In honor of one of my favorite national days (I’m a fan of national days in general), I thought I’d do a little series on some of my favorite books.

It was a wild and crazy apricot season, with my little tree netting 75 jars of jam. This meant picking apricots daily, checking the ground (some of which is the community greenbelt) for fallen fruit usually twice daily, and making 3 batches of jam per week. It was, by all accounts, exhausting, but the jam is delicious.

Aftermath is probably the wrong word, but it's always interesting as an author to go through the first couple of months after a book launch. Of course, my circle of readers and fans is quite small, so take anything I say with a grain of reality salt, but it's nice to hear tidbits of feedback as they come in from readers.

I don't recommend books very often. Partly because writing books of my own cuts into my reading time, but mostly because rarely is one so remarkable that I feel the need to take to the streets to recommend it.

I confess I was really hoping the San Francisco Review would give me 5 stars for Jeweled. Of course, you never think it's going to happen.

I've been traveling this week, and it's the first time in probably years that I didn't bring a computer with me.

I began my Christmas shopping this weekend. So far I'm spending way too much per gift (as well as spending way too much time in each store), but that's neither here nor there.

I learned recently (when they sent me the advanced review) that the San Francisco Review has given Schooled a 4 out of 5 stars.

When you are a no-name author, word of mouth is one of the only things you have to work with. You hope that everyone who reads your book tells several other people who then read it and tell several more people about it. In my head I always thought of it as a snowball/domino effect that would blossom quite naturally. In reality though, getting people to buy your book is not that easy.