it's the most wonderful time of the year

Several times on the way to Des Moines today, I saw the same ominous sight -- a large pool of blood on the highway, with rough smears showing that body had been dragged off the roadway into the gravel shoulder. Of course, I assume that these were deer-related, but my overly-fertile imagination went down the serial-killer path before I sternly told myself to keep my eyes on the prize.

The prize in this case is the Romance Writers of America's Golden Heart competition, which I successfully entered today. The award is given yearly to the best unpublished romance manuscripts, and if I final in the contest (which I won't know for months), it could give me a boost in the publication process. It's why I didn't blog yesterday -- I worked on the synopsis for the contest entry almost all of yesterday, and was so tired at the end that I couldn't summon the energy to blog (particularly since my parents could just come into my room and hold a mirror under my nose to check whether I was alive, rather than fretting because I had not blogged). But I finished the synopsis last night and emailed the synopsis and the first fifty pages of my book to a FedEx store in West Des Moines, so six copies were waiting for me when I got there this afternoon. After checking to make sure they were complete, I FedEx'd the entry to the organization headquarters -- and now I just have to wait until March to find out whether I am a finalist.

The rest of the day was pretty good; the other reason for going to Des Moines was to drop off the rental car that I used to surprise my parents, and so they and my brother picked me up at the airport. We had a very late lunch at 2:30ish, at which point I was so hungry that I was afraid I was going to faint, and ended up eating strawberry jam straight out of a packet, which was actually kind of good. We spent the rest of the day shopping and running errands, then came home and had supper before watching another fabulous episode of 'The Mentalist' -- and by "fabulous episode of 'The Mentalist'" I mean "fabulous forty-five minutes fantasizing about Simon Baker, the only blonde whom I love." Did I say too much?

Okay, enough creepiness, I should go to bed!