I had an eventful birthday. Things started off right when I dreamed that Richard Armitage fell madly in love with me. After I reluctantly woke up, my husband made me belgian waffles for breakfast and later bbq ribs for lunch.
In the afternoon, I worked with my editor to come up with a short list of possible titles for my new sci-fi romantic thriller coming from Carina Press next year. This was insanely difficult, but they have a point. The working title was just that, and it needed something a little more representative of the work as a whole, and something which would communicate to potential readers. But, damn, it was like trying to rename your firstborn child. Very strange.
I was presented with an ice cream cake from my husband and kids, and lots of books from my Amazon wishlist, including Mark Twain’s autobiography, Mogworld, and The Duke and the Pirate Queen. This was a small affair because the big party with friends and extended family will happen this weekend at an Irish pub.
I spent some time at the DMV because I waited until the very last day to renew my drivers license. (Not really. I was actually dropping off a vessel containing an escaped soul…)
Somewhere, in the middle of all that, I began watching “In Search of Ancient Ireland” and discovered that Bronze Age horns in Ireland sounded exactly like didgeridoos. Which might finally explain why I’ve always had an uncanny passion for the sound of a didgeridoo… It’s going way back into those mists of my soul’s distant past…
In the evening, I attended Bull Spec magazine’s launch party for issue #5 and met Richard Dansky (whose book Firefly Rain I really enjoyed, it’s beautifully written). I also got an autographed copy of Journal of a UFO Investigator from David Halperin, who I met at NASFiC. I call him “professor” because, well, he is one, but he’s also just exactly what you think of when you think of someone called “professor.” If I had to seek sanctuary with an eccentric historian because I was being chased by nefarious cretins who wanted a mysterious object that had somehow fallen into my possession but I had no idea what it was… he would TOTALLY be the one I’d go to.
Then, to top it all off, I discovered Amazon finally has my favorite (but very obscure) Christmas song on mp3. I’ve only been trying to find a copy of it for the past 15 years!
So, all around great day. Now off to bed… Perhaps I’ll meet Sean Bean?
~ J.L. Hilton
