That’s what this week has been like—falling off the edge of a cliff.

I was determined to finish the next Joanna Brady book, By Reason of Insanity, before it was time for the next Beau book, Den of Iniquity, to hit the shelves. I worked on it seven or eight hours a day for weeks, day in and day out. I finished the rough draft at about 8:30 PM on Monday, September 2. The first interview for DOI was on Tuesday, September 3.

Wait, wasn’t September 2 a holiday, like Labor Day or something? It may have been for everyone else, but I was too busy laboring to notice. Right now I’m holding my breath and waiting hear from my beta readers on BROI. Once I have their input, I’ll install their suggestions before sending the manuscript to New York.

I’ve now done three Den of Iniquity interviews. Do you have any idea how hard it is to talk about one book, when the characters from another book are still rattling around in your head? Fortunately, the interviewers had all actually READ the book (unusual, by the way!) and the on-point questions they asked, helped me get back into the world of J.P. et al. Unfortunately the copyedited manuscript for Overkill is due any day, and then I’ll be back with Ali Reynolds.

My daughter claims I’m calendar-challenged, and that’s true under the best of circumstances. Yesterday was not the best of circumstances. I wasn’t feeling well—a bad head cold. (Today’s interviews were conducted in what my friend Janis Ian calls my “key of R” with me sounding as raspy as if I were a life-time smoker which I’m NOT!) But back to the calendar issue, when Bill asked me yesterday if America’s Got Talent was on last night, I assured him it wasn’t because AGT is on Tuesdays. In my messed-up world it was definitely still Monday.

So I’m not actively writing right now—not writing a book, I mean—and that’s weird. As a consequence, I decided to go out on the back porch and take a nap in the recliner out there. When I woke up two hours later, I pushed the recline button back instead of forward and broke a kitchen window behind me. (FYI, when a double-pane window breaks it sounds a whole lot like a gunshot.) For several minutes, we had no idea what had just happened. It took a while to locate the broken window. The Glass Doctors will be here shortly.

And now that I’ve written that, I think I’m going to go back out and give the recliner another try. I believe I’ve actually earned another nap, and the recliner has been moved out of reach of any windows.

Last week’s blog was extra long. This one is short but brief. I guess is all evens out in the end.