October 1st! We made it to level 10.

This little boy is a fox! :)

Good morning, everyone! 

We finally made it to October. This year has been pure insanity, and it doesn't look to be calming down just yet. Yet, we can hope for the best!

I've been kicking it around here lately with home improvements, cooking, cleaning, book writing, promotions, and even managed to order my 2021 planner (woohoo!). 

This coming weekend I'll even be cleaning out my chicken coop as the girls may be feeling a bit neglected lately since my 15yr old has been in charge of them while she was home from school for 6 months. Now that she's gone back to school I'm back out there tending to them and realized the teenager might have slacked a bit on cleanliness. 

On the Homefront, I've been spending a lot of time with my little grandson, Grady. He is a light in this crazy world. He's all smiles when he sees his Gammie and PopPop, and we adore him! He looks soooo much like his mommy (who looks soooo much like me!). 

On the book front, I'm still working on the 8th book in the Liz Baker series. I also wrote a little short Liz thing for a multi-author anthology coming up in the future. I've been reformatting a few of the eBooks to include extras like free short stories and even a full length book. I've joined a few multi-author promotions to boost newsletter subscribers and introduce my readers to other authors who are doing the same with their own lists. I've also been approached by a website looking to add the Alex & Fiona series to their novel-reading site (I haven't decided on that one yet). Lots of things in the works right now! 

In the meantime, I hope all of you are surviving the year. Hopefully October will be a good month and lead us all into the holiday season with a bit more calm.

And the winners are...

Congratulations to Brandy, Lori, and Crystal!  They are the winners of the June blog tour giveaway.  Three Liz Baker books and two e-books were given away, and I hope you ladies enjoy the books.

Next up for me...  VACATION!  Woohoo!  I'll be leaving Sunday for a week of fun in the sun with my hubby and the girls.  Oh, and Rex the Chihuahua and Spike the Boston Terrier.  ;)

We'll be spending a week camping, swimming, grilling, sightseeing, relaxing, and possibly some mini golfing.  Can you guess that I'm looing forward to it?  LOL!  I haven't been out of town since February, for the Book 'Em conference.  It was fun, don't get me wrong, but it was work nonetheless.

Next up will be my middle daughter's 12th birthday party, touring a local historical site that will be in the next Liz Baker book, then school starting back, and then....

The Undead Conference and Anne Rice's Wolf Gift Ball in New Orleans in October.  Yay!

All in all, it's going to be a busy four or five months, and that's before the holidays come around again.  LOL.  It'll be crazy, but a lot of fun.

Welcome to October!

I love the month of October!  I can't believe it's finally here.  October has always been a magical, fun, exciting month for me.  As children, it's the month we get to plan out our Halloween costumes, think about all the yummy goodies we'll receive, and maybe even throw a Halloween party of our own.

As an adult, I still enjoy costume decisions, parties, and the excitement the children share with me.  When else can you buy arm loads of costumes, make-up, decorations, and candies without being looked at sideways.  LOL!  Oh, and I can't forget about apple-picking and making all sorts of yummy things with those apples.

However, I also find that October is a happy month around here.  I like the milder temperatures, the changing leaves, playing outside as much as possible before cold weather hits.  Tim & I also like to plan a get-away for just the 2 of us in October.  For the last 2 years we've been going to Charlotte, NC for a Nascar race.  I doubted that we'd get to go this year, but Tim's determined to find tickets in my pre-assigned ticket price range.  LOL.  We'll see if he manages to do it before the race.  ;-)

Yes, yes, I know.  I spoil that man far too much.  Sex anytime, anywhere he wants, a nice library of Xbox games, meals he loves, attention whenever he wants it... yep, he's quite spoiled.  Oh well, I have fun, and he does anything I ask him to do. 

Anyway, back to October.  This is a fun month for me, and I know it'll go by too quckly.  Nonetheless, I still have a lot of work to do, too.  My goal is to completely finish the rewrites and edits for Time For Death before we go to the race (if we go).  Then I'll have about 2 weeks left in October before I have to worry about NaNoWriMo starting on November 1st.  I already know what story I'll write that month, but if I don't get done with this one I won't even bother starting another in November.  Soooo, I'm determined!

I did start the new chapter 13 today, and tomorrow I'll get more done on it after we run some errands.  Well, if Tim leaves my laptop alone long enough for me to work.  He likes my laptop for ticket searching over the desktop.  I might have to buy him his own after the new year so he'll leave mine alone and stop whining about using a purple one.  LOL.

Okay, since today is October 1st, it's time to announce that my September e-Book giveaway is over.  The winner of an Alex & Fiona book in e-Book form is Shannon S.!  Congrats and I hope you enjoy it!  I've already contacted the winner and hope to hear from her soon.  :-)
Thank you to all of my new blog followers, and be on the lookout for future goodies.  I love giving away goodies.  :-)  My next contest will probably be in December, so keep an eye out for announcements. 

That's it for me this morning.  I've got big, busy plans for today... and I need to keep Tim on his toes begging for race tickets.  It's always a lot of fun to see how much extra attention I get from him when he wants something big.  *giggle*  I got a foot rub last night!  Woohoo!

Have a great Thursday.  :-)



*Image: Taken by my oldest daughter back in Feb. Tim & I were getting ready to head off to that bed & breakfast we visited.*