Housekeeping!

Hey, everybody! *waves*

I know, I know, I said I'd be back Monday and I was not. But it turned out that I needed at least 2 days to recover from my vacation. Those of you with kids know what I mean. Now, let me do some catching up.

NaNoWriMO: FAIL. I only managed 30K words by the end of November. But that's okay. That's half the book, and Rebel Belle continues to chug along at its own pace, and it continues to make me happy, even if sometimes I do think I've gone too far with it (someone gets straight up murdered with a shoe. But, I mean, that's fun, right?)I'd still really like to have it done by Christmas, and that seems doable, so we shall see! One of the writing related things I did over the break was make a list of all the books I have bouncing around in my head right now, and when exactly I thought I could start working on them, and when they would be finished. I ended up having 14 books written in 5 years. I clearly have an overly optimistic take on how long it takes me to write books.

Birthdiversary: Most excellent. Chilled at the beach with the fam, got some lovely and thoughtful presents, and am feeling good about the last year of my 20s. And I'm already planning something epic for the big 3-0. Not sure what yet...but EPIC. OH! And at the beach, I read the best, best book in the whole wide world, The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins. Do yourself a favor and GET THIS BOOK. Easily one of the best things I read this year.

Iron Bowl: We will not speak of it.

Small Son: Continues to rock my world with his awesomeness and high levels of hilarity. Last week, he got chocolate pudding cups out of the fridge, brought them over to me and said all excitedly, "Mama! I found Harry Potter!" I have no idea what this means, but I laughed and laughed. My kid rulz.

Demonglass: Will now be sold in both Germany AND the UK, bringing the grand total of countries where you can find Demonglass up to 6 (counting the US)! Both publishers are super awesome, and I am so thrilled to be working with them (Also, sidenote of awesome: My British co-agent's name is Caspian. This makes him easily the coolest person ever.)

CONTEST: Yes, the Reading Writing Rachel/Buy A Book, Save the World Gift Card Giveaway! Thanks to everyone who left a comment! Please feel free to kick up your feet here at this ol' blog anytime you want. And our winner, chosen at random (as in, I put the comment numbers down on paper and crossed out the voluntary "disqualfiers" and made The Husband pick a number...just in case you were wondering)IS:

CHARMALOT!

Woo hoo! Charmalot, shoot me an email at rachel@rachel-hawkins.com, and give me your deets, and some Barnes and Noble giftcard goodness will be on its way to you!


Since I've been away so long, I'm going to try and blog every day for the rest of the week (I know, that's, like, 3 more days. Big whoop. But I'm trying here!) I have some publishing stuff I was thinking about talking about, but I'm also going to open the floor to requests. Anything you RWR readers out there would like me to talk about specifically? I'm thinking publishing/writing/book stuff, but if someone wants my indepth analysis of Neil Diamond's I Am, I Said um... we can do that, too. ;)

Let me hear from you!