I swear I don't need a refresher on the days of the week

I know, I know, I missed a Friday again. It's not that I don't know what day is which, it's that I was so completely and totally exhausted on Friday that the idea of posting felt ridiculously involved and difficult. Ah, the joys of ADD. I swear the tagline for ADD (you know, if we were to all start promoting it) should be "Making molehills seem like mountains since 1798.*"

So, here's the final Friday prize - In addition to all the other fun stuff you'll get if you win, I'm throwing a signed ARC of STAY into the prize pack. ARCs are printed as review copies before the book comes out. There's only a small batch printed and once they're gone, they're gone, so they become something of a rarity. Submit your STAY photo before 10/31 to enter!

The reading at Fisher on Thursday was wonderful. I got to have dinner with faculty and a great group of students before the main event. When I got to the reading, I was stunned by how packed the room was! I had a blast. I read from the writing exercise that started STAY and the short story I wrote from the exercise, before I read a few selections from STAY. The students asked a bunch of questions no one has asked me before, I got to meet Steph (on the left) finally, and one of the students asked me to write "Mrs. X can suck it" in his book when I signed it. It was awesome.

And the day before that, I visited M. J. Iuppa's fiction class. STAY was actually course-adopted, and it was so much fun to be able to talk about the book with the class, knowing everyone had read it. Usually, when I talk with a group about STAY there's so much I have to avoid talking about so I don't spoil anything for the people who haven't read it yet. It was neat to talk in-depth about the ending and how I got there, and hear their ideas on the Van/Janie/Diane/Natalie dynamic.

This week I'm going to a book club! STAY was their pick for this month. It'll be my first book club chat and I'm really looking forward to it.

And, today I'm doing laundry, paying bills, answering e-mail, listening to Toad, wallowing in the icky grey weather, drinking absurd amounts of pumpkin spice tea, and possibly catching up on Desperate Housewives later while I eat lunch. It always amazes me how real life sneaks back in after a crazy whirlwind week.

What's on your agenda?

*The year Sir Alexander Crichton used the term "mental restlessness" to describe what we now call ADD. And, of course, I do realize that ADD existed before anyone was writing stuff about it. In fact, there may actually be a reason some of us evolved this way.