Can’t even call it a dusting. But still. There was BIG excitement around here when this happened.
Some of us can’t wait for the REAL thing. :-)
Hope you all have a great weekend.
Winners!
We have winners!
Winner of SHIVER and SWEEP is…Brooke DelVecchio.
Winners of the ReVamped bookmarks signed by Ada Adams are…Lea Krnjeta, Justine, and Merisha Abbott.
Congrats to you all! Please send me an email with your mailing address, and I’ll pop your goodies in the mail this week. :-)
(That was fun. Let’s do that again sometime soon, okay?)
:-)
Thankfully
Over the holiday weekend, in between cooking up a Thanksgiving feast, copy editing a fellow writer’s book that’ll be coming out very soon, and working on Jonas’ story Indomitable, I started a new knitting project.
I know, I know! I can’t help myself. The yarn is calling to me right now and the promise of a warm sweater to wrap up in is too wonderful for me to resist.
I’m so excited about this, you guys. It’s been a while since I’ve knit myself a sweater (years upon years) and when I came across this pattern I fell in love.
So in those few moments when I get to sit and be still (when I’m not writing) I’m knitting. On the rare evenings when we watch a movie, I’m knitting. When my boys are all sitting around with their needles and yarn, and my girl is saying “Mama, I wanna knit, too,” I’m knitting.
That makes it sound as if I’m doing lots of knitting, and I wish that were true. But it’s just a row here, a couple of rows there—not much accumulating on any given day. Taking it bit by bit because most of my time is spent writing or child-ing. But each row adds up, right? And at some point I’ll have a whole sweater to slip into. Hopefully sometime this winter. :-)
But it’s just lovely, I have to tell you, to be making something stitch by stitch, row by row. To watch it grow and become something right before my eyes. It’s a meditation for my mind, for my hands. It reminds me so much of writing, as I sit by the wood stove, wrapping yarn around my needles, slipping loops off as I wait for the fire to get hot enough for me to close it down for the night and go to bed. A story grows word by word, sentence by sentence, chapter by chapter in such a similar way. And it takes time. It takes sitting still and working on it until it’s just the right length/size, just the right shape, just the way you want it.
And as we head into the month ahead that often feels like too much to me–too much to do, too busy, too stressful–this knitting is my haven. A row or two to calm my mind and my heart. To bring me back to center. To remind me to slow down, that not everything must be a rush, that it will all get done in time.
Thankfully.
* * *
A quick reminder that today is the LAST DAY to sign up for the Shiver and Sweep Giveaway. Tomorrow I’ll be picking one lucky winner (I sure hope it’s you!).
Have a great day, everyone!
Shiver & Sweep Giveaway!
I am slowly thinning out my overcrowded bookshelves and have two more fabulous YA books to give away to you. (Lucky YOU!) One fortuitous person is going to win
and 
Will it be YOU? (I hope so!) Shiver is the first book of Maggie Stiefvater‘s Wolves of Mercy Falls series and it features werewolves. Sweep is a collection of the first THREE books of Cate Tiernan‘s Sweep series (which runs at least fifteen books long!) and is all things Wicca.
What do you have to do to be entered to win? Just tell me you’d like to have these books. There are three ways to do that:
1. Leave a comment on this post.
2. Leave a comment on my Facebook post about the giveaway. (And share it too, please!)
3. Tweet about it (but be sure to include my Twitter name and a link to this post in your tweet so I see it! I’m @jmeyersbooks on Twitter). Here’s a sample tweet you can just copy and paste, or adjust as you like:
I entered to win SHIVER and SWEEP from @jmeyersbooks. You can too! http://wp.me/p28ik8-10Q
CONTEST IS NOW CLOSED. THANKS FOR PLAYING!
If you wanted to FOLLOW me in any of those places (blog, Facebook, Twitter) that’d be extra sweet. :-) But you can enter even if you’d rather not. You can do all three ways or only one. And I’d really appreciate it if you’d help spread the word so more people get a chance for these great books.
Contest is open internationally and each person gets one entry. The giveaway is open until Monday, November 26, 2012, when I’ll give everyone a number and pick a random winner. On Tuesday, November 27, I’ll announce the winner here on my blog, on Twitter, and Facebook. So make sure you check back to see if you’ve won!
- I took this in black and white by mistake but loved it so much I had to post it. Don’t you just love black and white photos? Even books look great in b&w.
Also, just for fun I’m going to pick a few runners-up to send one of these gorgeous signed bookmarks to. Ada Adams‘ second book ReAwakened will be coming out soon, so I’m celebrating in anticipation!
Good luck everyone! (I hope you win.) ;-)
Saying Goodbye to Fall
I love this season like no other, and every year I fall in love again. We pull out our sweaters, find hats and sometimes scarves. I start making massive pots of soup every week and we dip fresh bread into it or sprinkle cornbread crumbs on top. The wood stove gets fired up and after a lovely cold night snuggled deep under covers, the toast of the fire is just right. And as we all say goodbye to the colors and crisp days, I am surrounded with four littles anxiously awaiting the first real snow.
Have a lovely start to your week, my friends.
Switching Gears (a little)
Okay, so I have good news and (sorta) bad news. Which do you want first? The bad news? Great. (I’m like that too.) Here goes:
I’m realizing that Imaginable is not going to be ready to be published by the end of the year as I’ve hoped and promised. I know, I know. I’m sorry. But I’m working on building the best story I can for you all, and unfortunately it’s not happening as quickly as I’d like. (But I’m loving the story and there are some incredibly cool things that happen in it that I’m SO excited about.)
So it’s going to be ready (fingers crossed) early next year. Maybe January…more likely February. (Hopefully no later than that.) Quality takes time, right? (Turns out that’s really true.)
But I’m NOT leaving you TOTALLY hanging. And that’s the good news.
Since Imaginable is delayed, I’m taking a little time to write a novelette/novella about one of the important secondary characters. WHO, you ask?
Jonas.
(I know, right? JONAS!) It gives Jonas’ back story and a greater glimpse of his character. And it will be coming out in December. For SURE. (It’s a LOT quicker to write and polish 10,000-20,000 words than it is to do the same for 90,000 + words and a more complex story line.)
Jonas’ story is called Indomitable. I’ll be telling you more about it in the coming weeks.
In the meantime, I hope you have a wonderful weekend. :-)
Preparing
Baking fun treats and practicing for my reading tomorrow. It’s going to be a dramatic reading, of course, because once an actor, ALWAYS an actor. ;-)
(Also on the to-do list before the reading: swim lessons and ice skating. Because life goes on.)
Hope you all are having a great day.
Reading/Signing in NY this week
Anyone in the Ithaca, NY, area this week should stop on by my reading/signing at the Trumansburg Library on Thursday, November 1, at 7 pm. I’ll do a short reading and then we can all talk books. Also? FREE cookies. And bookmarks. And tattoos. FUN guaranteed. Right? So even if you weren’t planning on being in the Ithaca area, you still have time to book your flight now and get here. :-)
Oh, and I’ll be the one with blue hair. (I’m not kidding.) (I’ll post pics, you guys. Promise.)
And I’m feeling the need to give a book or two away. So, look for that SOON.
Hope your week is starting out great. (And hopefully SAFE for those of you in the storm zone. Fingers crossed for us all.)
Gratitude
Today I’m steeped in gratitude for…
* one last warm Fall day filled with sunshine and golden falling leaves.
* the coming cold days to be spent curled up in front of the wood stove, toasting ourselves to bone-deep warmth.
* busy days making happy, tired kids.
* the end of soccer season (to make our weeks just a little *less* busy).
* glasses that I’m finally getting used to and starting to really appreciate the clarity with which I can now see.
* soup-making season. (And fresh bread to dip in the soup.)
* the magical feel of knitting, watching sweaters and hats grow on my needles.
* finding the right words when I need them.
* the four little people I get to spend my days with, and the one big person I get to spend my life with.
* chocolate and tea. Always. :-)
Hope you have a great weekend!
What is filling you with gratitude today?
Another Kind of Revision
Simultaneous undoing and redoing
I’m revising a hat I made last year—unmaking it while I reknit it again a tad smaller (it’s kind of fun to unravel it as I knit…I haven’t done this before).
Done!
I think this is the hat’s third (and last-because-it’s-now-exactly-how-I-want-it) revision, because just like with writing, if you don’t get it just right the first time, you can always go back and revise.
Hope you’re having a good day. :-)