Hi folks. I’ve blogged over at Pens about a former colleague who needs our help. Please read his story and consider doing whatever you can. If you live in the Boston area, that’s as simple as attending a fun show. Click the picture below to be taken to the full write up:
Thank you!
Over at the Pens, I posted last week about TIME MANAGEMENT AND WRITING. Very exciting stuff that you can click on the pic to see:
And today, over at the League of Reluctant Adults, I have a brand new guest blog post with J.A. Kazimer, author of the novel CURSES: A F***ed Up Fairy Tale. I blurbed this book and it was so much fun! Go check out her great post and find out more about her release:
I’m being naughty again. This time with euphemisms. . .
Hello my friends! It’s now Sunday evening of my first weekend back in London, and I’m happy as a pig in shit. Which I’m told makes for a very happy pig, although I really don’t know if that’s true. But I do know I’m one happy Nikki.
The flight over was fine, although I did arrive to a bit of a debacle with the keys to my holiday flat, as I blogged about over at the Pens. But it was sorted out by early evening, and within a few hours I was unpacked and ready to start cooking for my friends.
I have a secret, paradoxical domestic streak. I don’t think I want children, and I’m ambivalent about marriage as an institution, but I love nothing more than making people food and serving them and pouring them drinks and making sure they’re comfortable. It’s odd, and I have no idea where it comes from, but I’ve learned to embrace my strange drive to nestle people into my domestic bosom. So within hours of unpacking I had my lovely friends Ruth and Linda over, as well as Linda’s brother who was visiting from Dublin. All I did was make salad and heat up pizza, but it was so nice to catch up and know I didn’t have to run around that night. Then we had delicious cherries and pots of delicious chocolate ganache, which was heavenly.
The next day I had a proper day out with Ruth, and our friends visiting from Edinburgh, Sarah and Robin. We went to Hampton Palace, which was Henry VIII’s stomping grounds. Indeed, Dr. Ruth has become rather obsessed with the Tudors, the TV series, and she especially enjoyed all the large-booted stomping performed by the actor playing Henry.
It was a gorgeous day out, and a great day for a picnic on the front lawn:
After which, we did the whole palace and gardens. I really enjoyed it, although there were a few rooms in which they piped in “authentic” sounds and smells. I was fine with the sounds, but the faux-beef stew smell in the first rooms of the kitchens nearly made me hurl. Any nausea, however, was quickly eradicated by the rest of the kitchens, which had live cooking demos with recipes from the time. Not only were the demos interesting, but all of the cooks were sporting proper period costumes, including these padded cod pieces that looked incredibly, hilariously vulgar underneath their aprons. It was a definite moment of “Is that a rolling pin under your apron or are you just happy to see me?”
As usual, we were definitely the least mature people in the room, and couldn’t stop giggling. But all in all the palace was gorgeous, and very inspiring. I especially liked the maze:
And here’s a picture from the gardens that is actually a cryptic spoiler from book 5, Tempest’s Fury:
After leaving Hampton Palace, we headed back to Islington and one of my favorite restaurants here, the Afghan Kitchen. It’s tiny and super cheap and I adore it. We ate ridiculous amounts of food, then headed down the street for one last drink at the pub:
It was a place I’ve been to often with Dr. Ruth, and it was nice to be back with her:
We went our separate ways after that, but Ruth and I were back at Waterloo Station the next day to head out to Whitton for a BBQ at the house of Dr. and Mrs. Whisky, and the Wee Dram. It was a lovely long day spent with good friends, and I had such a great time. The Whiskys are great, and Dr. Whisky has been very busy with his new job as Global Ambassador of Balvenie. Not too shabby, right? Meanwhile, Mrs. Whisky is expecting ANOTHER Wee Dram, so she’s not been slacking off, either.
Another uni friend, Steve, was also in attendance, and he’s been doing awesome work studying glaciars in Greenland. It was great to catch up with everyone and find out what everyone’s up to. I’m lucky to have such fascinating friends, and the conversation ranged from places to visit in Austin, TX, to the drinking culture in Korea.
Tomorrow I’ve got to get some writing done, but in the evening my friend Jo is coming round to stay for a few days. I can’t wait to catch up, again. Then I should have a fairly quiet (and hopefully productive) week till the weekend, when we’re throwing Mrs. Whisky a baby shower.
So all is going very well here, and I’m so happy I’ve come over. I’m sure I’ll have some more updates for you shortly, including some very exciting things that are happening over in the UK with Jane and her series. I’ll let you know as soon as I can!
Now, however, it’s time for some sleep. Book five calls, and I might be writing a very sexy scene with Jane and a certain someone . . . who do you hope that someone might be?
OH, and Happy Fourth of July!!! Watch some fireworks for me!
Hello my friends. Today’s a beautiful day in Greensburg: the sun is shining, the breeze is cool and fresh, and it’s not 90-fucking-degrees. Seriously, I thought I was going to die last week. But today I’m wearing long sleeves! That makes me very happy, not least as I managed to burn one (but just the one!) arm yesterday. I’m considering cutting off my other sleeve when I go run, to burn that arm and balance myself out, but I think that’s ill-reasoned on a number of levels.
What’s also probably ill-reasoned is the fact I’m going to shoot for a 45-minute run today. I’ve been doing 30, but the next step up is the rather improbable jump of 15 minutes. Think I can do it? I don’t, so if you see me tweeting from a hospital bed later, don’t be too shocked. Okay, I probably will just stop running before I actually collapse, but that doesn’t mean I won’t bitch and moan the rest of the day about being stupidly sore and worn out. Now there’s something to look forward to!
Before I go off for the jogging torture, I have some pimpage for you! First of all, my very lovely friend, the incomparable Jeanne C. Stein, has work out in two new anthologies. These anthos look awesome, and I want both! The first release is a novella, in which we meet a new love interest for Anna Strong. Hot!
Jeanne’s other new release is another Anna story in the very awesome looking antho, Chicks Kick Butt, which also features stories by Rachel Caine, L.A. Banks, and Lilith Saintcrow:
Both of these books look great, and I haz a hankering. 
Also hanging out in the Southwest, Kevin Hearne’s second novel, Hexed, is already being spotted in the wild. I blurbed Hounded, and really enjoyed it, and I have no doubt this one is even better:
On the northern shores, meanwhile, Kat Richardson has hatched a very cool scheme involving official minions. She’s looking for twenty people to be her official 2011 minions, and you get a host of cool prizes and stuff. Who doesn’t love prizes, or Kat, or being Kat’s minion??
As far as my own work is concerned, Book Five, Tempest’s Fury, is going swimmingly, all of a sudden. I’m just short of 100 pages, and I have no idea how that happened. I’m getting into my zone, basically, which means I’m at that stage where I’m not entirely sure where I left my car keys, as I’m eating, breathing, and living Jane.
I did take a brief moment, however, to think through my thoughts on V. S. Naipaul’s comments regarding women writers, over at Pens Fatales.
So that’s my life in a nutshell. I’m unfocused, slightly barmy, and unable to concentrate on much besides my own imaginary worlds. In other words, fairly normal, for me.
How about you guys? How is your life treating you? And have you read or watched anything really good, with which I can distract myself?
Hello lovelies!
I’m updating you from a hotel room in Baton Rouge. Snark-La-Tex has been a BLAST. Seriously, it could not have gone better. We had fun turnouts in awesome bookstores, and we’ve had so much fun together. Everyone’s asked, “Have you killed each other yet?”, which couldn’t be further from the truth. We’ve had an awesome time, laughing our way through everything.
There has been a lot of eating, a lot of snarking, a ridiculous amount of swearing, and a tattoo. Whose? Where? You’ll just have to wait if you don’t follow me on Facebook or Twitter.
I’ll blog the whole tour soon enough, when it’s over. Tonight we have our last signing in Shreveport, at the Barnes & Noble on Youree, at 7pm. Be there or be square.
But now I’ve got a special treat for you, a guest post from Kat Richardson who has done a very cool walking audio tour for her books. Kat’s books are set in Seattle, so if you’re a visiting fan these tours have to be a must-do on your list!
Here’s Kat!
Playing Tourist in Harper Blaine’s Neighborhood
Nikki, being the fab human that she is, asked if I’d say something about the walking tour I put together recently for YodioTours.com. Well, OK, because I’m always one to toot my own horn if someone is fool enough to ask.
Which is kind of how the whole thing started—Clay Loges asked me if I’d like to make a tour based on my Greywalker books for his new service and since it was a chance to get some more exposure in a new way, I said “sure!” Clay had been referred to me by the staff at Seattle Mystery Bookshop who are the best book-pimps money can’t buy. I just love those guys.
So I walked around, took photos, wrote the script, edited the script with Clay’s help and then recorded the audio once we’d got all the photos and the script set to our satisfaction. It was fun to take a look around the neighborhood again since it had been a while since I’d spent much time in Pioneer Square. The books had started out there, but the later ones had often gone out on vacation to other parts of town or even other towns and I’d almost forgotten some of the things that had made me love the historic district to begin with. So I guess I’m back in love with my character’s old stomping grounds. It’s nice when a new project reminds you how much you loved the old ones.
If you want to take a look, the tour is up at YodioTours.com (http://www.yodiotours.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=category&layout=blog&id=35&Itemid=164) and you can view it online or download it to your phone and follow along, when you visit Seattle.
Thanks to Nikki for letting my squat in her blog like this—she’s the best!
I AM the best, Kat. But seriously, thanks for posting and this walking tour is such a great idea. In fact, I’m so psyched about this idea that if you comment about which other series of books you’d think would make a great walking tour, and why, I’ll enter you into a contest to win the book of your choice from Kat’s Greywalker series. Sound good? So comment on this blog post, and if you win then you can pick any of Kat’s Greywalker books and I’ll have it Amazoned to you. If you’ve never tried this series, I think you’ll love it. I’ll draw the winner next Friday, May 27th.
So comment away and thanks for blogging, Kat! I’ll blog myself soon about the tour (the tats and the plans for Poonstache 2012). But if you miss me that much, you can finally see my debut post at Pens Fatales, on carpeing your diems.
See all you Shreveporters shortly!
