It’s nearly three in the morning and I have no idea why I’m awake, other than the fact that I can’t sleep.

Duh?

It’s officially 22F degrees here in the land of flowers, 13F if you believe the thermometer outside my door. Not a lot of difference there as far as I’m concerned: cold is cold, period.

It’s been a hectic week. I stayed offline for several days to try and do a final read-through of Meter Maids Eat Their Young and when I logged back into the outside world, I had like a hundred and fifty messages in my email. A hundred and forty were spam, of course, I’m not that popular except to the spammers.

The usual shit: penis extenders and viagra, like I could care about either of those; breast implants, which, you know, don’t really apply to me; fake watches and sunglasses, neither of which I wear, real or otherwise; and the ability to obtain enough drugs from Canada, without a prescription mind you, to keep the entire population of the lower 48 stoned for a week or more.

Oh, and several bankers and/or lawyers in Nigeria, the FBI, Bill Gates and some woman in New Braunfals, Texas who want to give me enough money to qualify for the Republican Billionaire bail-out. Someone should tell those folks they really need to proof read those emails, get someone to correct their spelling and grammar. I’ve offered to do it, several times, for a mere hundred bucks a pop but they never write me back. I guess they’re more interested in getting my name, address, gender, phone and bank account number than in speaking – or would that be writing? – proper English.

The others were emails from friends and family. One was a joke about Santa having a bad day and an angel showing up at the door with a christmas tree and wanting to know where Santa wanted to stick it. That one really made my day. I laughed so hard I spit coffee all over my desk.

Another was from my friend Barb Annino, author of Opal Fire, which I wrote about last week. She wanted to trade pages: What I had of MM for what she had with her newest, Bloodstone. Jumped on that one, for sure. She hooked me pretty badly with that end to Opal Fire. I’m looking forward to those pages.

The most exciting email, though, was from my editor who wrote to tell me about a review of Stealing The Marbles posted on Jarika Johnson’s Will Write For Love website. The review is there if you care to read it.