2004

WHAT’S UP and COMING?
LADIES OF THE LAKE LIVES:

For all my loyal readers who have wondered what happened to LADIES OF THE LAKE, don’t worry. That book is currently in rewrite and will be completed as soon as I can fit it into my schedule.

FUTURE BOOKS

God has been providing me with all sorts of ideas and great fiction material. I have three more humorous women’s fiction novels in the works for future reads that will entertain you, make you laugh, and touch your hearts. Watch for emerging news on these and other upcoming projects, including a read-aloud children’s book in honor of my precious new baby grandson.

And since we’re on that topic, please allow me to do my grandmother thing. I swear, it’s not just me, but my grandboy is really an adorable baby, long and lean and sweet and bright-eyed. He never cries unless something is truly the matter. What a peach. And he thinks his GoGo (that’s me) is swell. I’m blessed to get to keep him often, which is fabulous for both his mama and me. The only way he takes after me, though, is that he has my ears (a good thing) and my voracious appetite (a very good thing if you’re four months old, and a very bad one if you’re fifty-six.) We won’t discuss the flatulence, but one of his nicknames is “Bubbles,” and he didn’t get that from his mother’s side.

TYPOS IN MY BOOKS
Or
ASHEVILLE, PLEASE FORGIVE ME!

Nobody’s perfect, least of all me! Writing a funny novel every single year about serious women’s issues is a tall order, but I love doing it. Yet, as any of my personal friends can tell you, my brain is so busy with the book I’m currently writing (plus the next two projects that I’m hammering out), that I often run out of “available k,” as the computer people put it. The most embarrassing manifestation of this is making dates to meet lovely people for lunch or dinner, then forgetting to go. Ouch! This, from a formerly organized obsessive-compulsive fixated on punctuality. How far I am fallen. I once even stood up a whole book club in my home town. They were so gracious and forgiving, but the bottom still drops out of my stomach every time I think of it.

I talked to my neurosurgeon about upgrading the hard drive between my ears, but he said no go. That left me no choice but to jettison those dentist’s appointments, my entire family’s birth dates, my son’s phone number, the location of my last three years’ tax receipts, and ninety percent of the names of anybody I have met since childhood, including roommates, teachers, and all my second cousins. Who knows what will have to go next?

So I freely admit that I make mistakes, which many of my sharp-eyed readers bring to my attention. I work hard to make sure the glitches are purged from my manuscripts, as do my two sharp-eyed critique partners, my mama, and my editors. But some typos always manage to sneak through. Wish I could fix them! As it is, they’re a constant lesson in humility.

That said, please allow me to issue a public apology to my readers and the good citizens of beautiful Asheville, NC, for leaving out the e in the middle when I wrote THE RED HAT CLUB RIDES AGAIN. I knew it has an e. My sharp-penciled mama knows it has an e. My two critique partners know it has an e. My editor knows it has an e. And my copy editor knows it has an e. Yet we ALL missed it in our proofing. So mea culpa!

But I plead innocent for the Betty Friedan glitch. The printer’s presses use their own weird language, so they have to translate the WORD documents I send them into their own specialized software. The result is that I get back page proofs with zillions of translation boo-boos, like changing Friedan to Friedman. I do my best to flag and correct everything, but not all the corrections make it into the final printed edition (which makes me and my sweet, sharp-penciled mama crazy, so I rarely read the final printed edition of my books).

Also, when I’m doing revisions, whole scene locations may change, or paragraphs or scenes might get moved from one spot in the manuscript to another, so my characters sometimes leave, then miraculously reappear to leave again.

So please bear with us. Laugh about it, if you can. My publishers and I want your reading experience to be error-free, but popular fiction is the art of the possible—like the construction industry, which drove me crazy in a past life when I was building or renovating houses before I discovered what I wanted to be when I grew up.

FUTURE APPEARANCES

I’m always delighted to meet with any of my readers, especially women’s groups, Red Hat Society members, Ya-Yas, Divas, Sweet Potato Queens, faithful gal-pals, and those who belong to their own grass-roots Red Hat clubs. If you see that I’m going to be in your area, please feel free to e-mail me about scheduling a meet-and-eat event for your local clubs or groups while I’m there to speak. (I rarely turn down a free meal and the chance to meet new friends.)

Please click on my “Signing and Appearances” menu option to see additional appearances as they are added.

ABOUT THAT NOTICE MY READERS DIDN’T GET

I love computers and the Internet. Unless I hate them. There is no middle ground. They’re miracles, but they’re also cunning, baffling, and confusing to those like me who just want the bleemin’ thing to work!

Last spring, I attempted to email those of you who have written me, as I promised, to let you know the details about THE RED HAT CLUB RIDES AGAIN’s March release and national book tour. I was shocked when I got a message back that my account had been frozen and I was a suspected spammer! It took more than a week, but I finally got permission from AOL to do the mailing. The only trouble was, when I moved to Boston, I signed up for COMCAST high-speed broadband, with AOL “piggybacked” on it so I could get your emails. I never think about it, because I always use AOL. But when I tried again to send an announcement email, Comcast kicked it back, and I was in Internet hell once again.

By the time we got things clarified, I had to leave for my book tour: 33 appearances in ten states in 31 days. St. Martin’s Press did their best to get some of the emails out for me, but the new spam regulations are really strict (which is good), so I’m still working on solving this problem before the next book comes out next year. I really love meeting you whenever I can, so I want you to know where to find me in plenty of time. God willing and the Ethernet don’t rise, we’ll get this taken care of.