Lisa Hendrix

I’m tapping away furiously on Immortal Champion, so this is a quickie I’ve been saving for a fill-in.

Do you like bubble wrap? Popping it, I mean. Most people find it hypnotically addictive. In fact, given a sheet of bubble wrap and any environment outside a library or hospital Quiet Zone, most people will keep going till they pop every bubble, turning it from useful packing material into trash.

And thus I bring you what may be the ultimate online time-waster (courtesy Child2).  Pop. Pop. Honestly, if you’ve got little kids to keep happy during a wait, this is da bomb. Plug in some headphones and put them to work — if you can give it up yourself…

I’ll get you to Tuxford in a couple of days. And yes, I’m writing, not popping bubbles. Really.

Okay, maybe a few…

No, I’m not becoming one of those bloggers, but I found this wonderful post on The Best Times to Buy Anything, All Year Round at Lifehacker and figured everyone could use the info.

The official NORAD Santa Tracking site went live as of midnight.

According to the site, the US Military started tracking Santa when a Colorado Springs Sears store inadvertently misprinted Santa’s phone number and children started calling what was then the Continental Air Defense Command. Possessed by the true spirit of Christmas, Director of Operations Col. Harry Shoup had the radar operators check their screens so they could provide updates on Santa’s progress to the kids who called in. The tradition was born, and the Christmas Eve updates continued even after CONAD joined with the Canadian military to form NORAD, the North American Aerospace Defense Command.

Col. Shoup passed away earlier this year, but his legacy lives on. NORAD’s Santa team also posts updates to Facebook and Twitter.

Colonel Harry Shoup. Christmas Hero. (Photo from NORAD Santa website)

Catching up on a few random items:

If an e-reader comes your way for Christmas, Hannukah, or Kwanzaa, please keep in mind that both IMMORTAL WARRIOR and IMMORTAL OUTLAW are available as Kindle Editions on Amazon.com, and in other digital formats at Barnes & Noble.com (Please note: I am NOT the Lisa Hendrix Simmons whose self-published books turn up under my name at B&N. I’m not making any comment good or bad about her books, I’m just not her.)

Also, a reminder: my Virtual Booksigning is still in full swing. If you get or give  IMMORTAL WARRIOR and/or IMMORTAL OUTLAW, you can have them autographed long distance by sending for my custom  bookplates.  Follow the link to find out how. (You’ll also get bookmarks and a recipe for a delicious herb bread.) If you get them as e-books, you can have a bookplate anyway or I’ll be glad to sign a bookmark with my sparkly bronze marker. You still get the recipe. <g>

I’ve been having a lot of fun on Twitter and Facebook recently. Too much, in fact, so I’m going to have to be good for the next few weeks while I finish writing IMMORTAL CHAMPION. But I’d love it if you’d go ahead and follow/fan me so you’ll be ready when the party starts again after I finish.

Finally, I have a new guest post up at 1st Turning Point, a relatively new but excellent website for writers. After you’re done here, pop on over to read The World’s Cheapest Promo, then explore 1st Turning Point’s other articles, listed under Resources in their masthead.

More later. Jingle-jingle.

I know, I know. I owe you a post about the glorious Minster at Sudwell and the Gate (Procession) that supported it for centuries, but the Swine Flu (not me, but *all* of my family) has stolen much of my time over the last two weeks, and what it didn’t steal I’ve been trying to use to write.

Now I’m leaving the sickies behind to go visit readers, meet with writer friends, and Read the rest of this entry »

It’s excerpt month over at the Rose City Romance Writers blog, and to celebrate, I contributed a never-before-posted bit of Chapter 2. While you’re over there, take a few moments to read all the other excerpts. There are lots of talented ladies in the Portland chapter of RWA.

And have a good Sunday.  (I’m going shoe shopping with Child2!)

Sorry I’ve been so delinquent about continuing our travels through Nottinghamshire. It’s been a busy couple of weeks, what with driving Child1 to college nine hours away, then turning around 24 hours after I got home to make the ten hour round trip to a signing in Portland. I barely got back from that in time to attend Child2’s acting debut, literally walking in just as the play began. And then two days after that, I started running a character workshop for the FF&P Chapter of RWA. Whew!

But things have settled down now, sort of, so we’re off again, backtracking, as Steinarr and Marian did, from Haworth toward Sudwell, stopping off at the Retford market. This is the market where Ari sat in the tavern and spun the story that inadvertently started the rumors about Robin Hood.

Retford, which lies on the River Idle about 30 miles north of Nottingham, has long been the prinicipal market town in an area known as the Hundred* of Bassetlaw. Ret-, or Red- (the town appears in the Domesday Book as Reddeforde), is a reference to Read the rest of this entry »

Well, not here, but at Powell’s Books at Cedar hills Crossing.  I’m one of a dozen members of the Rose City Romance Writers who’ll be autographing their books this evening (Friday, 9/18/09) at 7pm. Show up and you can get books signed by Meljean Brook, Margaret Mallory, Delilah Marvelle, Jean Johnson, Cathy Lamb, Minnette Meador, Elisabeth Naughton, Jenna Bayley-Burke, Hanna Rhys-Barnes, Gina Robinson…and moi.

Full details are on the Meet Lisa page, but here’s a Google Map to get you pointed in the right direction:

View Powell’s Books At Cedar Hills in a larger map

Be there or be square—and utterly without a decent book to read this weekend.

Lots of folks are marking the date today by buying lottery tickets. For me, it’s a reminder of how heavily the number nine figures in the Immortal Brotherhood books:

Nine warriors. Nine amulets. Nine books.

Nine words in the tag line the copywriters created for IMMORTAL OUTLAW:

“When the sun goes down, the beast comes out.”

Nine clues in Marion and Steinarr’s quest. [I didn't plan this one. I didn't even realize it until after I submitted the manuscript, but when I started listing them in preparation for making the Google map—Surprise!—there they were.]

And nine because the Norse gods, especially Odin, are obsessed by the number: there are nine worlds in the cosmos; Heimdall, the guardian of the gods, has nine mothers, and Ægir has nine daughters; Odin hung upside down on the world tree Yggdrasil for nine days in order to gain the wisdom of the eighteen (twice nine) runes of Wyrd; the Swedes assembled every nine years at the temple of Uppsala to celebrate and sacrifice for nine days; Odin’s ring Draupnir released eight drops of gold every ninth night, each of which formed a equal ring for a total of nine rings (Tolkein’s inspiration, btw – and there were nine members of the Fellowship at the outset, too). [Find out more about nines in Norse mythology at Wikipedia.]

So tonight at 9:09, I’ll be lifting my glass of honey mead and taking nine sips to my warriors. And then I’ll go back to work on IMMORTAL CHAMPION. Because I know you’re waiting…