JENNY, KRISSIE, & EILEEN: May We Redirect Your Attention To . . .

. . . the 2007 website for The Unfortunate Miss Fortunes?

It's at http://www.unfortunatemissfortunes.com/ or you can click on the nice link above, of course, but we never trust links. They break.

We've loved having this blog, but as you may have noticed, we're a little undisciplined. A lot undisciplined. Over at the new place, we'll have Mollie watching us. There will be no sloppiness. Posts will be posted on time. Graphics will stay in place and they'll get dusted, too. The cover will be up as soon as we get it. Plus you'll get to see the site designed before your eyes because Mollie and Mara can't design it until they see the cover, so what you're going to see is a tastefully plain little place over there, then the cover will go up, then some bells and whistles . . .

And every Friday a new post. Plan your weekend around it. Well, maybe not. But really, it'll be so much better than it has been here.

2007. Have a wonderful one. We're planning to, especially every Friday until July when all hell breaks loose. Or The Unfortunate Miss Fortunes break loose.

Happy New Year everybody!

Jenny, Krissie, and Eileen

JENNY: Coming in 2007

You may have noticed that this blog is, well, erratic. We tend to lurch about, then disappear, then come back for awhile. But now we have A Plan.

Yes, I know we've had those before, but this is a real plan, one we've showed to Mollie who will hold us to it and we're afraid of Mollie, so we'll be following it. On January 1, Well Behaved will be moving into the Miss Fortunes web space and the beginnings of its new look. The website won't be up yet, but Mollie will have seen the cover (we haven't seen it yet, we told you we'd show it to you as soon as we got it, didn't we?) and begun the very basics of the design and the new blog will reflect that. And along with that is a regular posting schedule. No, really, one of us will post every week. And if the one scheduled to post doesn't, the others will come on here and make fun of her. Or something.

So in January we're going to talk about our characters, Eileen about Dee, Krissie about Lizzie, and me about Mare and Xan.

In February, we're going to talk about what took us by surprise while we were writing them because we all were caught flatfooted by some of the things that happened while we wrote.

In March, we'll post the first four POVs from the book, Mare, Lizzie, Dee, and Xan in that order. Yes, I'm sure. Everybody's on board with me this time. It's a go.

In April, we'll talk about the men in the book, some of whom survive to the end.

In May, we'll talk about the magic and the problems that caused us in writing.

In June we'll talk about Salem's Fork and the fun we had writing that, Eileen especially, who called the paper there the New Fork Tines. June will also see the website debut with more excerpts on it each week so that when the book comes out in July, you'll be slavering for it. We are not subtle people. We're exploiting you mercilessly. We want you to know that up front.

And in July when The Unfortunate Miss Fortunes finally hits the bookstores, we'll go back to our usual random posting as we start doing booksignings at RWA National and wandering around cluelessly again.

But really. We have a plan.

EILEEN: Copy edits: the final chapter

Yes, I did get the manuscript in record time from Krissie(there's a really interesting group dynamic here. Krissie seems completely done with tinkering at copy edit level. Jenny and I seem not to know when to quit. Just a FEW more changes. I swear it's finished now...). The problem, as Jenny said, was that the manuscript was coming in just about the same time as the armageddonlike ice storm that swathed the midwest. I got the manuscript at 6PM from an intrepid Fed Ex driver who was already slipping dangerously close to my car and trees, and at 9:30PM, our power went out. That was Thursday. This is next Tuesday. My power went back on late last night. This is my first day back home after taking my show on the road around my siblings(that after my husband ran away from home to Chile, where they're having summer, of course---okay. So it was a business trip. He's still warm). I spent twelve hours in my bed with chocolate, wine and a romance book. I consider it therapy.

But here's the heroic part. I got the copy edit off Friday afternoon after working on it by Coleman lantern the night before to the symphonic sound of tree limbs snapping and crashing and transformers exploding. Quite atmospheric. Then it took me three hours to find someplace with electricity who could mail the thing off. Office Max is my new hero. The manuscript is in. Now we wait for the cover. In the meantime, we've been talking about posting an update on our characters, now that we've seen how they turned out. Then, maybe a peek at the first POVs. Until then, I'm scanning for generators on Ebay.

eileen