I came downstairs this morning to find no room at the breakfast table because, well, this.

But who is missing? The Bear in Charge, Ski Bear. Where could he be?

One thing about social media: It teaches you you're not the only person with problems. My connection to hundreds if not thousands of other human beings each day has made me more grateful for the good things in my life and more tolerant for the bad. No, everyone else is not sitting around on unicorn-fur couches sipping ambrosia -- they have cancer and bankruptcy and also new babies and cute puppies and lottery winnings. We are all in it together, for good and for bad.

As Beloved's job situation stretches on, I've found myself in several doctor's offices making sure the thing I have now -- my health -- is intact. Last week I went to a dermatologist to get my first-ever full-body skin cancer check. Basal skin cancer seems to be all the rage in my hometown for the farming crew, and I let my fair-skinned self turn lobster red way more times than I should have in my youth. I also tanned before prom, just sayin'. Luckily this time I came out clean, and I made an appointment to get checked again around my birthday every year.

Today I'm going in for a well-woman appointment. I haven't had one in years. Unfortunately, I was inspired to do so after a dear friend lost her cousin to sudden and unexpected girl cancer. Like two weeks unexpected. Though I don't even know this woman, I'm taken aback by the speed in which she was taken down, and it scared me enough to immediately book a Pap smear. I tell you this so if you are a woman, you will be sure to get one, too. So many girl cancers can be treated if caught early.

I'm not perfect with my health -- none of us are. And I try not to think too hard about my health, because I have anxiety disorder and if I think too hard about all the crazy-ass things that could give me cancer or brain damage or whatever, I'll freak out. It's so much easier to avoid breaking a bone than getting a terminal disease. I have a close relative who is dying of something completely awful right now that scares the shit out of me.

I try not to think about that.

But there are some easy things that I can think about, and one of them is skin cancer checks and another is well woman checks.

And then I'll go back to my job and hope everything else in my life works out just fine.

I feel like I have been working on THE OBVIOUS GAME for a thousand years, even though intellectually I know it is three.I feel like I have read this manuscript so many times I should have it memorized, and yet I still found an errant sentence referencing a scene I cut twelvity million revisions ago not ten minutes ago.

I have read this manuscript over and over and over, as this week I turn it in and probably won't see it again before it goes to print.

Part of me, a very LARGE part of me, wanted to just hit accept changes and turn it in without another glance.

The part of me that is a control freak knew there was no way in hell that was going to happen, because if wasn't the way I wanted it and it went out like that, I would never forgive myself for setting aside two scrolling-related migraine headaches and ten hours of my butt in an uncomfortable chair scrolling, scrolling, through Word and through my Kindle and then back to Word again.

At some point, you just have to call it done. That is pretty hard to do. And yet effortless.

While I was waiting for a publisher to emerge from the ether, I started working on my new novel, THE BIRTHRIGHT OF PARKER CLEAVES. I immersed myself in that novel, which is completely different from this novel. I outlined the entire thing. I bought software to help me avoid the structural mistakes I made in THE OBVIOUS GAME in its earlier drafts. I thought deeply about plot and character. I almost forgot Diana, the protagonist of THE OBVIOUS GAME. I kind of needed to forget about Diana, because it hurt too much to think about her never seeing the light of day except in my head for these three years.

Spending so much time with my manuscript after almost a year of trying not to think about it as as jarring as a 10-year high school reunion. Not enough time has passed to keep you from still being a little in love with those people. And now, diving back in and staring at every sentence, I'm so grateful for InkSpell and the opportunity for this book to see the light of day. I'm still in love with these people.

It was 115 degrees five minutes ago.

I have a rotten jack-o-lantern sitting outside my front steps.

I have made exactly half of my Christmas presents already.

Time is moving too fast and too slow.

Happy Halloween! The little angel was a monster trainer. And Tiny (remember Tiny?) was her monster. I made the costume. Took me five hours. It took her five minutes to take half of it off.

After about two blocks, Beloved got tired of doing this when she rang the doorbell.

We just got back. When I went upstairs, I walked in on this. WTF?

Some of you expressed interest in what I'm doing with my publishing interactions with readers and other authors. My motto is pay it forward and hope and also pray hard and row for shore. In other words, while I think there is something to books sell because they are really beautiful or profound or poignant, there's also even more to books sell because people realize they are there in the first place. That's the toughest part of publishing right now. With 235,000 self-published books coming out yearly -- that's self-published, not even counting the number of books that come out with a traditional publisher -- distribution and discoverability are huge to a book's success. Knowing how hard it is out there for a gangsta, every author I've befriended and whose book I liked has received his or her share of tweets, Facebook likes, Goodreads shelves and now Riffle lists that I can provide. I've even starting to write Amazon reviews -- I didn't realize in the past how powerful those are. I know, naive. But it's so true. The nicest thing you can do for an author is throw out an Amazon or Goodreads review.

I've been digging through the various places in which one can get a review or a mention. In addition to the usual social media channels, there are also very book-specific sites. Today I'm going to cover one in particular: Riffle. It is brand new, and I got the insider scoop because of a job-related connection. As a beta user, I've been busy curating lists:

• Shaped My Life
• Writing I Admire
• Learned Something About Writing or Technique
• Great Reads for a Rainy Day
• Good Books for Teens
• Books I Threw Across the Room (the anti-list)

I also use Goodreads almost daily, but I use Goodreads differently than I use Riffle. Both tools are good for discoverability. On Goodreads, I seek reviews and I give reviews (I need to catch up on that, note to self) and I also use the shelves to track which books I'm going to read in which order. With two to three books a month that I need to read for my job as managing editor of the BlogHer Book Club (another fabulous place to get ideas for what to read next, *cough*), two or three YA novels a month I'm reading to get a feel for what works and what doesn't and a few other picks mixed in, I'm plowing through more pages a week than I have since graduate school. And you know what? It feels great. I feel energized after I read a good book. I don't feel that way after watching TV. Sometimes, I'm too drained for anything but TV, but I've found since I started reading more I feel like the world is more interesting.

And isn't that interesting?

Back to bookish tools. I digress.

As a reader and an author, I want to help other readers and authors find great books. I don't see Goodreads and Riffle as being any more competitive with each other than I see Pinterest and Facebook being competitive with each other -- they tap into different facets of the same communication. Riffle is very visual and very curated -- it's pretty much pure discoverability, and I love the way it works visually. Here's my profile page on Riffle:

Here's my profile page on Goodreads.

Riffle is just pretty, and the lists I curate there are not everything I've read, but things I've read and mentally sorted into a list. Sometimes physically sorted on my bookshelves at home.

I follow other people on Riffle -- people I know and people who have clever list names. Here's the main Riffle page.

I have friends on Goodreads, too, and if someone sends me a recommendation and I know that person, I usually put their recommendation on my shelf. Both Riffle and Goodreads are useful tools for those of us who just inhale literature and don't want to waste our time on books that just aren't good.

Life is short. Read the best.

If you'd like to get an invite to Riffle (it's currently invite-only as the rollout begins), click this link between October 29-31st. They'll know you came from Surrender, Dorothy, and this is the only place you can get access to this particular invite. I know, we're totally snooty around here, right?

And also, please do friend me on Goodreads if you use it so we can see each others' books. I am reading gazillions of things right now and I'm happy to give you my honest take on whether or not I liked it on a variety of levels.

I did actually manage to pack yesterday. I haven't yet determined how much I forgot, other than my phone charger. But Beloved has one just like it! So, phew. Because even though my phone doesn't get reception here in the hinterlands, I still have to have it with me and charged like a woobie.

So we made it up here, and I woke up this morning all KA-POW! feeling like myself again, thank you Jesus, because wow that really sucked feeling paralyzed! Interestingly, what snapped me out of it was going through my 117-point marketing plan for The Obvious Game with Beloved in the car. He asked if I were going to get blurbs for my novel, and I was all BLURBS ARE THE TIP OF THE TYPE A PERSONALITY ICEBERG, DUDE. And I read him my plan and he was all, "That is, um, a LOT more than you did for Sleep Is for the Weak." And I was all, "Twitter barely existed in 2008, and I had no idea what I was doing. Also back then I thought it would be easy to sell books."

HA HA HA HA HA HA HA

But even though I'm in a tougher publishing environment now than I was in 2008, I at least now understand the toughness and am prepared to face the toughness and spend a half hour a day four months before publication doing everything I can to get ready for this novel to come into being. I told Beloved that incredibly 31 people have signed up to help me out on my Google form, and he was shocked, and I was also shocked, because that is pretty amazing, the offer to help, and I'm so honored that people would volunteer their time or effort to help me break through the noise a little for a book that I so need to get out into the world.

And that did it. Thirty-one people signed up to help me, so I better get unparalyzed and get off my rear and get back into high production, because there's money to earn at the day job and a wedding to attend in the family job and the book? Well, that's what I do for myself. There are a lot of balls in the air, but doesn't everyone have them, and as I've said before, though your friends and family may love you and want you to succeed, nobody cares if that book gets published but you, my friends. It's a blessing and a curse.

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Part of getting off my rear involved writing this review about the 2012 American Girl party dress and holiday accessories. There is an itsy bitsy Nutcracker, the cuteness. Check it out on Surrender, Dorothy: Reviews!

My cousin's wedding is on Saturday, and we need to leave in a few hours. I have tons of work left to do, I'm not packed and someone is coming to watch the cat and the house is a train-wreck of half-finished homemade Christmas presents and school supplies and unsorted coupons and to-be-read books. We are drowning in paper products at Chateau Travolta.

Forcing myself to focus is almost physically painful. I can do it, but only for a few minutes at a time. I'm not quite sure what is wrong with me, but it could be that I'm taking Monday and Tuesday off and not going anywhere except the bookstore to stare at the young adult section and try to figure out how it works. I haven't taken days off to putz around in a long time, and usually it's all I can do to not immediately fill those days with cleaning the house and raking the leaves and making more of the homemade Christmas presents and and and until I return to work feeling more exhausted than when I left. I desperately need to recharge my batteries, but I'm my own worst enemy in that arena. But this time I can barely get myself to Iowa for my own cousin's wedding.

I couldn't even blog yesterday, though I have so much on my mind.

( ... )

The funny thing is that I never in my entire life have had a problem with procrastination. I find it hard to even identify with procrastinators -- how could you possibly want to put something off when the guilt of an unfinished thing will then just sit over your head like a raincloud? My anxiety is raincloud enough and the voice in my head screaming DO IT FINISH IT GET IT OVER WITH even made me graduate college a semester early. Is procrastination a present you get when you're almost forty, along with abdominal fat and crow's feet?

I'm going to go stare at my to-do list now and try to cross something, anything off it.