Norman Mailer and Ira Levin R.I.P., Van Hallen, Rachel Ray and Walt Disney

I took a brief family vacation to Disneyworld, where I managed not to work (wait - I did meet with a client for breakfast). We jammed four days of Disney into three overnights, so we were up at dawn to fly out and in at midnight when we came back. But I love it, and I am so glad that my teen-aged son still wants to go with his middle-aged mom.

It should be no surprise to my readers that my favorite Disney ride is The Haunted Mansion, but I do love Soarin' and Mission Mars (the kinder, gentler version). My son and I also stayed for a full showing of activities at The Adventurer's Club on Pleasure Island, and that was a hoot and a highlight.

In order to take one day off (I was gone for Veteran's Day, but that should be a holiday, so it doesn't count), I was working until about 10:00 the night before. I did four contracts that week and two major submissions (meaning getting 15 copies or more of a proposal out) as well as mailing out the week's checks.

Came back to another contract to review and the changes to two of the contracts I had reviewed last week.

I am hoping to close on four books, possibly five, before the Thanksgiving break.

I went to a Women in Publishing meeting on industry blogs last night, which was great. It's amazing how many people in this industry are sharing their wealth. Made me ask myself the question, "Why Do I Blog," which I'm hoping will be answered in my next post.

But then I had tix for the Van Halen concert, which was probably the best one I've seen this calendar year (and that includes The Police, Sprinsteen and Rush, who were all pretty awesome). Said hello to Rachel Ray, who was in front of us (and much cuter and tinier in person) - a New York moment (I keep on seeing Tony Bennett walking his poodle around Central Park too).

But, as you know, Ira Levin died today, which is a loss. He was a major horror/fantasy writer who really brought my favorite genre into the social zeitgeist. Rosemary's Baby, The Stepford Wives and The Boys from Brazil were amazing social commentaries.

When I was in high school he also wrote his social science fiction novel, This Perfect Day, which I loved, but it appears no one else did, because it didn't even make it into his obituaries.

Norman Mailer died while I was in Orlando. He was a mainstay of my literary pantheon, always there with Updike, Vidal and Roth. I kind of think of them as my literary uncles.

But I was never particularly fond of him. I read The Naked and the Dead when I was in college, and was not old enough to be impressed by how young he was when he wrote it. Then I discovered feminism (or it discovered me) and I was so appalled by his essay on giving women oral sex as the answer to all the problems between the sexes (I'm sure you can google this), I just gave up on him. The Gary Gilmore years were interesting, but let's not forget that he stabbed one of six wives and got a murderer released from prison so he could kill again. He was colorful, but just not my favorite uncle.

Greek Chicken Soup

I am better. I did absolutely nothing Saturday, but sleep and rest, which was very hard for me.

And I felt much better on Sunday, when we all had an extra hour's sleep.

But I credit my speedy recovering to Avgolemono soup (it means egg and lemon soup), my comfort food of choice. Recipe below:

One large can of chicken broth with fat (That's four small cans of broth).
3 eggs
2 lemons
1 cup cooked rice

Bring to boil one can chicken broth and one can water.
Make one cup of white rice (you can also use orzo, but I prefer the taste of rice in this soup).
In a large bowl, beat the three eggs. Cut the lemons in half and squeeze in half a lemon at a time, beating with the eggs as you go along. When all the lemon juice is added and beaten in, add the cooked rice to the lemon egg mixture (for those who care, the lemon cooks the eggs).

Ladle the broth into the egg and rice mixture and stir as you go along. This is a little slow and tedious, but if you rush it, the soup will curdle. If you do it right, it is an amazingly creamy texture. When the entire broth is ladled and stirred into the egg mixture, give it all a good stir and serve.

A Bronx Tale was incredible. I knew it had been a play before the movie, but was unaware it was a one man show. Chazz Palminteri was incredible for 90 minutes straight playing something like 20 characters. And he wrote the play.

We had to wait on line to get into the theatre even though we had tickets. This is a 14 week run that is practically sold-old already, but definitely worth it, especially if you are interested in the creative process of going from play to film.

I am Sick

I actually started to get sick yesterday, but popped Ibuprofen after Ibuprofen hoping that the headache that would not go away was just a headache. But I woke up with it this morning, with a congested head and only half my throat sore.

I am sick because I did too much. After all the family gatherings last week, I had promised to take my retired minister mother to Atlantic City (where I mostly watch her gamble), so I was gone Monday and Tuesday (but was up at 7:00 a.m. and worked until noon on Monday and was on the blackberry the whole time there). I got back Tuesday night and stayed up until 2:00 a.m. sewing yellow question marks on a purple suit for my son's Halloween costume of infomercial pitchman Matthew Lesko (he looked fabulous), but I was already tired.

And then I worked like a tornado the next two days trying to make up for lost time, working until 7:00 on Wednesday night.

I took two naps Friday, but that didn't make a difference.

So I am holed up in bed with my computer and I will spend all day today reading in an effort to outfox this cold. I have tickets to A Bronx Tale tomorrow, and I don't want to be under the weather for that.

News and Notes

It's continues to be a busy, but positive, time of year.

I finally closed on a multi-book deal for a non-traditional series of books that I have been working on for over a year. This is the deal that I had to fly to Chicago for. I wanted my client to meet the people he would be partnering up with for the next few years. And that was certainly good advice, because now everyone really knows everyone. He not only got to meet his editor and the book's designer, but the special sales and marketing people, as well as the actual owner of the company. Win, win all around.

I've also had three meetings with another publisher in the past three weeks where I have been developing a series of books. Again, this is exciting, but very time consuming. But it is also opening doors for all my other clients as well.

I took these last two weeks to have lunches with some of my agent/editor colleagues, because it is important both professionally and personally to know what's going on in the agent part of the book world. It was great to see people I hadn't seen since the summer, and to hear that we are all extremely busy this year, so it's not just me.

And my clients continue to deliver proposal after proposal and book after book. I made a list of things to do over the weekend, thought I was finished by Sunday night, sat down to watch Desperate Housewives and checked email before I went to bed only to find a new partial, a proposal and a whole new, unexpected novel. So I was already late before I started the week.

And on top of that, my cousin got a new job in San Francisco that starts on Monday and decided to come to New York to shop for new work clothes, so I had a dinner for her Wednesday night with more relatives and went out to dinner tonight.

Tomorrow is a paper work and reading day and it couldn't have come at a better time.

Catching Up

This is the first weekend I've had home in three weeks. I went to the New Jersey Romance Writers conference last weekend (Sherlynn Kenyon gave an inspiring speech, which I wish I had taken notes on, because she said she was retiring it, but, basically it was about believing in yourself and never giving up. She told the story of how her home was almost in foreclosure, she had medical bills up to the ceiling and hadn't sold a book in over a year. She has one stamp in her wallet and she received a list of editors names from the RWA newsletter and found that a woman who had once been her agent was now an editor, mailed a partial to her and sold her novel) and had a mid-week one-day trip to Chicago to close a deal. So, I was exhausted this weekend and spent a good part of it sleeping in and then sorting through the carry-on debris of my life, meaning books and bags and pens collected at the various writers' conferences.

Also decided that this was the weekend to separate the summer from the winter stuff and box it up again.

I guess in an odd way I'm thankful that the Yankees aren't in the play-offs because it gives me a little extra time to catch up. (I am a devoted Yankees fan from April through October, but I watch no sports the rest of the year, so I guess this is when I do most of my reading). For the record, I do not hate the Red Sox. I have always said that if the Yankees didn't exist, and the Mets weren't playing, I'd be a Red Sox fan (they are always a good team, and I do love to beat them), so I find myself in the unusual predicament of rooting for the emeny because I cannot bring myself to root for a team with such a racist logo in this day and age.

And I have decided that this is the time to dig out that copy of THE GIRL WHO LOVED TOM GORDON, so that is what I'll be reading for pleasure.