I ate the Justin's peanut butter cups

Yep. Gave in to the chocolate craving -- or should I say "addiction" -- that I talked about yesterday. So sue me.

Follow up: Did you already BREAK any New Year's resolutions?

One minor resolution I made related to nutrition was to eat less sugar.

In my case, "less" is a relative term. Maybe I should have said, "Don't eat sugar at every meal."

I'm a big fan of Justin's peanut butter cups,
preferably the dark chocolate variety.

My downfall, honestly, is chocolate. I absolutely love it. Can't live without it. If I could, I'd eat chocolate in some form several times a day.

When I was on vacation recently, I basically did just that. And wow, did I ever enjoy myself.

But now it's back to reality, so I'm trying -- trying -- to eat less of it so as not to put on the weight that would inevitably follow that kind of positively reckless chocolate eating.

So far today -- it's 10:15 am -- I haven't had any. And I don't have any nearby, either. Can I actually go a full day without having any chocolate? Maybe I should try it and see what happens.

I'll post again tomorrow and let you know if I succeeded or failed.

Merry Christmas!

To all of you who celebrate the holiday, I hope you have a wonderful Christmas.

I'll be offline for the next couple of days, spending the holiday with my husband and daughter in Oxford, UK. I really like this city -- it's quite bustling, and the food has been surprisingly good!

So stay tuned for more posts in a few days, plus I'll add in some Oxford photos.

In the meantime, enjoy the holiday and drink a toast to Hope and Jake. :-)

Red eye, that's for sure

Anyone else have trouble sleeping on planes?

I'm TERRIBLE at it. While I'm excited to go on vacation today, I'm sort of dreading the whole red-eye-flight-thing. I just can't sleep on planes.

I'm sure it'd be better in first class, with all those reclining seats and blankies and Champagne.

I'm in coach, and proud of it. But I'll be tired upon arrival.

Ah, well, c'est la vie.

Happy Thanksgiving!

I hope everyone who celebrates the holiday has a wonderful, stress-free time with family and friends.

Where's James Bond when I need him?

I've lost track of how many miles I've driven on this two-week trip in Calif., starting in LA and ending in SF. At each location where I've stayed for a few days -- LA, San Luis Obispo, and the Bay area -- I've put many miles on the rental car.

Or should I say cars, plural, which is why I lost track of the mileage. The first rental car was being way too weird, with the RPM jumping all over the place if I lifted my foot off the gas even just 1 mile an hour. Lame.

So I'm now on the second rental car and just decided not to look at the mileage, because frankly, it's a little depressing. Since moving to NYC five years ago -- after living nearly my entire life in Calif. -- I have come to loathe cars. I mean, I really can't stand them. I don't like riding in them, and I don't like driving them.

I couldn't even be persuaded to like riding in a sports car -- unless Daniel Craig as 007 was driving it. Bring it on, Bond.

And can we talk gas prices for a second? Gas jumped up 60 cents in TWO DAYS! I mean, are you kidding me?

Oh yes, I do get annoyed with the MTA and the NYC subway drives me crazy sometimes. But right now, I'd take my seat on the subway where I can read my Kindle or write my stories or knit or just people watch: always an entertaining show in the Big Apple.

Nobel flu shot, subway silliness

Today was a funny day:

1) I got my flu shot at the same time a Nobel Prize winner did -- he was sitting next to me because we both happen to work at the same place. (I'll leave him anonymous, but he's a very nice man. I've had the privilege of interviewing him before, and he was gracious and generous with his time.)

2) On my subway ride home, someone recognized me from my one TV appearance. She said, "I just want you to know, your episode of 'House Hunters' was the best one ever."

Obnoxious email marketing -- yuck

I recently unsubscribed from a bunch of email lists.

And I need to do it again.

I signed up for an email newsletter that sounded pretty cool. This person has spent years interviewing and talking with well-known marketers and has asked them to share what they know. If you sign up, you can listen to the interviews for free and also read transcripts.

Sounds good, right?

This guy needs to pay closer attention to their professional advice, because I'm sure his tactics aren't part of it.

In the past couple of days, I received not one, but TWO emails from him asking me to call a number and wish his son a Happy Birthday.

Um, what?

So his son is going to get a gazillion voicemails wishing him a happy birthday? Gee, thanks, Dad.

If you've signed up for my mailing list, you'll notice I haven't sent you anything yet. And that's because when you signed up, you expected to hear from me when a) I release a new book, and b) if I'm offering a free book.

That's it.

I should probably give this guy a break, but my email box gets so crowded -- doesn't yours? -- that I have to slash and burn anything that doesn't truly support what I'm trying to do, professionally and personally.

Time to purge my email subscriptions again.

After that, it's on to the junk mail I get in my actual mailbox. How DO I get on all these catalog mailing lists, anyway? Sheesh.

Love lists? I do

What action-adventure-fantasy-thriller
movies do you watch a zillion times?

I discovered a cool website yesterday called List.ly.

It lets you set up lists and add them to your website. What's really great is that your website visitors (in this case, that would be you) can add to the lists right then and there. Visitors don't have to leave your site and go to List.ly to add to your lists. Love that.

So check this out: I added a page devoted to lists.

I started one list of action-adventure-thriller-fantasy movies I absolutely must watch over and over again. No, I am not ashamed. I can't even count the number of times I've watched the Matt Damon "Bourne" movies. Oh, I just remembered another movie I need to add: "Enemy of the State." I love page-turning action, in books and in movies.

Come on over and add your ideas.

What does any of this have to do with my short stories? 

Not a whole lot.

In the words of Cyndi Lauper, I just wanna have fun.

Mini Movies for the Mind

I coined the phrase "mini movies for the mind" not long ago because I realized that that is exactly what my mind does when I read a book. I get comfortable in my chair, the darkness envelopes me, the screen lights up with images, the soundtrack booms -- it's all there, just like in a movie theater.

After I finish reading, the images and sounds stay with me as if I had actually watched the characters and heard them speaking.

Wow, is all I can say when I think about the power of the human mind.

My newest mini-movie creation is the third short story of The Pandora Chronicles. Get ready for an action-packed drama that you'll see, hear and experience in your own personal mind theater.

Maybe I should start eating popcorn while I read and write, just to get the full effect. I have some microwave popcorn in the cupboard somewhere ... but I don't have the butter flavoring. Love that stuff.

Am I a Friday night loser?

I live in NYC, so I have a huge choice of options for how I spend my Friday nights. But generally, you know what I do?

I plot.

Not to kill someone. Well, maybe I do, and maybe I don't. It depends what kind of mood I'm in.

I sit with my laptop on my lap, literally, with my cat Sophia next to me, and I plot my upcoming stories. And not just for The Pandora Chronicles, oh no.

I'm also plotting a series of stories based on traveling the NYC subway system. Now if that isn't an apocalyptic horror story sometimes, I'm not sure what is.

Like the story a friend of mine told me about fainting on the subway train one time. A guy carried her out of the train, set her down on the platform, and them promptly got back on the train. She woke up to a woman standing over her saying, "It's OK, honey, he didn't take your purse. I have it right here." The woman rode with her to the hospital.

So I guess chivalry is only partly dead?

Some of my characters will end up more than partly dead, I guarantee that. ;-)

Does this make me a loser, that I spend my Friday nights plotting? You tell me.

How Jane Austen affects your brain

Have you ever wondered how your brain reacts as you read literature? Some Stanford researchers did. So they had people read Jane Austen while they were inside an MRI machine, asking them to read it for pleasure and also as if they were reading it for an exam. The participants -- all PhD candidates in literature -- also had to write essays afterward.

I'm not sure I'd be able to read anything inside an MRI machine. Those bangs, bings and bongos would distract me no end. But anyway, the researchers were able to learn some pretty amazing things about how our brains work as we read.

Here's my favorite quote: "After reviewing early scans, neuroscientist Bob Dougherty, research director of CNI, said he was impressed by 'how the right patterns of ink on a page can create vivid mental imagery and instill powerful emotions.' "

I'm not sure research was required to come to that conclusion, do you?

Anyone know what this thing is called?

 I dug it out of the closet today, and I can't quite remember what to do with it. ;-)

What I eat on Fridays

And Saturdays, and Sundays, and Mondays, and Tuesdays, and Wednesdays, and Thursdays ...

Today's choice: Lindt Classic Recipe.

Lately, my favorites have been Trader Joe's dark chocolate caramel with sea salt and Ghirardelli caramel squares.

If I don't eat chocolate every afternoon, I get crabby. I also generally have hot chocolate at night.

I figure, I don't smoke, I don't drink, I don't overeat, I exercise. So I need to have one vice, right? And besides, chocolate is a health food. Or is it a super food? Maybe it's a super health food. I'll go with that, thanks.