Maggie's Newsletter
Happy
April!
 Well,
of course the biggest news of all for me this month is
the news of my fifteenth RITA Award nomination!
DEMON’S KISS made it
for Best Paranormal of 2007, and the competition
includes Christina Dodd, a woman I’ve admired and adored
throughout my entire career. It’s honestly a thrill to
be nominated in the same category as her. I’m really
delighted.
I have
won the RITA once—after my fourteenth nod, so they
finally stopped calling me Susan Lucci. That win was in
the Best Novella Category of 2005, and the winning
novella was “Her Best Enemy” from the
Night’s Edge
Anthology. It was awarded in the summer of 2006 and I
didn’t attend the ceremony that year. The year I
finally won. I think I had attended every other time I
had been nominated. All 13 of them!
I just
want to let fate know, I’ll be in San Francisco this
year. You know, just in case you want to balance out
the scales of Justice or anything. =)
Now,
there is other news this month, so we’ll get right to
it. As of this month, I have officially joined the
Witchy Chicks blog site.
http://witchychicks.blogspot.com/
The
Chicks do things a little differently. At the Evening
Sun, you can see my column,
Shayne on You every Wednesday.
At my other group blog site, the
Storybroads, you can read my blogs every
single Thursday. But like I said, the Chicks do things
differently. So I’ll try to post my schedule every
month.
For
April I’ll be blogging about publishing on April 7th.
On
April 15th, I’ll be posting a question to get
us chatting in what’s known as “Henfest.”
And on
April 23rd, I’ll be writing a short story for
our Flash Fiction segment.
I hope
you’ll join us there!
Okay,
so onward. And I’ll stick with the topic of work for
the moment, because I’m not quite finished yet. All of
you have been asking me when I’m going to write a book
for Dawn, to finish out the
Thicker than Water,
Colder
than Ice, Darker than Midnight series. And I keep
answering you, soon, I hope. Well, it’s getting
closer. I have just one more vampire book to write, and
then I hope to dive into Dawn’s story.
Right
now I’m working on a brand new project called
BLOODLINE. It’s another of the vampire series, a
continuation of Wings in the Night, in which we find the
newest evolution of the dreaded DPI, up to more evil
than ever before. This book has an interesting history,
because I’d already written 77 pages of it, before my
house, Serenity, caught fire. My laptop, though, was
toasted. I’d backed up the files, of course, on the
flash drive, which was in the little cup that held lots
of pens and a couple of nail clippers, which sat on the
stand next to the VCR/DVD player. Sadly, that device is
where the fire started. I couldn’t even identify the
flash drive, much less retrieve information from it.
That
said, it’s not the end of the world. I’ve already
started over and it’s going to be even better than it
would have been before. It’s due in August, but I’m
shooting for June, and then, stay tuned, because you’ll
be hearing me talk about Dawn’s story next.
Fireplace immediately after fire
And
speaking of things that will be better than ever, I want
to bring you up to date on the house. The entire thing,
except for my office, has been gutted now, and the
fireplace has been sandblasted (only instead of sand,
the machine pummels its target with powdered walnut
shells. Imagine that!) And now, the fireplace looks
better than it did before the fire. It looks almost
like new.
Fireplace after being sandblasted
As for
the rest of the place, it’s ready and waiting for the
rebuilding to begin. The building permit hasn’t arrived
just yet, but I expect it any time now, and then I’m
really going to see some progress. In the meantime,
I’ve had a group of Witch-Priestesses here and we
performed a spiritual cleansing and blessing on the
house to get rid of unwanted energies. Since then, I’ve
been writing spells, chants, rhymes, blessings,
affirmations and just positive words in the walls,
thinking Dr. Masaru Emoto and his work with water. To
make a long and complex series of experiments overly
simple, he wrote negative words and thought negative
thoughts toward water in certain vials, but wrote
positive words on and sent positive thoughts toward
water in other vials. Then the water was photographed,
crystal by crystal. The water with the negative energy
formed uneven, unattractive, blobs, but the positively
treated water formed beautiful, perfect crystals.
Dining room after fire
The
bottom line is thoughts have power. And the words we
use have power. And that power can cause physical
changes. So why not apply it to Serenity? She’s being
filled, daily with words of love, trust, safety, joy,
stability, words of beautiful poetry, words attributed
to the Goddess, words of Abraham, words of my own, all
of them telling this house and all who live within its
walls that they are loved, protected, blessed, charmed,
happy, beautiful and eternal. Isn’t that a fun thing to
do?
Dining room ready for rebuilding
And now
that things have settled down, and I’m nicely cozy in my
apartment, awaiting the renovations to begin, I took the
time to take my car, Sam, into the body shop to fix up
the damage from the deer I hit two days post-fire.
She’s going to have a new windshield and mirror and some
dents and dings fixed, and some paint replaced, and
she’s going to be detailed while she’s at it. After
that, I’ll probably celebrate by buying her new seat
covers and floor mats and something pretty to hang from
the mirror. While she’s getting her makeover, I’m
driving a rental, a Ford Focus I’m calling Red. She’s a
lot of fun, but I do miss my Sam.
 In
other news, just you wait to see what I’m up to on the
pet front. There are a litter of puppies not too far
from me, in which only one little male has yet to be
claimed. They’re English Mastiffs, and they are
HUMONGOUS! (Posting some pics I found online—the
average adult male weighs in at about 200 pounds.)
They’re about a week and a half old now, and I have
dibs on the little boy. I’m supposed to phone tomorrow
to make a date to go see him for the first time. I’ve
fallen in love with this breed, and I must have one.
And if
all goes well and it’s meant to be, I’ll be bringing
home a puppy in seven or eight weeks. And no, Glory (my
cat) probably won’t be thrilled, but I figure she loved
the other dogs, and never had a problem with them. If I
bring her home a pup she’ll teach him from Day One that
she is not to be trifled with, and he’ll grow up to
respect her.
I’m
going to need a doggy door the size of a garage door,
and a nice fence around a significant portion of the
lawn.
So
that’s the plan, and the update. And even as I type
this, Spring is arriving. It’s only in the forties
today, but six of the next seven days in the forecast
call for fifties, and that’s what I’ve been waiting to
see. (Have been—now I’m waiting for sixties!)
Two
quick notes. I’ll be speaking at the
Florida Pagan
Gathering the first weekend in May,
And I
will definitely be attending the
Romance Writers of
America convention in San Francisco the first week
of August.
Until next time,
Maggie
Maggie’s Feel-Good Websites:
www.hayhouseradio.com
www.abraham-hicks.com
www.effortlesshealing.com
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