First chocolate bribes are in the mail + look: tattoo packs! + an unplanned plug for Friday Night Lights

Yes, the first CHOCOLATE BRIBES are in the mail! Thank you so much for your reviews!
That one on the top is en route to FINLAND. (Hi, Sara!) I love the idea of my book living in distant countries; it's kind of like Magpie is really there, doing her gypsy thing. Anyone who wants to send me a picture of Blackbringer out and about in the world, I love those. I have an Afghanistan one (hi Marianne!) that I treasure.

The CHOCOLATE BRIBE is still very much in play (scroll down to last post or click here for details). I have not yet even exhausted the first round of chocolate (though only milk chocolate remains right now, but never fear: I will restock on dark. But as a milk chocolate person myself, I'll never understand the preference for dark. To me, it's like the difference between black coffee and sweet milky coffee. Sure, one is more pure, but the other is more delicious!) Please continue to post Amazon reviews. You will be rewarded with chocolate and tattoos!

Speaking of which, WHEW! I spent the whole day yesterday, and most of the day before, getting my tattoo packs together! Here they are, all packaged:
I think they look awesome. But imagine, for a second, putting 700 sets of tattoos into little bags, folding 700 header cards over, and then stapling 700 header cards in place. And that's not including the design time, or running around town to buy bags and pick up printing. Here are the 500 I sent to my editor:
This photo represents an entire day spent at the kitchen table, and I'm not even kidding when I say I gave myself a repetitive stress injury from the stapling. Okay, I'm kind of kidding. It's not an injury per se, but for a while I've had a small problem with getting a burning pain in my right trapezius when I'm working with my hands for too long, be it putting together Laini's Ladies or whatever. And the stapling really had it screaming. I had to keep stopping to whimper and stretch. Poor me! It made me think of how I heard a while back that librarians were no longer stamping books because of the repetitive stress. It was hard to imagine stamping books bringing on pain, but I believe it now. (How feeble am I, complaining of stapling pain? ha ha. Ask me about childbirth in a few months!)

All that time at the kitchen table, I had my computer before me, watching shows on hulu.com. I tried to watch Netflix online, but my computer does not support it, which was too bad, because I was all ready to see North & South, after posting the kiss video a couple of weeks ago! But alas, no. I ended up watching episodes of Dollhouse, which in spite of my Joss Whedon love I find to be extremely "meh," and Fringe, of which I had seen only the first. It's not bad, really. I love the old guy, the one who played the Steward of Gondor in LOTR?

Speaking of TV, two of our favorite shows have come to an end for the season: Damages and Friday Night Lights. Wah! I just want to take a moment to say here that if you have not seen Friday Night Lights, you are missing something wonderful. Don't say, "I'm not into football," because I am so not into football and I love it. It's not about football. It's about teenagers, family dynamics, struggling toward the future, hoping to have a better life than what you've seen all around you for forever. It's about mentoring, striving, falling in love, winning, losing, growing up, and all that real stuff. It's so well written. Seriously. The characters are phenomenal, it's not melodramatic (with the exception of a bit of a shark-jumping in Season 2, which everyone would like to pretend never happened), and . . . just . . .

. . . just WATCH THIS. This is especially for you, Stephanie, because it's set to a Coldplay song. I have this idea that if I can make a Coldplay connection in your brain (however false a connection), I can get you to watch the show! ha ha. But seriously:
Ah, so good. The football sequences, when they come around, are like in that montage: exciting, brief, and always tied into the emotional story of the characters. The game in the mud? So. Good. Rent Season 1. Seriously. There are three seasons and they're all good. Season three almost didn't happen because, as is the case with most good shows, not that many people watch it!!! But it DID happen, thanks to a bizarre partnership between NBC and Direct TV. A fourth season, from what I hear, is looking hopeful, and after having just seen the season finale, I soooooo hope it happens. What a great starting point they have now to recreate the show. I mean, most of the cast has graduated high school (including my TV boyfriend, Tim Riggins, below, soon to be seen as Gambit in the Wolverine movie), but I really really want to see what happens next! I [heart] Coach Taylor and his wife -- they're the best couple, and seriously, if more kids had mentors like them . . . well, just watch the damn show (which is what I think Coach Taylor would say, sounding irritated) and tell me if you never get teary eyed, because I shall want to call you a robot.
[Caption: one reason to watch Friday Night Lights]

Okay. Huh. Where did that impassioned promotion of Friday Night Lights come from? I don't know! We don't watch very much TV, it's so rare to find a really good show, and when you do, they tend to get canceled (Firefly, sob sob. Wonderfalls! Pushing Daisies!) because most people are watching CSI: Topeka or whatever. So, come on, people!

Oh, and please continue to post Blackbringer reviews! Chocolate will come your way!

AND, remember: Lips Touch ARC, with a one-of-a-kind ink illustration by Jim, is on auction HERE! As someone did point out in comments to my last post, the cover is here sneakily outed. It's not the grand unveiling I had planned, but oh well :-)