Welcome to March.

Good morning!  Here we are entering yet another new month that happens to line up on a Monday.  I've always thought of that as a great way to start a month.  Get the first Monday out of the way and move on.  Of course, it could be that I like months beginning on Mondays because payday on the second Wednesday of the month comes even quicker.  LOL.

I spent the weekend working and spending time with the family.  Tim & I had Friday night to ourselves with the girls at my mom's house.  We spent it at home making dinner, watching movies, drinking, and having a great time together.  We even slept until 9am the next morning.  Talk about nice!

Saturday we cleaned house, did laundry, cleaned the car, and spent the day with the kids.

Sunday, boy, Sunday was interesting.  The in-laws were out of town for the weekend, meaning we didn't have to go anywhere.  I spent most of the day working on formatting Time For Death.  Decisions have been made, plans are being worked through, and I'm feeling quite optimistic about this new book series.  I know Liz will be glad that I'm moving forward with her life.  LOL.

Speaking of good new.  My March newsletter will go out to al subscribers on Wednesday morning.  I'll be making a fun announcement in it that I hope may people will take advantage of. Don't miss it! (Click here to sign up)

As a way to prepare for new things, I did a little updating to the website over the weekend.  Mainly just some organization and moving things around.  During the work, I was thinking about moving this blog over to the website.  What do you think?  It would take me some time to get it set up, but at least then the blog would be right where everything else is at.  Let me know what you think ---->  (Survey link)

All right, time for me to get going.  Tim took the kids to school, I've already fed the youngest and folded two loads of laundry, and it's time for my breakfast before getting back to work for Liz.  She's quite demanding at times, and now that I'm ready to finish her first story she's even more demanding.  LOL!

Have a great Monday!

Snow again? Really?

Why must Mother Nature torture me so?  Why is there all this white stuff covering the ground, vehicles, porch?  This is nonsense!  Ugh!

Here in north Georgia we somehow accomplished a snow accumulation of around 2-3 inches (just going by what's on my front porch).  I don't know why, but I do know that I don't like it one little bit.  "I have plans," she screams skyward.  "I don't want anymore winter!"

Yes, yes, I've mentioned that snow is pretty.  And yes, I was probably excited about that first snow of the season, weeks and weeks ago.  But now, I'm downright, utterly, extremely sick and tired of all this cold, mushy, dreary weather.  Not only that, but this new batch of snow is really putting a kink in our plans to go out of town next week.

If this mess isn't all out of here by tomorrow we'll have to cancel our reservations at the camp ground.  :-(

On the upside, before the snow started yesterday we waved good-bye to my van as it was hauled away by a tow truck and taken to the mechanic.  Yay!  I can't wait to get her back.  The only thing I'll miss from driving Tim's car around are his huge speakers.  I can listen to my music the way it was intended to be listened to... LOUD!  Oh well, I'll trade thumping speakers for space and comfort any day.  :-)

Today, well, I don't know what I'll be doing today.  I had planned to do some camper cleaning and packing, but there's still a lot of snow out there.  Burrrr!  I do know that we'll go out to pick the kids up from my mom's around noon.  I have some errands to run, but don't know if we'll get to them in this mess.  Overall, it's a day of whatever happens happens. 

A little update on Time For Death:  There is this literary agency that's been my top pick for a while now.  I've been putting of submitting a query to them for a while.  No one likes rejection, but that's part of a writer's life.  Nonetheless, I put off submitting because of the fear of being rejected by my to choice... kind of like college choices.  However, I finally broke down and submitted to them.  You can't find success by sitting back in fear or uncertainty.  If you don't try, you'll never have the chance to succeed.

So I queried my favorite agency, hit the send button on that e-mail, jumped off a cliff in hopes of hitting water instead of concrete.  I told Tim, "There's no taking it back now."  And now I wait... 

Like I told someone the other day, "In this game, you wait for them.  They don't cater to you.  You'll hear from them when they get good and ready for you to hear from them."  We writers must be patient and try our hardest to resist the temptation to obsess.  Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't.

Okay, that's it this morning.  I suppose I should go do something.  Bah, humbug to winter!  Try to stay warm if you're dealing with this nastiness too. 

How I write, on this sunny Sunday morning.

Good morning to all you wonderful ladies and gentlemen reading this.  I hope you've had one fabulously extraordinary weekend.  Mine has been pretty darn good, if I do say so myself.

Yesterday our oldest daughter had her very first school dance.  It was very sweet, and really only the tip of the iceberg for her.  She's in 7th grade and this was a two hour "social" at school.  She wore jeans, a black t-shirt, black heeled boots, and her jean jacket.  I fixed her hair and put her very first full face of make-up on.  She was so excited.

There was no date for this dance.  She met up with all her friends, and from what I hear they had a fantastic time.  She even brought a friend home when I picked her up.  We ended up with a sleepover buddy, but they were very well-behaved and had fun. 

I had a great writing day yesterday.  Today, once I find the time to write, I'll hit the halfway point.  25K here I come!  I can't believe the month is half over.  I wasn't even planning to do NaNo this year, so it's no wonder that I probably won't be finishing early this year.  However, I know I will at least finish on time.  Woohoo!

I love how a story starts out one way, you have an idea of how it's all going to go, and them *WHAM* it takes a turn you weren't expecting and the entire story changes.  I had a character in this story who was going to be a helper in the story.  However, things went dark and he's actually turned into the bad guy!!  Eek!  I wasn't expecting that one!  It's very exciting to see where my characters go and down what paths they'll take me.

I'm a character driven writer.  I let them take the lead in a story.  I have an "idea" of what the story will be about, or what the ending will be, but I never know how my characters will create the ending.  I couldn't imagine being the type of writer who plots the entire story out from beginning to end.  I actually tried to do that once and the story went so far off of my story outline that I couldn't believe I'd even tried it that way.

One thing that I love about being this kind of writer is the fact that even I don't know what will happen next.  I've had moments with all of my books where I will literally say out loud, "Wow! I wasn't expecting that to happen."  Tim just looks at me like I'm nuts, but it's true.  LOL.  I really didn't know that was going to happen next until my fingers type it out.

So anyway, that's how it works for me.  I let the characters take me where they may and I'm simply along for the ride.  :-)

Right now I have banana bread in the oven.  Once it's done, I have to get dressed, take the oldest's friend home, and head to the hospital to visit Tim's mom. 

She's still in intensive care, with no hint of when she'll be moved to a regular room.  They're saying this hospital visit will be a long one for her, and the doctors were even discussing life support wishes with both her and FIL.  And when we were up there Friday, the nurses had been discussing the option of putting a breathing tube down her throat.  It doesn't sound good to me.

I'm off!  If anyone wants fresh banana bread, come on over!  There'll be plenty for sharing.  :-)  Have a great day!

Tuesday! It'll be a good day.

Good morning!  We have been blessed with the ability to wake up to yet another Tuesday.  Be happy!

It's cloudy and rainy here in north Georgia, but I'm feeling frisky and energetic this morning.  It's just past 8 am and I've washed two loads of laundry, fed the youngest and took a shower.  I still need to eat something myself, but not sure what I want yet.  Tim took the big girls to school for me, so that was nice.  :-)

Yesterday turned out to be a good writing day, even though it felt like I was running the roads all day.  So many things to do in one little day just make it feel rushed and overwhelming.  Luckily I'm a stubborn Capricorn that knows how to get things done.  ;-)

Today will be a smoother day, with less running around.  I'll be able to have another good writing day.  The story is finally picking up speed for me.  Took three chapters, but hey, that's what edits and rewrites are for AFTER the story is on my virtual paper.  LOL.  Right now it's all about just getting the story, from beginning to end, written down and out of my head.  Later I'll come back to add scenes, change scenes, delete scenes, rewrite those things Liz said to Chad when they were rolling around on the ground, delete what Cole said about Hamish, and numerous/millions of other things that'll need to be done and un-done.

Yeah, edits will be a bitch on this one, but it'll be well worth it in the end.  I hate edits!  Nonetheless, they improve any story one hundred fold from its first daft state.  No one but the writer should ever, EVER lay eyes on a first draft of anything... much less a story.  Nooooo!!  Never do that!  It's death to any story when you show the first draft to someone.  You know it's bad, all first drafts are bad, there can be no exception to this rule.  Just don't do it.  And certainly don't ask to see mine 'cause I'll adamantly refuse your request.

Well, I guess I better change out of my shorts and tank top and into something appropriate for November.  Tim wants to go buy Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 when the game store opens.  He's been talking about it for a couple of weeks, so it has been planned. 

I doubted he'd get it since it's $60, but he made some extra cash helping his dad and I always make him trade in an old game when he wants a new one.  So he should have plenty of money to get it without asking me for more.  LOL.  Gotta train those husbands like you do the kids sometimes.  We'll hit our 16th anniversary after the first of the year, so no, the training never ends.

But at least that'll keep him busy while I'm working today.  Woohoo!!

Have a wonderful Tuesday!  Make the best of it and you'll be a happier person.

On your mark, get set, WRITE!!!

Welcome to Sunday, and November 1st!  Today is the day that the National Novel Writing Month begins.  Woohoo!  I'm super excited about this month and hope to have the first draft of the next Liz Baker story completed by November 30th (preferably sooner).

I won't be able to get started on my word count until we return from visiting the in-laws today.  However, I do have loads of notes, ideas, and thoughts on paper, in the computer file, and stored away in my head.  I have the book's computer file all set and ready for the story to begin.  It's open and sitting here on my desktop so that I'll be able to jump right in when we get home.  Woohoo!

Okay, so last night was Halloween.  We took the kids and Rex the Super Pup out to forage for sweet things to eat. It was sooooo crowded in the neighborhood that we go to (my grandmother's), and we got rained on.  Blah!  Therefore, I was thoroughly thrilled that their candy buckets ended up full to the tippy top after only 8 houses.   Yay! 

After that we loaded them back into the van and partook in the 50 cent corndog deal at Sonic for their late dinner.  It's not everyday that you can feed three children for only $7 (including fries).  Tim & I had Subway.  Yum!

Rex the Super Pup had a decent time.  He freaked out when he met my mom's chihuahua, but that only lasted a moment and then he was intrigued by this other dog so close in size.  LOL.  However, he was happy when we returned home and he was back on his own turf.

Well, I'm off.  We need to get ready for Tim's parents and the back home for me to get started on NaNoWriMo. Once I get the word count widget on here (on the left), you'll probably notice that some days will be low in word count and others will be extremely high.  My ideas come in spurts--some are small and some are gigantic.  :-)

Have a great Sunday and try not to get a tummy ache from all the candy you collected last night.

Friday Run Around

Good Friday morning!  I'm so glad it's Friday.  I've been looking forward to the weekend.  Next Monday the kids are even out of school, so we get to sleep late for 3 days this weekend.  Yay!

Today Tim and I have to do our Friday run around.  We have errands (read: groceries, groceries, groceries) to run.  I've finally convinced Tim that my weekly errand day works out so much better than him wanting to go to town 4x a week.  My way has been working (and saving gas) for all these years.  I must be doing something right.  LOL!

Today I have only 2 more chapters to edit.  Woohoo!!  Then this evening I'll start finishing off the ending and then VOILA!  I'll print it all out again so I can just sit back and read it.  Yay me!!  I love it!  I think Tim's even happy for me to get this one finished, and not complaining about having time to finish it.  LOL.

Hopefully in a couple of weeks I'll have some good reviews from my test readers to share with you.  Then it'll be time for NaNoWriMo... and the next book.  I'm calling this series the Liz Baker saga.  We'll see how that goes.  LOL.

Okay, I'm off for the day.  I hope you enjoy your Friday and have a fantastic weekend.


*Image:  MisMade*