Melts in Your Mouth

It's a beautiful day in the publishing blogosphere, isn't it? If you skip around the raging hemmorhoids, the flaming jackasses, the rabid tongue-cluckers and everyone else shoving their posterior in your face today (and trust me, somehow we'll deserve it, us being the worthless writer scum that we are.)

Someday someone will invent a process that makes semen chocolate-flavored, but until then, we're stuck with these people.

I am here to report that despite the conflagrations, there are some pretty wonderful things out here, like National Novel Writing Month, aka NaNoWriMo. It's in full swing now, and that's always fun to join in or cheer on the NaNo'ers. I love November because fifty or sixty thousand kindred spirits spend it finding out firsthand just how fun this gig can be (and tough, and cool, and frustrating, and amazing, and so on.)

Need something to read? There are always new books hitting the shelves to check out: Lauren Bacall's updated autobio, By Myself and Then Some, Emma Holly's new tale of the Demon World, The Prince of Ice, Monica Jackson, Donna Hill and Adrianne Byrd's holiday antho Takin' Chances for the Holidays, Tamara Siler Jones's latest Dubric novel Valley of the Soul, Alison Kent's newest Blaze Infatuation, Jo Leigh's latest Blaze Relentless, and some SF book by a chick with an aquatic fixation.

No room in the budget for books this month? No worries, you can find lots of free reads online if you know where to look.

The holidays are just around the corner: only 47 shopping days left. Have you made a list? Have you checked it twice? If you need help deciding on the perfect gift for someone, you might consult the gift wizard at FindGift.com.

If you're talented and not afraid to show it to the entire planet, you might enter your video for a shot at the $50,000 prize in the Yahoo! Talent Show contest (11/27/06 is the last day to submit a video.)

You can discover some new and healthy recipes for your seasonal gatherings over at Cooking Light Magazine, or win some neat prizes on their contest page. Baking some homemade bread is also very good, if you don't use the bread machine -- pummeling the dough by hand works out plenty frustration.

You might also resync yourself by trying one of the Cleveland Clinic's Calming and Empowering Exercises.

Or you could get started on inventing that flavoring process. Just remember, when you accept the Nobel, I get a mention for having suggested it. Who says that we can't have world peace in our lifetime?