The Things I'll Do For a Chapters Card

So, the gift grab. Well, if any of you have ever played it before you know how it works, for those of you who don't, you basically draw a number and that number indicates the order you go in. Then each person, one by one, picks a gift. The thing is, you can pick a gift from under the tree, or you can swipe a gift already opened by someone else, then they in turn can either swipe a new gift from someone else, or pick a new one from under the tree.

Well someone had the bright idea of buying a Chapters gift card as the gift. Once everyone saw that they pretty much knew what I was going to do. There were 19 of us playing and I drew #17, which put me near the end and in perfect position to get the card. The only thing is, with all the swiping going on, I had to stay three steps ahead to determine where the card was going to end up, and what gift I had to swipe to end up with the card in the end.

As it turned out the gift card and a really nice set of steak knives were the hot ticket items. I knew if I didn't end up with the card, I just had to end up with the knives and I could swap after the game. So as the game progresses after I have my turn, and we get caught in this ten minute loop of 5 people swapping four gifts my brain was working furiously to outguess everyone else. And I've discovered that when there is a Chapters gift card on the line, my brain has the ability to strategize at a level that would make Winston Churchill proud.

So needless to say, I ended up with the knives and Derrick, who desperately wanted the knives, ended up with the Chapters card. We swapped after the game, and Saturday I went and spent my winnings on Mary Balogh's new book, The Secret Pearl, as well as a couple of books for my niece and nephew for Christmas. The whole thing was a lot of fun, especially for someone as competitive as me. I think we'll definitely do it again next year.

In other news: Desire & Brimstone is going along great. I posted my first chapter to my critique group on Sunday and I'm halfway through chapter 2 already. This story, so far (knocking on wood) has been very easy to write. The detailed outline definitely helps, keeps me from wandering off on a tangent.

Now here's a question for any of you who have read Lisa Kleypas - I'm currently reading her Wallflower series and in the first book, Secrets of a Summer Night, there are two characters - Lord Westcliff's sister and her fiancé, Mr. Shaw. Now the way she writes them makes it sound like she has already written their story, but when I went on her site to check her other books since they didn't appear in any of the ones I had, I can find no mention of them. Anyone know if she did write their story and if so, what the book was? There is something very intriguing about Mr. Shaw and I want to know more...

And to end things off - we have snow on the ground this morning. Ugh. Is it too early to start counting down to Spring?