I don’t get those women who want to bear children after forty or, God forbid, fifty! Children are for the young. I’ve only had a small three-day dose, but I’m exhausted. Have you ever tried to tell a 1-year-old that the reason she cries is that she needs sleep? Or that dropping her toy over the side of the playpen out of reach isn’t a screaming offense? There’s no reasoning with her. And although the 5-year-old has some verbal skills, she still doesn’t get the concept of let’s sit so the dog doesn’t get overexcited and stops barking. Nope, she runs circles around the couch yelling at him to shut up. There’s a reason I had a house husband. I don’t have the maternal gene.

It also doesn’t help that there’s so much Irish running through their veins. Everything that happens, happens loudly.

Yesterday when the 1-year-old went down for a nap, I did manage to finish another chapter of the big book, but I didn’t make it back to any of the smaller projects. Maybe I’ll work up the nerve to put the shock collar around the neck of the barracuda with a tail (the dachsund) so he will stop barking and I can think. He’s old and grumpy and likes to check you with a bruising (not puncturing) bite. Or maybe I can just shoo him out the door and he can go play with the pit bull next door.

For stories, that is. I love it when readers tell me they’d like to see a story about a guy and girl who…

Yeah, and I’ve written a few custom stories like that. It’s fun and challenging to take input and then craft something special and unique. So, if you had a writer willing to take suggestions, what sort of story are you dying to read? Tell me, and you might see it in print.

So be creative. Or just have fun. Sometimes the most off-the-wall ideas make the most interesting stories because then the writer has to think a bit about how something like that might actually happen.

You would have laughed if you’d seen me this morning, standing on the back porch watching two dogs, butt-to-butt, getting it on. My life. The 5-year-old is off at school, and I’ll be writing my fingers to the bone while I have some quiet time (if the 1-year-old cooperates).

Yesterday was not a good day. One of the little Yorkies I loved tangled with a logging truck and lost. I watched it happen and there wasn’t a thing I could do to stop it. She slipped out of the fence and ran for it. This morning I’m still down. Such a sweet little thing, but my only consolation was that she didn’t suffer.

I’m back at the red-headed hellion’s house for the next few days, and since she’s on dial-up, I limit my access to Internet. Her menagerie is a lot of work. The chickens are the easy part, if I can manage to dodge the rooster—he’s just plain evil.

I did get a short story out the door yesterday before I left. Cross your fingers it made the cut! Thanks to Brandy and Heather who read it to make sure it didn’t suck too badly. Today, I’ll keep my laptop on my lap (imagine that) and work while I keep the 1-year-old away from the light sockets.

Between this blog, the After Midnight blog and Facebook, there were 43 entries in yesterday’s contest! So without further ado (another of those phrases I don’t understand), the winner (by random number generator) is…Christiana Toups! Christiana, email me!!

Color me shocked when the announcement was made yesterday. My very first title at Samhain was the most downloaded book for 2009! Thanks to everyone who bought it—and if you haven’t yet, well, post a comment today and you’ll be in the running to win it. If you already have SADDLED, then I’m sure I can find something in my backlist of eBooks to interest you!

In fact, post a comment here, then mosey on over to After Midnight Fantasies to check out my next release, Bad, Bad Girlfriend. If you post a comment there you will get a second shot at the prize!

5 Stars from Just Erotic Romance: “…I couldn’t put this story down! It was danger, betrayal, sexy and fun all rolled together into the perfect erotic romance. The plot was brilliant, and the characters unique…The sexual scenes will make you clamp your knees together and dream of a sexy cowboy or two of your own…”

5 Stars from Vixen Reviews: “…What starts out as an innocent effort to warm Kate up turns into some of the most erotic sex I have ever read along with some of the best dialog I have seen in a book so far this year…The chemistry and interaction between the three of them is well written and keeps you chuckling and turns you on. The characters themselves are so well written you feel for them and you want them to make their alternative relationship work….Saddled is heart-stopping and fascinating!!!!!!!…”

4.5 Blue Ribbons from Romance Junkies: “…Delilah Devlin’s storylines never fail to pull readers into the story and SADDLED is no exception…Of course the sex scenes are scorching and adventurous with the perfect blend of emotional turmoil to ensure readers keep Ms. Devlin’s name at the top of their ‘must read’ list.”

Slippery when naked…

When Bobby Blackhawk and Cale Yancey see a car slide off the highway and into an icy creek, they’ve got only minutes to get the beautiful driver out alive. And only one way to save her from hypothermia: take her to their isolated cabin, get naked…and hope like hell that when she wakes up, she doesn’t scream the place down.

Katherine Duvall opens her eyes in a strange bed, and the tingles flooding her body aren’t entirely due to restored circulation. She’s snuggled between two handsome men, one a gruff, gentle giant, the other a sexy, playful Native American. Having just left her fiancé romping with another woman, she’s not quite as shocked as she might have been.

In fact, these two lonesome cowboys could be the perfect bookends to satisfy her hunger for revenge and bolster her dented self esteem. It’s not long before their raging hormones are melting the snow on the cabin roof.

To their surprise, they find something else is melting, too. Their hearts…

“Samhain Publishing is very pleased to present this trophy to Saddled by Delilah Devlin for 1st place in the Best Selling E-Book 2009.”

Another unproductive week. Only 17 pages progress. But understandable given family obligations. All I can say is thank goodness I was way ahead of schedule when real life intruded.

I caught up on sleep last night. Watched a really terrible disater flick—2012. I’ll watch it again, no doubt. I completely love cheesy, end-of-the-world B movies, and this one had several real groaner scenes. I wish there had been a surprise or two, but everything was pretty formulaic. The only character I truly enjoyed was Woody Harrelson’s (did I spell that right?), over-the-top portrayal of the crazy prophet of doom who stays to watch the fireworks when Yellowstone blows. The lesson here—never, ever trust my taste in movies.

Monday night, I head back over to my daughter’s house. I sure as hell hope I can figure out how to get some sleep and that the dogs are exhausted by their good time. I’ll take my laptop with me and try to get some work done. If I’m still struggling, I won’t beat myself up. I have time to finish the big book. The shorts might have to fall by the wayside.

Y’all have a good week. Thanks to everyone who expressed their outrage on yesterday’s Facebook posting. I knew I wasn’t crazy to be outraged!

Daughter has the weekend off, so I made a mad dash for the door—after dropping the 5-year-old off at Saturday detention at the high school. I mean, really, what can a 5-year-old do that warrants three Saturdays of detentions? She looked so small and lost with all those teenagers when I dropped her off. Grrrr… Stupid administrators. I think they meant it as punishment for the parents because my daughter refused to let them spank the kid when she got into a fight at school.

But I’m home. Not that I’ll be getting any work done today. I’ve had a total of 7 1/2 hours of sleep the past two nights. Those damn dogs kept me up. The shepherd and the malinois tied again last night at 1:00 AM, and daughter and I held both dogs’ collars as the dogs stood butt-to-butt, joking about how dirty we felt. The male must have been insulted because when he finally withdrew from the bitch he sprayed our feet with doggie-cum.