My day so far… (and penitential pralines)

So everyone’s back at school now. Hooray!

Of course, I celebrated by going to my traditional coffee haunt, where I got my usual (the cheapest thing on the menu — tall drip) and deposited myself in my favorite brown chair.

And read through the entire Wolf 1 manuscript, marking the areas I want to revise. (My word count today, if there is any, will be on the first manuscript; this week is dedicated to revisions. Unless I need a change of pace.)

Then I wandered next door to rearrange books to my advantage. As I was relocating a small stack of Murder on the Rocks books from a table in the back to the mystery bookshelf, I came across a woman reading the back of Dead and Berried. And of course, I said, delightedly, “That’s my book!”

She was more than a little bit startled, and I think prepared to point out that there were six copies on the shelf, and that I was welcome to any one of them. I hurried to explain that the book didn’t actually belong to me, it’s just that I wrote it. As it turned out, her name was Amelia, and she was very nice. It all ended with me signing a copy of Murder on the Rocks for her. And buying three books to take home, including Jitterbug Perfume (which is what I went in for), Haunted Castles of England and Ireland, and a book called Dark Fire (I think) that takes place in England in the 1500s. Where exactly I’m going to put these books, I have no idea. I should not be allowed in bookstores; I’m a menace.

On a totally unrelated note, evidently it was Prison Awareness Sunday at the Austin American-Statesman; I read a fascinating article about a man who spent thirty years in jail (for a crime he didn’t commit, incidentally) making pralines out of purloined butter and sugar packets. Evidently it requires burning thirty (thirty!) rolls of toilet paper, and you have to do it over a toilet so you can flush the evidence if a guard walks by and catches you with sticky fingers. So to speak. So if you have a yen for pralines, he sells them online. He no longer cooks over an open toilet, in case that was a concern for you, and now uses natural gas rather than flaming toilet paper as a fuel source.

And to think that with two convection ovens, a high-output gas stove, and a refrigerator bulging at the seams, I have difficulty getting dinner on the table!

I’ll check back later with word count. I hope. How’s everyone else today?