Woo-hoo – in the charts! – and lappie love

Current work: I wish...
Listening to: Diana Krall (am on a jazz/blues piano kick at the moment)
Reading: next on TBR pile but NOT until I’ve finished the book

My current US release – Surrender to the Playboy Sheikh – is in the Waldies top ten series romance bestseller list this week! Thank you very much to the lovely people who put it there, and I hope you enjoy Karim and Lily’s story.

Thank you also to the wonderful Harlequin readers – when I dropped by the eHarl pages on Wednesday to pick up the code for the widgets in my sidebar, I noticed that Playboy Boss, Pregnancy of Passion was at #3 in their bestseller chart. Colour me very happy, and I hope you enjoy Luke and Sara’s story.




And thank you to Marilyn Shoemaker, who’s written a very interesting post on Sheikh lit and included my latest in there.

Bought the laptop yesterday – which will NOT be connected to the internet and will, I hope, improve my productivity because it means that if I work on it I can’t be tempted to flick into email/get sidetracked by research. Also means DH and the kids can use my desktop so they won’t keep moaning that I hog the computer when I’m on a screaming deadline, as I am at the moment. And it has a webcam so son can use it for animation. (When he can get it to work. Daughter says she’s going to write on it. Ha. Bet that doesn’t stop her fleecing me for pretty notebooks.)

The thing is, though, a laptop needs storage. As in a lappie bag. The one in the John Lewis tecchie department was a Samsonite: nice enough, but a little boring/blokey for my taste.

(You know what’s coming next, don’t you?)

Radley do lovely workbags (beautifully made and they last for ever) and I’ve been coveting my friend Nell Dixon’s workbag for ages. Sadly, neither John Lewis nor House of Fraser in Norwich had the one I wanted in stock. But I came home to discover a very timely email from Hudson’s Leather Shop giving me 20% off their clearance prices (note, I have been immensely restrained and not bought anything Radley-oriented for myself for almost a year). And guess what was in the sale? Yup, the exact workbag I wanted. Black with a lavender trim. Sale price plus discount meant that it was only a tenner or so dearer than the Samsonite bag. Result: one lovely lappie bag ordered, with no guilt whatsoever. And it seems I got the last one: I feel very, very lucky.

I was dreading having to tackle Vista, having heard nightmare stories, but so far (touch wood) have managed to load Microsoft Office, set up the users, and help everyone to change their settings. Have also copied latest WIPs across. So I’m all set for use, now. As for printing: rather than faff about trying to find the Vista driver online for my elderly printer, am going to copy the file to memory stick and print from the desktop PC.

Plan for today: originally, the idea was to do lots of work and wait in for the delivery of the laptop bag.

But.

It seems Dad’s cataract op yesterday was more complicated than expected (haven't quite got to the bottom of that yet) and there isn’t ANY hospital transport available to take him back for an urgent check-up this morning (which might not be a check-up - might be the other half of the op. As I said, not got to the bottom of this yet), so I’m taking him and one of the carers is coming with me to help get him in and out of the car. The hospital said be there from 8.30 - but I need to do the school run first and can't be in two places at once. Which means he’ll be anxious (the joys of Parkinson's); depending on traffic and how long it takes to get him into the car it's more likely to be 9.30. Without a definite time, we may end up with a long wait in a hot, sticky environment; I foresee lots of trips to the vending machine for cool drinks. Must remember to take pack of straws for Dad.

Very hot and sticky here right now, which is why I'm posting at 5am - woke with a nightmare and it's too humid to go back to sleep. And yes, I know what triggerered the nightmare: worry about Dad's eye. Dreams can useful to me as a writer, but sometimes they go a bit far, and this one was pretty upsetting. Not fair to wake DH and sob all over him, so going to do some work instead: kind of useful, as I've lost three out of five working days this week, so having the revisions done and the next book off my desk before the summer holidays is looking pretty remote.

But, glass half full, Hudson’s sent me the tracking number for my parcel, so I rang the courier yesterday to ask if they could please leave it next door if I’m not back from hospital when they deliver; they were lovely and agreed, so at least I won’t have to drive halfway across the city to pick it up when I get home.