“The biggest sin is sitting on your ass.” ~ Florynce Kennedy

I’m hoping she meant that figuratively or I’m screwed.

It’s the day after Snowmageddon. We got a paltry five inches. Not that five inches isn’t enough to halt all traffic (including school buses!). Yesterday, I had the hellion and her kids here because they were “bored”. Like I’m the entertainment? Little high-pitched voices screaming, “She hit me!”, “No-ny! No-ny!” (she can’t say Nina), and the sounds of things crashing to the floor, sent the muse into hiding. I should have unpacked the Pack ‘n’ Play and given them both boxing gloves.

Still, no excuses. Today, I will pay the price with double the pagecount to make up.

I’m sure what Florynce meant was that the greatest sin is doing nothing. Doing nothing when it’s time to speak. Doing nothing when it’s time to act.

Well, I’m acting now. Just on my ass.

“I survived because I was tougher than everyone else.” Bette Davis

I can claim “tough”.

I served 14.5 years in the U.S. Army (including a stint in the Middle East during the Gulf War), plus another 7 in the Guard.

I gave birth to a 10.5 pound kid without so much as an aspirin.

I worked full time, wrote full time, and put up with a 3-hour commute each day.

So why do I want to whine like a 5-year-old because I’m up at the butt-crack of dawn now and can’t go back to sleep?

It’s my own damn fault. I looked at my calendar, carved up what I still had to accomplish for the rest of the month, then did a little backward planning to come up with my To Do list for the next few days. Today’s has a hellish 30 items I need to get through to keep on track. I’ve been making great headway on the Viking story, but shoved everything else aside this week to make sure I kept focused on goal #1, but I can’t afford to let all the other little things slide either. They add up. And they keep my edgy.

So, here I am at O-dark-thirty, getting the the first thing scratched off my battle list. And if I’m reverting to Army-speak, it’s because I feel like I need to roll out today like I’m getting ready to cross the LD (the line designated to coordinate the departure of attack elements). Hooah!

“I am tough, ambitious, and I know what I want. If that makes me a bitch, okay. I can throw a fit, I am a master at it.” Madonna

I promised pictures from Romanticon today, but I think I will have to wait until Saturday. I’ve been struggling to master all the changes going on in my life and make my daily page count. Monday through Friday, I’m babysitting little ones for my daughter. So, my work schedule has to be crammed into nap times. (Did I mention that my daughter and her two children moved in with me?)

Good news is, I did make progress yesterday—on both the Viking story and the next Cat Tails installment. I should have chapter four of Bad Moon Rising ready to go by the weekend. I know some of you have been eager to see what happens next to DiDi and Mason.

I chose Madonna’s quote today, because it resonates with me right now. It’s Thursday. I’ve been feeling my way through a workable writing schedule all week. I’ve had to really focus on what’s most important right now. Kids first, of course. But for those spare moments, pages! And based on what I wrote yesterday, very sexy pages. My Valkyrie girl is learning what it is to love someone and learning how to receive pleasure from a man. Yummy stuff!

Anyway, I bet you want to know who won yesterdays’ contests. I’ll have to wait to hear from Taige to see who her winner is, and I’ll make sure she posts the name in the commments on her post. My winner from the Access Romance contest is…Patricia K [horseunicornkey@aol.com]!

Back to being a bitch. Hoo-ah!

“The requirements of romantic love are difficult to satisfy
in the back seat of a Dodge Dart.”
Lisa Alther

I pulled this from my The Goddess Within mini-book. Seemed like a good jumpstart to a conversation. Agree or disagree? What constitutes romantic love?

The cliche would be chocolate and flowers. A slow, gentle wooing. I have to admit, I’ve never—not once—experienced that sort of love in my life. I think that’s due to my personality. I always preferred to be “handled”, if ya know what I mean. I tend to challenge guys. Even if they’ve been that romantic man with someone else, they’re the rough and ready guy for me, or they don’t last long.

What’s been your experience? What’s the most romantic thing that’s ever happened to you? By your definition!

I have bursts of being a lady, but it doesn’t last long.
~ Shelley Winters

I feel like I’ve been away a very long time, but I haven’t gone anywhere. I tell you, I’m addicted to my blog. If I don’t start the day with a new post (of my own!), it’s like I woke up in someone else’s bed. Icky. Disoriented. Ooh. I feel a story coming on.

So I didn’t get to go to Lora Leigh’s big party. Everyone who went is sending messages to each other saying what a nice time they had, and I know the experience is like meeting a sister you never knew because you have EVERYTHING in common—or at least a love of books. I really hate that I missed it.

I wish I could say that I spent the time I was supposed to be gone working productively on writing the stories I have looming, but I can’t. In the back of my mind, I had set apart those days for play, and there was no reprogramming me. Didn’t help that I felt like crap too.

Fun stuff did happen though. Like until today I was #1, #6 and #10 on Samhain’s MBaM site after Four Sworn released. (That’ll change as soon as the new releases come out today!) And Pleasing Sir is cooking along on Kindle. I have a brand new obsession—hitting the refresh key on the sales reports on Kindle. Seriously, thanks to everyone who bought the books. I have serious cash flow issues coming up—something fun to add to my website that will cost me a bundle, but that I hope will add to your enjoyment of my new series starting in January.

In the meantime, I’m ramping up for the release of Darkness Captured next week, and I will be starting a countdown contest on Thursday to celebrate. If you want to win something, you better be paying attention!

Don’t you love today’s quote? Now, there was a woman who lived with no apologies for her excesses in men or food.

Until you’ve lost your reputation, you never realize
what a burden it was, or what freedom really is.
~ Harper Lee

I want to be like that one day. A one-line quote in The Goddess Within mini-book. Guess I better start saying pithy, quotable things, huh?

I’m supposed to be winging my way to West Virginia today. And there’s supposed to be a guest blogger here, but she didn’t show up. So it was fate, right? I’m not supposed to be at Lora Leigh’s big party this year. Nope, instead I’m sitting in my jammies, nursing a cold. I’ve emptied two bottles of Nyquil (lovely stuff) and a box of Kleenex (the kind with the aloe because my poor nose is sore).

Yesterday, I thought since it’s so warm still outside and the pool water is still in the 80′s, what difference does it make if I’m wet? Hmmm…my ears ache now because I couldn’t help myself. I couldn’t just look at the bugs and leaves the robot wasn’t sucking up. I went “pearl-diving”.

Back to that quote from the author of To Kill a Mockingbird. I flipped through my little book looking for inspiration, and that quote was the first to catch my eye. Why? It really struck home. I spent a lot of years in the military, a corporate job, a classroom—and I had to hide the wild child inside me. When I started writing, I let my inner vixen free to roam wherever. I kept my identity a state secret.

These days, I don’t care. I no longer pull a paycheck from anyone who cares what I do with the rest of my time, or what my morals are. I am free to be me. People ask what I write, and if they are old enough to send into cardiac arrest, I say, “I write very racy romances,” and give them a wink. Sorry, had to pause to clean the screen. I sneezed. The rest, I tell them I write in the very lucrative genre of erotic fiction. I don’t have a reputation left to lose—unless it’s for writing really steamy, really nasty pervy books. I’m loud and proud and out!

So, no more soapbox. Just thanks to everyone who’s bought my latest two releases. Four Sworn and Pleasing Sir are chugging along nicely as far as I can tell. I really don’t know how to get the word out any better than I do. I know this blog has a limited audience—mostly friends who’ve been with me a while. I kind of like that, but I would also like to know how to reach more people, because one of these days, I’d love to have an even bigger, badder rep.

I saw this on one of my loops where an author was talking about overcoming the doubt critics can cause, whatever your job or calling. I love it!

“It is not the critic who counts, not the man who points out how the strong man stumbled, or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena; whose face is marred by the dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs and comes short again and again; who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions and spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best, knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who, at worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly; so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory or defeat.”
Theodore Roosevelt (Paris Sorbonne,1910)

Now, if I could just convince my inner critic to embrace that sentiment.

Most days, I’m scarily focused. The past week, again because I’ve had too much time on my hands to think, I’ve dithered. I’m not a ditherer. I’m a doer. I do…things. (Can you tell how much Grey’s Anatomy I’ve watched lately? I sound like Meridith!)

So just what did I get done this past week?

I played with opening scenes to two new stories. Just slapping down dialogue, trying to figure out who the characters are. Nothing’s solid yet. Very vaporous in fact. I have to keep working them to “gel” stage. But I’m thinking one will be about two men teaching the woman playing with both their passions a lesson. Yeah, I love it when guys turn the table on a woman, take charge, and rewrite “The Rules”.

I revised and shipped MIK-7 and Raw Silk to my new editor at Ellora’s Cave.

I completed a proposal for a new novel and sent it off to my agent. Hopefully, he will find it as much fun as I did and get behind it. Send up a message to whatever deity you worship that he finds it has legs. I love it.

That was all I accomplished writing-wise this week. I have to get motivated to plow deeply into something this next week.

Lastly, a BFF and I booked tickets for a cruise in December. As soon as we paid, I remembered I hadn’t seen my passport in a while. I tore apart my office and couldn’t find it, so yesterday I headed to the post office to apply for a new one. Have to start a countdown list of things to do and purchase before the trip. So if any of you have gone on cruises before, I’d love some advice. This will be my first. She knows someone who works aboard the ship we’ll be sailing on, and he will be our port guide. We plan to get up to plently of mischief aboard. Can you imagine the questions we will ask the crew? We’re both writers, so we’ll be looking for good places to stash a body or have a quick tryst. Murder and mayhem on the high seas!