Statesman.

Would love to know if someone somewhere got something written today. It would give me hope. Waddling off to bed now…

For those of you who noticed I didn’t post yesterday, it’s in celebration of National Procrastination Week, an event I heard about on KUT this morning. Okay, so obviously that’s not really the truth, but it could be. And I did write my 1500 words today, by the way, but since the Statesman will be at my house tomorrow, I don’t have high hopes for Tuesday’s word production.

Oh — and I must tell you, this morning I saw a pick-up truck advertising a business I never in a million years would have thought of: “Bookkeeping for Truckers.”

Seriously.

Can you say niche marketing?

Anyway, the real reason I didn’t blog yesterday is that before church, I saw a raccoon sleeping in a pile of leaves outside my kitchen window. We went out and took a few shots (with the camera, not a rifle); when we got back a few hours later, he was still there.

He’s absolutely adorable, but was having a hard time moving, and was very shaky. We called Wildlife Rescue, and with the help of a have-a-heart trap my mother-in-law lent us and a can of tuna, we lured him in, and I drove him up to the wildlife rehabilitator’s house in Round Rock yesterday afternoon. Unfortunately, she diagnosed him with distemper. The survival rate is only 5%, which makes me sad. I’m keeping my fingers crossed; but if nothing else, at least we made his last few days a little more comfortable, I hope.

Of course, Round Rock is close to IKEA, so I had to stop there, too, and now we have lots of new rag rugs and table runners, a new salad bowl, and a ton of Swedish cheese and jams.

I am SUCH a sucker.

But back to the raccoon; I’m going to call the lovely woman who took him (her name is Karen, too) later this week for an update on our cute little masked bandit. Send your good thoughts his way! (And my way, too, please, so I don’t burn my muffins in front of God and everyone tomorrow.)

I saw your great comments, by the way, and will be back after I pick Ian up from school. And bake a batch of muffins…

Today was a lot of fun! I signed at my home B&N;, which is always a treat. Of course I saw lots of friends, writing and otherwise (including my barista pals Tom, Larry and Lamar, who moseyed over and bought books). And as I always do at these events, I even got to make some new ones! The picture at right is of Jo Virgil, Community Relations Manager extraordinaire, and yours truly, by the way.

Didn’t get a whole lot done writingwise, but it’s Saturday, so that’s okay. I did, however, realize that I’m going to have to redo a scene I wrote last week — and thanks to my hubby Eric, I think I know what to do to fix it.

While I was at the store, I did pick up two more books in Robin Hobb’s excellent fantasy series; although sometimes I have a hard time getting past the covers of fantasy novels (I know, I know, you’re not supposed to judge a book by its cover, but all those maidens with sultry eyes and barely concealed bosoms do get a little old), I’ve been trying to read more of it, since some of the work I’m doing involves what’s called ‘world-building’. And it’s always helpful to see how other writers do things.

But it’s a happy coincidence that I picked up one of Ms. Hobb’s Tawny Man books a couple of months ago, because her characters are moving and absolutely convincing. She’s a powerful writer, and her characterizations are so strong I think of them as real. I made the mistake of reading the last trilogy of the series first, but I’m going back to the beginning now, and she’s beguiled me again (although I can see the progression in her writing).

But they’re books I’m relishing, and I will be sad to read the last of them. Hope she’s writing more; but they’re doorstoppers.

It’s fun reading widely and keeping an open mind; you never know what you’ll encounter next!

My favorite quote of today was from my 7-year-old daughter, as she put a 1.5-pound block of chocolate into my shopping basket at Central Market:

“But mom, dark chocolate helps prevent cancer! We have to buy it!”

I admire the sentiment, but I’ve got to wonder… where do these little tidbits come from?

We compromised on a Dairy Milk bar (one of the big ones), of which I consumed about 2/3.

It’s been a long, chauffeur-filled, edit-filled day. I finally tackled the very last (for now) edits on Howling at the Moon; i.e. making sure everything I did worked, fixing the fact that one of my characters was surprised by the same information two chapters in a row, adding another steamy 700 words, and fixing it so that the chapters are of relatively equal length. Sort of. Well, closer than they were, anyway.

Which is time consuming, especially when you’re using the “find” feature and have to retype “chapter” every time you’re looking for the next chapter heading. (I had replaced “Camry” with “BMW” earlier in the day, and every time I pulled up the find and replace tool, it still said “Camry,” so I had to retype “chapter” every single time. No idea why, but with 40-plus chapters, it got a bit annoying. Note to self: complain to Microsoft.)

So I’m sending it off on Monday, and I’m sure I will have more edits once Charlotte (my editor) goes through it, but at least I can focus on the second book again. Which will be lovely, and far preferable to changing previous work, which always results in continuity problems. And chapter length issues.

My dear friend Lindsey was supposed to be coming in tonight from New York, but I found out her flight is canceled, so I’m a bit disappointed. I was looking forward to her company at my signing tomorrow; I haven’t seen her for like six years. (I even washed the sheets for her!)

And for some reason, I am convinced that my ceiling will fall in while the reporter from the Statesman is at my house. Or that my coffee cake will implode. Or that any number of catastrophic events will occur.

At any rate, somebody is yelling in the hall, so I’m off. How was YOUR day?

Good things come in threes, I suppose. First the Agatha, last week. (It’s still sinking in, by the way.)

And then I had an interview with Dane Anderson of the Westlake Picayune this morning; they’re doing a feature in next week’s paper. When I got home from that, the fabulous food editor Kitty Crider of the Austin American-Statesman sent me an e-mail; they’ll be doing a feature in the Food and Life section of the paper. Which means they’ll be taking photos of me. In my kitchen. Which thankfully now has tiles instead of ripped-up wallboard as a back splash. Because if it didn’t, I’d be canvassing everyone in Austin to let me call their home my own for the day. I can see it now. “Of course this is my kitchen, Kitty. I just can’t remember where I hid the flour!”

I’m going to try and write now.

But I have one more thing to say: Laura, when I wrote my first book, I averaged significantly less than 1,000 words a day, and that was a real accomplishment. These days, it comes easier — but I’ve written over 1,500 pages of fiction, which helps. But any word count at all — even 100 words — is something to be proud of. Any words are good words. 🙂 Hemingway considered 500 words a good day.

Just keep the faith!