Every intention was to spend the night in Twin Falls, Idaho, and then come home the last three hundred miles in a leisurely manner.  (After living in Montana with gaping distances to travel to get to Walmart of good Mexican food, well, 300 miles does get to seem leisurely).  But in Twin Falls, the Shiloh Inn wanted $160 dollars.  WTF????  Summer rates.  Oh.  I've stayed in NYC and Washington DC for cheaper.  So drive on.  But it turns out, they can get away with said prices because all the hotels are full.  Full.  We drove all the way home.  Got in around 2 a.m.

It is smokey here.  The western half of Montana is on fire.  The mountains all around us are veiled in this pale white fog that is not fog. 

While in CA, I bought a super horrendously Wowza expensive desk chair.  It will arrive in three or four weeks.  It may help my back while I write.  I fell in love with the human touch zero gravity chair.  i do not have money for it.  But I love it.  One day . . . .

I've been working on a new project, which is kinda fun.  It's been trying to figure out what it is, but it has decided and now I'm running ahead of the wind.  We'll see how it goes.  I heard from my new editor and from my agent.  Both are liking the new book.  Whew!  I've been worrying a lot about that.  And my editor read The Cipher and LOVES it.  Yay!  Don D'Amassa reviewed it recently too and had kind words to say.  And I really wanted kind words from him, so I'm aglow.  Here's his website.  You should have a look at it--he reviews all kinds of stuff and he's one that I pay attention to. 

Elsewhere, someone on my Flist, and now I can't remember who, though it's likely it was Marjorie Liu, aka webpetals, had a quote from Neil Gaiman about writing and writers block.  One of the things he talked about was that writers are awfully good at finding something else to do.  When you write, you need to only write.  No blogging, no email, no reading, nothing.  You need to sit there and do nothing if you aren't writing because pretty soon, it's more fun to write than sit.  Now what's so ironic is that writers LOVE writing.  It feeds us.  And yet, we will avoid.  Sometimes it's really difficult to start that day, or to sink down into the current and let yourself go.  And if you sit there and don't let yourself do anything else, you have no choice but to let the love take you.