No, not an early post for Thanksgiving according to the Mayan calendar.

I finished, sort of, my book called … well, it doesn’t actually have a name yet but it’s about Jane Austen in Bath, vampires and a French invasion, with guest appearances by the Prince of Wales (later the Prince Regent), Beau Brummell, and Colonel Wellesley (later the Duke of Wellington). Guess which one is a vampire. Coming from HarperCollins in fall (?) 2010.

So on Monday night I left work early and went home with my head stuffed full of the last three thousand words or so and started to write.

First phone call: from a worthy organization I told to take my name off their call list.

Phone call #2: daughter wanted to borrow my pretty pie dish (she is the official Thanksgiving pie maker) and I told her it was cracked, probably not a good idea.

Phone call #3: the person who had kindly invited me to attend the local Jane Austen Society birthday event as her guest. This necessitated me making a call to find out what day a possibly conflicting event was on–I am such a social butterfly–and finding out that I could attend neither the Austen event or event #3 that I really wanted to go to.

Phone call #4: from a worthy organization who hung up before I answered.

Phone call #5: my daughter again, asking if it was ok to ask our hosts if she could bring the office Thanksgiving orphan (there’s always one) and I said yes, good idea.

Somehow, fielding more phone calls than I usually get in a week, I got to the point where I typed THE END. Yeehah.

Frantic editing and fact checking will follow and then straight into the next book. But I celebrated the end the next day by going to see the Pennsylvania Ballet’s Nutcracker at the Kennedy Center, a last minute invite from my daughter the pie baker. Lots of fun!

Happy Thanksgiving, Risky friends (US) and happy Thursday to Risky friends elsewhere!