This and That

I've been too busy to post the last couple of days. Mostly, I've been plugging away on my latest MONK book. I've taken some time out, though. Yesterday, I watched my daughter Maddie earn her black belt in Tae Kwon Do (yahoo!) and today I attended the MWA-SoCal Christmas party at the Jonathan Club in Santa Monica. While munching on tacos and fajitas, I caught up on the latest happenings with authors Paul Levine, Christa Faust, Les Klinger, and Matt Witten, among many others. The big talk around the tables was the frightening situation for writers in TV and in publishing, the dire circumstances of Borders, and NBC's decision to stop producing scripted programs at 10 p.m on weeknights. Nobody had answers, of course, but there were plenty of worries to share. It's a scary time to be a writer. But it wasn't all doom and gloom. There were plenty of funny anecdotes swapped back-and-forth, stories about new novels and projects people were working on, and the usual gossiping.