On Fridays, I go over to the Long Beach Senior Center for bridge. It's a really nice group...not too serious, not too good, but nice. (For example, one guy revoked today, denied he'd done so, and took an extra three tricks by saving his stopper. We decided not to argue because even with that, he had a low board). That's sort of my point for the day. We play duplicate, but we normally have only two and a half tables, which means that high on a board is one. Since both defense and bidding are suspect (one notrump by my partner, two spades by my right-hand opponent and he had only four spades. Weird), even bidding and playing perfectly can result in a low board. My regular partner was out of town and I played with Dorris, a nice woman who's been introducing me to Long Beach bridge. We came in second. Could have been better. Could have been worse. Either way it was weird.

We've got an offer out on a house and we were supposed to hear yesterday, but then we heard the realtor was taking the two best offers to the owner and we were going to hear today. We didn't. I have no idea what this means...I suspect it means nothing but who knows. The funny thing was, they were supposedly in a hurry to get their money.You'd think if they were in a hurry, they'd be ready to make a decision. People are strange.

I made some progress on my new-new near future book today. I'm up to page 69. I seem to be writing about 5 pages a day rather than 10, whihc is my goal. I'm planning on writing 50K words during NaNoWriMo, so I'll definitely have to up the pace. The good news is, the story is set and moving along. I've got a protagonist, a sort-of-antagonist, and a fairly complex world. I'm setting it in Dallas. I wonder if this is my last book to be set in Dallas.

I've rebalanced BooksForABuck.com's schedule. We'll publish FORWARD, SHAMBLE! by Joshua Calkins-Treworgy in November (it's the second in the Bob the Zombie series), and HARD LESSONS by Vanessa Knipe in December. (it's the second in the TALES FROM THE THEOLOGICAL SCHOOL OF SAINT VAN HELSING series). I sort of smirk every time I see that. St. Van Helsing is very funny, I think. Knipe plays it straight, though. The Church of England against the forces of darkness. I'm looking forward to publishing both of these.

We had some exciting news. Karen has sold a book to Harlequin SuperRomance. She hasn't sold a book for a while and so this is exciting. Also, SuperRomance is a new line for her (she's written for Silhouette Intimate Moments, Silhouette Desire, Silhouette Romance, Harlequin Intrigue and Harlequin American before). SuperRomance is a bit longer, so she'll have a few more pages to get in the plot twists and character development she likes. From a financial perspective, selling a category romance doesn't exactly equate to winning the lottery but it's better than zero money coming in, so it's progress.

I'm going to make SPRING RAIN ON THE WIND by Kristina O'Donnelly the www.BooksForABuck.com book of the day. An English warlock has chased a beautiful woman across the generations. Now, she's forced to face him...whether she's ready or not. A moving and exciting romance. Only $3.99. Learn more, read the excerpt or buy the book here: http://www.booksforabuck.com/rompages/rom_2007/spring_rain.html. (Available in HTML, Adobe PDF, eReader, Mobipocket and Microsoft Reader formats (ask if you need Sony or ePub). Here's the cover:

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