Whoa. THAT turned into a saga, one that never should have happened.

Know how sometimes, you make what you think is a good decision, but it comes back to bite you? Hard? Like, broken bones hard? And that it wouldn’t have if you’d known to ask the Very Good Questions your business coach told you to, except you never even knew the #1 question to ask involved stuff you’d never heard of, never even imagined was technically possible?

Yeah. Like that.

So… the past is over and done with and I’m setting my sights on bigger and better. I’ve got a couple of Featured New Book Spotlights to post, and even a Line of Distinction or two.

One note: You may catch typos in the form of strange characters on some of the pages and maybe even in the archives. If you’d take a second and let me know what you find, I’d deeply appreciate it. Things didn’t go smoothly… oh, the odd benefits of eight years of archives.

In a week from today, I’m heading out on my first REAL vacation in three years. Not a week at Scout camp (although that’s always a welcome break). Not a weekend adventure. A real, honest-to-God, airplane-involved vacation.

And like any good Boy Scout, I’m going to mostly be camping. In a national park.

If you are savvy enough, you’ll realize what that means… NO INTERNET.

Which means NO E-MAIL.

If you’re a client or a potential client, next week may not be a good time to reach me. Waiting until I get home on the 20th isn’t wise, either. Jet lag, exhaustion, the need to make up for lost time with my bed (and re-locate what’s come dislocated while sleeping on the ground, usually pelvis, vertebrae, and ribs)… all that’s going to play a role in how long it takes me to catch up. We are talking about someone who gets, according to Google, 1300 mails a month.

Now for the good news: If you’ve got something short — 50k words or less, or an almost-polished proofread — and want to slip it past my editorial senses before I leave, get in touch with me NOW. I’ve purposely left time open in my schedule between today and Wednesday. And I’ve refused to unpack certain things from last week’s camping adventure, making it easier to get ready for this trip. Preparations are under control. No sweat.

I’ll remind you again before I leave, of course. Spread the word. Your editor par excellence is headed out to clear her head, see bison and bear and mountain goats and bighorn sheep and moose and wolves and mountains and streams and geysers and paint pots and canyons and rivers and… Those of you who’ve been here a long time may remember the last time I headed out that way. Sadly, the pictures have been lost, but the posts are still there, buried in my archives.

Do I really need to come home? I could just stay, right? I’d be REALLY West of Mars then. No need to change the business name. I can work in that beauty and grandeur. I can do better work out there. I know it.

Just don’t ask me to do it next week.

I have to tell you guys that when the airplane door slammed shut in Bozeman and the plane was pushed back from the jetway, I almost screamed NO and jumped off the plane and called one of the amazing tour guides to come get me ’cause I wasn’t going anywhere ever again…

Believe me, it was tempting.

Pictures of the trip will follow soon, most likely as Thursday Thirteens. The Tour Manager and I took about 500, give or take the deleted ones (ahh, the pleasure of digital photography), and including my 140-some on our final day in the park.

My fiction and rock and roll take up a big part of my soul. I’ve made that abundantly clear on this blog. The other part of my soul is Yellowstone National Park. Really. I would have stayed, if I’d had the option to.

Happy New Year to all of you. May all of our dreams come true in 2008, and may I have news for you of a publication of Trevor’s Song by the end of the year, if not earlier. Keep on visiting and spreading the word about our fun here; the bigger the buzz, the more you inspire me.

Thirteen Things You Need to Know1. Yellowstone National Park became the first national park in the United States in 1872. It was signed into law by President Ulysses S. Grant. 2. In 1976, my parents took me to Yellowstone. To say I fell in immediate love is to underestimate the power of the emotion the park evokes in me. 3. In 1988, 1.4 million acres of Yellowstone burned. 4. In 1998, I made a return trip with the Tour Manager. Signs of the fire were still everywhere. The Tour Manager promised we’d return in five years. 5. In 2008, the Tour Manager and I will layer up our winter gear and leave the warmth of the Old Faithful Snow Lodge to see Old Faithful’s first eruption of the new year. (yep, five years became ten. Amazing what happens when you blink.) 6. Because we’ll be spending five of our six nights in the park, we probably won’t have Internet access. Or cell phone coverage. 7. Our first morning there, we’ll go wolf spotting. 8. We’re bringing both digital cameras and the laptop, so we can upload the pictures and have empty memory cards to start each day. 9. I have learned more about long underwear than any rocker chick like me ought to learn. 10. We’re going to be surrounded by bison and yet I’m betting that all that will be on the menu is cow. 11. As a result of this, I probably won’t be able to check in while I’m gone. 12. I’d thought about having a friend post entries for me, but given what Trevor’s done around this joint in the past when I HAVE been here, I didn’t think that was wise. 13. But if I can post from Yellowstone, I will. Keep your eyes peeled, and have a terrific New Year’s.

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