What's next for Kate?

This is a tough question because it depends on whether you're talking about the next week, the next two weeks or the next six months. Hmmm, where to start?

I'll just give you the interesting stuff, okay? There are things I do two or three times a week like:

1. Blogging on The Best is Yet to Read, the blog you're reading right now.
2. Blogging on my own blog - www.kateaustin.blogspot.com.
3. Blogging on my Witchy Chicks blog - www.witchychicks.blogspot.com.

Next week, I'm off to New York for a week. The flight is about 4 1/2 hours and I'll spend it drinking a couple of glasses of red wine and doing the line edits for my novella "Summertime Blues" in the Summer Dreams anthology - Stevi Mittman and Jennifer Greene also have stories in that anthology and it promises to be great. And funny. And once that's done, I'll spend the rest of the flight judging some short stories for a contest.

When I get there, I'll spend the weekend speaking and doing workshops and panels at a conference at Rutgers and the week in Manhattan. I love New York - and it doesn't even matter if the weather is bad.

When I walk in the door, my author copies of Last Night at the Halfmoon should be there. There is something very satisfying about opening that box and seeing them. Yes, I've seen the cover - this is what it looks like and it's gorgeous -

But holding the book in my hand? Amazing. Maybe a bit like the difference between seeing a painting and touching a sculpture, looking at a lion in the zoo and petting your own cat. Tactile, it's very tactile.

And then I'm into a summer worth of writing. I've just sold two more books to Next and they're due in August and November - the first one, The Losers' Club, is already bubbling around in my mind and I expect that I'll write at least the first chapter while I'm away. The second? Who knows? I don't even know what it's going to be but I guess I'd better start thinking about that as well.

While I'm doing that, I'm going to conferences. Write on, Vancouver at the beginning of May, Writers' Weekend in Seattle at the end of June, RWA National in July, PNWA (also in Seattle) at the end of July, Emerald City in October. I think I might - if I'm lucky - take a week's holiday in September and go somewhere that isn't work - where do you think I should go? I have no idea.

So, as you can see, what's next for me is busy. And it's the kind of busy I love.

Kate