Congratulations to Ellie and Sharon whose names I drew this morning. As soon as they contact me, I will put their books in the mail!

Read on and weigh in on JB … James Bond, of course!

Spike TV is running their 007 days of Christmas again this year. Bond movies will be playing all hours of the day starting tomorrow (Sat. the 23rd) to next Friday (29th). If you like Bond, you might want to check this link for the time listings so you can catch your favorites!

Playing tomorrow: The Spy Who Loved Me, Diamonds are Forever and Dr. No. After that it’s 5 movies a day.

I have a soft spot for Man with a Golden Gun, which is one of the lesser known Bond movies. Octopussy and Live and Let Die are also fun ones. Campy Roger Moore movies. I also have a soft spot for The Living Daylights (Kim! I had that on VHS after it came out and used to watch it all the time). Of course the old standards of Dr. No and Goldfinger can’t be missed. And the new Bond! I’m taking my family to see Casino Royale this weekend. Second trip for me, can’t wait. I’m very much hoping a second helping is even more divine!

Which Bond movies might you check out this week?

We’ve needed new carpet on our stairs and the second floor of our house for waaay too long! The carpet held up like iron, but the padding crumbled about 5 years ago (yikes!). Anyway, we just replaced the carpet on the staircase and the entire second floor. My office is up there, so this whole project involved a major cleaning and re-organization. And I realized that I have loads of books … to give away!

So tell me about the best Christmas (or holiday) gift you ever received (from whom and why it was so special) and from all the responders, I’ll draw a name tomorrow morning. I’ll send you an autographed copy of The Perfect Seduction and Saxon Lady. I’ll probably throw in a few book covers, too!

Um, I’m off in the world, giving away stuff again today. This time it’s at Romance By the Blog, where I’m talking about hero versus heroine books and giving away LONDON and DESIRE NEVER DIES! Check it out!

And be sure to read Shana’s post below!!

Wish me luck. Today is the first day of my new job.

No, no, no…I’m not giving up writing. Ultimate Sportsfan just sort of mentioned a few weeks ago that it might be nice to be able to go to the grocery store and buy food and toilet paper and stuff like that. And since I’m still waiting on that chick lit contract, he sort of mentioned that it would be good if I found a job to help with that food and toilet paper situation.

Just until the chick lit contract comes.

Well, as you can imagine, I didn’t exactly embrace USF’s Plan B. I tried to convince him that we could eat Ramen Noodles for a few months and borrow toilet paper from public restrooms, but he wasn’t going for it.

So today I start a part-time job as a tutor (I know who starts a new job this time of year?—me, I guess). I’m going to be helping adults learn English, which I think is kind of exciting, actually. I have missed teaching—just not teaching in public school and not teaching adolescents.

Thankfully, I’ve already found my career. Have you seen the excerpt for Good Groom Hunting on my website? Go here to read it.

So what about you? Love your job? Hate it? Looking for a new career?

If you could go anywhere in the world … if cost, world conditions and time constraints didn’t matter … Where would you go? Would you take that trip to China and see the Great Wall? Or maybe go to India and see cows in the streets and those big, open houses with their marble floors and verandas? The Taj Majal?

I like the UK – and could go there any time. I don’t think I’d ever exhaust my explorations of the landscape, the historical places, the bookstores! But how boring is that? They speak my language, and I’ve studied the country for my books. I should probably get more adventurous. What about Prague? Or Bulgaria? The Greek isles or Russia – wow, the Kremlin! Tuscany! Paris!

Have you ever thought about taking an extreme expedition somewhere? Like a safari or a trip to Antarctica? Scuba diving in Mexico or the Caribbean?

Sometimes, I think it’s best to pick one place and keep on going back there until you know it well – the best pubs and restaurants, the swimming spots, the museums and coffee shops you like. But I still go back to thinking that exploring a brand new place can be exciting and invigorating.

My husband and I are going to Cancun after New Year’s, but that’s a place I never thought about visiting. He’s got a week-long meeting for work and asked me to come along. I’m not much of a beach-sitter, but heck – it’s just the cost of the airline ticket, since the hotel room is paid for. I picked up a book about Cancun and the surrounding area, so I’m going to be prepared to do more than just work.

But enough about my trip – tell me where you would go if the sky was the limit!

And also click on Jenna’s link below for a new excerpt!

Well, I just did the December 19 update for Jenna Petersen! Come on by and check it out! The entire first scene of the book is now available for your reading pleasure, as well as some fun events for the week! I’ll update one more time this month: next Tuesday (Dec 26), the day the book is out!!!

Click here to check out the update!

Many of our lovely Jaunties are off on fabulous holiday vacations, which the rest of us are not jealous of at all. Oh no. Not one bit. Nope. Let me just wipe this green off my face and… there. Anyway, we’re slightly short staffed this week, so I’m popping in again for more Jenna Blogging fun. I know. Don’t knock yourself over with excitement.

I’ve been thinking about the holidays. Just one week from today is Christmas (don’t panic!!) and Hanukkah started Friday. Kwanzaa is a week from tomorrow. So we’re just surrounded by holiday holly jolly. Christmas has always been my favorite holiday. I like giving presents. There’s nothing like giving someone something you just KNOW is perfect and waiting for them to open it. I always want to scream, “TaDa!!!!”, but that tends to frighten people. So I stopped. I actually am a bit of a gift giver throughout the year. I’m like my Mom on that account. She could never wait to give gifts. If she found the perfect gift in September, she wasn’t about to wait four months to give it. You were getting that sucker. Now.

So what’s your favorite holiday? Are you gaga for New Year, where everything is new again? Are you over the (full) moon for Halloween when you get to unleash your inner beast? How about Valentine’s Day or 4th of July? Or maybe something more obscure? What holiday gets you going and why?

P.S. — Don’t forget that tomorrow I’ll be updating Jenna Petersen again!

Just a quick post. Here is what we did this weekend:

It was a good day.

I think anyone who writes stories have been asked at one time or another–how do you come up with your ideas? You can get many different answers….but for me it’s usually just a snippet of something that I see or hear that piques my interest and I start asking “what if” questions.

What was interesting for me this week was that I was listening to the radio and they were interviewing a song writer/singer who was telling a story that spurred a song….and as I was listening to it the wheels started turning in my head. One of my critique partners is writing a book that this story seemed perfect for.

Here’s the story the guy told: when he first moved to Nashville he lived with this older couple, Harry and Liz who’d been married fifty years at the time. Harry was fond of telling the story of the first date he and Liz first went on…when he went to Liz’s house her father sat him down and said his daughter meant the world to him and that he was entrusting him with her care for the evening. They would walk to the movie and back and he had to promise never to leave her side. He promised….and said he never did and nevery would. Fast forward ten years. Liz and Harry are now in a nursing home in different rooms. The songwriter went to see them and after they visited he was talking with the nurses and he saw Harry and Liz walking hand in hand down the hall. The nurse said that Harry never failed to walk Liz to her room. Even after all these years, he wasn’t leaving her side.

Anyway my critique partner has a subplot in her book about the heroine’s father who supposedly embezzeled some money and then skipped town. But the mother never believed that….at the end of the book they find out he was killed. I found myself thinking how you could intertwine “I’ll never leave your side” to add an extra depth to this subplot. It happens to be a Christian suspense novel and it would also be easy to tie in what the H&H are facing to “God never leaves your side.”

Have you had such experiences? Where something someone is saying just jumps out at you? It’s a great feeling, isn’t it?

UPDATE on the $20 challenge– Nothing seemed right until yesterday when I was having a celebratory lunch with my other critique partner who’d just sold a book after a five year dry spell–and the young man who was waiting on us confided he’d only been working there two weeks. He was very attentive, did a great job (though the restaurant was busy) so I folded over a piece of notebook paper, wrote “Merry Christmas” and left a $20 bill.