Bright light, dim bulb

There's a chance I'm getting a bit fuzzy, here in writing world. Two things happened yesterday that made me realize the importance of maintaining some connection with the outside world as I'm holed up here at my laptop finishing volume one of The Story of Trish's Life.

First, I got an email from my author friend Nancy French. She and I have been communicating quite a bit recently, both about the success of her hysterical book, Red State of Mind, and about the copy of said book that was supposed to be on my doorstep several weeks ago. I'm not exaggerating when I say, I LONG for this book. I've seen the advance reader copy (the one with all the saucy language), but there's something cool about the final hardcover version that makes me happy. I even know where this book will go on my bookshelf, and space there is hard to come by.

But the book didn't come. And didn't come. Days and weeks went by, until the only feasible thing I could think of was that someone must have stolen my copy of Red State right off of my little front porch. Now, we've never had anything taken from our porch, so the likelihood of someone in our exceedingly blue neighborhood perloining my copy of Nancy's tribute to conservative America is pretty low. But I was desperate for an answer, and that was all I could come up with.

Fast forward to last night's email. It's Nancy, who says UPS called to verify my address because they couldn't find me in the place I said I'd be. "That's strange," I thought. "My address is pretty easy..."

That is, when I get it right. Turns out UPS has been trying for weeks now to deliver my copy of Red State to some non-existent address in downtown Boston. I live in Belmont. Sigh.

I wonder if I should ask to dig around a bit in the UPS truck when it finally arrives, just to see what else I've sent to the wrong place???

The second thing making me reach out into the blogsphere for a tiny dose of sanity is the embarrassing fact that when Steve arrived home from work yesterday, I was still in my pajamas. Still in bed, to be precise, in exactly the place he left me, typing away on my laptop. What's worse is that I'm still wearing those pajamas now. Thirty-six hours and counting.

Don't worry though - I'm changing soon. Someone (prompted by my husband perhaps) sent me one of those articles about how personal appearance is an important part of author marketing these days. At the very least, it inspires me to get in the shower, as I guess cleanliness is the next big thing in books.

You heard it here first :)