want you to make me feel like i'm the only girl in the world

I intended to go to bed an hour ago, but I got lured into the depths of Wikipedia while attempting to determine how many years someone in Regency-era England might go missing before they were declared dead. That's what everyone my age does on a Saturday night, right?

Today was a generally lazy day, even though it started remarkably early for a Saturday; I made it to Berkeley just before the 9:30am start of the monthly meeting of the SF area romance group that I'm part of, and enjoyed the camaraderie of fellow romance novelists for a couple of hours. The guest speaker is one of my agent's colleagues; she has 20+ years of experience in publishing, mostly on the editorial side, and joined the agency last year. I introduced myself v. briefly (score one for overcoming my shyness), and then listened to her talk about trends (slightly depressing, since published authors get fewer chances to become a bestseller before getting cut from the program) and a variety of other publishing topics. After making a lunch date with Tina (one of the women I hung out with in Orlando last summer, who is seeing a lot of success with self-e-publishing on Amazon/etc.), I skipped out and drove across the bridge to the evil city, where I holed up at Samovar in Yerba Buena Gardens for a couple of hours and brainstormed my plot. Then, I got my bangs trimmed (thank goodness -- I can see again!), came home, took a nap, and generally alternated between wikipedia and my notebook the rest of the night.

I think I had a major breakthrough with the end of my book today; I wasn't happy with the ending I came up with in December, since I think it's too gimmicky, but I wasn't sure how to fix it. However, one off-handed comment from my agent helped me to have a breakthrough, since I realized I was about to make the same mistake I made with my first book (which was to resolve their love story/internal conflict last, rather than the external forces keeping them apart - editors said that they wanted the relationship to resolve sooner). With that in mind, I completely redrafted my synopsis for the last third of the book, and I think it's going to be a lot better. Now it's just a matter of writing it -- no hill for a climber, right?

Unfortunately, I think I'm getting sick, and so I'm going to go to bed in hopes of staving off whatever imminent disaster is lurking in my lungs. Goodnight!