Tor Forge will be re-releasing Blame It on Paris, this time in mass market paperback, in May 2010.  Check out the new cover!  Isn’t it romantic?  I have to say, the hero of the story would not be caught dead in a dolman-sleeved sweater, but I like the leaning tower of Eiffel.

Yes, I’m still determined on the hiatus, but I just wanted to post a big THANK YOU for all the words of support and encouragement.

Also, I wanted to say a big thanks to reader Barbara!  I would answer your email directly but the email address didn’t come through.  But in case you happen to check the blog, thank you so much for your kind words on Blame It on Paris.

Merci à tout le monde, en fait!  Thank you and enjoy your spring and summer!

It is now that I say in this imitation of the totally ghastly French dubbing of Terminator I once had the misfortune to be forced to watch:  J’y retournerai.  (You’d have to hear the thread-thin whisper voice used for that French Terminator dubbing to appreciate why I’m over hear laughing my head off, really.)

So…I have been thinking about this for a while, and so the whole hack problem is the last straw rather than the cause. I think I am going to have to put this blog on hiatus for a while.

I am on a simplification kick. I am Decluttering. I am donating to Goodwill. I may even empty my attic of boxes of books I have been clinging to for 15 years. (I may. This is a very hard step, to give up books you once loved and don’t need anymore. It’s like giving up someone you once were and still like. I only did it once before–all my Trixie Belden books when I hit that “I’m an adult” teenage stage–and I always regretted it and wish like anything I had those Trixie Belden books back. So I tend to cling to books.)

But whether books stay in my attic or not, I would like to focus on a few things–writing, family, work, cooking, lazy fun times with friends–and so I am having to choose some things to stop.

Most tellingly, I did a journal exercise not too long ago using Kinder’s three questions, the second of which is: You go to the doctor, who discovers you have a rare illness. He says that you’re going to feel perfectly fine for the next five years, but then the illness will prove fatal. It will come suddenly, causing no suffering. The question is, Now that you know that your life will be over by then, how will you live it? What will you do?

And one of the things I wrote was: I would spend no time at my computer at all, except to write, and I might even start writing by hand. (Now this might not be realistic–how am I supposed to find out the WEATHER without a computer, for one thing? Watch TV? Look outside? That’s just crazy talking. Also, I wrote that I would grow a garden, so I decided to go start a garden right away, and OF COURSE where was I supposed to find out what to plant if I didn’t use the Internet?)

But…you know what I mean, I bet. There’s a line between resource and Computer=Life, and it’s not really a fine line, it’s just hard to stay on the right side of it. Internets are tempting creatures.

It may be that the hiatus doesn’t last very long and I get drawn back in very quickly, but right now my plan is to stick to it through August. This means I won’t be visiting your blogs much either! I will miss you, this is what I will miss the most.

But it is doing me a world of good to use that last little half hour of the evening to curl up in bed with (currently) Neruda’s Cien Sonetos de Amor (100 Love Sonnets–I highly, highly, highly recommend these, by the way, if you haven’t tried them. Tapscott’s translation is very good, too.) It’s hard to turn off the computer and make that shift, but I’m always glad I did. Simplifying experiences and deepening those, and maybe rediscovering a bit what it was like to live my life ten years ago when I didn’t have internet! That’s my track right now…we’ll see how it goes!

So this is au revoir (not adieu!)…THANK YOU for all your support the past year and a half, for giving me the chance to get to know you, and for humoring my obsessions. :)  And keep up the Chocolate War!!! Know that I will be fighting hard in the trenches, never surrendering, not even when faced with a dearth of Easter clearance candy.