I’m thrilled that the gifted designer, April Martinez, gets this recognition for her wonderful work. Wahoo!

And, of course, I can’t resist posting the cover again.

The fabulous cover!

Hello, 2012! The old year was particularly, um, challenging for me, so I am happy to see it go. Not that it was all bad. Here are some of the big things that happened in 2011 that I’m grateful for:

I drafted a new romantic comedy script, “The Apology.”

My first screenplay, “Package Deal, or The Blue Jay’s Egg” was a finalist in the StoryPros Awards and made it to the second round of the PAGE Awards.

My Austin house sold in a day.

I came back to Tennessee, where family and friends have made me welcome.

I found a great church home.

I released my first historical mystery, Fortune’s Fool, which became a Kindle bestseller. It’s now available in paperback, too.

I moved into a fabulous apartment I love.

I wrote the first draft for the next book in the Psychic Socialite Series, A Billy Sunday Kind of Love, during NaNoWriMo.

That’s all pretty cool. And there’s other stuff, more modest, everyday accomplishments that please me, so I can’t wait to see what the new year brings. Happy 2012, y’all!

And remember, books make fabulous Christmas gifts!

Let’s face it, writing can be a solitary business. We writers spend a lot of our time alone with our keyboards or notebooks with no one else around but the people who live in our heads. Granted, our fictional creations can be good company, but sometimes we just need other folks who understand what we do and why we do it.

If you can call your writing suspenseful, then the Kiss of Death chapter of the Romance Writers of America may be just the ticket.

KOD promotes and supports the writing and reading of suspense and mystery fiction with strong romantic elements. Formed in 1994, it’s one of the largest RWA chapters, with members from across the globe who join the online family of mayhem-loving writers.

Joining gives you access to all kinds of good stuff to help your writing develop and grow. Today kicks off KOD’s annual membership drive. As a bonus, all new members or renewing members who join in December will be entered to win a first chapter critique from published Kiss of Death members.

To join Kiss of Death, visit  http://www.rwamysterysuspense.org/join.php for easy PayPal or traditional payment options. For the joining fee of $35 ($30 for renewal), you’ll love it to death!

I think about the nature of love a lot, and not just because I write about it. The the brain and its workings fascinate me, especially the biochemistry of emotion. And what emotion have people pondered through the ages more than love?

Anthropologist Helen Fisher studies love and the brain. Yesterday, I stumbled across her TED presentation about our need for romantic love. Her first example of ancient lovers from Tikal brought tears to my eyes. I dare you to listen without being moved.

Helen Fisher on the brain in love

By the way, if you haven’t discovered the treasure trove of free TED lectures on every subject under the sun, check it out at TED.com.

Isn’t the cover fabulous?

Now available for the Kindle from Amazon. Coming soon for the Nook.

Nell Marc­hand has never worked a day in her life. When her phi­lan­der­ing skunk of a hus­band sud­denly drops dead, leav­ing her with­out one red cent to her name, she lands smack dab in the mid­dle of the hard times she has only heard about in news­reels. Nell tries to find a job to sup­port her­self and the house­hold that depends on her, really she does. Her typ­ing is a dis­as­ter, she cuts off every call in her one day as a tele­phone oper­a­tor, and laun­dress leaves her back aching. There has to be an eas­ier way.

A reluc­tant visit to pros­per­ous Joseph Cal­en­dar, her flighty mother-in-law’s medium, per­suades Nell that there are for­tunes to be made in, well, telling for­tunes. As soci­ety for­tuneteller Madame Nelora, she is soon the toast of Mem­phis. But when a des­per­ate father begs Nell to find his daugh­ter, she has a true vision of the miss­ing girl. Ter­ri­fied that she’s los­ing her mind, Nell turns to Cal­en­dar. She may sus­pect he’s a char­la­tan, but he is the only man who can help her embrace her gift and the respon­si­bil­ity it entails. To find the girl–and unravel a secret from her own past–Nell must out­wit a cor­rupt banker and his gang­ster pals who will do any­thing to keep her hidden.

You can find Fortune’s Fool on Amazon in the U.S. Kindle Store, the UK Kindle Store, the French Kindle Store, and the German Kindle Store. You can also get it for the Nook now, and I hope B&N eventually loads the cover as well. Happy reading!

To announce the release, I’m still fiddling with a new look for the website, so stay tuned.

Meanwhile, I’m working on a new look for the website. And stay tuned for really big news about Fortune’s Fool coming later in September.

This is my first week on Twitter, and I’m still feeling my way with it and TweetDeck, which I hope is going to be the handiest way to keep track of and coordinate my Facebook and Twitter accounts. Stay tuned. You can follow me on Twitter @JaneSevier

Now, if I could just add my Google Reader to TweetDeck.

My pulse waxes caprizant at the thought.

Yesterday on my usual morning walk, I got about two steps past a house on the next block when I stopped in my tracks and stared at the sculpture in the front yard that my brain suddenly decoded as a bottle tree. There’s no telling how many times before I had passed the thing, looked and it, and thought, “Huh, that’s kind of neat” without knowing exactly what it was.

Now, there are no pictures of bottle trees in On Folly Beach, but suddenly I knew one when I saw it. Reading Karen White’s book changed how I perceive my own little world. Yep, that’s the power of fiction.

Has something you’ve read ever changed what you see in the world around you or how you see it?

But what makes a book big? There are how-to guides out there that propose to tell you what a Big Book is and how to write one. Albert Zuckerman’s Writing the Blockbuster Novel and Donald Maas’s Writing the Breakout Novel spring to mind.

Over at Muderati, Alexandra Sokoloff has a great discussion going on about what makes a book big. What’s your definition?