Procrastination as a Fine Art

Before I begin what promises to be a rambling post, let me say that I don't procrastinate on writing. Writing is the thing I use to procrastinate from other things. Like grading papers. Reading things I should be reading. Blogging. etc. 

I don't know if I'm really writing about procrastination today as much as hiding from the world (internet) as a coping mechanism. 

I just know that I've been overwhelmed this summer. At the beginning of the summer we moved to a new house, which was and is great, but I'm not good at living out of boxes and...well, it's the first new place I've had in a decade, I greatly enjoyed decorating and putting things in place. Then I went on the amazing Dark Days Tour and to BEA, later in the summer I went on an awesome trip to England and Scotland, and yesterday my 7 year old had major dental work done, like 2 hours under anesthesia dental work done (and we had a lot of preparation for this since she had to visit her heart specialists to make sure the work could even bee done) out of sheer exhaustion I'm sorry to say that I won't be attending SCBWI in LA this year. I need to stay home and relax and get my kids ready to begin a new school and write.

The other thing I've been doing is revising Dance of the Red Death, which I might actually love more than Masque...in a month or two. Writing a sequel proved to be a little harder than writing...anything else I've ever written, and I've rewritten scenes and scrapped scenes like I've never done in a manuscript (and people who know me will tell you that I'm a serious reviser during the best of times). I've also developed an embarrassing coma addiction that I really must purge. Maybe I'm channeling Poe, IDK. 

Anyway, because I've been snowed under I've neglected my blog, I've neglected twitter, and I've neglected the contest I initiated on release day of my book three months ago. Possibly because it's hard to pick a winner! But regardless, my office is getting a new floor this week (against my objections since I don't really want to move anything--but the previous owner's cat apparently enjoyed peeing in the corner and my husband ordered ceramic tile to put in here...I need to get these prizes out. So tomorrow will be the big blog announcement of the winner. 

Later this week I'll post pictures of my trip to England and Scotland! 

And I promise not to hide out anymore. Oh and I'm sending bookmarks and bookplates out today, I have an entire stack of envelopes that whenever I see them I go, ugh, I'll deal with that tomorrow. Well, today is that...tomorrow. So I guess I'd better get to work.