I’m off to Little Rock for a doctor’s appointment. I plan to whine a lot about my neck and back. Whatcha wanna bet she says I need to spend less time at the computer? Huh.

Since I won’t be around, I thought I’d leave a question for you to think about. Answer with your gut. My gut went straight to the gutter with this one…

If you could invent a pair of glasses that would allow you to see abstract things (for instance, the motives behind someone’s actions), what would you want to see most of all?

I’d want to see other people’s dirty thoughts. Wouldn’t that be endlessly entertaining?

Quick Sunday Report Card for me to own up to what I accomplished this week:
* Finished more revisions of the big book, and added chapter 20
* Finished chapter 3 of Lone Star Lovers-3
* Finished the third installment of my free read

This coming week, I will finish the rough draft of the big book. I’ll wrap up LSL-3, revise and ship it! And I’ll turn my attention back to SOW, a paranormal novella I set aside when I got the current contract.

Now to the contest…
I have a series, just two books in it so far, called The Shadowlands. But EC doesn’t think my series name is sexy enough. So any of you who have read the stories, or have just read the blurbs for an idea of what they are about, I’d appreciate suggestions for a new series title. In addition, I need a title for a print book to include both of the currently existing stories. If I use your suggestion, or if it sparks an idea in me for a title, I’ll name you in the acknowledgements and give you a signed copy when it publishes (or if you can’t wait that long, I’ll let you choose something already in print).

Since two titles are needed there will be two possible winners here!

The third installment of Cat Tails: Bad Moon Rising is ready to read!

This is the story that you are helping me plot, chapter by chapter. And what a fine job you’ve been doing. I’m enjoying incorporating your suggestions. Be sure to catch up on the story, because we have work to do!

That’s right, it’s time for you to start thinking about what you want to see happen next. Give me your suggestions. Think about the questions you want answered about the cats and about that full moon that’s coming. Think about that old house she’s inherited. What’s special about the house or her lands? And what about those two sexy guys? You tell me.

Once I have your suggestions, I’ll conduct another poll so that you can all vote on what happens next.

DiDi woke with a start, the sound of the shower reminding her she needed to pee. But that wasn’t her only problem. She lay naked and dirty on top of her coverlet. A shiny handcuff affixed her right hand to one of the wooden spokes of the headboard of the bed in her motel room. Which narrowed down the possibilities of who was responsible for her predicament to precisely one man…

This is for you writers out there…

When you’re on the go, you don’t have to carry the latest in digital gadgetry to get ahead on your Work-in-Progress (WIP).

What you might try doing for those short windows of time throughout your busy day, whether sitting in the dentist’s office or waiting for a school bus, is carry a stack of index cards in your purse. I like the colored ones (color inspires me all by itself). I keep them at the bottom of my bag with a rubber band around them. When I have those small windows, I pull them out and jot down notes—maybe a smattering of dialogue, notes about setting that I need to layer into a scene, the outline of a scene, whatever pops into my mind—on the card. It doesn’t matter where you might currently be in your WIP. You can lay out the cards later next to your plotting grid/outline to figure out where these snippets will fill in the blanks.

If you have your scenes plotted already, you can carry your grid/outline wrapped around your index cards. Number the scenes on the grid/outline and put the reference number at the top of the index card so that you can plop what you’ve jotted down into your manuscript at the appropriate place the next time you’re sitting in front of your computer.

If you need reminders of what your characters look like, jot down their descriptions on a card to keep permanently in the stack.

If you need a reminder where your were the last time you opened your document, and need to work sequentially through your manuscript (some of us are linear thinkers!), print that last page of your story, fold it in half lengthwise, and wrap it around your stack of cards.

Index cards can be a handy, transportable writing tool that won’t break your piggybank!

I stay pretty healthy. Yeah, there’s more I could do—shed some more pounds, get some more exercise—but on the whole, I don’t have many complaints. Which is why the nagging aches in my shoulder, neck and lower back are really beginning to annoy me. I’m close to the finish line with a couple of projects, but this is going to wreck my concentration. I haven’t done anything so far to fix it. I have a regularly scheduled doctor’s visit on April 5th, but in the meantime, all I can think to do is pop aspirin and sleep on a heating pad. Why now? Why me? Okay, there’s the whine.

The whole back pain thing does make me realize how important health is to writers. We need our sleep to keep our minds functioning at top peak performance—you can’t have wild, hallucinogenic dreams without it. We need our fingers strong and agile to slam those words onto the page (imagining little finger calisthenics now?). And we have to be able to sit for long periods of time, so we really need to build those butt and back muscles to stand the strain of our everspreading rears. Yeah, had to have some fun with it.

But y’all wanna know who won the contest, right? By random number generator, the winner is…(drumroll) Lisa J! Lisa—email me!

Just a quick progress report. I like to do those—just for me. I figure if I put my writing life out there, including my goals, successes and failures, I’ll shame myself into stepping up my game up.

In April, I will finish Beloved Captor. I will get to the end of the short novella for Samhain. I will write a proposal for a Nocturne Bite, and I will write two short stories. That’s a lot. But I can do it, if I stay focused. Here goes…

Remember, you can still enter yesterday’s contest. I will pick the winner tomorrow. Today, you can earn two more chances to win!

Just a quick note here because I’m blogging at Access Romance today.

I wrote the big external climax, the big exciting battle, yesterday—and now, I can see the end of the book wrapping up very quickly over the next two days. Then I will have about a week’s worth of edits to complete before I can ship my Berkley book out the door. Cross your fingers it isn’t complete crap! I’m enjoying it.

I finished the rough draft of chapter 3 of Bad Moon Rising. Today, I’ll edit it, then I’ll look for a Beta reader or two to see how they like it and hopefully find any typos I couldn’t see. So it’s just days now until I will put it on my website for you to enjoy. If you haven’t read chapter 1 & 2—do it now! Bad Moon Rising