It’s coming - and it’s going to be a hoot!

Join Shot In The Dark Mystery Games, The Romance Galleria, and me, Michelle Miles, for a night of virtual mystery! If you’ve ever wanted to play a murder mystery game from the comfort of your computer chair, this is the event for you!

On Saturday, April 14, 2007 at 8 pm EST, people from all over the world will meet in The Romance Galleria to play the newest Shot In The Dark Mysteries murder mystery game, Murder at the Book Signing, and you can be a part of this thrilling event!

The Venue:
Murder at the Book Signing is taking place at The Romance Galleria. The Romance Galleria is a chat room, a bookstore, a theater, a forum…and so much more. Discover a virtual world like no other in the romance industry. No other community can come close to offering an expansive virtual environment or real time interactions like the Romance Galleria. Murder at the Book Signing is taking place at this state of the art facility, where you assume a virtual version of yourself (AKA an avatar) and mingle with other players, all from the comfort of your own home.

The Storyline:
Romance author, Michelle Miles, is kicking off her book tour and her fans are eager to meet her. Miles’ best-selling novel, A Bend In Time, has established a cult following, and her fans are eagerly awaiting the second book in the Adventures of Ransom and Fortune, A Break In Time. But when Miles’ agent is found dead, the suspect list begins to grow, and fans and authors alike are held to determine who committed the Murder at the Book Signing.

The Featured Author:
Michelle Miles writes in several genres but finds she enjoys creating other worlds best of all. In addition to working full time, she has numerous projects underway.

Her time travel adventure, formerly a serial with Inara Press, has been released in novel length from Samhain Publishing. The first book, which encompasses the first and second seasons of the serial, has a new name: A Bend In Time. Look for it in print later this spring!

The Murder Mystery Game creator:
Shot In The Dark Mystery Games creates and sells murder mystery games for kids and adults in a variety of genres. Mystery game kits are the perfect way to spice up your next get-together! Visit us online and chat it up in our forum, buy a game and sign up for our ezine!

The Murder at the Book Signing Characters:
Michelle Miles - The Author:
Michelle Miles is an exciting new addition to the best-seller list, giving readers a break from the pontificating memoirs of late and helping them slip into the thrills of adventure. Michelle has been writing for years, and the success of the first book in the Adventures of Ransom and Fortune series, A Bend In Time, is no surprise to her long-standing die-hard fans.

Fletcher Flemming - Michelle Miles’ Publisher
Angel DiTosto - The Agent’s Mistress
Risto Rasmussen - The President of the Ransom and Fortune Fan Club
Sonia Sparrow - Michelle’s Close Friend
Sophia Bernesque - The Rival Author
Sally Mustard - The Romance Galleria Event Coordinator
Horrace Halliday - An As-Yet Unpublished Author

The Fans:
Marilyn Paradise
Ian Kirstofferson
Rose Seabrook
Ross Westcott
Vivaine Vincente
Germain Leblanc
Brenda Calhoun

In addition to the murder, attendees must also use their sleuthing skills to determine the identify of Michelle’s stalker! It’s two mysteries in one!

Tickets to the event are $10 (US). Don’t want to play a character? You can still attend the event and solve the mystery. Spots are limited, so sign up now for a great night of fun, murder and mystery! To learn more and sign up, visit Shot In The Dark Mysteries.

All attendees will be entered in a drawing to win some fabulous prizes including a bookmark, a signed copy of the print version of A Bend In Time (once it’s released in print in May), as well as some other cool adventuresome goodies.

So mark your calendars! Hope to see you there!

You ever feel like you’re having one of those moments? A brain meltdown of sorts. That’s me. That’s right where I am these last few days. Man, I can’t remember ANYTHING lately and it’s sucky.

It was back to the old workplace on Monday and for some reason, I was really kind of okay with that. Jolly almost. It was nice to know I was missed around the office and people told me it was super quiet around there. Yeah, I’ll bet. Especially with Mouthy Broad #1 gone for five days. I was up to my usual harrassment of the hired help (i.e., IT) and managed to get some good pestering in before the day was out. Ahhh, bliss.

Took my car in to be repaired post-accident this morning, too. Now usually these places just suck my will to live, but today it wasn’t so bad. Since I had called on Saturday, they had already had all my paperwork done up and ready to go. So it was just a matter of renting the car.

Now, I vowed never to use Enterprise again after the Ikea Fiasco… but since my insurance covers $35/day car rental and the collision repair place has Enterprise as their car rental place, I didn’t have much of a choice. So I sucked it up and put on my Happy Face and headed for the Jaws of Death with a Light Heart.

The guy was actually pretty nice. And organized and like…on top of things. Shocking, I know. When it was my turn, I told him my insurance company had made a reservation for me and he checked the system and, naturally, no reservation. Since I was still in my Happy Place, I decided to not let this get to me even though my first instinct was to growl and have ‘tude. He asked me if I knew what my claim number was and I told him - no clue.

He was good enough to get on the phone and call the insurance liason next door at the collision place and get the number. He was then able to find it in the system.

“So they only told you a half lie,” he said with a grin. One of those cocky grins that is so Han Solo-ish.

“Well, I suppose that’s better than a whole lie,” I quip.

He laughs.

He gets the paperwork done and flings open the drawer full of keys. “How about an Xterra?” he asked.

“Okay,” I said, trying to sound like it’s really no big they are giving me a super cool SUV. Inside, I was doing the happy dance because I knew I wouldn’t have to drive a two-door Spec for the next three to four days.

“I like your style,” he said, still with the cocky smile.

We walked outside and he circled the vehicle for previous damage. As he’s finishing writing up the paperwork, I ask him if it’s unlimited mileage.

“Yes, as long as you stay in the state of Texas.”

Okay, um…how are they gonna know I’ve stayed within the border of Texas? I could drive all the way to the panhandle and then down to Brownsville and that would be like… a lot of miles.

“I guess that rules out my roadtrip to Vegas,” I said.

He laughs again. “I like your style,” he said. Uh huh, sure. Whatever. He hands over the paperwork. “This is your copy. If you get pulled over while driving to Vegas, just show them this and you’ll be on your way.”

Well, at least he had a sense of humor.

I was in and out of the place in about 30 minutes and actually made it to work shortly before 9 am. Not bad, I think.

I did actually get some words in on the dragon story today, which is a tremendous effort. The edits for Break are looming, though, and I will need to turn my focus to that. I came home, though, with a horrendous headache. One of those head-splitting ones. Plus exhaustion hit me hard and heavy since I was up until midnight the night before and had horrible dreams. Nightmares, actually. I just work up feeling out of sorts. Oh, and I forgot to set my alarm to the mere fact I woke up at 6:30 was a miracle in itself.

Anyway… I printed some pages of the ms. to start taking notes since I couldn’t stand to look at the computer second another nanosecond. It hurt my head too much.

And now it’s off to work I go!

I’m thoroughly annoyed that it’s Monday already and last week went by so freaking fast.

I’m also thoroughly annoyed that this is the second time I’ve written this post. Apparently I had a Senior Moment or an Almost Middle-Aged Moment or something because apparently I blacked out in mid-type and forgot to save the fracking post.

Sheesh.

Anyway. Sunday was a lazy day and the Sweetie Boy and I didn’t bother to get dressed until nearly noon. We stayed in all day. He played games, I didn’t laundry and finished reading the bestest book ever.

On Saturday, Ames and I went to the local B&N because Candace Havens told us the previous Saturday at the chapter meeting we HAD to go because Rosemary Clement-Moore was having her first booksigning for her debut novel, Prom Dates From Hell. (Was that like the worst run-on sentence EVER?) Rosemary is a total doll and Candy was there helping her stay organized.

I bought the book, of course, and came home on Saturday afternoon and started reading. I couldn’t stop! I couldn’t wait to get the baby to bed so I could crawl between my own sheets and read. I finally fainted somewhere close to midnight and had to stop. I finished it on Sunday and it was, may I say, totally awesome. Rosemary is a wonderful writer. I loved Maggie and I could relate to her on so many levels. The dialogue is snappy and witty and there was some laugh out loud moments. It’s the kind of book you feel like those characters are your best friends by the time you reach the end. I want more, dammit! More about these characters! hehe Do yourself a favor and run to your local bookstore and buy this book. You will NOT be disappointed.

Anyway. It was hard for me to take the baby boy home Sunday evening. I have moments of sadness. The house was terribly terribly quiet without him there. At around 7:30 I shut the TV off to get some work done. I read some chapters from Ames’ new book (another awesome story!), all the while having a rousing text message session with The Man.

This is going to be a busy week, seeing as how I’m going to have to get my car fixed. I have an 8 am appointment with the collision repair place this morning. I hope they don’t have to have the car too long because I hate driving something that doesn’t belong to me. I want to get this done and over with and I BETTER not get shafted by the guy’s insurance company or I’m going to be one pissed off lady.

Tuesday I have a date with The Man (tentative) and then Wednesday through Sunday the baby boy is back with me while his dad is out of town. We’re going to a Tupperware party on Saturday afternoon and somewhere in there I’ve promised the baby we’d bake cookies.

AND… somehow I’ve got to get all the edits done for BREAK IN TIME and back to the editor by …Thursday.

I’ll need coffee. Lots and lots of coffee. Especially since it looks like I’ll be burning the midnight oil.

So…I’ve been having some technical difficulties lately with bandwidth issues. It seems some yokels out there decided to LINK to an image I had of 300 on my server. You morons. Don’t you know you’re supposed to right click and Save As and link to it YOURSELF?

Doesn’t matter now because guess what? I deleted the fracking picture. HA! The joke’s on you now.

PS Thanks for causing my entire server to get locked out. You jackasses.

Wishing you a rainbow
For sunlight after showers—
Miles and miles of Irish smiles
For golden happy hours—
Shamrocks at your doorway
For luck and laughter too,
And a host of friends that never ends
Each day your whole life through!

Okay, so… I’m broke, sunburned, and have chapped lips and sore achy muscles. But this week was TOTALLY worth it. We had a grand time yesterday at Six Flags. And what trip to Six Flags isn’t complete without at least one self portrait?

Aren’t we dumb? HEHE But I think it’s terrific I got Sylvester to pose for a self portrait.

Best Good Friend and I started the whole self portrait taking YEARS ago. I still have the first ever self portrait…somewhere. I think we took it in like 1997 or something.

I was concenred about the baby boy and what he’d ride. He hates those rides in front of the grocery store where you put like a quarter in it. He refuses to get in those while they’re running. Hates ‘em. But not today. He wanted to ride EVERYTHING. Unfortuantely, he’s not tall enough for the Titan, Mr. Freeze, Batman, or Superman Tower of Power. However, he was tall enough for some of the other bigger rides - the Runaway Mine Train (always a fan favorite), the Cliffhanger (which they’ve renamed as the Wildcatter or something dumb), all the rides in Spain (the big Conquistador ship; the Mexican Hat; the tea cups which had us laughing so hard we were crying), and my very first roller coaster, the Judge Roy Scream.

Wait times for the bigger thrill rides were at least an hour. We split up and I took the baby to ride some of the rides he could go on, while everyone else went for Batman and Mr. Freeze. We met back up, rode more rides, had lunch, and then rode more rides. *snicker* By the end of the day, we were pretty much wiped out. But we split up again and Brother, Niece #1, Nephew, and I all headed for Superman while the rest of the gang took the smaller kids off to do other stuff.

I have to say…that Superman Tower of Power…is rather scary. But I’d totally do it again in a heartbeat. I’m not even going to try to explain it, so I’ll just borrow the description from Six Flags’ website:

This is a 325-foot skyrocketing and ground-pounding, free-fall machine that has three towers with 12 riders per tower. This free-fall thrill ride catapults riders up each tower — feet dangling. Then, riders are dropped for a free fall all the way back down.

It’s awesome. I screamed my lungs out with Niece #1. BAHA

And that was the end to the day.

I was sort of worried how the day was going to begin, seeing as how I got rear-ended about 3 minutes from where I was supposed to meet up with Brother & Gang. I was so ticked, too. Car was driveable and we were all fine, but my bumper is cracked in half. Literally. It will have to be replaced. And I’ll have to deal with that for the next week. Not happy about that AT ALL.

I’ve already called the insurance company, though, and got the ball rolling on that so I can get it fixed and just get on with life. My insurance company is so great to deal with and they are actually going to file the claim on the guy’s insurance for me. Plus, I have an one of their “preferred” body shops literally 2 miles from my house AND I have rental - thank goodness - on my insurance that’s totally reimbursable. It’s a pain, but thanks to my insurance company, it’s going to be less painful that it could be.

Still. What a pain!

Okay I gotta get going this morning!

Yesterday, I exceeded my bandwidth on my website, which gave me some downtime. I was shocked to see I had over 1000 hits the other day. Just on the blog. I think it’s those folks looking for pics of 300. Who could blame them? That man is SMOKE.

Earlier this week, I was contacted by a place wanting to give me free shoes to review for ShoeIQ. How cool is that? They’ll be Easy Spirit shoes, so as soon as I get them, I’ll be writing reviews of them. And I totally get free shoes. WOO!

I can’t believe it’s already Friday. It makes me mad the week has flown by so fast. And today is Six Flags day. But I have to say, it’s been a really fun week. My mom asked the Sweetie Boy what he thought of Spring Breaks. “They’re fun,” he said.

Not only has it been fun, but it’s also been a week of interesting things happening. The shoe thing for one (which totally ROCKS) and for the other… Well, Samhain Publishing is now going to be a recognized RWA publisher. Which means, for me, I will be considered PAN - professional by RWA standards. I have basically graduated from PRO (unpublished) to PAN. It’s kinda cool, actually. And I’m pretty excited about it. So - congrats to all of us who are making it to PAN! That all being said…I really don’t need someone telling me I’m a “professional” writer when I already think it.

Anyway - it’s Six Flags! I haven’t been there in about 6 or 7 years. They have lots of new thrill rides. The baby boy is excited about going and I’m excited for him - it’s his first time. I hope he does okay. I’m sure he will - but I worry about him still. I hope he doesn’t chicken out on the rides or I’ve just blown about $35 on a ticket for him. Ah well. At least he can keep my mom company if he decides not to ride. hehe

And now I’m off. Must dry my hair, get stuff together, get the baby dressed. And I still have to run by the store and get some stuff for our luncheon-fest at the park.

Happy Friday everyone!

So. Yesterday we went to the zoo. It was half-price Wednesday. And … there were about five billion people there. We got there early. Fought traffic to get in the gate and actually got a decent parking space. We converged on the zoo with all the other gazillion people and hit the primates first.

I guess it really wasn’t that bad but you know…you totally get tired of dodging folks. the lions and tigers are my favorite. Specifically, the white tiger is my favorite. It’s so funny to me that no matter the size, cats all still do the same dumb stuff. One big tiger was dipping his paws in the water and then shaking them off. Then he decided to just go ahead and lay down.

We had lunch at the zoo cafe. All eight of us. We were a horde. And, shockingly, none of us managed to spill anything.

Afterwards, we headed through the rest of the zoo and made our way to the end. We were exhausted by the time we got to the end where the little zoo train is. We waited in line for about 30 minutes to get on the train and then we were like sardines. BUT it was fun. And the kids had a good time.

Once we got off the train, which takes us back to the front entrance, we all said our goodbyes and departed ways. I decided to get the Sweetie Boy a sourvenier (to which he wanted to know what a souvenier was…haha). I boughtt him a six foot long stuffed rattle snake - complete with rattle in the tail. He thought that was the coolest thing EVER. He named him Snake and he had to sleep with it.

Now, since my mom is staying over, she’s sleeping in his bed. Which means he’s sleeping in my bed. Which also means I had a snake in my bed. A six foot long purple stuffed rattle snake right down the center of the bed. But I couldn’t tell him no since he was so excited about having that snake.

Today is bowling day. We’re going to hit the bowling alley early, then have lunch at the house. Then we’re going to run some errands and come home and collapse.

And tomorrow…is Six Flags day. WOOHOO!

Yesterday went by fast and furious…and we spent most of it in the car. It was a mararthon drive, let me tell you. I think I drove on every major freeway in the Metroplex. I drove to Mom’s to pick her up for the next two days. But her car was in the shop so we were at the mercy of the repair guys. We waited around for it to get finished and in the meantime, I drove us to Borders.

We found where they shelve the Samhain books, so Mom could look for my book when it comes out in May. We talked to a very nice lady who worked there and she told me who to call at the district office - the manager who makes the buying decisions. I’m so not doing that. Can you say chicken? Anyway, we wandered through the music section and the kid’s section. I got the baby a Pirates of the Carribbean sticker book which gave him hours of sticker fun. hehe

Finally, her car was ready after 3 and I drove her over there to pick it up. Then back to my house. Hit traffic. Poured down rain. Had to drive reeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeal slow. It took just over an hour to get home (beating) and then once we got there, we got ready to go to dinner.

I took us to The Man’s restaurant for dinner, but we didn’t leave the house until 4:45. Way later than I originally wanted to but oh well. Hit traffic (beating) but it really wasn’t all that bad since I had company in the car to talk to. It took us and hour and a half to get there. GAW. And everyone had to go potty by the time we hit the restaurant.

They have this cool thing for the kids to do - instead of crayons and stupid menus to color, they have one of those little boards with the magnetic pen to draw on. Can’t think of what they’re called but I thought that was way cool. AND he got his own little chopsticks to eat with. The Sweetie Boy thought that was awesome. So I asked The Man what was on the kid’s menu and he said, “He can have whatever he wants off the menu and I’ll make it for him.” Aw. (Well, he meant, his chef would make it for him. heh)

The baby ordered all by himself - steamed chicken and white rice - and he ate almost every bite. Mom had moo goo gai pan and I had the mongonlian beef. It was yummy. After we were stuffed to the gills, the baby announced he wanted dessert. Which struck me as odd because the kid NEVER asks for dessert anywhere we go out to eat. So I asked him what he wanted.

“Do they have a big brownie?” he asks.

“I don’t know. Let’s as the nice man in the suit when he comes back,” I say.

So when Then Man came back by the table, Sweetie Boy asks him. Now, the kid is not big on cake. Ever. He won’t eat the stuff. I’ve never been able to get him too. “We don’t have a big brownie,” The Man says. “But had a brownie chocolate cake.”

So the baby nods his head real big. And I’m thinking…Oh my gaw… because I know he’s going to be the Great Wall of Chocolate cake that is like six layers of chocolate with to-die-for frosting coated in chocolate chips. And three forks.

There goes the diet for me and Mom. But I’ve never seen a kid plow through cake like he did. I swear, he nearly at every bite all by himself. Moments later, the fortune cookies showed up - we got six - and that kid ate two! I was so full! And the he brought all the fortunes and the rest of the cookies home.

Anyway, it was a nice time an we drove home with no traffic which was totally nice. We hit the door around 8 and we were all exhausted. We finally all climbed into bed and fainted.

And today it’s Zoo day! Which means I need to hit the shower and cook some breakfast… and the baby boy is still fast asleep!

And… I slept until nearly 8. The baby didn’t get up until 8:45!

What a life have lately. haha

It was foggy and gross this morning. And now the sun is TRYING to peek out from the clouds. I am still not dressed. Or showered. And the baby is watching Peter Pan again. In his PJs. I mean, how many days can we have like this? It’s glorious.

We had waffles this morning that were less than fabulous. I’m disappointed. Of course, they were not Eggo Waffles so…that’s probably why they sucked. I’m throwing the whole package away and EFF it.

Sweetie Boy announced this morning he wanted “animal Eggos”. Apparently, they have animal shaped Eggo Waffles? Anyone heard of this? I will have to search for them.

And… I have a new crush. On Josh Turner. Not only is he a total hottie but that voice…My God that voice… it makes me melt into a puddle of goo. Which of course means I have to purchase his two albums so I can sit and listen to that glorious rumbly sexy voice over…and over…and over…

*fanning self*

Okay. I’ll stop. But LOOK at him! My god.

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