Happy St. Patrick's Day from Ciel and the gang!

Wishing all of you the luck of the Irish!

And if you absolutely must read a real post, here's a rerun from 2010. TG has a show this year, so we won't be having our traditional dinner tonight. But we had Reuben sandwiches last night, so at least we got our corned beef and cabbage (in the form of sauerkraut), anyway. And I'll still wear that necklace. 

Me & St. Pat, we got a thing going on...

I love St. Patrick's Day. :)

Every year I wear this:



It's not a shamrock, but I figure a four-leaf clover is close enough. This one I've had since I was born (which makes it *cough* over twenty-one), a gift from my aunts in Sweden (who were really my mother's cousins, but as close to her as sisters, so my brothers and I always called them aunts). They wanted me to have a life full of good luck.

Here's the back:



Isn't that handy? I'll never forget my name as long as I am wearing it.

Seriously, St. Paddy's Day is just about my favorite holiday. Yes, even above Christmas. As much as I love jolly old St. Nick, there is a lot of mom-work involved with that holiday. Not to mention High Expectations from just about everyone.

St. Paddy's Day is laid back. Relaxed. No gift shopping, no unavoidable card & candy & flower shopping (oh, you can send cards if you like, but nobody really expects them, at least nobody I know), no hard-boiling & dyeing eggs, or filling up baskets with fake grass and goodies. No infernal racket & blowing your fingers off with fireworks.

Just good ol' Guinness and a nice New England boiled dinner (corned beef and cabbage, and of course potatoes).



Normally I don't even have to boil that dinner, since the theater god loves to cook. But this year I may have to, if he doesn't get home from work in time to start the corned beef (it takes about three hours at a simmer to do it right). I am assured by both TG and DD (my darling daughter, who inherited her cooking skills from TG--too bad she's not here to step into the breach) that this meal is easy-peasy to produce.

Ha. We shall see about that. Never underestimate my ability to screw up in the kitchen.

Update later. If I haven't burned down the house.

(And if I've had enough Guinness, I may come back and tell you about the time a gunrunner for the IRA tried to recruit TG and me in Dublin. Long story short, we, um, declined his kind invitation to be a part of a noble cause. Even though he did offer us a freezer full of steaks and a possible job connection at the Abbey Theater.)

ATTN: Readers of the Latest ARC!

It's that time again! ARC Tour!

Photo courtesy of MorgueFile.com, "Fixed" by moi.

The USS ALL FIXED UP is about to embark on the traditional voyage of early readership. (Get it? Readership? Ha-ha! Sometimes I crack myself up. Then again, I'm an easy audience.)

As many of you know, All Fixed Up won't be released until May 24th. BUT! (Am I using too many exclamation points? I feel like I might be. But this is exciting!) But (apparently I'm fond of "buts," too) if you don't mind a few measly typographical errors, you don't have to wait that long to read it. Because I have these:

And I'm going to send one of them out into the world, in all its uncorrected glory (don't worry, it's not that bad), so my loyalist readers can find out Ciel's bombshell early. (Please, no spoilers if you participate. But feel free to smile smugly at your secret knowledge.)

If it's any encouragement to participate in the tour, I guarantee that in this one Billy is Billy-er, Mark is Mark-ier, and, most importantly, Ciel is Ciel-ier! One might say her character is growing. Which is, in my humble opinion, important in a series. 

Once again, the magnificently bad-ass Karla Nellenbach has agreed to be my Tour Director, and will be juggling emails and plotting the best route for the book. 

To participate, all you have to do is email me at linda(dot)grimes(at)gmail(dot)com and tell me your address, and agree to mail the ARC on to the next person on the tour list when you're done reading.

I'll forward your info to Karla, who will be the one giving you a heads-up when its on its way to you. 

Once you have it, it would be great if you could finish in under a week, so the others don't have to wait longer than necessary for their turn. And if you sign it before sending it on, that would be absolutely lovely. The early-reader-signed ARCs of the first three books are some of my most prized possessions. :)

Oh, and if you would leave an honest review on Goodreads, Amazon, or B&N (after release day--May 24th--for Amazon and B&N), that would be great, too. But not mandatory.

Since I'm asking people to pony up the postage to send it on to the next person, I'm afraid I'll have to limit participants to the US. It doesn't cost much to mail a book within the US. Under $3, last I checked. Lots cheaper than buying the book, anyway. ;)

More incentive: I will send each participant a signed bookmark, once I get them from the printer. (Speak of the devil--just this minute got a email from the printer that they've shipped. Yay!)

Bookmark Front

Bookmark Back

Hope you guys will enjoy it! Ciel, Billy, and Mark hope so, too. :)

2016!

I would love to take a few minutes to write a truly inspirational post for this, the first day of 2016, but, frankly, Bill and Ted distilled it so much better than I ever could:

Think how much better the world would be if everyone did just that. :)

And now I'm off to begin my new year as I would like to continue it: working on a book. 

First up: Finish assiduously (wow, those SAT prep vocab words really do come in handy) perusing the First Pass pages of All Fixed Up.

Yup, it looks like a real book now! Stay tuned. May 24th will be here quicker than that jerk behind you at the light can honk when it turns green. ;)

May the coming year bring you health, happiness, and creative fulfillment!