Hit By the Japanese Spammer

スパム My blog was finally hit by Sexy the Japanese spammer that has already hit everyone else’s blog. I truly do not understand the purpose of this. It took me an hour to delete it off all the pages. Translation at Google didn’t clear up the purpose of this. It translated into random words. It did give me a chance to respond to some of the bloggers that I hadn’t gotten around to. Seems like I run around lately like a chicken with its head cut off. Do people say that anymore? It was one of my grandmother’s sayings.

Hope everyone is having a great summer.

Rereading Overload

Lately we’ve had a sudden influx of books that need editing. I barely finish one when another comes in. The last couple days we’ve had three novels arrive FedEx that are in the page proof stage. For those of you who don’t know what page proofs are, they are preliminary versions of publications. They are unbound, and in some cases electronic. They are created as part of the proofreading and copyediting processes, but can be used for promotional and review purposes also. At this stage most of the mistakes should be already corrected. Usually mistakes we find are from what was corrected in copy edit stage and entered incorrectly. At this point I’ve read the book so many times that it is sometimes hard to catch mistakes. This would be my last chance to catch a mistake. It really bothers me when something stupid doesn't get fixed. For example in Frankly My Dear, I’m Dead I did not catch that I had Margaret Mitchell’s husband down as John Walsh. His name is John Marsh. I knew this, but for some reason my brain didn’t catch it. That still bugs me. Let’s hope my brain is sharper this week. I'd better eat some fish.

Killer Crab Cakes

Publisher: NAL Trade (September 29, 2009)
ISBN-10: 0451228367
ISBN-13: 978-0451228369

I wasn't sure what to expect for a cover with the title Killer Crab Cakes. I visualized a crab waving around a gun or knife. No crabs, but it is a nice colorful cover. The book is set in Rockport, Texas where James and I spent a month researching and working. He actually wrote a book and a half while were were down there while I researched, plotted, and cooked seafood. I'm much, much slower at this process than he is. It took a second trip down there to finish writing the book. Unfortunately we couldn't spend a second month down there. The second trip was just for a week, but the last touches were put on the book in Rockport.

Nicki and Nora

We finally settled on the names for the puppies. Who would have thought it would be that hard to name a couple little female pups. We went through a lot of names, but none fit them. I threatened to call them Jo and Anna since our youngest daughter, Joanna, recently moved out. I wasn't serious and she saw the humor in it.

I thought about Calamity and Belle, but we had a little goat named Belle. John suggested Min and Pin and Michael Davis went even further with Minnie and Pennie. Good names, but not for these two. Michael came up with a lot of good ideas for names on Facebook, some we’ve even used in the past for pets.

Finally we decided to name them Nicki and Nora. I like the salute to the mystery series, but since we didn’t have a boy pup Nick was changed to Nicki. Nicki also has a second meaning to us. When our daughters were little we read a book called No No Nicky. They loved that book. It was a book the whole family knew without actually seeing the pages, because we read so many times. Even though it was about a cat, it really fits the smallest pup. She climbs up my leg when I’m sitting and suddenly I have a tiny pup in my lap. She climbs so high, I’m afraid she’s going to fall. We do seem to say no, no to them a lot. They are only eight weeks old and have many things to learn not to do. Like don't go near the grumpy ol’ dog we’ve had for many years. I think he must look a little like Momma because they really, really want him.

They are getting more adventuresome which can be a problem because we have a pair of hawks that live in the nearby woods. Yesterday one flew right over them. Luckily it wasn’t interested in them because it had a big ol’ snake.

I’d forgotten how much fun babies were. We’ve had kittens before but never puppies this young. They will just make you laugh out loud and our house hasn’t had enough laughter lately.

A Very Nice Review

There is a very nice review of The Christmas Cookie Killer by Pamela James at the Mayhem and Magic blog. Thanks Pamela.

Mother's Day Puppies

We have two new additions to the family. Today James and Shayna went to Denton and brought home these two little girls. These little half-pints are seven weeks old Min-Pin/Chihuahua mixes. They napped in a plastic tub while I bought supplies.

Now we need to come up with names. Any suggestions?

Pot Roast

I finally bought a new crock-pot to replace the one I lost in the fire over a year ago. I never really used the old one that much at home. Actually I had two of the big ones, but they were bought to make nachos for the school math and science team home competitions while our daughter was on the team. James and I ran the concession stand for the teams for several years. You wouldn’t believe how many pots of cheese we’d sell in one competition. I would have to get up especially early on those mornings to start a batch in the first pot. The kids would start buying nachos as soon as we’d set up for breakfast. While setting up, I’d start the next batch in the second crock-pot so hopefully it’d be hot by the time the first batch was gone, so I could start the next pot of cheese, and then the next . . . I really hated nachos by the time our daughter graduated high school.

This morning I filled my new crock-pot with baby carrots, onions, celery, red potatoes and two braised chuck roasts. The smell is already getting to me and I haven’t even had breakfast yet. If it turns out tasting the way it smells, I’ll split it between us and my parents. I do love cooking a whole meal in one pot, not to mention I can work through the time I would normally cook supper.