Today, I’m blogging about Lockdown at Access Romance’s All-A-Blog. I’d love to see you there.

But you’re really wanting to know who the winners are of my countdown, right? I won’t make you wait or tease you. Oh wait, on second thought…I think I’ll wait until tonight to announce the winner! So if you’d like one more chance to win, be sure to visit me today and post a comment! 😈

And if you’ve forgotten what prizes I’m offering, be sure to check out my June 7th blog entry!!

The Devlins have a family reunion going on this week, and the girls decided they needed to do something wild—something to bond over. This was someone’s bright idea.

We’re outside Redbeard’s Living Canvas in Hot Springs. From the left it’s my niece Liz, SIL Teresa, SIL Shanna, me and my 70-year-old Mom. See the smiles? We had no idea…

I’m sure the biker dudes/tattoo artists thought we were pretty interesting. We were certainly fascinated meeting them. My poor mom didn’t blink an eye at the F-bombs that exploded, but watching her grit her teeth and blink like mad every time the needle carved into the top of her foot was really pretty funny. Of course, I thought she was just being a little wimpy.

UNTIL, it was my turn. I know I made some interesting faces because my niece laughed her ass off. My SIL told me my fingers were completely white because I was digging them into the chair so hard.

This is a pic of the work in progess. It’s kind of sexy looking at it in hindsight with tattoo dude hovering over my quivering toes.

The experience may have been painful, but we had a blast. And we love the results! We came back to the house and sat out on the patio admiring our new art. The guys think we’ve all lost our minds. They just don’t get it. We know we’ll have something permanent to remind us of family every time we glance down.

Here’s my mom’s awesome dragon:

Shanna’s pretty flowered anklet:

Teresa’s colorful butterfly and rose:

Here’s my final result (my poor foot’s swollen). Keep in mind I intended to go for something small and dainty!

Join me if you can! I’d love the company!

Bright and early Sunday morning, Myla Jackson, Shayla Kersten and surprise guests will start arriving at the Ellora’s Cave chat loop. We’ll have great contests and excerpts provided very generously by many of your favorite authors, including Sylvia Day, Katherine Kingston, Adele Dubois, B.J. McCall, Stephanie Julian, NJ Walters, Ashlyn Chase, Lynn LaFleur…and of course your prolific, fabulous hosts!

So be sure to check in throughout the day, enter a contest, join us for the live chat (it will be at 11 AM CST at the Fallen Angels chat room), and ask us any little thing you might be curious about. If we don’t know the answer, we’ll have fun making them up. We’re writers—we’re professional liars. *wink*

If you aren’t on the Ellora’s Cave loop yet, send a message to this address: ellorascavechat-subscribe@yahoogroups.com

Oh, and I love my horoscope—it’s so me:
“You may outrage some friends or strangers today with your wild ways or your big ideas, but don’t hold back! It’s a great time for you to show the world that it needs your help in a big way!”

Ask my sister, Myla. I don’t need any encouragement.

I’m housesitting on Lake Catherine for my friend Cyndi. I arrived yesterday afternoon, and Cyndi and the hubs took me for a ride on their pontoon boat. The sky was overcast, which kept the heat bearable and the wind kicking up. Lovely for boating. We headed to Fisherman’s Wharf and tied off on the dock before entering the restaurant for a meal. That’s the first time I’ve arrived at a restaurant by boat. How cool is that?!

They left early AM and I’ve had the house and dogs to myself. I can’t believe how much I accomplished without a telephone and with limited access to my email account. I finished first round edits on Stone’s Embrace (tentatively scheduled for release July 14) and shipped the story to my editor.

I worked on the synopsis for a new futuristic, set off-world, for Samhain. Something a friend and I are writing together. We are going to try writing this in tandem, alternating chapters, and following two separate plot threads. We will probably kill each other before it’s over, but it sure is fun right now.

I finally set up my iPod and hit the iTunes store. I have tons of metal CDs (like NIN, Disturbed, GNR, Audioslave, and Aerosmith), Pretenders, The Cure, U2 and Green Day to upload when I get home, but I downloaded some easy listening tunes: Jason Mraz, Plain White T’s, Kings of Leon, Black Crowes, Train, Kelly Clarkson and Jeff Buckley. Not anything I’d want a full CD of, but tunes that are nice to fall asleep to. If you have any suggestions for music I should check out, let me know. I think I have a new obsession.
🙄

Progress on new cowboy novella

I’ve been lazy about posting to my blog. Must be because summer is sneaking up on me. We’ve had so much rain lately it’s been a little hard to tell. I finally got fed up yesterday and took the 4-year-old out to the pool to swim in the rain.

She threw a fit because she didn’t want to get her hair wet. Did I mention she’s blonde too?

Then of course, she had to walk all around the pool with me to check for critters. Every leaf was a toad or a snake. Guess I shouldn’t have rhapsodized about the baby cottonmouth or the worm snake I fished from the water this past week.

But she’s home with mom today, so I entered the pool in peace and quiet. Yeah, it was sprinkling again before I got out, but the water (78 degrees) was warmer than the outside air (73 degrees), so I didn’t care.

Fished out a dead shrew—I should have put it in a bucket to horrify the little monster the next time she stays over.

Starting new untitled cowboy story!

The craziness is past. I shipped the paranormal proposal off to my agent. We’ll see what happens. Cross your fingers!! In the meantime, I can’t sit and wait. My “writer muscles” would atrophy. It’s tough when you take a break. You come back to a blank page and second guess yourself to death. So instead, I dive right into the the next thing. And the cowboy stories are so dang easy to slide into! 😀

Cleaned the pool this morning and pulled two dead tree frogs from the traps and fished a baby snake from the water. I didn’t want to check the type of snake it was, because if it was poisonous I’d have had to kill it. It was way too cute to demolish. Went for a swim afterward, then dressed in a dry suit and shorts so I can hop in whenever I get stuck in the story.

Bummer about Adam Lambert. But fantastic he won’t be married to that godawful “No Boundaries” single. Can’t wait to see what he does next. I wish Kris luck. I know he’ll do well too, but really, Idol was all about Adam this year. I bought an iPod yesterday. Guess whose performances I’ll be downloading?!

Well, I’m off to join friends for some timed writing sprints. Later!