Here's how you can tell that I've locked myself away in my writing studio and am busy doing revisions for my next book Ordinary Beauty: my postings here get few and far between, I rarely answer email or the phone, my status on Facebook stays the same for days on end and when I do post, I don't have very much to say.

Happily, while most of the above is true, we did have a fun Halloween weekend. We took three days and went down to Gettysburg to visit Roundtop, Devil's Den and tour more of the battlefields, do a couple of ghostwalks and most spectacularly, meet up with some dear friends (and notable authors) that I haven't seen in a while who were doing a book signing. 

This was part of Devil's Den at night, sad, beautiful and potentially spooky.  It would have been a lot spookier had A. the temperature not fallen to maybe 32 degrees with a fearsome 20 mph wind, B. it hadn't been crawling with other people with the same idea and C. I hadn't tripped twice and then stepped in a hole, twisting my ankle among the boulders. Happily, I'm fairly flexible so while my ankle bone scraped the ground, it wasn't permanently damaged, only slightly bruised and I was able to go on to bigger and better mishaps later on.

 

I have tons of photos of breathtaking monuments but I'm only going to post a few because one is New York's, gorgeous and sad, the second is New Jersey's, looming and welcome, and the two pics third rep PA and more, and is stunning.

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New York, with an Irish Wolfhound lying in wait, and mourning.



Go, Jersey!



 
Just beautiful.

We also spent several hours crawling around a small, hidden cemetary trying to read gravestones back from the 1700s, searching for one of my bf's ancestors, who I think we might have found. That was a first for me, and not a bad thing.

So, after freezing at Devil's Den and Roundtop, we stopped and bought hats, scarves and gloves, and headed out on two ghost walks, one at 11 pm. The late walk got really interesting when the guide led us into the woods in the pitch dark, told a ghost story then said we had time to go off and take pictures of potential spirits. Right, I'm thinking, looking around. Who can see anything?

Well, my bf decided he wanted to take pictures so he turned and headed deeper into the woods. I was following him (I thought) but somehow veered off and the next thing I know, I somehow step smack into a big pile of branches, and am heading for a crash landing. Now, this is bizarre for me, as I haven't fallen down in decades and somehow, in the span of one short night I've managed to trip twice, step in a hole and twist my ankle, then fall headlong into a pile of branches.

The worst part about it was that I couldn't see anything, so for all I knew I was falling down a well or over a cliff or something. Happily, it was a short fall which left me tangled in sticks and hauled back up to my feet by my bf and other people trying hard not to laugh. I appreciate their kindness, as I probably would have laughed if I was them. Hell, I would've howled.

The biggest blast for me (no offense to the Civil War) was seeing friends Shelley Sykes (author), Lois Szymanski (author), Patty Wilson (author), Jon and Debbie McConnell and their enchanting Shelties, Olivia Sykes and Betsey Gravenor again. Shelley, Lois and Patty were doing a book signing with Mark Nesbitt and the paranormal was everywhere. 





After their signing we headed out to a restaurant and had waffles and french toast and gorgeous cookies Olivia and Betsey and Debbie had made, hung out past closing and laughed so hard we almost fell off our chairs. It was really, really good to be back in such smart, funny, wonderful company.

 



And the moon, oh the moon on trip-and-fall night was just perfect...



So happy late Halloween because now I have to go back work. There are some disturbing scenes in this book (big surprise) and I need to concentrate so if my Facebook status stays the same for a week, don't worry, I'm not dead, I'm just writing.