Revving up the engines

I just got the first sample of the cover for MFH (now officially titled: MURDER FOR HIRE - THE PERUVIAN PIGEON since we're looking at a series here) and am starting to get excited about the reality of the damn thing being published after all these years. I'd post it here, but they (Rock Publishing Inc.) sent it to me as a Read Only Adobe pdf, so it won't upload. No problem, I'll scan it to my computer when I get to work and post it then.

ANYway, I don't have the back cover yet and Lynne (she who is doing the cover art) is still tinkering with the front, but just getting to look at the design has me frothing at the bit (I love that expression even though makes me sound like a rabid horse...and do horses even get rabies? Am I mixing my metaphors?) to get going on publicity. I need to get an actual author website up and running and am trying to decide between spending the dough to have www.danafredsti.com designed by a professional or trying it myself and having www.danafredsti.google.com or whatever free site I choose to host the webpage. I have no idea how to design a webpage, who to host it, how to do this mad, gay thing. So...any opinions?

Another positive side-effect (affect? I will never get those two straight , no matter how many books and stories I end up publishing in this lifetime) is that after pretty much two straight years of atrophy, my writing muscles have started to stretch out again. I picture them as about 50 pounds overweight, lots of flab over unused muscle. I have to feed them junk novels every now and again to appease and motivate them. They're not doing it easily or happily ("yo, bitch, that hurts! Knock it off or we'll Barbara Cartland on you!"), but they're working.

I'm going to the airport in two hours to pick up Dave, who is joining me for the rest of my housesitting stint. The four kittens are staying with a friend and her husband (Dave called me yesterday to tell me that the kittens had left, pretty much near tears. So it's NOT JUST ME, folks! I'm not the only one who gets attached to the little furballs!) while we're both gone. I bet the cats are much relieved to have the little hairballs out of the way for a few days. This is a picture of their safety zone when the rugrats get too 'bunctious...

And that's all I got for the moment!