Another month, that is. Four more months until the end of 2020! And it can’t happen fast enough, because I’m convinced this year is cursed.

I lost my mom, COVID hit, self-isolation began, killer hornets invaded, protests in the midst of isolation began, school began online, twin hurricanes threatened the coast… What’s next?!

Oh yeah, an election looms. So, the worst is yet to come, I’m sure. Be looking for more apocalyptic signs—the Kardashians will give away half their fortunes to fund food banks, locusts will swarm the midwest before harvests, a killer arctic storm will push south to freeze-dry everything in its path, and we’ll be streaming across the Rio Grande to safety… Oh yeah, that movie’s already been made.

Just streaming thoughts, y’all. September will see the start of Fall. I’m ready for it. I love sweaters and fuzzy socks. I’ll miss the pool, but I’m happy the year’s almost over because it’s been hellacious, right?

August is done. The one bright spot for me was the release of Cage, the first of my Montana Bounty Hunters: Dead Horse, MT series.

I finished off multiple editing jobs, as well. Created a bunch of little paintings. One little crochet project.

But what’s ahead for September?

I’m hoping to finish Lawless and the last of the With His SEAL Team stories.

I’m planning on taking several online art classes this month, so I’ll be posting pics on FB and Instagram—it keeps me motivated to produce. I’m also going to be making headband/ear warmers for the girls so they’ll be ready for cold weather. So, plenty to keep me busy while I’m writing, helping kids with online assignments, etc. It will be a busy fall. 🙂

And that’s it for my update. Hope I didn’t bore you too much with my August recap and look into September! I’d love to hear what apocalyptic signs you would add to my list as well as hear about any goals you’ve set for yourselves!

UPDATE: The winner is Jennifer Beyer!
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What a week, right? At this time last week, our biggest worry was how the kids’ schooling would go when they began their online classes. As it turns out, it went very, very well.

The kids do have schedules and requirements to be online. The little one’s teacher warned students they’d be meeting at the beginning of each day online, and she didn’t want to see any pajamas or shirtless bodies, which the 7-year-old decided meant dressing up in new “school clothes” every day. She loves getting up, eating her breakfast, dressing for school, then smiling as she watches the other kids come on line. The other kids dress but are more casual about it. They all have daily lessons they have to complete, but the nice thing is—if they apply themselves—they can finish their requirements by the afternoon. There’s no recess, no movement between classes. No wasted time. My dd stays busy going from the little one’s and the middle kid’s bedrooms to help them negotiate the online programs and work through their homework, but she’s on top of it. We can do this.

So, what else happened this week? We prepared for Hurricane Laura because, as far inland as we are, we’ve never been under a hurricane or tropical storm warning before. As it turned out, we were lucky, because the storm hooked to the east, and while we sustained some hammering rain and winds, we didn’t lose a roof. Sure, we have tons of cleanup in the yard, but we stayed safe and even kept our power throughout the storm.

As for me, I was a bit scatterbrained last week. I found it hard to concentrate on work because of all the changes and commotion. I have my work cut out for me this week, but I’m ready for it. I’m working on my September plan today, and I’m hoping to keep it relaxed as opposed to slammin’. We’ll see. I have to start strong.

Plus, I’m looking at what I want to accomplish this Fall so far as arts and crafts are concerned. One thing I did accomplish while the storm was hammering the house was this…

I’m not much of a crocheter because I prefer simple and fast. This was both. Now, my dd has orders in for more for her and her girls. So, that’s one more thing to add to my Fall projects list! 🙂

Contest

Tell me about any of your Fall projects or plans for a chance to win a $5 Amazon gift card!

More Open Contests!

Enter while you still can!

1. #1 place I want to visit post-COVID! (Contest–2 winners!) — Win a FREE book!
2. Reina Torres: Some Help from a Friend (Contest) — Win a FREE book!
3. Flashback: Truly, Madly…Deadly (Contest–3 Winners, Plus Excerpt!) — Win a FREE book!

Well, Hurricane Laura hooked to the east once it entered Arkansas, so my little town was spared the tornadoes, the 90-mile-an-hour gusts, and the heaviest rain. Whew! We do have a huge yard/pasture cleanup adventure ahead of us because of all the fallen branches, but no huge limbs landed on the house so we’re breathing a sigh of relief. We were even spared power outages. The town next to us had hours of outage, but not us!

While we waited, I kept my computer powered down and unplugged because I didn’t want to risk any damage, so that left me with art projects to keep my time filled with something kind of mindless.

The night before, my sister, Elle James, visited. We caught up on family gossip and she delivered bags of clothes she was shedding from her closet to my girls. There’s nothing quite like her hand-me-downs—some of which look as though they were never worn. It’s always like Christmas. She had a small jewelry bag amid her bounty. I grabbed it up because I liked the pattern and thought it might inspire an art project—and it did.

This was one of the pieces I worked on while the storm raged outside…

So, now that everything’s kind of back to normal, I’ll reset my brain to think about “words” instead of “pictures”. It’s actually rather hard for me to bounce back and forth because painting is such a happy place for me to be these days.

As for anyone who’s made it this far into this post ( 🙂 ), here’s a list of open contests. Be sure to enter today! Some are going away… Tomorrow, I’ll be back with something fresh and fun! ~DD

Open Contests

1. Cage is out! (Puzzle-Contest) — Win an Amazon gift card!
2. Tell me a story… (Puzzle-Contest) — Win an Amazon gift card!
3. Back to school…or not? (Contest) — Win an Amazon gift card!
4. #1 place I want to visit post-COVID! (Contest–2 winners!) — Win a FREE book!
5. Reina Torres: Some Help from a Friend (Contest) — Win a FREE book!

UPDATE: The winners are…Evie and Normandy Hood!
*~*~*

I’m not greedy. I don’t need a long trip. Just a long weekend. A quick 7-hour-drive away.

I’m talking about NOLA—New Orleans. That’s the place I’m dying to go back to even though I’ve been there a half-dozen times. The food, the ambience, the crazy residents. I love everything about it.

This was the view from our hotel, I think, last year, when we made a 2-day drive-down/drive-back trip to get our NOLA fix!

This shop’s always a MUST hit place for me to stock up on my voodoo kitsch!

And I love to take kids to “infect” them with my love of the place!

For a chance to win your choice of a download of one of my backlist books, tell me what place you’re dying to see once it’s safe to travel again!

UPDATE: The winner is…Amy Toohey!
*~*~*

Tomorrow’s the big day. Only, this year, it’s going to be very different from previous years.

This year, we didn’t have to buy a bunch of new school clothes or backpacks and lunch bags. This year, we had to make trips to the schools to pick up computers and tablets and practice logging into school websites, because in our little town, the school district offered families the option of in-school or virtual instruction, and we chose the virtual route.

We did it for many reasons, tops being—COVID-19. We want everyone to stay safe—students and adults—and when schools can’t prevent outbreaks of head lice in classrooms, we kind of figure they won’t be able to do a lot against an easily transmissible disease. Related reason: They won’t be able to do a lot to prevent outbreaks, so we’ll be ahead of the game when schools shut down again.

The kids were split. The boy hates not being able to hang with friends. The littlest girl will miss being queen bee of the classroom (she was the teacher’s pet last year), but she also loves being with her mama. The oldest girl likes the idea of doing classes online because she’ll have plenty of support from her mom and me when she runs into things she doesn’t understand (math!). They’ve found the self-isolation both fun (because we’ve been very creative about making little things into “events”) and lonely. FaceTime is a sanity-saver, but most of their friends are going back to the classroom, so I worry that their friends will drift away.

Still, we had little choice. With two elderly persons in the house, and one child a two-time cancer survivor, we knew from the outset what we would do if the opportunity was provided.

So, how to make it work and not go nuts?

My daughter has spaces throughout the house for the kids to have privacy to do their lessons. We’re setting alarms so they all start their work at the same time. If they finish early, they have the rest of the day free to do what they want. We’re lucky we have a big house to give everyone their space. If she still lived in her previous house, she said she would have set up posterboard cubicles to separate them at the kitchen table, anything so their line of sight wouldn’t include someone they could start a fight with. We’re an Irish family—there are always a lot of noisy opinions being thrown around.

How will this affect my writing schedule? We’ll see. I imagine mornings I’ll be standing by to provide assistance. Both of us will be running from room-to-room to keep kids on task. When the afternoon comes around—that will be my time. I have to stand firm. Hopefully, my dd can take a nap. 🙂

The upside of all of this? We’ve never been closer as a family. And who wouldn’t want to spend all the time they could with this one?

Contest

For a chance to win a $5 Amazon gift card, answer me this…

How are schools where you are handling school reopenings?
Plus, bonus points for anyone with great ideas to keep kids happy at home!

As a writer, you’re only as good as your editing.

Misspellings, misuse of homonyms, and horrible punctuation will ruin even the greatest stories, and yet, there are times when our brains simply can’t figure out how to fix what’s so obviously wrong.

Take me, for instance. Back in 2005, I’m about seven months pregnant in the summertime in San Antonio, Texas.

For those who’ve never had the experience of walking around in the 100+ degree heat while in your last trimester of pregnancy, consider yourselves blessed. That along with my pregnancy brain in full force, it was truly amazing I never forgot to put pants on every day.

One of the writing organizations I belonged to at the time was the Association of Health Care Journalists. Back when people posted to message boards and Yahoo loops, I posted a response to a question from a fellow member that went out to everyone in the organization.

For whatever reason, I had to use the word “subtle” in my response. I couldn’t tell you what the question was or why I needed to use that particular word, but that day, I could not spell it. And when I said I couldn’t spell it, I mean, just that.

I tried. S..u…t?

Wait. That’s not right. S…u…t..t..l..e?

Shaking my head, I took a deep breath and tried again.

S…u…t…

And again.

S…u…(exhale)…t? Dammit!

I closed my eyes and attempted to let my fingers sail across the keyboard, hoping that part of my (pregnant) brain would kick in and spell the word subconsciously.

Nope. That didn’t work.

Spellcheck?

Nope, it kept correcting to settle, scuttle, or shuttle.

After spending a good ten minutes on this one word, I said screw it and sent it out into the professional writing world, knowing I’d misspelled it. My brain and body were simply too tired to care, but I knew I’d hear from someone.

And I did.

Within a few hours, I got a private message stating, “By the way, it’s subtle.”

That’s right! There’s a B in the middle of it.

I could’ve been totally annoyed, but whatever. One stinking mistake didn’t make me a failure. I emailed back, explaining I tried for ten minutes to spell the word and my pregnancy brain simply wouldn’t have it.

The response I received couldn’t have been scripted. She wrote, “Really? I’m the editor for *Fit Pregnancy Magazine. We’re doing a survey on pregnancy brain. Are you having a boy or girl?”

I wrote back, telling her we were having a girl and decided I might as well bite the bullet and pitch her a short story for their “How I told him” page.

And she bought it.

These are the kinds of real situations I make sure to include in my stories. Whether I’m writing about a family who lives in the Texas Hill Country, a woman who’s navigating her life after running out of her wedding, or a group of doctors and nurses re-inventing themselves in Montana, those real, insane, imperfect events have to be my favorites. It makes true escapism so worth it and if I may say, my wonderfully flawed characters are waiting to sweep you off to their imaginary worlds.

How’s that for some subtle self-promo?

Check out Patricia on social media and her website (that’s getting a facelift right now).
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