Right now our home is not the peaceful place I need to write. So today I took my laptop and drove to the harbour where our boat is. That worked out great. I wrote a whole chapter and took care of some other stuff, without being disturbed or distracted. I’ll do that again soon!

It was really scary, but it went well. I sold and signed a lot of books that night.
Oh my, I really am a writer!

That’s what I’ve been doing these days. Reading. And writing.
I was so tired last week that I spent most of my time on the couch, reading. And resting. A little knitting on the green dress, but nothing much. I had great plans, rearranging furniture, decluttering, cleaning, but I ended up just doing enough and not even a little thing more.
Two days ago I got a struck of inspiration and a new romance is growing on my computer right now.
I think I did rest enough.
I don’t know if I will be able to post everyday, my head is filled with these people in the story and I still have some other things to do, but I will try.
Blog break is over, I think! I missed you guys!

I really had to interrupt the blogbreak to show you this. My book. For real!
I can’t sell it or give it away until the presentation on March 11th, but it is printed! So weird to see my own words in a real book!

I joined the Flickr group “a year of mornings”, although I don’t think I’ll make it through a whole year (oh my, I suddenly remember the year of color thing – I totally forgot about that). I told the owner I couldn’t commit to that and was kindly invited to join anyway. So the last two days I have been picking up my camera much earlier than usual, resulting in different pictures than usual. This morning however, I was too busy to even stop and think about it that early (it was still morning though). I had to be at Miriam’s school at nine to pick up this year’s first report card (it’s a good list -sevens, eights and even a nine out of ten- she is doing great) and I didn’t sleep very well.
On the picture you see the reason for that. Last night I got an email that my book had been worked through by an editor. Would I look through the corrections, change some things and send it back?
I was under the impression that it was in the process of being printed by now (it’s supposed to be in the shops in December), so that was a bit of a surprise… I have asked the publisher what to expect months ago, but was told there was nothing more I had to do.
I’m starting to have mixed feelings about this whole process. I realize I’m new at this and that I’m a control freak. But I get little or no information about what’s going on and that is starting to bother me.
Oh well, I’m still quite excited that I will have a real book in my hands soon (might be later than December though).
And now I’m going back to it. Eighty pages to go…

When I have to take pictures of people that I have interviewed they usually get a bit nervous. “I really don’t like getting my picture being taken.” they tell me. And I answer that I agree and I do think I am on the good end of the camera…
But today I got an email from my publisher that I needed to submit a picture of myself for my book and their coming list of publications. So I gave dh my camera and he started taking pictures.
I really really don’t like my pictures being taken. I look so old on them (don’t we all keep an image of ourself in our early twenties in our minds?), my laugh is funny and my eyes… And there is the fact that I’m still a bit suffering from the flu. I can really see the redness of my nose, and the extra deep eyes. But dh says this is how I look. Oh well.
This is not the one we sent to the publisher, but I think I like this one best. This is just me, grinning because dh is making me nervous waving that cameralens at me. May be I’ll send this one too, even though I think the background is too dark to be printed.
So anyway, there you have it. Just me.

Remember the news that I couldn’t tell you about? Well, I signed the contract today, so I might as well share it with the world.

My book will be published! And that’s about all that would interest most of my readers here, since it’s an novel in Dutch and it won’t be out until late 2008. But really, I’m so happy!