Not quite on schedule for August or September, am I? What schedule, you ask. LOL! Thank heavens for the volume of e-mail in the world today or my e-mail subscribers would all be hovering over your in-box, waiting piteously for a monthly e-mail from me.

Okay, I'm in a funny mood. It's probably because I spent time recently at the NASFIC Convention in Seattle, which was a load of fun and is the sort of thing to send my brain on one of its loops. Speaking of which, let me tell you a story....

Some friends and I went out for dinner away from the conference hotel, which was a nice change. When we came out of the Mexican restaurant, there was a Value Village. (Sort of huge thrift shop or charity shop, for those of you not familiar with them.)

So we went in, and I was looking for different, but most of the stuff was the same as everywhere. I checked out Cabbage Patch kids, just in case there was a clone of the old ones we have, but they've become quite rare. I hope they're all going to good homes. But, as I was wandering down a boring section of cups, dishes, glasses and such, there, totally out of her world, was Robot Girl.

You have to imagine this -- about 18" tall, a pink and purple plastic doll with purple rope hair. She definitely belonged at an SF Con, not among the tired dishes. She even had a bit of faint battery power. When I pushed a button, her pink heart beat and she tried to talk.

Now, at the Con was a young SF editor from Tor, with streaks in her hair, and it suddenly seemed to me that she and Robot Girl were a match made in the stars -- round about Betelgeuse, in fact -- so I got new batteries from the adjacent drug store and we all headed back to the con, where it just so happened the Tor party was beginning.

In we went. I spotted the editor and put Robot Girl down so that I could use her remote control to send her wheeling toward Anna saying, "I am Robot Girl. I am your personal assistant!" Hit of the party, and Anna blogged about it. Read September 6th and check out the picture.

You might want to read more of Anna's blog to see fiction from a young editor's angle.

Speaking of blogs, I do occasionally post to mine, which is weird stuff from history. Minepast.

What else do I have to say right now?

I'll be in Halifax soon. Halifax, Nova Scotia, which was our first home in Canada. I'm looking forward to getting back there. I'll be doing a reading and booksigning in a library there, open to the public, so if you're in the area, do come by! More details here.

In October, I'll be speaking at the Surrey Writers Conference again in Surrey, BC, which is part of Vancouver. There's a signing event there, too, if you want to drop by. Check it out.

On the book front, I hope you bought a copy of Forbidden Magic , if that's one you were missing. It was out again in August. And The Shattered Rose , long awaited, will be out again in October.

See the new covers here. You'll see that there are six -- six! -- reissues coming next January, and at a very good price. Then in March, The Rogue's Return, Simon St. Bride's book. There's a little teaser of that cover lower down.

Oh, and there's more. Harlequin is reissuing The Brides of Christmas in October, which contained one of my most popular novellas, The Wise Virgin. And out now is a book of essays on Pride and Prejudice. Sounds boring? I only have to tell you Jenny Crusie is the editor to wipe that idea. The title is FLIRTING WITH PRIDE AND PREJUDICE and I have a piece in there about why the Bennet women were gold diggers. More about this book.

And I completely forgot to tell you about this, but back in July I had an article in the Writer magazine about writing historical fiction. Your library might have a copy.

What am I working on? Dare's book, plus a dragon story for an anthology put together by my friends Mary Jo Putney, Barbara Samuel, and Karen Harbaugh -- the same group that brought you Faery Magic. I'm having such fun with this, and you're going to love my dragon.

All best wishes for the end of summer and the beginning of fall.

Jo :)

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