Thank you all so much for your well wishes and prayers. It really means a lot to me. Everything is looking good now, and on the upswing…

(“Geez, Diana, could you be more vague?”
“Probably not, but I spent the last few days having people say to me, ‘Don’t put this on your blog, okay?’ so it is what it is.”)

I also want to wave hello to the people who have discovered Secret Society Girl in the past few days. Thanks for reading! I hope you enjoy it.

What a ridiculous few days. I haven’t gotten anything accomplished but I haven’t been this stressed out since I was a senior in college (a period in life that I still have nightmares about, which is, perhaps, why I’m able to capture Amy’s state of mind). And the signs of stress are definitely showing.

Example #1: While leaving a parking garage, I accidentally forget an envelope full of important documents on hood of car. Since I never put things on the hood of my car for precisely this reason, I am initially mystified, upon arrival at my destination, as to where said envelope could have gone. Bewildered, I search car, bags, and call back to my origin point to see if I left the envelope there. Negative. I frantically drive BACK to the origin point, keeping an eye out for glimpses of the envelope along the (very busy, main thoroughfare and beltway exit). Finally discover envelope in middle of road right by the exit of the parking garage. Has been run over multiple times, is flattened, dirty, and full of holes. Documents inside are (miraculously) mostly untouched, except for the top page, which is a bit dirty and wrinkled, and all the binder clips on the documents, which are no longer triangular so much as linear. Still, close call.

Example #2: While ordering dinner for Sailor Boy and myself, I forget that he requested, and I ordered, a pasta dish, and then proceed to order him another meal entirely. If anyone’s in the mood for Szechuan beef, I’m drowning in it.

Example #3: In packing up a DVD to send back to Netflix, I completely fail to put the proper DVD (Poltergeist) in the Poltergeist Tyvek slip. Instead, I put in a home-taped episode of BBC time-travel show, Life on Mars. Then I sealed the envelope up and put it in the mail. Luckily, I figured this out a few moments later, when instead on seeing seventies-era Manchester on my screen, I saw Carol-Anne in front of a snowy TV set. Seriously, though, what gives?

I’m not usually like this. But suffice to say, there is a reason that I will not be posting on anything craft-related or complicated today. Instead, I’ll be snoozing and catching up. If you have any suggestions, let me know in the comments.

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Probably won’t be posting again for a while, due to a moderate family emergency. Rest assured: everyone will be fine.

Meanwhile, we are still having a giveaway of Secret Society Girl, the paperback, this week. Leave a comment in this post to enter.

In passing, winners from the last two weeks, Susan Hatler and Crystal G, have yet to contact me to receive their prizes. Since my access to email is spotty this week, let’s give them until Friday and then I’ll draw new names.

I’m tremendously behind in what’s going on in the world, on email, on loops, on blogs, etc. right now, but I do know these things:

1) Justine Larbalestier won an Andre Norton Award for her debut novel, Magic or Madness. Wow. Go, Justine! I am completely blown away by this and would be more eloquent except that I haven’t slept in thirty hours. (Justine, if you’re reading this, I am buying our next round in celebration.)

2) Gemma Halliday’s debut, Spying in High Heels, is currently in development as a television series on the USA Network!!!

Now I sleep.

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Checking in from Florida…

I’ve been much busier here than I’d expected — haven’t had time to read any of the books I brought, write anything, blog, or even read other people’s blogs. Bummer.

On the upside, I’ve been hanging out with my parents, my brother, his cats, and my best friend. Yay! Tonight, I’m going to see Erica, and tomorrow, I’m speaking at the Tampa Area Romance Authors (TARA) meeting. Double Yay! (Where we shall all miss Carrie.)

Right now, our whole house is completely enveloped in a thin mist of smoke from the wildfires. Last I heard, the fires were still pretty far away (hours and hours of driving) so I’m shocked that the smoke has blown down this far.

Updated to add: So I realized I totally forgot to pick the winner of this week’s SSG giveaway. And I was doing the drawing (which I do, by the way, at random.org) and my best friend was looking over my shoulder and goes, “Oh, that’s how you do it?” So now we all know.

So, without further ado, the winner of the copy of SSG is:

SUSAN HATLER

Congrats, enjoy, and, come back next week for another giveaway!

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It’s 7 a.m. I must be on a metro car in an hour and a half, and I still need to accomplish a whole list of things that may or may not include packing.

Meanwhile, I did get my hands on my camera, so pictures of Life & Style, for those of you who haven’t gone grocery shopping this week and so missed the tabloid rack:

This is the correct issue of the magazine on the left, and this is my ad there on page 21 on the right. Cool, huh? Yeah, I know, totally geeking out. Other ads include Crest Whitestrips, Cover Girl, and Sketchers Sneakers.

Moving on…

Some good blog posts out there recently. Bestselling author Angela Knight weighs in on the topic of “critics, snarks, and trolls” and how they differ. Good stuff.

Agent Kristin Nelson is talking about the make up of the Publisher’s Marketplace blurb, and how imagining what you will write for that is actually a great exercise for a writer looking to hone their high concept. So true! I’m a huge fan of this exercise, not only for the reason mentioned, but also for another reason: positive visualization. When I was in high school, the coach of the swim team used to make his swimmers pick a goal number, a goal time, for their event and then write it down EVERYWHERE — on the cover of their binders, in big letters inside their locker, in cut out felt dangling from their rear view mirror. Everywhere you went, you knew what the guy in your Geometry class wanted to make in the butterfly relay or what your locker mate was striving for in freestyle backstroke. And they knew. That number was there, in their head, in their mind all day.

The coach claimed that seeing that number in front of you all the time was an excellent way to make it happen in real life. That if you kept picturing it, it not only kept your head in the game, but also made it seem like it could happen, It was a number you got used to seeing.

I have been known to write fake Publisher’s Marketplace announcements for myself and for friends as encouragement devices. A sort of, “I know you’re getting rejections now, but look at what this might lead to if you keep trying” game. So many people I know said that their sale felt “real” to them when teh announcement appeared in Publisher’s Lunch. Having a concrete visualization, in the established Publisher’s Marketplace style, can be a big encouragement.

This is what Publisher’s Marketplace announcements look like (a shout out to my pal Jaida, who just made her first sale this week):

Or:

So the pattern is:

Genre
Something About Author Author Name’s TITLE, about blah blah blah, in Blank Book Deal, to Editor at Publishing House, by Agent.

Get as fancy as you want:

Non-Fiction/Memoir
New York Times Bestselling Author, Eli graduate, and future Princess of Wales Amy Haskel’s recollections of her idyllic childhood in Ohio, her stormy Ivy League College career as a member of the infamous secret society Rose & Grave, and how she met William, at auction, in a two book deal, to Random House, in a pre-empt, by Clarissa Cuthbert of ICM. Movie rights are with Kevin Lee of CAA.

Okay. Off to catch a plane. I think I may give a prize to the most amusing Publisher’s Marketplace-style announcement left in the comments section. Have fun!

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Sorry for the lack of posting. It’s been really busy around here. (I will post on exactly what I’ve been busy with soon, but some of it includes dealings with: Several pounds of beef, Brazilian monkeys, and four yards of tulle.)

The first thing on my blogging To Do list today is give away the prize from last week’s giveaway. The winner of the paperback of Secret Society Girl is:

CRYSTAL G

Please email me with your address to receive your prize.

By the way, the contest continues this week, with another copy of the paperback to give away. Leave a comment on this post to enter. (I promise I’ll try to do the drawing on Friday this time!)

Next up: gossip magazines. Anyone seen the new issue of Life & Style magazine? (May 14th, the one with Angie and brad on the cover.) There’s a gorgeous ad for Secret Society Girl and Under the Rose on page 19, right next to J.Lo. I’ll take a picture of it as soon as I locate my camera.I know I had it recently, since I do have pictures of what I did with the aforementioned yards of tulle:

Moving on…

Reviews are pouring in for Under the Rose. First, we heard from Publisher’s Weekly:

Deep within the Rose and Grave Secret Society at Eli University, the secrets even members aren’t privy to make Peterfreund’s second novel impossible to put down. Picking up where last year’s Secret Society Girl left off, the novel follows the misadventures of Amy Haskel, who, having endured the initiation only to unravel a misogynistic plot set on destroying the first class of “Diggers” to include women, is looking forward to putting her troubles behind her. But things begin to sour when all the “Diggirls” receive a mysterious letter warning them of the society’s impending implosion. To make matters worse, Amy’s ex-boyfriend has a hot new girlfriend; her roommate starts dating a society member with commitment problems; another society member is dying to get under Amy’s ceremonial robe; and Amy’s senior thesis looms. When the Diggers realize they have a mole, Amy is intent on finding the culprit. Peterfreund offers an intimate view of the modus operandi of a college society, and even when the story’s revelations feel anticlimactic, readers will be absorbed by the juicy romantic plot.

And now, from Booklist:

Peterfreund picks up where she left off in Secret Society Girl (2006). Now that elite secret society Rose & Grave has accepted its first female initiates, they have a new obstacle to face—a traitor in their midst. Amy Haskel thinks she knows who’s leaking the society’s secrets, but she has to convince the others that it’s not just a conspiracy theory. It doesn’t help that she’s a little distracted by her hot-and-heavy relationship with the resident Rose & Grave lothario, George Prescott. Peterfreund pairs romance and suspense in a picaresque university setting with a few surprises thrown in for good measure. Readers who picked up the series debut will be excited to continue the adventures of Amy and her cohorts. The author doesn’t spend too much time rehashing the first book, but new readers will get swept up in the sexy story in no time.

And, I’ve been hearing from the non-reviewers who have ARCs as well, such as OC Annie, who is really pulling for a more frequent use of footnotes, and Erica (and Carrie) who are speculating heavily on Amy’s future (Erica uses white text for spoiler’s sake).

In passing, I’ve realized that Google and Ice Rocket and their ilk are not going to be particularly helpful in tracking down web whispers about my new book, due to the fact that I share the title with, among other things, some song from a Finnish rock band’s latest album. All in all, I’ve decided that this is a good thing.

As for me, I’m still hard at work on the latest SSG novel. It’s an interesting time to be writing, because I keep hearing from people who are just discovering the book, via the paperback, and reading the first reviews for the sequel, but in my head, they are all living a year in the future, they’re all on Spring Break of their senior year, and I have to keep that in mind when I’m responding to questions or taking part in conversations or interviews. I have seen what happens to these characters, where they go, what changes in their relationships, etc., and I’ll sound like a loon or a big spoiler machine if I talk from that mindset. So I have to keep in mind who Amy is at the beginning of SSG and who she is at the end, which is very different than who she is at the beginning of UTR, let alone the end, or in the third book. For example (white text), think about how significantly her feelings about Clarissa change over the course of the first book. Stuff happens. This isn’t a big problem, but it’s a professional hazard of being a series writer that I hadn’t really given any thought to. (Speaking of series, Carrie has an excellent post on the subject right now.)

So, that’s all the news that’s fit to print right now. I’m leaving town on Wednesday, but I’ll still be blogging from sunny Florida.

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Last weekend I went out to (gorgeous, gorgeous) Harper’s Ferry (where we had nothing but tremendously fine weather, as you can see to the left) for the annual Washington Romance Writer’s Retreat. So. Much. Fun. It’s a lovely, intimate conference, and probably one of the most well-run and information-packed mini-conferences I’ve ever attended. Because all attendees are WRW members, there is a kind of camaraderie and informality to this conference that is truly unique.

The conference is held every year in Historic Hilltop House, a tiny, quaint, and cozy hotel that has the best views in all of Harper’s Ferry. Here is Michelle Buonfiglio from Romance B(u)y the Book and Romance by the Blog and I enjoying the view:

Michelle is such a doll! We first met at RWA Nationals last summer. She evenremembered my little brother, who came with me to my agent’s party. (Which reminds me, I still need to send him her regards.) We got to hang out a lot at the retreat, talk more about the recent Princeton U. visitors to her blog, and I was there when Michelle made her amazing announcement. Congrats, chica! I also found out that my single contribution to film theory: Alan Rickman Makes Everything Better has somehow found a life of its own amongst her blog visitors as “Everything is Better With Alan Rickman,” which is a slightly different argument, but still… How cool is that?

Aside from the view, Hilltop House is mostly famous for its “historic charm” by which they mean small rooms, hundred year old mattresses, no amenities like hair dryers, clocks, TV sets, or irons, very little hot water… and ghosts. I had heard so much about these ghosts that I basically didn’t sleep the first night. Every time I heard a noise or sensed movement in the room (like, say, my roommate getting up to go to the bathroom) I completely freaked out and jolted awake. Here’s a picture of our room, taken from the door. My bed (the one with all my crap on it) was pressed up to the radiator. I actually didn’t think it was very bad. I’ve stayed in MUCH smaller rooms in boutique hotels in New York City (right, Colleen?) and this one was a hell of a lot cheaper!

The bathroom, on the other hand… Note Amanda displaying its size, at right. Yes, the door was that narrow, and she has her hands splayed to show how wide the space was. Her back is against the wall, and the (tiny) (tilted) sink. Seriously, the sink was set at a good 20 degrees off the horizontal. Fortunately, the toilet flushed at least half the time.

But I certainly don’t go to conferences for the hotel rooms, and remember, you’re talking to the girl who lived in a tent in Australia for a couple of months. (Our tent was not haunted, FYI.) We didn’t spend much time in the rooms, and when we were there, it was wrapped up in the blankets we’d brought from home, wondering how to make the radiator work without burning down my bed. Most of the conference was spent at the workshops and of course, at the bar.

The workshops were all held in this gorgeous sunroom overlooking the gorge and the river. Luckily, they were all amazing, so I was never tempted to do much woolgathering. I went to a workshop on last-ditch revisions, with Kathleen Gilles Seidel (she gives the best workshops!), an “American Idol” style first page review with Kate Duffy (Kensington), Jennifer Enderlin (St. Martins), and Tracy Farrell (HQN), a book-doctor workshop with the incomparable Lisa Gardner (I think this is the workshop I learned the most from at the conference), a talk on “whining” by Nora Roberts, and a published author breakout session which was, as Leslie Kelly pointed out earlier this week, truly humbling. The keynote speakers were Julia Quinn, Madeleine Hunter, and Lisa Gardner.

I also played a cut-throat game of Apples to Apples in the lobby with these writers (left), went on a Harper’s Ferry Ghost Tour with Amanda Brice and Janet Mullaney/Jane Lockwood (which meant I missed a WRW Jeopardy game where I was a clue — oops), hung out at the bar with so many historical writers: Diane Gaston/Diane Perkins, Sophia Nash, Kathryn Caskie, and Michelle Willingham, and didn’t get any sleep the second night because Amanda and I stayed up until all hours talking about secret societies and frats and how they differ.

Our final day in Harper’s Ferry, there was a humongous raffle drawing of what seemed like a million prize baskets (Linda Morelli and Kathy Caskie won most of them, oddly enough ::vbg::) and then, the grand prize drawing: registration for next year’s conference. My roommie, Amanda Brice, had bought one raffle ticket for this drawing, as a lark — and she won!

After her victory, Amanda, Knight Agent Elaine Spencer, and I went wandering around town, enjoying the gorgeous spring weather and soaking up the history and a little of the frozen custard that Harper’s Ferry had to offer.

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Release Day was splendid. I met some friends and former coworkers for lunch at Ben’s Chili Bowl (a D.C. landmark) dropped by the National Zoo to enjoy the sunshine, the flowers, and the adorable baby animals, received a great review for Under the Rose from Booklist (details to come), and went to see my book on the shelves.

I think the people at my local bookstore have stopped giving me funny looks when I snap pictures of their shelves.

Here’s Secret Society Girl at the front table of my local Borders:
Two books to the left is Curtis Sittenfeld’s most recent title, Man of My Dreams, which sports a very different cover from the hardback. I think I like the new cover much better. The colors and the pile of men’s shirts seem much more inviting to me than the frog prince.

Speaking of frog princes, I had my eye out for Shanna Swendson’s new release, Damsel Under Stress, as well as Jennifer Estep’s debut Karma Girl, but I couldn’t find either of them. The computer said they were in transit, so I’ll check back tomorrow (though they also said my book was in transit).

However, I did see some other great new books:

That’s Deidre Knight’s newest “Midnight Warrior (aka Parallel series) book, Parallel Seduction face out in the romance section. I swear, Deidre is blessed by the cover gods; they just keep getting yummier and yummier. I haven’t read this book yet, but it features Scott, the hybrid alien warrior with a chip on his shoulder and Hope, the half-blind linguist who captured his heart (and ours) in Parallel Heat.

Over here we have my friend Roxanne St. Claire’s newest Bullet Catcher title, Take Me Tonight. (I might as well have titled these pictures: book on Diana’s TBR pile, since I have both of them!) I have to say that the premise of this novel scares me to death. It’s about an investigation website where you can order a “fantasy kidnapping” with disastrous results. This is definitely a book I’m not going to read late at night or when Sailor Boy is not around to protect me. then again, she does delicious heroes, too…

And, just for fun, I found Secrets, volume 9, and pulled it face out to show SB:

Who’s that sassy minx and why does she want that poor man’s tie?

And what happened to his shirt? Questions, questions…

finally, I haven’t seen this yet, but I can’t be the only one wild to get my hands on a copy of Evil Genius, by Catherine Jinks. I’ve been salivating about this book since I first heard the blurb for it on Publisher’s Marketplace. It’s about a young supervillain at an evil genius school who is trying to figure out a way to become a good guy. Her article on Backstory this week was fascinating, and if that’s not enough, the special website for the “World Domination” school her main character is sent to is the icing on the (evil) cake. How awesome is that?

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