UPDATE: The winner is…Miki!
*~*~*

A Quick Note!

Over on my Collections website, we’ll be posting “Getting to Know You” blogs about the authors who wrote stories for the Silver Soldiers anthology. We’ll post every few days, and there will be contests! The first post went up today! Be sure to check out “Getting to Know Rhonda Lee Carver.”

Contest

Solve the puzzle. These are my personal choices for movie stars I’ll drop everything to sit down and watch. It’s a subjective list. My list. Josh Duhamel isn’t anywhere near Gary Oldman so far as skill, but he’s lovely, isn’t he? So, solve the puzzle then tell me who you’d add to the list for a chance to win a $5 Amazon gift card!

UPDATE: The winner is…Joy Boutwell!
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Just so you know, in case you don’t frequent my Upcoming/Coming Soon page, I have three books coming out in quick succession!

1. Danger Zone releases next Tuesday, April 18th!
2. Silver Soldiers: A Boys Behaving Badly Anthology releases May 9th!
3. Cold Hard Cash, the first in the We Are Dead Horse, MT, series releases May 23rd!

And that’s my Public Service Announcement for the day! If you haven’t already pre-ordered your copies, do so now! *I will pre-order. I will pre-order. I will pre-order.* Did my mesmerizing skills work? 🙂

The Saturday Puzzle-Contest

 First, solve the puzzle. Then, for a chance to win a $5 Amazon GC, tell me if this was a scene from a horror or sci-fi movie, what would happen next?
Don’t think too hard! Have fun with it! 

When you’ve been writing as long as I have (23 years!), you can have a rather large backlist of books. I’ve got a huge backlist! And yet, my new converts (er, readers) have likely never heard of some of them.

A case in point is a trilogy I wrote and published, um, eight years ago? I think. It’s when I first began toying with writing series based around military heroes. I’d done cowboys and vampires, but military heroes? I thought I’d be bored, after all, I lived that life. You know, I was a veteran… I worked with these cocky bastards. I’m over lusting after men in uniforms, right? (Never, actually. Ever.)

The series never sold well. And I knew what the issue was. I named the series after the travel agency my three heroines ran rather than putting the focus on the story. These were sexy thrillers. Couples were chased through the jungle by a drug cartel, dropped to the ocean floor in a shark cage with one tank of air, and stranded on a desert island.

So, I renamed the series: Danger Zone.

Now, I’m putting together a boxed set of all three stories to make it cheaper for you to buy all three. It’s a $5.98 savings. And it will be FREE to KU readers—for a short time! So, if you haven’t already read the series, here’s your chance. The stories are sexy—sexier and more explicit than my bounty hunters—and funny. The heroines are all “fish out of water” and dependent on their alpha males to get them out of danger, although they all rise to the occasion to help themselves, too. They aren’t wimps even if they are operating outside their comfort zone. Read a little about the stories, then click on that pre-order link!

Danger Zone, Books 1-3

Dangerous Liaisons
Pampered travel agent, roughing it at an anti-terrorist training school, escapes through the jungle with an undercover DEA agent when a drug lord mistakes her for a rival’s daughter.

Mutiny’s Bounty
A former Navy SEAL races to rescue the passengers aboard a luxury yacht after it’s captured by pirates, but first, he has to rescue the woman he’s trapped with inside a shark cage on the ocean floor.

It Takes a SEAL
A travel agent visiting friends in the Bahamas is stranded on a desert island with a sexy ex-SEAL after their private pleasure cruise is interrupted by men who mistake her lover for a reclusive billionaire.

Pre-order your copy here!
Order your print copy now!

UPDATE: The winner is…Gail S!
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This is the last day of March! Where does the time go? Without any further ado, I’ll dive right into my recap…

March

Work-related:

1. I completed work on my latest Montana Bounty Hunter story, Mica! And I published it!!!
2. I’ve been doing minimal work on the Silver Soldiers anthology, which comes out May 9th! Mostly, working on a promotional calendar with the authors in the anthology.
3. I completed only 3 editing projects for other authors in March. The injury to my hand severely impacted my ability to work at my usual pace, at least for the first half of the month.

Health-related:

1. I continued wearing the brace on my hand until March 17th. The break is healed, but now I have to work on physical therapy to improve my hand’s function. My hand aches after I use it for a while, and my fingers get numb when I hold a paintbrush or pen for very long.
2. I had a visit with a cardiologist this month. He has me wearing a monitor stuck to my chest for a week to see how it functions day to day. It’s beating a little slowly and has a slight arrhythmia. My blood pressure is still way too high, but the cardiologist adjusted my meds, and we’ll see how that goes.
3. I haven’t been dieting like I should, what with my heart and blood pressure issues, and I haven’t been great about cutting my salt intake. My weight loss is stagnant! I think I was a little depressed by my hand injury. I could tell because I wanted to sleep way too much and didn’t want to go out at all. I don’t like to wallow in negativity, but it has been hard to motivate myself to move forward.
4. As for physical activity, I’m not doing enough. Again, I’m feeling tired all the time. Which I know has to do with my weight, meds, and inactivity. All my issues are interrelated. I just need to get my fat ass off this chair and move more often.

Happiness-related: 

1. I’m back participating with my local art guild or humanities council. We had some planning meetings for upcoming exhibits and programs. It felt good to get out and mingle again.
2. I am still participating in the #the100dayproject art online art challenge. As of today, I’m on Day 38. Here are a few of my March pieces…

April

 

1. To complete my short story for the Silver Soldiers anthology.
2. To compile all the Silver Soldiers stories into the anthology and get it formatted for release on May 9th.
3. To begin work on Cold Hard Cash, the first of the We Are Dead Horse series.
4. To complete 4 editing projects in April!

For health related, I plan:

1. To restart counting those points for my Weight Watchers diet (I hate that word) and hopefully shed at least another 5 pounds, remembering, as always: Slow is good!
2. To continue to reduce salt, processed food, and incorporate foods good for blood pressure (spinach, broccoli, bananas, red wine).
3. To get the pool cleaned up—as soon as the weather cooperates—so that the minute the water is warm enough, I’m swimming (hopefully by end of April).
4. To begin walking and counting my steps.
5. I’ll re-dedicate myself to doing more housework, too, because my art room is a disaster. And cleaning is exercise, right?

For happiness-related, I plan: 

1. To continue producing some small piece of art every day as part of #the100dayproject. I’m volunteering several times a month to sit in the Art Center to keep it open. I use those quiet days away from my computer just to paint!
2. Try to complete one of the many already paid-for online art classes I’ve lined up to do.
3. To blog about art (on my Emerald Casket site) just to keep myself honest!
4. To work toward re-opening my Etsy store!

Contest

Comment on anything you’ve read in this post. Tell me what you’re doing to make yourself happier and healthier. Tell me what you plan to read in April…

Like I said, comment on anything for a chance to win a $5 Amazon gift card!

UPDATE: The winner is…Beverly!
*~*~*

Silver Soldiers releases in May. I have the other authors’ short stories edited and ready to plunk into the book. Now, I have to write my own story, and I don’t want to think. Or maybe I need a nudge and a hint. That’s where you come in.

I need an idea for an older ex-military or retiring-soon military dude. The only idea I’ve struck upon is a guy who yearns to go fishing and thinks living on a houseboat is his ticket to paradise. But I’d love to hear your ideas before I go down that rabbit hole. Offer a suggestion no matter how wild or silly (he doesn’t have to be of this world or this century). If you give me an idea, even one I never use, you’re entered to win a $5 Amazon gift card!

Plus, have you ever read any of the Boys Behaving Badly Anthologies? You might want to check them out here:
Delilah’s Collections

The seventh A Boys Behaving Badly Anthology is coming soon! This time the theme is mature warriors—those ex-military silver fox soldiers! The stories are short and very, very sexy!

In the coming weeks, the authors who contributed stories will be stopping in at the Delilah’s Collections website to chat about their stories and what inspired them. There will be contests! In fact, there’s one running on that website now. Go check it out! There’s a $10 GC to win!  Delilah’s Collections

Also, be sure to pre-order your copy now! This thick, juicy collection of 14 short stories will cost you only $0.99! Pre-order your copy of Silver Soldiers now!

Originally, I was titling this piece “Conquering Change,” but I haven’t conquered anything. Instead, I’m chipping away at needed changes. The biggest chunk I’ve chiseled off is making the decision that I had to change my job.

I’ve been a published author since 2016, but for almost three decades I’ve been a sports journalist. As a reporter, I’ve covered professional events, college events, and even taken some photos at a few NFL games. I spent twenty years covering a real love of mine, the Indianapolis 500. I covered my last race in 2016 to concentrate on being an author.

After six months, I missed being a sports reporter and found a compromise. I decided to cover high school sports for the local weekly newspaper whose coverage area included two high schools in my community. In a way, it was a dream job, because I had the freedom to continue being an author but still have the extra income of being a reporter.

I fell in love with being a reporter for high school sports. I developed wonderful relationships with coaches, athletes and others in the community. I watched some incredible events and athletes who never gave up, but more than anything, I loved seeing how these coaches were more interested in guiding kids to be good people more than winning games.

Then something happened.

I was diagnosed with cancer. I went through treatment and went into remission, but the lingering effects of treatment changed the game for me. I did go back to work, but it was difficult with the exhaustion and chemo brain causing trouble in interviews. It got better, but I was never like I was before treatment. Nine months again, the cancer returned. Now, I’m on a different treatment which is not as draining as chemo.

I still couldn’t keep up. The late nights, weekends, hard bleachers, press boxes with no heat or air took its toll, and I had to make a difficult decision.

I couldn’t do it anymore.

But what else could I do? Reporting was all I knew.

A CPA firm took a chance on me even though I had no experience working in an office or working with software other than Word. I think I nailed the interview when I said I was used to unhappy people yelling at me. Grandmothers at sporting events can be pretty scary.

I’m in my fifth month at this job, and I love it. I don’t work nights or weekends. I work indoors with heat and air conditioning, and my two other coworkers are already like family. I have a cozy chair to sit in, and the owner comes into the office maybe once a week. I’ve been yelled at twice over the phone by people who still haven’t received their tax refund. (The IRS is six or more months behind in processing paper returns). The yelling doesn’t bother me because it’s not something I did, and since I have the health issue I have, most problems seem pretty minor to me.

I guess what I want to say is big change is scary, and something we don’t want to do but are sometimes forced to do. At this point in my life, it was the right decision, and in doing so I have a whole new set of people who care about me and are fun to be around.

My writing has stalled a lot during the last two years, but I haven’t given up completely. I’ve had some short stories in anthologies and have another story in a Valentine anthology from the Indiana Romance Writers group which released February 1^st.

Once I adjust more to my new normal, I hope the writing juices began to flow as opposed to trickle. Until then, I’m going to enjoy this change.

https://www.amazon.com/Lucky-Valentine-Limited-Romance-Anthology-ebook/dp/B0BKJZ93TB
Apple Books: https://books.apple.com/…/lucky-valentine…/id6444009196
Kobo: https://www.kobo.com/…/lucky-valentine-a-limited…
Smashwords: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/1277604