We have a winner of the Family Tree Contest. She is Nancy Ferer of Englewood, New Jersey,and she will be receiving my DVD, plus ten copies of the new trade paperback edition of Family Tree for her book group. Congrats, Nancy. And my thanks to all of you who entered. Please keep an eye out for more contests. I’ll certainly be doing another one this winter.

Winter? Why does the word itself sound cold? Maybe because, as I write this, the country is in the grips of its first widespread snowstorm of the season. The mid-west was socked. New England won’t be quite as bad. Still, there’s snow falling outside right now, the roads are icy, and the forecast is for more of the same.

I work at home and won’t have to leave the house today. That’ll make it a good work day – though you can be sure that I’ll be clicking on SAVE more often than usual. This is the kind of weather when we lose our lights, and I’ve learned the hard way the price of not backing things up. There’s nothing worse than losing hard-fought pages, even a paragraph or two, then trying to rewrite them as they were the first time.

Right now, I'm working on my 2009 book, While My Sister Sleeps. I'll blog about that process later this week. And next week? Look for Chapter 2 of The Secret Between Us. It doesn't go on sale in stores until January 22, but I'll be posting Chapter 2 on my site. Chapter 1 is here now. Take a look. If you're on my mailing list, you'll get an email as soon as I post Chapter 2. If you're not on my list, sign up here.

Back to meteorological stuff. A few minutes ago, when I was looking at the weather forecast, I saw that the length of the day is now 9.2 hrs. That’s pretty grim. The good news is that in a little more than two weeks, we’ll hit rock bottom for darkness. Then it starts going up. What a nice thought.

Stay warm, you all!