Wednesday Update: In Which I Am In My Happy Place

Man, this has been a great week so far for me.  Finally declared victory over a troublesome chapter of Labyrinth (well, okay, not total victory, but I feel it's in decent enough shape I can move on to the next chapter!), landed all my double jumps at skating practice (my coach, throwing up her hands to heaven: "My God, I thought I would never live to see such a miracle!")...and I got word from my agent that I have indeed been paid for The Tainted City, at long last.  (The best words you ever hear in authorhood are "Wow, I loved your book!", but I won't lie...the words "Your check just arrived" are pretty sweet also.)

In addition, the magic of google alerts has shown me The Whitefire Crossing and The Tainted City getting a little love, lately:

• Review of The Whitefire Crossing at Fantasy Review Barn (always lovely to hear that someone enjoyed the book despite having no interest in climbing!)
• The Tainted City is one of Bibliotropic's top 10 books read in the first half of 2013 (woot!).  The others on the list I haven't already read look pretty interesting - I've been happily adding to my TBR pile.
• The Whitefire Crossing showed up as one of Renay of Lady Business's top 10 reads so far this year - haha, it totally made my day to see that my story has inspired someone to want to write fic. (I know some authors detest the idea of other people playing with their creations.  While I certainly would be annoyed if someone tried to actually profit off my work without permission, 99.99% of fanfic is written solely for the love of it - and to me, fic is a sign that something about your story/characters spoke so deeply to a reader that they felt compelled to explore it further.  Personally, I find that awesome.)

Last but not at all least, I'm looking forward to some serious fun in the mountains over the next few days.  Hope those of you in the US have a wonderful 4th of July holiday, and for everyone else, may you have a generally terrific first week of July!  I leave you with a picture from where I'll be spending 4th of July tomorrow (bonus points to anyone who can identify the location!).

Mmmmm, mountains....