Howdy! What a week! News is focused–as it should be–on the dis­as­ter that Hur­ri­cane Sandy wreaked. My thoughts are with all still affect­ed. For every sad and depress­ing sto­ry that I read though, I find at least one more that renews my faith in human­i­ty. Keep up the good work, East Coast.

Work in Progress News ~ I’m get­ting back in the groove. The book I was writ­ing for a new pub won’t be com­plete in time for the dead­line, but it’s going so well, I’ll fin­ish it any­way. Since it has a Christ­mas theme, I’m not sure I want to send it to a pub­lish­er, that would take too long. If (I mean WHEN!) I fin­ish this, I’ll prob­a­bly pub­lish via Dark Moun­tain Books.

Favorite Song of the Week ~ This is a cou­ple years old, but I do like it. Here is OneRe­pub­lic per­form­ing Say (All I Need)

Tweet of the Week ~ There were sev­er­al Sandy relat­ed tweets that warmed my heart, but most had to be read in con­text to real­ly get the full effect. So here’s one with a lighter message:

You want to win the argu­ment, guys? Pull her in by her belt loops and smile. That’s our kryptonite.Sorry, girls. Some­one had to tell them.

– I Hate Kate (@SuperApple8) Octo­ber 30, 2012

Indus­try News ~ Ran­dom House and Pen­guin have merged, cre­at­ing what should be the largest pub­lish­ing com­pa­ny in the world when the merg­er clos­es in the sec­ond half of 2013 (sub­ject to reg­u­la­to­ry approval). This should cut oper­at­ing costs as well as increase lever­age with Ama­zon. So the big six become the big five, and the inter­net goes wild with Ran­dom Pen­guin and Pen­guin House logos.

What I’m read­ing ~ On Hal­loween night I read a short lit­tle haunt­ed house/serial killer romance by Josh Lany­on. Just the right mix of scary and roman­tic in a nice pack­age. I hope Josh writes a fol­low up book though, I did­n’t quite get enough of these characters.

Search Term of the week aka How Peo­ple Found My Web­sites ~ Not much excit­ing this week. But I hope I was on page fif­teen or so for this result: “play­boy erotic”

Book Snip­pet ~ From the book I’m work­ing on now, with Andre the limo dri­ver and his boss Ange­line, a snot­ty Hol­ly­wood diva.

“I’m your dri­ver. When I’m behind that wheel, and when you’re in the back seat, you can send me in what­ev­er direc­tion you want, and I’ll take you there. But if you think about it…that still puts me in charge.”

And I’m learn­ing that he real­ly does like being in charge. Okay, that’s it for this week. Be sure to get out and vote by Tuesday!