I’m going to try to figure out why, but it’ll have to wait until later tonight.

*Edited to Add: It was the “Adhesive” plug-in that caused my “older entries” link to disappear from the bottom of my pages. Fixed now.

Besides the fact that, after five years, it was time for a refresh, my primary focus was navigation. I think I’ve got that covered, though I despise drop-down menus. Maybe at some point I’ll take a look at that, but that requires doctoring the CSS stylesheet and I don’t have the brain-cellular fortitude for that right now.

There’s still a lot of tweaking left to do. Moving to a full-width layout on the book pages tweaked the formatting and I need to tweak it back. There are places I used a flourish from the original design as a separator and I need to replace those with a new graphic. Little things here and there, but overall it’s cute and functioning.

I know there’s some debate over whether or not an author’s blog should be on her home page. Mine always has been. Honestly, I probably would have changed that and made a static front page if I knew how. If someday I have the pennies to pay a designer for a total overhaul, that’ll go on the list. For now, it is what it is.

And a big shouted-out thank you to Wordsugar Designs, who made the header graphic. You may also know her as my fellow Carina Press author, Ginny Glass, whose novella Coin Operated was so incredibly hot I’m surprised my iPod Touch wasn’t smoking!

So please be aware that at any moment this could blow up in my face and the site could disappear. If that should happen, please know that I am wailing and gnashing my teeth and will throw myself at the feet of somebody who knows WordPress more than I and beg for mercy.

As always, if the website should temporarily self-destruct, you can always find me running amok elsewhere.

And I know my website here’s a mess and the sidebar’s beyond cluttered. As soon as I finish up a couple of things, a redesign is next on my list!

So what’s been going on during the brief down time?

My upcoming Carina Press release has a new title! The book formerly called JUST JOE will henceforth be known as EXCLUSIVELY YOURS! Pretty excited about that.

I’m multitasking projects:

Working on DG4. The big picture’s settled, but I need to figure out where the story actually takes place. And I’m really having some trouble figuring out where to start the story. From the villain’s POV? Isabellas? Jack’s? I’m not really seeing it. Did write a really fun scene in which Jack gets tased by a cop, though. Bzzzzt!

Also working on a proposal for the sequel to EXCLUSIVELY YOURS. Joe’s brother, Kevin, owns a sports bar and craziness, love and happily ever after ensue.

The opening line:

Every time the New England Patriots chalked one up in the win column, Kevin Kowalski got laid.

So back to work for me! Oh…right after I call the groomer. Poor Mini looks like something that fell out of a janitor’s mop bucket and dried in the sun. I think she’s got dreadlocks in her tail. Lucky groomer.

Hopefully it’ll be pretty again soon!

See the shiny Natalie gave to me? It’s very pretty and I’m very thankful she thought of me and my blog. It also means I have to come up with a list of ten things to tell you guys about myself.

I’ve been blogging for five years now, so coming up with ten things you don’t already know about me? Not easy. Especially as I’ve already done lists like these a few times. I’ll try my best, but I warn you now I’ll be scraping the bottom of the meme barrel here.

1. I can’t move a sleeping cat. Even if she’s curled up smack dab in the middle of my side of the bed. I’ll turn myself into a pretzel trying to curl myself around her, but I can’t make her move. If the dog’s sleeping on my corner of the couch, I’ll scoop her up and move her over. If it’s one of the cats, I sit somewhere else. I’m not sure why this is—hell, I’ll even move a sleeping kid—but if a cat’s asleep, I can’t wake it up.

2. I don’t like my foods touching on my plate. This is more of a wide-spread quirk than my husband would like to acknowledge, and a lot of people are the same way. TK, however, takes it to a new level. He’ll only serve himself one food at a time. For example, he’ll take a piece of ham. When he’s finished with that, he’ll get some mashed potatoes. When the potatoes are gone, he might have another slice of ham. But it doesn’t all go on his plate at the same time. He manages to make do at restaurants, but only because I refuse to allow him to request his meal be served on individual plates because 1) there’s not enough room on the table and 2) that would be obnoxious. (Yes, that was a little more about my kid than about me, but since I’m his mother, it’s connected enough for me.)

3. I still mourn the cancellation of The Unit on a regular basis. It would probably be easier to let the series go if both of the opening credit songs weren’t part of my DG playlist on the iPod, but I’m surprised by how much I miss the show (despite the rather stupid turns the writers kept taking toward the end). Most shows are a little out of sight, out of mind for me—like Flash Forward. Somebody asked me when it was coming back on and it took me a few seconds to remember what he was talking about. But I really wish Mac and the guys had come back. Other than Firefly—which was a gift—and Deadwood, I don’t buy television DVD sets, but I might buy The Unit. (TK owns season one of The Big Bang Theory, so it’s on my shelf, but it’s not mine.)

4. I was once the star of the school play. What grade was I in? Third? Fourth? Something like that. I played the princess in The Princess and the Pot or whatever the name was. My mom permed my hair for me, but it didn’t take and the princess had limp and boring hair. The young man who played my prince had to take my hand to help me out of the “pot”, which was actually a cardboard box I hid behind, but there were boy versus girl cooties involved, so I had scotch tape wrapped around my finger where he would touch me. And the younger grades had to draw pictures of the performance and they all drew my dress peeking out from behind the “pot”, like little triangles on each side. And so went my only treading of the boards.

5. I can’t channel-surf past an episode of The Little House on the Prairie…except one. I was raised on Little House. I’ve seen every episode of it—including the A New Beginning episodes—so many times I can almost quote them by heart. But there’s one episode that, for some inexplicable reason, I can’t stand. I watch it, but I hate it. It’s the one where Caroline stays at home to bake the pies and cuts her leg and it gets infected and she’s about to cut it off because of the Bible passage when she’s finally discovered because she was late to the party and what’s a party without pies? I don’t know what it is about the episode I don’t like, but…there it is.

6. Seven Brides for Seven Brothers is my favorite musical. I’m not a big fan of older musicals, but I love 7B47B. On the flip side, I absolutely abhor My Fair Lady. Detest it.

7. Buck Rogers in the 25th Century was the first show we watched on our first color television. I was seven or eight and my love for Gil Gerard was epic.

8. A little boy named Jimmy used to hold my hand and walk me to bus before boarding his own in kindergarten. He was my first boyfriend and I loved him madly, but it was not to be. The first boy who ever kissed me was also named Jimmy, though a different one, and it was also not to be. My husband’s name is not Jimmy, and it be.

9. The first time I ever did it, my boyfriend’s friends were playing Super Mario Brothers in the next room. The soundtrack of my deflowering. (See? Scraping the bottom of the “things you don’t know about me” barrel here.)

10. I walk like a duck. I don’t think it’s incredibly noticeable, but if you follow my footprints in the snow, you’ll die laughing. My husband does.

There. That’s it. I truly believe long-time readers of this blog now know more about me than 1) my family knows and 2) you needed or wanted to know and that if all the about-me lists on this blog were compiled into one easy-to-read document, I’d be remanded for treatment.

But anyway…it’s time to pass on the One Lovely Blog award and I’m giving it to Heather Rae Scott because she’s warm and funny and a very good friend and I think we should know ten more things about her.

Yes, it did some funky things to some punctuation, including my excerpts. I’m not going to worry about that tonight, but we’ll get it fixed. (ETA: This is apparently effected everything I stupidly c&p’d from Word rather than a plain text editor. I know better, but the older version of wordpress apparently hid my sins. Over the weekend, during TV time, I’ll tweak the punctuation so it’s back to normal.)

The smilies are absent, too, but they’ll be back when I have a few minutes. (This is a common issue, I think, because Jaci’s disappeared, but Angie knew how to fix them.)

But most importantly, the blog is now mobile! If you’re on your smartphone or iPod Touch or other mobile device, you’ll see a mobile-friendly version!

Then, I’m giving a glimpse of the view from the other side of the desk in a guest post at Angie’s blog. A peek into my editorial relationship with the fabulous Miss Angela James, if you will.

I didn’t even use :angie:

But if you make it all the way through my ramblings on editing, you’ll find out how you can win a digital book from my backlist. (Or, technically, I guess you could just scroll to the end, but what fun is that?)

I also updated the family’s ATV blog with some opening weekend pictures.

And finally, I DID IT! I’ve posted pictures of moose, both real and fake, a fox, and even a skunk named Barney, but I FINALLY captured a bear!

(We were in the truck, not on the four-wheelers, in case you were wondering.)