10 Things I Want To Do Before the Summer Ends (or, Why I'm a Hopeless Nerd):

Blogging makes me feel accomplished; even though I am a hopeless slacker when it comes to finishing my novel (my muse is on its yearly vacation. I think it's in Belize, at the moment)I AM WRITING SOMETHING. *Shakes fist at muse*

Anyway, these top ten lists make it even easier for me to be a punctual blogger, so here's another one for you:

10 things I want to do before the summer ends (or, why I'm a hopeless nerd):

10. Find a Coldstone and try at least three flavors. Because everything is calorie-free in the summer*, so I need to eat all fattening foods before they can actually fatten me.

9. Read The Maltese Falcon, the rest of my new Sherlock Holmes stories, and possibly also some Dostoyevsky...

8. Go to the lake and fish.

7. Create the ultimate in pet-specific engineering: a dog/cat door with built-in sprinkler and blow dryer. I'd call it the cat wash...something tells me I'd have the cat mafia on my tail, though...

6. FINISH MY NOVEL. Because I have striven toward this goal for two consecutive summers (not counting this one).

5. Find an agent for the novel I co-authored with A.L. Brown.

4. Organize my office.

3. FINISH MY NOVEL (I just really want to do this. No, I'm not copping out on number three. FINE, I will make a real number three).

3. For reals this time: FINISH...hahaha gotcha. Learn to ride a motorcycle.

2. Submit my short story, COFFEE AND CARTELS, to the Tony Hillerman Short Mystery Story Contest**.

1. WIN the Tony Hillerman Short Mystery Contest.


* This statement may be fallacious and/or facetious.
** I will be at the post office tomorrow morning, bright and early.