Winner - Good-for-you/me contest

Thank you so much to everyone for the great recipe ideas. You guys are truly creative with your greens and I'm almost sort of excited to try them!  Farmers market today, plus Dad and Judy are cutting the rest of their greens in preparation for traveling, so I'll be receiving a bounty.

The winner of a copy of A BAD DAY FOR SCANDAL, chosen via random.org, is Lisarenee. Please send your snail mail address to sophie@sophielittlefield.com and I'll get the book to you asap! (and let me know who you would like it signed to!)

Good-for-You Contest: win BAD DAY FOR SCANDAL

One of the banes of my existence is those deep green leafy veggies we're supposed to be eating so much of. "Yuck" sums up my feelings about them. But recently my eye doctor explained that people whose family history includes macular degeneration really need to step up and eat gobs and gobs of spinach and kale and such. Lutein's the key - you can read more about it here.

Luckily, my dad and his wife Judy are organic gardeners with an abundance of greens they are happy to share. They supply me with bags of the stuff whenever I ask, and I've started sauteeing away.



I need more ideas to make this stuff palatable, people!  I will send a signed copy of the paperback of A BAD DAY FOR SCANDAL to the best idea that comes my way. Just comment with your idea or a link or whatever you got.

So far, I've been adding Trader Joes brown rice and soy sauce. I also chopped it up and add it to canned soup. (Yeah, I know it's terrible, but I haven't had time to start cooking again since I got the go-ahead from the doc.)  Please don't suggest ruining a perfectly good lasagna...or, worst idea I heard yet, a spinach smoothie ("Add a banana and you won't even notice!" my friend claimed....).

New Spex

Many of you are accustomed to seeing me in my librarian glasses, which I adore, especially for their pearly-pink interior. It's one of those details that's all the more special because no one knows it's there but me.

But I recently got a pair of just-for-reading glasses, and I think I might like these even more. They're the geek me, the *real* me, myopic and easily distracted and bleary from staying up until the wee hours reading.

My glasses style icon is Gigi Pandian, who has long maintained that everyone looks better in glasses. What do you think, Gigi?

Day 15: Done!!!!

Yessssss!  Went to the doc today full of trepidation. She sat down with me and all my x-rays and we had a great talk. My fingers are NOT broken, just very stiff and swollen - and I'm out of the brace!  That's right - I'm typing like a normal person again for the first time in five weeks!  SO excited, I can't even tell you. My little finger doesn't really work yet, and I've got some physical therapy ahead, but I'm definitely on the road to good-as-new.

Don't know if things like this happen to remind us to be grateful...but I am sure feeling grateful. I'm sure I'll soon return to my usual take-everything-for-granted ways, but for today I'm delighted that I have the use of these marvelous hands.

Celebrated with a trip up Mt. Diablo (well, I hadn't been to the doc yet at that point, so it was more like pre-celebrating). I only hiked the summit trail, and on the way down I got turned around and added an extra 2.5 miles, which I wouldn't have minded except I was afraid I was going to be late for my appointment and it was half steep descent and the other half...yes, steep ascent, which I was trying to do quickly. Needless to say I was pretty worn out.

Should sleep well tonight!

Day 14: Movie Night

A couple of my pals came up with a brilliant idea to cheer me up: watching Wonder Boys, surrounded by pets, after a fantastic meal of cowboy steak and potatoes, and cheap white wine (and one bottle of good french wine to shake things up.)

I was a Chabon fan back when country wasn't cool. I remember buying MYSTERIES OF PITTSBURGH back when they first invented the trade paperback format and thinking Gosh this is so darn *literary*. But you know what - it makes a way better movie. Even with Michael Douglas, who we all hate passionately...every time he whines about his book taking so long to write, we screamed - screamed! - with derisive laughter.

Day 13: Caffeinate

Sorry, I fell off the schedule there briefly - a busy mothers' day with my kids and family was followed by an entire day of basking in the new-series glow.

Today, however, I started my new book. I had a good talk with Erika, my editor, and we agreed on the rough outline for the new book. It's tentatively called GRAY HOUSE (love!!!) and it is as shiny and sparkly as any new project ever was, which is to say, quite shiny and sparkly indeed!

Early days in a new book, I love to lay down some serious word count. This time around I can't do that. I think I'm at a little more than half my usual productivity (which kind of makes sense, since I have a little more than half my manual dexterity at the moment.)

I did meet up with the Cabal this morning for some coffee drinking and motivation:

New Series Announcement!

I'm thrilled and delighted to announce that I have sold the first two books in a new series to Pocket! The as-yet-untitled novels feature thirty-ish Joe Bashir, a hunky Pakistani-American detective in an affluent suburb of San Francisco.

Let me just say right up front that I LOVE Joe Bashir. If I was fifteen years younger - and he wasn't imaginary - we'd be involved, for sure. On second thought, I guess we *are* involved, since I've written a number of short stories as well as a completed book and a number of proposals featuring Joe and his colleagues.

The best thing about this new venture is that my new editor is Abby Zidle. I've had a writer-crush on AZ forever, and not just because she claims that her edit directives "are made of kitten whiskers and moondust" - that woman is SMART. Scary smart, and you all know how I feel about smart.

I don't have many details yet, but let me share the pitch for the book. If you're wondering where it fits in the Littlefield imagin-o-rama, I'd say the Joe books are more procedural and "serious" than the Stella series, not as gruesome as the AFTERTIME series, while still being very character-driven. Barbara (who, you'll remember, calls me the 2nd-worst pitcher ever) likens them to John Sandford's work, a comparison I'll be glad to take, thank you very much!

I'll share more when I have more, but for now I'm just excited about the new venture. Onward!