We’re leaving at the buttcrack of dawn in the morning to drive 2 1/2 hours south for a family funeral. Then we’ll drive the 2 1/2 hours home, throw some stuff in the truck and drive 2 hours north to camp.

Other than my customary quick check while chugging caffeine in the morning and a probably 10-minute window to check email and twitter during the vehicle and clothing change, I’ll be offline until Sunday night.

Have a great Fourth of July weekend!

I’ve been watching the RWA versus epublishing debate for years, and I have a somewhat moderate stance on the issue, I suppose. My publisher is professional. My editor is a professional. I am a professional. It would be nice if RWA recognized that. But how does RWA recognize Samhain without recognizing Fly-By-Night Porn, Inc? I don’t know.

I do know some of the RWA-Hate I’ve seen recently isn’t helping. And no, I didn’t join the new yahoogroup for RWA Change because I don’t care to have RWA-Hate delivered by digest to my inbox. You have no idea how much I wish all the people involved in epublishing could elect a small group of spokespeople to manage the online argument, leaving everybody else free to shut the hell up.

Why? Let’s pretend I’m a big organization representing a ton of NY-published authors as well as many aspiring authors, and there’s a group of people out there who want me to recognize their business model is legitimate and respect their work. Let me give a hypothetical approach:

Hey, Shan, we’d like to talk to you about our business model. We have an informational presentation that illustrates why epublishing is a professional, viable approach and we’d like to share that with you, as well as getting comments from the people running for RWA office. Perhaps you could form a small volunteer committee to represent you and we could work with them on questions and answers and compromises and perhaps find ways to solve the problems you anticipate if you recognize epublishing.

My possible hypothetical response:

Maybe. I represent a large group of people, many of whom don’t want to address this issue, but if you continue to impress me with your positive, diplomatic, professional opinion, I might be willing to at least hear you out.

Now let’s look at another slightly less hypothetical approach:

Hey, Shan, you suck because you don’t respect what I’m doing, which means you’re a stick-in-the-mud and your business model’s a dinosaur and it’s going to be extinct soon, so how do you like that? You’re just jealous, plus you’re killing trees so you don’t care about the environment. Is your hair blue, because it’s obvious you not only hate sex, but you’re threatened by it. We’re the future of publishing, and you’re too stupid to see it. Why don’t you go sweat over your reserves against return while I go laugh all the way to the bank? Oh, and you have typos, too, so there!

My possible hypothetical response:

Fuck off.

HOW you say something is just as important as WHAT you say, and the argument for RWA accepting epublishing as a viable publishing option is, by and large, not being said well. I don’t read self-help books or watch Dr. Phil, but I do know you’re supposed to argue with “I”, not “You”. You don’t browbeat the other party with all the ways they’re wrong. You calmly and persistently illustrate the ways you may be right.

Bipartisanship isn’t achieved by a die-hard Democrat and a die-hard Republican screaming at each other. It’s a small group of moderates from each side, working and reworking and talking and compromising and reworking again until an agreement is reached both sides can live with.

Epublishing is not going to gain respect by trumpeting the ways print publishing is wrong. That’s just as bad as traditionally published authors proclaiming epublishing is wrong. The ignorance flows both ways. Both business models have pros and cons. And until people can discuss them rationally, without insulting the other, there’s not going to be a compromise.

Probably the most problematic aspect of the current online climate is the fact that once the RWA-Haters jump on the topic—and they’re quick—the more professional, diplomatic and well-spoken epublishing advocates don’t want to jump into the train wreck, so the opportunity for constructive conversation is lost and those of us involved in epublishing are left to be represented by people who are offending and insulting the very people we want to view us as professionals.

Things are so crazy now that I have scraps of paper everywhere with notes to add such-and-such to my to-do list. The next thing on the master list needs to be to go around and find all the mini to-do notes.

Double-whammy. With a funeral Thursday morning and camp Thursday night, each in an opposite direction from my house, it’s going to be one hell of a day. We can take the car south, so the truck can be loaded and ready to head north to camp, but that means everything has to be done by Wednesday night. Tomorrow night? Crap.

My uncle’s funeral will be in my hometown of Wareham, Massachusetts, also—and much more widely—known as the hometown of Geena Davis. (This is the point where, if he was still with us, my dad would say “Have I told you I went to school with her?” Yes, Papa, once or twice.)

It’ll probably be the last time I go back for a long, long time. He’s the last of my father’s generation still in the area, and I’m not particularly close to the next generation, so I’ll also be saying goodbye to my grandmother’s house and the hospital where I was born and the Tremont Nail Factory, which was the oldest nail manufacturer in the country and where my uncle worked most of his life and where they sold the most awesome penny candy when I was a little girl.

The thing I’m preparing myself for the most is the fact that, as it’s a graveside service, people will be standing on my grandfather’s grave again. When my aunt passed away nine years ago, all of my emotional upset ended up channeled into a burning rage at the people who walked across his final resting place and it took all of my husband’s crazy-wife-management skills to keep me from making an ass of myself. (I have many family members buried there, but my grandpa was special to me.) So I’ve been having talks with myself in preparation, and my husband will probaby be watching me like a hawk.

I don’t even want to think about transitioning from that to a long, holiday weekend in the same day. And the pigroast at camp has a luau theme, so I need to buy both Hawaiian shirts and funeral clothes tonight. How bizarre.

The lists and sub-lists await, so off I go. Feel free to ogle Gallagher some more while I’m busy.

I’ve been banging my head against the wall, trying to come up with something to blog about. Nothing. I’m pretty sure my subconscious doesn’t want to bump the cover for No Surrender down the page.

Once the doc’s all finalized, I’ll get an excerpt up. In the meantime, I decided last night DG4 will be Connor O’Brien’s story. It was originally going to be Jack Donovan’s turn but, for reasons I can’t tell you without spoiling DG3, he’s not ready yet. Connor’s heroine is about as different from Grace and Carmen as a woman can be, and she’s going to drive him batshit crazy. Fun stuff.

All I need is a setting. Oh, and a plot. Having a plot will, of course, help determine the setting, so I need to start jotting down some ideas. (Not sure about TK’s Basque Separatist plot. From what I’ve read they’re a rather desperate, fanatical group that responds to criticism with Molotov cocktails. Not that I think they’re going to jump on a plane and throw a flaming bottle of vodka through my window, but I’m not sure about using a real terrorist group like that. Chicken? Me? Yes, I think.)

Anway, off to get through Monday.

Last night NASCAR driver Joey Logano visited our Home Depot (one of the few positive things about sharing a highway exit with the New Hampshire Motor Speedway) and off we went. Halfway there my husband pointed out I’d forgotten the camera and asked if I wanted to run home and get it. I told him it was going to be a standard 2-second sign-and-go and my cellphone would serve well enough. Needless to say, photo ops ensued. The poor quality of the pictures is all my fault and you can take pleasure in knowing I received a resounding spousal “I told you so”.

First, the standard 2-second sign-and-go (although, the SK, having the luck of his Irish forefathers, randomly won a $20 Home Depot gift card):

The line funneled back outside, where he checked out the #20 Home Depot Toyota:

Then we were told Joey would be coming outside to build a Home Depot derby car and the SK could watch. As he milled around, one of the HD employees told him to step up and make one. Joey Logano is on the right, in the white, putting his car together. The SK is on the left, kind of behind his dad (the camera’s on the SK):

SK building his car (I watched Joey putting the wheels on his and let’s just say it’s a good thing he has a pit crew for his real car):

Once the car building was done, the Short Kid wanted his signed. I’m sorry to admit I’m shy and not forceful at all.

Me: I don’t know, buddy. Nobody else is. I don’t know if we’re allowed.

SK: Follow me, Mom, and stay close so you don’t lose me.

The husband and I have met a lot of drivers—NASCAR and Indy car drivers at NHMS, as well as F1 in Canada—and this was a great experience. While I caught Zippy, his crew chief who also signed, sneaking a few glances at his watch, Joey was relaxed and smiling and laughing. He really gave the impression there was no place he’d rather be than hanging out in a Home Depot and then hammering tiny nails in a derby car while the crowd heckled and waited with cameras ready for him to whack his thumb.

On the DVD shelf in our living room—which holds DVDs, CDs, a few family pictures and paperback copies of my books—there’s now a Joey Logano shelf, with the signed picture, his derby car, and the #20 HD Toyota Matchbox car SK cajoled his father into buying him at the merchandise trailer. I have a feeling, come Sunday, we’ll all be rooting for Joey Logano.

I love summer vacation. I really do. I love all school vacations because 1) there’s less for me to do and 2) I enjoy the company of my children.

But right now we’re in the adjustment phase. Because we headed off to camp last Thursday for a long weekend mere hours after school let out, this is our first full week home.

With the Short Kid.

His larger-than-life personality is a little easier to take when The Short Kid Show has built in intermissions, but now he’s center stage 24/7 and my head is reeling. Plus, his pet name for me this week is Old Woman, which is beginning to get on my nerves. Last week (for several weeks, actually) it was Crazy Lady. “Hey, Crazy Lady, what’s for supper?” and “I love you, Crazy Lady.” Slightly better than Old Woman. (He always does it in these crazy accents that make us die laughing, which is why he does it of course. It’s a performance, not a disrespect thing.)

He does offset nicely some of the more depressing, hard things going on around us at the moment, but it all adds up to a desire for the fluff. In my reading. And in my writing. At the beginning of the week I gave myself permission to step away from the intense emotion and high drama I was working on to tinker with some fun & fluff. I love fluff.

As a rule, Joshua Collins Blackstone the Fourth had a fondness for women who knew their way around a toolbox. But when the toolbox was his and he didn’t recognize the heart-shaped ass of the woman bent over, knowing her way around it, fondness gave way to irritation.

“You always help yourself to a man’s tools?”

The woman spun around, keeping her hands hidden behind her back. “Oh! I didn’t hear you come in.”

“Probably all that racket you were making rummaging around in my drawers.”

“I was looking for a couple of nuts.”

“Wrong drawers.”

“Can you make me some toast, please, Old Woman?”

EDITED TO ADD: Further explanation of the pet names—it began as retaliation for the fact I call him The Short Kid on the internet. That’s why he gets a little leeway. (That and the accents, which I so wish you could here.)

I’ve been knocking my head against the wall all week, so now I’ll throw it out there:

I’m looking for some kind of barbeque side dish that would either be simple to make or travel well (it’s for an event at the campground and our cooler is not large, though we have a full-size fridge there).

Small print: No onions, peppers, broccoli, mushrooms,…okay, very light on the veggies.

While I’d prefer a cold dish, bringing the crockpot is a possibility if the dish is worth it.

The event is a pig roast, though my children and myself will be eating hot dogs or cheeseburgers as I’m a little strict about the trimming and cooking of pork and that, combined with general finickiness, is enough to keep us away from the spit. The majority of campers, however, will be eating the sidedish with roast pork.

So does anybody have a fairly simple, non-fancy-cuisine potluck/BBQ sidedish recipe that blows people’s socks off?

Look what I got yesterday!

I also received an email letting me know a reader had received her copy from Books-A-Million! It has a July release date, so that was a very cool surprise. It also seems to be showing as in stock at Amazon and Barns & Noble.

A sheriff with a stone-cold reputation. An innocent madam hell-bent on disturbing his peace. Who will be the first to give in?

Rebecca Hamilton passed through life as bland as biscuits—until the day she buried her father and fled out West with a fortune in stolen jewelry. She arrives in Gardiner, Texas to find her aunt has bequeathed to her the only whorehouse in town.

With no other prospects except a proposal from a tall, dark stranger wearing a badge, Rebecca decides to embrace her vibrant aunt’s legacy and never again live under the thumb of an overbearing man.

After years of cultivating a reputation as a ruthless lawman, Adam Caldwell can’t believe he’s offered to marry the quiet, rather plain new madam. Even more perplexing is the fact she turns him down, choosing instead to become a sass-talkin’, sashay-walkin’ vision in feathers and lace.

With an innocent madam wanting him to teach her to be as wicked as she looks and rowdy townsfolk split over the scandal, the sheriff figures his cup of troubles is about full. But a man from Rebecca’s past catches up with her, and Adam has to decide just how much he’s willing to sacrifice for the woman who refuses to give up on becoming Miss Becky.

It’s also instantly available, of course, through mybookstoreandmore.com or your favorite digital book retailer. (And if you like Fictionwise, please don’t hesitate to send them a “Hey, where is it?” email. Apparently they have the books, but don’t have them listed for some reason.)

I have a very full plate this week, but I’ll give away a couple of copies next week.

I just packed the bag with the family’s books for the weekend, and I thought—in lieu of having anything else to blog about—I’d share what we’re all going to be reading.

Mom:

True Love and Other Disasters by Rachel Gibson. (I struggled the first few pages with the extreme Anna Nicole Smith association, but that faded and I’m enjoying it now. I think I’d be enjoying it a little more if I wasn’t coming off the back-to-back utter awesomeness of Erin McCarthy’s Flat-Out Sexy and Hard and Fast.

Dad:

He’s finishing up Heartsick by Chelsea Cain, and he’s also taking the sequel, Sweetheart, because neither the new Reacher nor the new Davenport were in at the library.

The Tall Kid:

Hunting Eichmann: How a Band of Survivors and a Young Spy Agency Chased Down the World’s Most Notorious Nazi by Neal Bascomb and Escape from the Deep: A Legendary Submarine and Her Courageous Crew by Alex Kershaw.

The Short Kid:

He doesn’t take any books to camp. It’s his time to run amok through the campground with his friends and burn off all the energy he saves up while stuck at home with his couch-monkey mother and older brother. At home he’s been reading a variety of books on the history of flight and the exhibits of the Smithsonian in preparation for the trip to DC we hope to take in April.

Happy reading, and see y’all Sunday night!