I’ve been binging Emma Lathen all week: John Putnam Thatcher is very soothing. Also reading books on art crime which, to my surprise, are also very soothing. In times like these, I like books where everything comes out all right in the end.

What did you read this week?

Speaking of working, this blog has been running sixteen years today.. (I know, I can’t believe I’ve done that much work here, either. Okay, most of the work was done by you commenters, but I commented, too. There are over 140,000 comments on this blog, that’s how hard we’ve been working for sixteen years.) Of course, things haven’t changed much. That first post ended with “But to answer your orginal question, as God is my witness, I’m working. Really.”

What did you work on this week?

That’s “old” in the sense that we’ve been friends for awhile, decades in fact. The kind of friend that you can not to talk to for a couple of years because you both get distracted and then you get in touch again and it’s like no time has passed. This week it was Patricia Gaffney, whose book The Goodbye Summer, was on Book Bub last week. We ended up e-mailing after midnight last Saturday, and it was just lovely talking with Pat again. Who is also lovely, in fact a bodacious mama. Happiness is good friends, good dogs, and good memories.

What made you happy this week?

Last week when the internet went out (shudder) I was forced to read books printed on paper. Since the books on paper I kept were the ones I couldn’t get digitally, I found a lot of old favorites: Gilbert’s The Long Journey Home, Haskell’s Green as Spring, and a lot of my old Emma Lathen’s including Murder Without Icing. Yes, I know the Lathen books are on Amazon, but the new editions have somebody else’s name on them besides the Lathens (economic analyst Mary Jane Latsis and attorney Martha Henissart), so I just don’t. Bank Vice President John Putnam Thatcher never disappoints, even though his mass market paperbacks are all the color of weak tea now. (Latsis said, ““We decided on a banker because there is nothing on God’s earth a banker can’t get into” which is chilling but helpful if you need access to a lot of different crimes.)

What did you read this week?

This week, I threw things out. Many, many things. I was Marie Kondo, Terminator. Once I got into it, it wasn’t hard, I just had to break through the “Won’t this be useful some day?” barrier and toss with gleeful abandon. Well, with abandon. Also worked on a Loki essay, an essay on expectation, and a crochet scarf, but the big news is ten garbage bags by the curb (three in the little dumpster) and more to come.

What did you work on this week?

A friend of mine is in the same situation I am–stuck on a book–and she said what she really needed was an outline. So I revamped my old synopsis-writing outline, and now I’m thinking maybe I should try that on Nita again–believe me, I’ve outlined Nita’s discovery draft several times already–and maybe apply it to Anna, Nadine, and Alice. And since I’ve been neglecting Argh … do you want to write an outline? (I saw Frozen last night for the first time and the earworms are constant.)

Please remember, YOU ANALYZE AFTER THE DISCOVERY DRAFT, NOT BEFORE. Thank you.
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Salpy said she was no longer getting notified when someone replied to her comments. I’ve asked Mollie to look into it, and she wants to know when the notifications stopped; Salpy’s post was on the 10th. Did it start near the time the new post e-mails started?

I had a very bad Tuesday. And Wednesday. Thursday wasn’t great, either. There was a major storm (and one of my trees toppled into my neighbor’s driveway), my internet went out (but thank god my power didn’t), when I was in the storeroom trying to restart my modem and router, I heard dripping water in the kitchen and went to try to find the leak which was in none of the obvious places (thank god, I still had power), and then just as I was getting ready to crawl under the sink and find the damn leak so I could go fix the internet, the power went out. I gave up and went to bed, where Emily leaped up and meaning to sink her claws into the comforter to pull herself in, got my foot instead.

Twenty-six hours later, the power came back on (most of northern NJ had gone dark, so it took awhile, thank you very much line workers), my foot had stopped bleeding, and my neighbor said no problem he’d take care of the tree, but the internet was still out. Fixable, said my provider, just go to this website and follow the instructions. (There may have been swearing and shrieking at this point.). I spend all of Thursday driving to free WiFi (that would be MacDonald’s) and struggling with the website until I finally gave up at 9PM and just went to bed. At 2AM Friday I woke up, and I had internet.

It was a freaking miracle. (It’s 2:30 AM Friday as I type this, even though it’s going to post on Sunday. This is what I’m happiest about this week, that’s why.). OMG, I have internet again. Did you know you can’t get most of your Kindle books without internet? Yes, of course, that makes sense, but I never thought about it before. And those random questions that pop up during the day that you can just google for? Not to mention banking and posting blog content and comments and e-mail. It was a damn wasteland here.

But now I have internet. And I’m so happy.

What made you happy this week?

I’ve been without internet for about three days (yes, it was hell) so I’m trying to catch up now.

Mollie changed a provider we had, so anybody who signed up to get notifications of new posts, they’ll look different.

I am very far behind in the comments–THREE DAYS, PEOPLE–so if you had a question that didn’t get answered while I was at MacDonald’s scarfing their Wifi, please ask again.

I just realized one of my favorite romances used smirked incorrectly. Damn it. Still one of my faves, though.

I am contemplating potstickers from my freezer. The power was out for twenty-six hours, so technically I should throw everything in there out. If you don’t hear from me again, it was the potstickers.

Edited to Add at 5:30AM: TWELVE PAGES OF COMMENTS. And still no potstickers. Life is harsh.

Remember how some of you said you didn’t like it that Nita was drunk in the first scene? I think you were right. I just read a book where the protagonist kept getting drunk and doing something stupid and it was a DNR, although part of that was because the hero was an asshat. I flipped to the end to see if they got any better and there were TWO babies. Just no. On the other hand, Rainbow Rowell’s Carry On was interesting, high school magic fantasy with interesting characters, and Rowell is a good writer who knows what the words she uses mean, so it was fun to read. It had too many points of view . . . yes, that’s another mistake I’ve made in the past . . . but good story. And I reread Network Effect because it’s such a palette palate cleanser after too many sentences like “What . . . allows you to depict who I can and can’t have in my bed?” I mean, what the hell?

Grumble. Grumble. Get off of my lawn.

What did you read this week?