Wednesday Scramble (with No Whining!)!

Tomorrow's Guest

I'm looking forward to presenting Charlotte Hinger, whose latest mystery, Lethal Lineage, was just released. I hope you'll join us.


What I'm Reading

Worth Dying For by Lee Child. Honestly, there's nothing I like better than a good Jack Reacher novel. I hope Mr. Child keeps on writing about Reacher for a long time.


Katrina Katie Kitten Update

Thanks to the Colorado State University Veterinary Teaching Hospital in Fort Collins, we now know that Katie has something called mega-esophagus and a probably hiatal hernia. The poor kitty was very sick because food was slow moving into her stomach and sometimes rolled right back into her esophagus. She's being treated now with medications to help heal the esophagus and lessen acid reflux, and in a few weeks she'll undergo more tests to make sure there really is a hernia or whether some other problem has surfaced. Eventually we may be faced with surgery for the little kitty.

For the moment, we are dealing with a bizarre combination or medicine times and conditions (like the one that must be given one hour after and one hour before any other medicine or food), and the requirement to keep the kitten in a vertical position during and for 30 minutes after feeding. We hold Katie's plate up high enough that she has to stand up to eat, and then one of us walks around holding her for the 30 minutes (or if she's especially cooperative and sleepy, we get to sit and hold her in position). Overall, she's doing better. But needless to say, if Katie recovers, she will be the most spoiled cat in the history of the world.


My Assignments for the Conference

I'll be moderating the agent panel at the Northern Colorado Writers Conference on Friday afternoon. I'll introduce the agents and then help field questions from attendees. I'm betting there will be a lot of questions about the future of the publishing industry and how agents fit into this new and dynamic model.

This year the slush pile torture event has been divided into two separate sessions running during the same hour. I'll be the reader for one of the sessions. Participants will submit the first page of their manuscript (with no name on it) at the time of registration. Submissions are picked at random and the reader begins to read out loud. The agents signal the place at which they would stop reading the submission, then they will explain why. These sessions are always well attended. Everyone wants to hear what agents like or dislike about a submission, even if they were afraid to add their own first page to the "slush pile."

Other than that, I plan on spending a lot of time attending workshops and panels and meeting lots of writers. And drinking coffee. And eating. Can't wait.