Copy edits and Bookmas Day 4

The copy edits for The Naked King are on their way to NYC, tra la! I now have oatmeal for brains...perhaps that will keep me safe from zombies. Part of the challenge with this book was trying to be sure it was consistent with my novella, "The Naked Prince," which will be out in the anthology An Invitation to Sin in February. I wrote the King before the Prince, but the Prince will be in bookstores before the King. (The King comes out in June.) And I handed the King in almost a year ago...I often feel like I'm in some sort of weird other dimension. A time warp, maybe...and no, I'm not going to sing.

So, I hope I was successful. I'll get another look at the book when page proofs arrive, but those are expensive to change.

And now on to the clue. I am not very good at guessing games, and I think I'm not very good at guessing game clues. What comes to mind at the moment--and remember, I've got oatmeal for brains--is a story about Jane Doe. Jane was born in the "town" I grew up in. I say town in quotes because it was more a postal address--the place was unincorporated and spread out over a good bit of territory. Anyway, I still live not far from this "hometown." I was at church one Sunday, at the donut hour after Mass, when I got talking to a woman whose daughter had been on our neighborhood summer swim team. Since I was the adult volunteer in charge of the team, and did all the data entry work, I knew her name--mostly I knew her daughter's name--and had chatted with her on the pool deck over the years...though I think her daughter was only on the team for a year or two.

Anyway, we got chatting. It was probably around the time I'd sold my first book, The Naked Duke. Somehow we got around to that fact, and my friend said, oh, her cousin wrote romance novels. It turns out her cousin is Jane Doe!