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This week so far:

Found brown recluse spiders in kitchen and one in the hallway bathroom. Exterminator has laid extra traps, but I am unfortunately allergic to most pesticides. It’s not an infestation of the scary buggers like we had about seven years ago when we found them by me being bitten by one. (That was painful and just not something I ever want to repeat.) Then Jon and I had to go away for a week so they could fumigate the house and not poison me. We did research for Blood Noir in Asheville, North Carolina, and even sick from the spider bite we both still loved the town. Need to revisit someday.

Jon’s knee that he had surgery on about five years ago is acting up. I’ve taken him to two doctor’s this week. Just learned early today that next week he’ll be talking to a surgeon. 🙁

Our Japanese chins, Keiko and Mordor, both have kennel cough, even though they were both vaccinated against it. Apparently, some dogs will get a mild case of it even with vaccinations, or sometimes because of it, but still better than the life threatening full blown illness. Our pug, Sasquatch, who is 11 years old, is fine. Pugs are the tanks of the toy dog world on most things. 🙂 Chins are quite a bit more fragile in a lot of ways. They tend to get sick more often, are more delicate for injuries, and how do you keep their food out of all that lovely, long hair? I swear Keiko rolls in her soft food like some dogs roll in noisome things in the yard. She ends up wearing her food, and since she has medicine in it, the texture on her curls is interesting. We love our chins, but pugs totally spoiled us with their comparable ruggedness and wash and wear ease of grooming. Still planning to have more chins someday, but first we need another pug. We all miss the dual snoring.

In the midst of all the doctor and vet visits, I have actually been trying to write more on the next Anita Blake novel. I announced the title at DragonCon this year, but never put it up on the blog, so here it goes. The next Anita novel is entitled,”Affliction.” Micah is called back home by his estranged family, because his father, a county sheriff, has been attacked and is terribly injured. Anita and Nathaniel are going with him for moral support and to meet his family under very trying circumstances. It’s an interesting book to be writing. I can’t wait for you guys to finally read it!

I had one day this week that I wrote six pages on, Affliction, and four pages on something brand new that demanded to be written. It came out of nowhere and made me go, really? It’s brand new, but I guess it contains at least two different ideas that I’ve made notes on before. I just never thought about combining them, and there were several new ideas added to the old ones, and it just worked. But first to finish the book. I don’t even know if the four surprise pages are part of a book, or a short story? It’s cooking, but whether it’s stew, soup, or something else, I won’t know for awhile. It’s kind of nice creatively to not know for a change.