I’m pleased to tell you I’ve been commissioned to write a play for a theatre in upstate New York. I’m really having fun, working on this. In the coming months, I’ll fill you in on where the theatre is, and when the play is going to go up. And then if you can, mark your calendar and come join us during the summer of 2011!

Bkwriter.blogspot.com posted an essay at:
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A Guest Post by Susan Arnout Smith: “Into the Dark: Writing Out at Night”
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At Bookreporter.com, I was invited to write a holiday blog, on which book was my favorite book to give. The following essay, Glitter Mom, is posted here: http://tinyurl.com/ydeslp4

Okay, okay, it’s been a long silence. My apologies! What a year!

I just returned from signing books at the LA Times Festival of Books. Thank you so much, those of you who took the time to come by a booth and wish me well. It’s a joyous amazing thing when people tell me they’ve read the book. Wow. In the Mystery Bookstore booth, I was signing next to Carol Higgins Clark and Mary Higgins Clark, beautiful, gifted, stunning looking women. Bobby McCue ran around in a straw hat and jeans, passing out waters, making everybody comfortable. Linda was in a T. Jefferson Parker hat. (Very cool, Jeff; great idea). Bobby and his team had a party for writers Friday night at his warmly appointed store in Westwood.

I know I’m sounding like a columnist for a social page, (down to the description of what everybody’s wearing), but it was a moment where it started to sink in. I’ve written a book that’s now on the shelf. In lots of countries. I saw my friend John Lescroart at the party Friday night. He’d blurbed The Timer Game and has a new book out made the New York Times bestseller list.

I am over the moon. And truly, one of the nicest parts, is meeting all of you. When I was signing in the Mysterious Galaxy booth (with Michael Connelly, Cornelia Reid, Rita Lakin) a reader came up with a Timer Game ARC to have me sign. And a book. It still makes me smile. That and the memory of Maryelizabeth (Mysterious Galaxy owner) under a beach umbrella.

There were over a hundred thousand people a day on the UCLA campus. To be there, signing in the same booths with authors I love and respect—wow. What a thrill.

I’m hard at work on book two. It is part of the Grace Descanso series and it’s great fun to be talking to these characters again who feel so real.

Thank you again, for your many kindnesses. And your patience. And your words of cheer about the book. I appreciate them all.

I’m still trying to get a handle on how to do things. (Which somewhat explains why I have never updated my Amazon site. The Internet is daunting. Ditto with my answering on My Space.
My plan, at this point, is to try and keep in touch more on the fly, but spaced closer together. . . Hope to hear from you!

Oh, and those of you who have encouraged your friends to buy The Timer Game, thank you!

The Universe listens.

And yes, responds.

I always believed on some level that to be true but about a year ago I tried it out and that’s what I want to tell you about.

I’m writing this at 12:30 in the morning in the lobby of the Convent Garden Hotel, as we get ready to fly home from Europe.

I’ve been visiting the sales team for Harper Collins, which will be publishing the novel in the UK. An amazing, gracious, lovely group of men and women I’m thrilled to be working with.

I know I’ve been slow blogging, but things have been, well, a little busy.

The Timer Game will be published, as of today, in ten countries. Ten. Five languages, (including Chinese text and Chinese character).

I’m still trying to wrap my mind around how stunning that is.

I’ve been to Alaska for Bouchercon since I last wrote, where I was asked to moderate a panel of bright new writers (Laura Bennet, Isabella Moon, Michael Wiley, The Last Striptease, Gabi Herkert, Catnapped and Ken Isaacson, Silent Counsel). It was a lovely honor to be able to shepherd them through one of their first panels as a published author and I was thrilled to be there.

And I’ve been working on a series of what I call webisodes about the novel to run on You-Tube. Do you remember the old Folger Coffee ads, where the couple meets cute in the hallway and everybody tunes in to see the commercial (not a great product, sadly–freeze dried coffee, but the commercial was stunning). The guy later went on to be in the Buffy series as the teacher. . . Anyway, that was the feel I was after. To introduce the main characters and create small cliff-hangars. They’ll start running on my new webpage, www.thetimergame.com which will be up and running mid-November as well as on You-Tube.

I didn’t want to tip any of the suspense in the novel, so I decided to go deeper into how the two main characters meet in a remote village in Guatemala.

If you’d like to be alerted to the webisodes (they’re 1 1/2 minutes each and we’ll start running about two a week or more starting mid-November, you can sign up on my mailing list and we’ll let you know automatically when a new one airs.

Shooting these in LA with SAG actors and a real crew was a daunting and exhausting experience. But great fun. The two main actors, Sarah Sido and Troy Zuercher, are superb and Sandra Kersulis created sets out of virtually nothing that were amazing. She also did heavy hod carrying lifting mostly by herself. But that’s another tale for another day.

The director I worked with, Kai Soremekun, was one of the original fifty bright directors Speilberg picked for his One The Lot program. When I first walked into her home, I saw the exact quote I have by Goethe hanging on the wall:

Whatever you can do, or dream you can begin it

for boldness has genius power and magic in it.

Pretty cool quote, huh?

And I was am sitting here in this grand hotel, my feet on a Persian carpet, I am so aware that Goethe’s right. We must dream our dream to see it realized, but the key is getting off the sofa and past our own fear to make it a reality. For over a year, I’ve carried in my wallet a small, two-sentence phrase about The Timer Game novel. I have the same words over my computer. It’s not important to know what they are, only that reading them helps me see the book always in the world as it was meant to be. Reading it calms me and centers me. The words weren’t true when I wrote them, (although, of course they were–I had only to step into that), but the words became true through time.

And now I read them and am in awe. They’re coming true. They are true. That’s huge.

Dream your best dream for yourself. Dream it with clarity and kindness. And know that the Universe–at least as born out in my singularly small but spectacularly important to me sampling—listens.

I’d love to hear from you. What have you asked from the Universe? What have you gotten back? And know it’s never too late for that note in the wallet.