I was browsing over on Deanna Raybourn’s new site, and found that she had been invited to sign her latest, Silent on the Moors at Nora Robert’s husband’s bookstore in BoonsBoro, Maryland. She had also stayed at the Inn BoonsBoro, an establishment co-owned by Nora Roberts, where all of the rooms are named for famous literary couples, including

Percy and Marguerite (The Scarlet Pimpernel)
Elizabeth and Darcy
Jane and Rochester (Jane Eyre)
Titania and Oberon (A Midsummer Night’s Dream)
Nick and Nora (The Thin Man)
and the couple created by Ms. Roberts’ alter-ego, J. D. Robb: Eve and Roarke

Ms. Raybourn stayed in the Wesley and Buttercup room, which apparently includes a copy of both the book and the movie The Princess Bride. How cool is that??

Pictures of all the rooms are posted on the inn’s website, and I must admit I lingered over the pictures, trying to decide which room I’d choose. I have to admit, the Nick and Nora is mighty tempting…but I’d probably have to choose the Elizabeth and Darcy–for obvious reasons.

I mentioned the Inn to my husband last night, really quite impressed with the idea. And after listing the couples, most of whom he is familiar with, I casually asked which room he thought we’d stay in, thinking his view of our relationship would guide his choice. He merely looked at me and said, “It would depend on what the rooms looked like.” The “duh!” was silent. Ah well…

P.S. I’m not sure why my links don’t show up on their own, but if you run your cursor over ‘site’ for Deanna Raybourn’s website and ‘rooms’ for the Inn BoonsBoro, there are links.

As a conoisseur of book covers (at least in my head), I enthusiastically took up the impersonal tag from Stacy’s blog to post my picks for ‘Five Books Worth Buying Just for Their Covers’. These are my picks (some of which just happen to be among my fav reads).

My personal tastes run to both the very simple as well as the uniquely detailed. I love the layered look of Lauren Willig’s Pink Carnation series and all the fun elements of Polly Shulman’s Enthusiasm. But I’m also a sucker for the stunning dresses of the Luxe series, a majestic old English estate a la Shannon Hale, not to mention the playful attitude of Hester Browne’s The Little Lady Agency. Does anyone notice a color scheme running through these covers??–totally unintentional!

I tag anyone with good taste in covers! You know who you are…

As the weekend draws to a close and the boys (all of them) “rock out” upstairs, I’m blogging, dear reader, to comment on the supreme irony that touched my life yesterday. I ended Friday ten pages away from the rewrite (first-person present POV -> first-person past POV) an agent had suggested back in November, and on Saturday I got a reply from her on the rewritten first thirty pages. Guess what she said…drumroll please: it still wasn’t quite what she was looking for. Doh! Oh well. I do think it’s a better version, so anyone I query from here on out will get the new version. And, if I decide to ride the wave of the future one more time via self-publishing, this is, I feel certain, a better book.

Meanwhile, I have a Barnes & Noble gift card burning a hole in my pocket and an Amazon order on the way. Not to mention a meaty library hold list… So, I’m drowning my sorrows (mostly I’m just all talk) with books. Oh…and these look really good. And I just happen to have both a brownie mix and a B.C. cookie mix in the pantry. Things are definitely looking up.

And thank you all so very much for all your encouragement–I truly appreciate it!