Here’s me beaming—as I look through the hundred pics their mama took before they headed out to the prom. I chose my two fave photos so I don’t bore you too much! Here’s the 17-year-old and the 16-year-old, stepbrother and sister standing in our driveway.
She didn’t want a typical prom dress–you know, with lots of tulle and sparkles. Said she wanted to look fierce. And add a black mask with rhinestones that she wore in the larger group, I bet she did look fierce and mysterious! Wish I could show you with their prom dates, but I figure that would be a privacy issue. Suffice it to say, they were just as gorgeous, just as fierce–and appropriately goofy!
Ah, good times. The kids bought that pool thermometer for me because they thought it looked like me.
We’ve had an in-grown pool for at least ten years (I think). I can usually count on getting into the pool sometime in April—the earliest date was April 12th one year. Not that the water was comfortable, but it wasn’t so cold I’d break out in welts (I suffer from cold urticaria if the water’s cooler than 76 degrees). It’s April 22nd and the outside temp the night before last was 35 degrees. The pool hovers around 60 degrees, and the weather might warm up next week, but we need several weeks of the high eighties to heat the water.
So, while I’m still wearing sweatpants and sweatshirts, I’m dreaming about better days.
In the meantime, I have a book coming out. If you love a print copy rather than the ebook, the print version is available now! Just click on the cover! If you want to pre-order the ebook, head to my book page to pre-order the version you need: In His Memory page. It releases next Tuesday!
The story is emotional, very hot, and you’ll want to order the other books in the series! It’s a military romance, features a SEAL hero, and a friends-to-lovers romance! Do you have your copy reserved?
I’ve shared photos of my favorite fur babies before. Here are Phil, Lil, and Kimi the goats, along with Brandy the horse. Not shown in the picture is the other horse, a 35-year-old Appaloosa pony named Kansas. Our inside animals include 9 dogs and 5 cats. And yes, we have too many animals, but we’re not giving them away or dumping them on the road. They have forever homes with us.
For a chance to win a download from my backlist of books, tell me about any pets, past or present, that you’ve loved!
I hope. I’m still writing it! I’ve been making progress, but I know I’m cutting it close. Have you already pre-ordered the next Hot SEAL, Holiday Edition story? It’s filled with tears and laughter. It’s possible to have both, I promise.
You can read a short snippet from the story and find all the buy links here!
It’s Sunday, and as happens all too often for me, it’s another workday. Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about the fact that I’m constantly chasing my tail with writing and editing. I’m of a “certain age” now and think more about what I might be missing out on with my family. Does that mean I plan to quit doing either? No, but I’m lucky that I have options. I already have two retirement incomes (one is very small—but every little bit helps!), and I’m eligible for Social Security. I can afford to take it a little easier, but I still have all these stories I want to write. I don’t need to earn so much money now. My priorities are shifting.
I plan to enjoy the summer with the kids. The pool will be my daily highlight. We plan for early morning walks along park trails. There will be flea market hunting—although our dear governor has removed the mask mandate, so those excursions will require extra planning, like trying to arrive before the unmasked hoards are out and about. I’ve had both injections, but we have little ones, including one who’s a two-time cancer patient who has another tumor we’re worried about. I wish people would be more considerate of others. Wearing a mask isn’t a big-ass deal when you consider the risks to the vulnerable. *sigh*
I want more time to play with my paint and beads and yarn. I want to create things for my family and friends. I am more than just a writer. I want the kids to remember me for being more than the weird relative who writes all day in her office. They’re such a joy. Did I ever mention that they give me toys to display in my office? They love to collect things for me. Once, they talked their mom into weekly runs to McDonald’s to collect all the How to Train your Dragon dragons that came in the kid’s meals. Yeah, I have every one of them. They didn’t care about keeping them for themselves because they knew I’d love them.
Okay, I’m rambling. These are the things I’ve been thinking about though. Maybe I’m just a bit aggravated with myself because of the self-inflicted time crunch I’m under.
Anyway, for a chance to win a FREE book from my backlist of books, let me know whether you’ve given much thought to your golden years and what you’d like to do!
It’s Friday but feels like Saturday. I’ve been a day ahead all week. I even woke the 17-year-old to put out the trash the day before the trashmen came. Gah.
We had freezing weather last night, so dd was looking for sheets to cover her newly planted garden. The local hardware store didn’t have any garden mesh. So far, it looks like everything survived, except perhaps, the lettuce. 🙁
The pool is still green, but I hope to get that fixed over the next two weeks. The long-range forecast isn’t great for swimming in April, but I’ll be ready for May!!!! I’ve hit it with algaecide, floc, and lots of chlorine. And I’ll have to do it all again in a day or two. The pool is a time and money suck—but so worth it when the summer heat is miserable. We love swimming at night and watching the bats fly overhead. (Yes, that wasn’t a typo!) We also moved our grill to the pool enclosure and have big plans for meals, drinks, etc., at poolside this year.
As for this weekend, I am hoping not to work too hard. I do have a looming book deadline, but I’ll try to only write the # of words I need for the day. I do have a set of edits that need to go out, but again, I’m not killing myself this weekend. I want some rest and to spend some time outdoors since it looks like we’ll have sunshine! I hope you all find some balance this weekend, too!
March was… It’s hard to describe. Crazy busy, super annoying. Big happy wins and crotchety pain-in-ass (literally) setbacks.
On the health front… I started the month still recovering from a busted tailbone, but by the third week, I sat comfortably (with a donut, still). My hand (last September’s fall) is still wonky and I met with the ortho guy who said the continued tightness and swelling are all normal, and if I keep doing my hand exercises, I should, someday, be able to curl my fist again and open a damn jar. Good news on the medical front? I had my second COVID shot and my dd had her first! Now, we have the 16 and 17-year-olds scheduled, too. We’re slowly getting there, but still masking and distancing, and will continue to do so until they have vaccines for the little ones.
On the work front… I finished writing Hardmanand published it! Woot! Thanks to everyone who read it and left a review. Reviews are so appreciated! I also completed 5 editing projects, two of which were loooonnng. They kicked my ass, but they are out the door! I got the rights back to some old books I published through some traditional houses a while ago, so I added them to my work schedule because they need a refurb, and one set of stories needs a readthrough because I want to write more in the series. To say the least, I’m super stoked.
On the art front… I am still slogging through the #100daychallenge, although I’m about ten days behind. Here are some of my favorites so far…
April
I completed my April calendar yesterday, and it already needs some fixes. I think April is going to be that kind of month—one where I have to be fluid and roll to evade the bombs and sinkholes. The big thing in April is that I have to write a book and publish it. Yeah, I haven’t written page one, but I generally do best when I’m running on adrenaline, and a hard deadline gooses me into creativity.
That book is Hot SEAL, In His Memory, and it’s going to be a hard one for me to write because it deals with the loss of a friend and a husband. If you haven’t pre-ordered your copy…
As for editing gigs, I presently have two scheduled, but I had that many scheduled for March as well, and look what happened! So, I’m hoping I’ll have the first couple of weeks pretty free to dive into my new story.
On the homefront, I’ve begun work to get the green scum out of the pool. That’s always a weeks-long thing. I can’t wait to swim!!!!! And my dd is putting in a garden. We’re hoping it does well and that we have a summer full of lettuce, cucumbers, strawberries, blueberries, peppers, and more! I love admiring the “fruits” of her labor, but diggin’ in dirt is not my thing. I’ll maintain the pool, thank you very much.
And I plan to catch up on the art challenge, too. I’m getting better at it, I think. But the purpose is to connect with my creative center. Writing has become a job in my mind. I need to find that spark again.
So, I’d love to hear whether you had big wins in March and plans for April! Chime in for a chance to win a $5 Amazon gift card!
Do you hear He-Man’s voice shouting that? Never heard it? I’ll fix that!
We lost power at 2 AM. I noted it and rolled over to go back to sleep, thinking that like 99% of the outages we have out here in the sticks that power would be back on in a couple of hours. At 5 AM, I woke up again, and the power was still off. Since I was the only one up, I put on some shoes and carried a flashlight down our long driveway to see whether I could see any lights across the road from us. Nada.
So, I called the power company, knowing that someone had to be the first person to notify them when there’s an outage or nothing gets done. I was the first. At hour number seven, I called back to see if they had any idea when power would be restored. They didn’t have a clue because a large pole went down in a swamp due to the storms we’ve had lately, and it wasn’t going to be an easy job to fix it.
Nice. A pole in a swamp. Who does that?
I had a good idea which swamp they were talking about, too. About a mile from us, way down the hill, is a place called Clear Lake. I think something was having fun naming it because it’s anything but clear. It’s a swamp. And it spreads outward every time it rains. Alligators live in it. In fact, about four years ago, a 10-foot gator took a stroll through an adjacent rice field. The kids love to fish there because they can watch the gators swim by when it’s warmer.
Anyway, we had to dig the generator out of the shop and start it up. We ran cords to the refrigerators. We have two. One for storage in the basement and one for the most-used items in the kitchen upstairs. With seven people in the house, we have to keep a lot of food on hand in case, you know, snowmaggedon or floods keep us cut off from town.
I know I sound like a complete hillbilly, but that’s country life. We love it. While the power was out, my SIL and dd headed to the store to buy vegetable plants for the garden they’re putting in. Yesterday, they were working on fencing to keep the horses inside. We had an incident the other day where some old fencing went down during a storm, and the horses ended up running through the ditch next to the highway to get to the green grass in our front yard. They’re penned in a small pasture now until the new fencing is done, but it’s raining today, so too wet to do any more fence work along the lower edge of the property where the ground is, you know, swampy, from the rain.
Anyway, the power is on again. Like a miracle. The day is shot so far is work is concerned, but I thought I’d pop my head in the door and tell you about my day. I’d love to hear about the weather-related issues you face on a regular basis.
