We have snow. Again. Lots of it.
I went to take some photos out the back door and Bucket got curious.
She’s usually not the curious cat type, so I was impressed that she actually took two whole steps before retreating back inside.
More snow photos over on Flickr.
As you may have noticed, I was in NYC for the past few days.
I met my agent and my editor in person for the first time. They are, in fact, actual people and not just lovely disembodied telephone voices.
I drank a lot of wine with my sister. I got snowed on in Times Square. I met the resident kitty at the Algonquin.
I generally felt like I’d wandered into someone else’s life.
It’s going to take awhile for this to fit on me properly. Like breaking in new boots.
And then last night, while I was on the train back to Boston, my Google alerts kind of exploded with the Summit film option announcement.
I’m thrilled about it, of course. It’s not helping that whole endeavoring to become more of a believer thing, though. Every time I think this whole journey might get less surreal eventually, things like this happen and I’m reduced to blinky-eyed deer in headlights mode and I say “yay” a lot, because I’m articulate like that.
Oh, and since some of the announcements have mentioned it as such, I should probably clarify that The Night Circus is not a young adult novel. It will probably have a lot of appeal for teenage readers & fans of YA, but it is indeed an adult-market book.
Home now, with kittens who claim not to have missed me. Fluffy little liars.
So long, 2010.
You were interesting.
I spent the vast majority of 2010 living in a black-and-white circus that will be nicely bound on bookstore shelves come September.
It’s still rather hard to believe, but I’m working on that.
This time last year I was still unagented and pulling my manuscript apart again for yet another revision.
Visions and revisions. That’s the way this year went.
2010 sounded like Bernard Herrmann Hitchcock soundtracks and jazz and Arcade Fire and Florence + the Machine.
It sounded like Florence + the Machine a lot. Song of my year, no question:
My New Year’s Resolution is to stop saying (repeatedly) that anything happening to me is weird or strange or crazy. Because crazy is my new normal and I should probably try to embrace that.
I should be more of a believer.
This is all really happening.
The snow outside is melting. I have stars in my hair.
Bring it on, 2011.
On Friday, we baked cookies & tartlets & listened to absurd amounts of holiday music. I still find the “Baby, It’s Cold Outside” song mildly disturbing.
And we made peppermint bark. I’d never made it before, but I wanted to try something not-cookie, and my Martha Stewart holiday cookbook had a recipe that seemed fairly simple, so we gave it a whirl.
We couldn’t find candy canes (craziness!) but we substituted giant peppermint sticks which were probably more fun to break.
We melted absurd amounts of white chocolate.
We mixed the two together with a bit of peppermint oil & chilled it in a pan & then broke it into pieces:
It is delicious.
We were intending to bring it along for holiday visiting yesterday.
Then we had a blizzard.
And holiday visiting was canceled.
So we’re snowed in with over 2 pounds of peppermint bark. I’m going to have to freeze it or something, we can’t possibly eat all of it between the two of us.
(Besides, I also have chocolate-covered, sea salt-dusted caramels. Those are getting eaten. Savored one by one.)
We had our first snow of the season, finally! Started yesterday & continued overnight, which meant no late night lunar eclipse watching for us, sadness. Still, it’s nice to have the snow.
I always love the first snow, when everything’s all bright & white & quiet. After it turns slushy, not so much love, but that initial snowfall is always kind of lovely.
It was especially nice to have snow just in time for the winter solstice today, snowy snowy solstice!
The boy got me solstice roses, which are a long story that we do not have time for, but they are tinted bluish-black & marvelously gothic, I’ll take better photos of them tomorrow when I have proper light, but here’s a peek:
It’s feeling very holiday-ish around here, suddenly. Festive & wintery & Carol of the Bells-y. And cold. And snowy.
Trying to hold on to this last week or so before the year falls away from me and December turns into January. Busy, but good busy.
