Hello hello!

I apologize for the long silence--the holidays this year were a whirlwind, and somehow December disappeared before I knew it. I can hardly believe it's the new year. It feels like I was just on tour, and now paperback tour is already approaching. (As soon as I have dates, I'll post them on the schedule. Also have a few lectures coming up, and will post those as well.)

So it's a bloody cold day here in the north. I'm at my usual coffeeshop haunt, Spyhouse, and getting far less done than I really should. I'm dragging my feet getting back to work after all the holiday whatnot. It was a warm, good Christmastime in my corner of the world. Snow upon snow, and I meant to get a Christmas tree...but like I said, time sped past me and I find myself with a case of the post-holiday daydreamings. I have a stack of new books to read--am partway through Toni Morrison's wonderful new book A Mercy, and just picked up Aravand Adiga's White Tiger, which comes highly recommended by a friend who claims he read Candide at the age of ten. Ha! I don't believe it for a minute. Mostly what I feel like doing on a day this cold is curling up under a quilt with a book, but I've ventured out into the real world, where everyone's got that Sunday-disheveled look about them. The day before everyone goes back to work, and no one's looking too hurried about it. In truth, I have been working a little these last two weeks--research on the Russian Revolution, work on an article for a legal magazine (no joke), and FINALLY I've kicked out about half of the new poem that's been following me around like a dog for a month. I dreamed about poems two nights running this week. One night I dreamed about the style in which I'll write the next one, and one night I dreamed, to my dismay, that I'm going to have to throw out most of the poetry I wrote prior to this year. Good lord. I want normal dreams. Like ones where I fly, or something. As it is, I just go to sleep and keep writing. In waking hours, I'm about to start work on the synopsis and character sketches for the new novel. I've managed to wind myself up into a total tizzy about it, and the only thing for it is to stop thinking and just write. When in doubt, don't think.

I've got itchy feet and am antsy to get out of town. It's unusual I'm in town for this long at a stretch--almost two months--and I'm dying to hit the road. Not for long. Just something to get the travel bug satisfied. When I get like this, I spend far too much time staring out the window and thinking about where I want to be. Today it's the Oregon coast, where I have family. Salty fog and cold walks on the beach are sounding awfully good right about now. I may head there next. I wrote the first draft of Wasted out there, as well as the last draft of The Center of Winter, and did a lot of research there for Madness. It seems like it'd be fitting to get some time in on the new novel there as well. Something about walking on the beach in a heavy sweater, listening to the gulls and the fierce crashing of the waves, does me good. On the other hand, considering the fact that it's 3 degrees outside, I could consider going somewhere warm...

My orchid, as discussed in a previous post, is thriving leaf-wise, but remains without a bloom. I'm getting cross.

And that, my friends, is all the news I've got on this sleepy cold January day. I really will be better about keeping this blog up to date now that the holidays are done. I may not have much to say, but I'll say it anyway. I hope all of you are off to a good start to 2009. Make it a happy, healthy year.

Peace,
Marya