I just found out about and signed up for Amazon Connect, and now I have my very own blog on Amazon.com. Seems like a really neat idea. So far I’ve only posted some introductory comments, but I’ve added my upcoming signings to the event calendar, and I’m hoping that whoever happens to surf by will drop me a note. Hopefully I’ll be ‘verified’ soon as the true author of Unladylike Pursuits, and then there’ll be a link on my Amazon book page to my blog and vice versa. I’m anxious to see how it will look and work.

My reading has definitely lightened in the past week or so. My husband was given the complete first season of Lost on DVD for Christmas, and we are both mesmerized by it. The concept is really quite ingenious and the writers’ success at building suspense is very impressive. For any of you who aren’t watching or don’t know the concept of the show, I’ll give you a brief summary without giving anything away. A plane bound for LA from Sydney goes off course, gets ripped apart, and then crashes on an unknown island. The first episode opens as one of the passengers wakes up disoriented on the jungle floor…and then sees a Golden Retriever gazing at him. From that point on, the show is comprised of a mix of on-island experiences and interactions and flash-backs from the castaways’ lives before the crash. And these are some troubled, suspicious characters. At one point, I said to my husband, “Do you think this is a typical assortment for a plane-full of passengers?” Kinda creeps you out to think about it. Everyone I know is so…average. Or at least I think they are…who really knows? Anyway…we’re hooked, and we’re way behind—Lost is in like its third or fourth season I think. A few more CD’s and we’ll be at the end of Season 1, and I’ll have to get my hands on the other seasons. Luckily I’ve been watching 24 from the beginning…

If you get a chance…come visit my site at www.AlyssaGoodnight.com and enter my contest for a lovely pearl and Swarovski crystal bracelet. To enter you have to read the excerpt from my debut romance novel.

Had to put off reading A Regency Invitation for a few more days…Ida B….and Her Plans to Maximize Fun, Avoid Disaster, and (Possibly) Save the World by Katherine Hannigan finally lured me in. I see the book, a Texas Bluebonnet Pick, all the time when I take my kids to the library and browse the picture books looking for some gems, and I’ve always admired the cover. I think I have a thing for apples on books because I bought Jennifer Crusie’s Welcome to Temptation just for the glossy red apple on the cover, and I’ve been a devoted reader of hers ever since. The apple turned out to be a good pick this time too.

I checked out Ida B. and started reading it right there in the library, standing beside the computer while my little one played Star Wars. I was immediately hooked. The language is mesmerizing…so much so that, as a writer, you almost wish you could write like that…even though it’s probably not the way to go for a romance novel. The book just seemed so carefree…the way Ida B could talk to the trees, and the brook, the way she was determined, and spunky, and a good hard thinker. The book made me sad and happy and wistful for a childhood in the Mid West. I’d love to live in the trees, near an orchard, near a brook, on a plot of land far, far away from a subdivision. Maybe someday.