UPDATE: The winner is…Debra Guyette!
*~*~*

So, I’ve been in town three times since mid-March, using precautions (masks, gloves), and I’m amazed how lackadaisical people are about this pandemic. Of course, I live in Arkansas—one of the states that never issued stay-at-home orders. Now, our governor seems confused about how we have a county with the highest rate of infection in the U.S. Duh. More people sick, more people who can reinfect others—especially, when you do nothing.

The kids are getting restless. They understand the need to remain in quarantine, but still, it’s summer. They miss their friends. I miss the flea market. It’s open again, and I may mask up and glove up and head there soon, but my dd says they don’t have staff to sterilize, so anything we bought would have to be sprayed with bleach when we got it home… So, instead, we’re doing projects at home. She’s doing home improvements, I’m painting.

And of course, I’m editing, editing, editing. Seems writers got busy during this pandemic. Lucky you! 🙂

A Puzzle & a Contest

Solve the puzzle and then tell me what you think this picture is all about for a chance to win a $5 Amazon gift card!

These contests and offers are still active!

1. Diana Cosby: Nature – Amazing Muse Inspiration (Contest) — Win a SIGNED book!
2. Open Contest–Reminders–A New Puzzle/Contest! — Win an Amazon gift card!
3. Two Important Notices about FREE Reads! — Everyone gets 2 FREE reads!

Sometimes, things work out the way they’re supposed to.

Take for example, the #100dayproject, which I’ve been completely faithful to since I began on April 7th (I’m on Day 51 of the challenge!). I planned to participate, not knowing 1) how difficult it was to produce a single piece of art every single dang day, and 2) how much I’d need something to put all that effort into.

Sure, as a writer, I create almost daily. But, unless I’m in the buzzy tail-end of a story when the action is speeding up, writing feels like work, and I know I can do it and do it well. The only challenge I face, these days, is getting to the end when I’d rather be doing anything else. However, I am not a mixed media artist. I can’t draw worth a flip, and I don’t know a lot about the different mediums. Over the past few years, I’ve only dabbled. So, I accepted the challenge, and then made my commitment very, very public by announcing it and then posting my daily attempts at art on FB and Instagram. Sometimes, with embarrassing results!

The challenge came along at the perfect time because, now that we’re living in Corona-time, we all need reasons to stay home. I love getting on FB and seeing folks who are baking for the first time ever or building something in their yards that they’d been promising themselves to do for years. My dd has been getting after it, too. She built a goat pen and bought goats! She also built a fire pit in the yard near the pool, and she bought a projector so we can watch movies outdoors, with a fire and lots of citronella candles going to keep away the mosquitoes!

Some states are loosening their stay-at-home orders. Our state never implemented any. However, we’ve been doing our own sheltering, keeping everyone close to home, with only rare visitors and only those who’ve also sheltered. We plan to do this for as long as we need to keep everyone safe. So, we’ll be looking for new challenges and around-the-home projects.

How about you? Are you still self-isolating? Have you finished any longterm projects on your To Do list?

Oh, and here’s my #100dayproject–Day 51 entry. 🙂

Contests/Giveaways

These contests and offers are still active!

1. Thom Collins: The Anthem Box Set (Contest—3 Winners!) — This offer ends soon! Get a FREE box set of books!
2. Reina Torres: An Idea, Some Spare Parts, and a Little Bit of Magic (Contest) — Win a FREE book!
3. Diana Cosby: Nature – Amazing Muse Inspiration (Contest) — Win a SIGNED book!
4. Open Contest–Reminders–A New Puzzle/Contest!  — Win an Amazon gift card!
5. Two Important Notices about FREE Reads! — Everyone gets 2 FREE reads!

UPDATE: The winner is…Mary Preston!
*~*~*

For gift-giving celebrations, my daughter and I like giving each other a bunch of little things rather than one big gift. It’s always been our thing. I love little tchotchkes, little figurines, pretty Post-Its, little bits of inexpensive jewelry, things I’ll clutter up my desk with.

My dd nailed it for Mother’s Day.

First, she gave me one of those engraved silver bar pendants with my mother’s name inscribed on it, with a little angel wing beside it and my mom’s birthstone-colored crystal on the other side. Perfect. We both got teary-eyed. I’ll wear it often. I have it on now.

Next, she got me the perfect coffee cup, right?

Lastly, she got me this little inch-and-a-half long figurine of a snail riding a turtle’s back. A long-running joke in my family is that I know only one joke. It’s true, and it goes like this:

What does the snail say as it rides on the turtle’s back?

Wait for it…

WHEE!

Yeah, I know. The lamest joke ever, but I remember it because of the imagery of that little snail going for a joyride. So, perfect! The kids couldn’t wait to see my expression, and of course, it joins all the snail figurines they’ve given me over the years that reside on my desktop!

Mother’s Day was almost perfect. The 15-year-old made breakfast for the moms—featuring French toast. Our dinner was carryout from our favorite Mexican restaurant.

However, mid-morning, our dryer went kaput. Not sure what The Powers That Be are telling us, but dang, it would konk out just as I NEEDED to wash my huge pile of laundry…

Contest

What’s your most memorable Mom’s Day Gift—either that you received or gave? Comment for a chance to win a $5 Amazon gift card!

I was trying to figure out what today’s blog would be about. There are several posts with ongoing contests below, so today, I decided to open up one of my “little books”–you know the tiny books at the bookstore near the checkout? I love those things.

The one I opened is entitled, The Goddess Within, and comes with quotes from famous women. When I randomly flipped it open, the quote I landed on made me laugh, and I decided I’d share it with you because it’s soooooo appropriate for those who are staying home, self-isolating from the virus.

“I base most of my fashion taste on what doesn’t itch.”
~ Gilda Radner

No wonder Gene Wilder loved her.

So, our discussion today is about Corona-style! Following is mine…

On cool days, I wear leggings—dark ones because they’re more slimming, or so I hope. And I have some waffle-weave, 3/4-sleeved shirts to go over them. Now that it’s warming up, I have jean Bermuda shorts and sloppy over-sized comic book-themed shirts to wear over them. My hair is wild. I decided to let my gray grow out about a year ago. I no longer straighten my hair, so my messy, curly, frizzy hair makes me look like an old hippie, which I guess I am at heart (I prefer the word “bohemian”). I rarely wear makeup. I’m sure I’m frightful looking, but all the time it takes to make myself presentable is wasted on my family and the dogs and cats and horses and goats. Plus, I have more hours in the day to get things done.

Soooo, what about you? What’s your Corona-style?

I am so excited to be selected for a second Boys Behaving Badly anthology with Delilah Devlin! This one is near and dear to my heart. For over a decade, I was a paramedic/firefighter in the urban jungle of Atlanta. When I saw the call for submissions for this anthology, I knew I had to enter. I had so many stories to share. But, it wasn’t as easy as I thought it would be. I abandoned several stories before I finally found my stride in “Crossing the Line”. I struggled to find the balance between fact and fiction, and it brought a lot of long-forgotten emotions boiling back up to the surface.

I was surprised how much I missed the firehouse and the guys as I went on my stroll down memory lane. The camaraderie in a firehouse rivals any family. I loved my guys, and on the days that I wanted to be anywhere but there, I still looked forward to seeing them. I knew their kids, wives, girlfriends, and boyfriends. We cooked dinner every night and slept in one great big bunk room. You can’t help but get close. I knew who snored, who talked in their sleep, how they liked their coffee, and who I could count on to have my back when the chips were down. They were my brothers, and I miss them.

I get asked a lot about station house romances. Oh yeah, they’re a thing. I never had one in my own house (that’s never a smart move), but I married a guy from the neighboring station! I had known him for years, but when I got stationed in the same battalion and started bumping into him on calls, the attraction that was there had a chance to grow into something more. At first, I wasn’t sure if I was imagining things. He was a nice guy, doing nice guy things like holding the door, bringing me a Gatorade after a fire, and helping me clean up the truck after a bad call. Surely, it was nothing more than that.

Then, in the wee hours of the morning, the battalion was called out on a house fire. We could see the flames from the station, and everybody’s heart started to go a little faster. Middle of the night fires tended to be tragic. Smoke detectors really do save lives! Fortunately, on that night, the fire was in an abandoned house, and no lives were in jeopardy. Unfortunately, the house, which was still under construction, sat down at the bottom of a hill, and it had been raining steadily for days. The lot had turned into a sea of red mud.

The roof and three out of four sides of the structure were blazing. My crew was assigned the backside of the house, which meant we had to cross the ocean of mud. At first, we made pretty good progress, but as we got to the rear of the structure, the mud swallowed my leg and refused to let go. Other companies had begun the attack. Water cascaded down on the fire, slowly filling the area until a pond began to collect on top of the mud. With the guys’ help, I managed to pull my leg free, but my boot was forever lost to the sucking mud. We sought higher ground, I borrowed a boot, and we got back to the fight. Finally, we got the blaze under control, and as the sun came up, we began the long process of cleaning up. Mud covered everything from hoses to firefighters.

As we were packing up, I realized I had lost my face mask, part of our breathing apparatus. It had been clipped on the front of my harness as we’d approached the house, but somewhere in the slog, it had gone missing. My stomach clenched. It was an expensive piece of equipment, and on top of my boot, the logistics officer was not going to be happy with me.

My crew reassured me they weren’t going to take it out of my paycheck, but my captain sent me to look for it. Suddenly, the rest of my crew had lots of other things to do that didn’t involve going back to the mud pit to look for my lost mask. Resigned, I skirted the worst of the mud in my mismatched boots and started to hunt. I soon had company. I smiled at the man who would become my husband as we waded through the mud in the early morning light. (We found the face mask by the truck. It had fallen off before we’d even got started!). I figured any man who would willingly crawl through mud to help me was worth getting to know a little better. He took me to breakfast, and I’ll leave the rest to your imagination!

My time on the streets of Atlanta adds depth to my stories. My experiences taught me that I could do more and go farther than I had ever dreamed. I weave those lessons throughout my writing. “Crossing the Line” is a blend of fact and fiction, but I’ll leave it to you to sort out which is which!

To find out more about me, visit my website acdawn.com and like my Facebook page, https://www.facebook.com/A-C-Dawn-2317750851796803! I’ve got lots more stories coming for 2020!

UPDATE: The winner is…ButtonsMom2003!
*~*~*

I’m going to share, and then I’m going to ask you to share…pictures, that is!

During this strange time, I decided to take up the #100dayproject challenge. The goal is to do something “artful” every day. Doesn’t have to be big or a big deal or even very good. The goal is to make art a habit. So, I’m at Day 15 of the challenge. I’m a little behind. I’ve posted through Day 13’s efforts. Every day when I finish a piece, I post it on Instagram and Facebook. I also talk about the project and, sometimes, what goes into making some of these little pieces on my other blog: The Emerald Casket. You can head there if you’d like to see everything I’ve done so far.

Here’s Day 13:

So, I what I’m looking to do today, here, is share pictures of things you might be working on. Are you knitting? Canning? Marie Kondo-ing? Send a pic to me at delilah@delilahdevlin.com, and I’ll post it here! And if you send me something, I’ll choose a winner from the posters to give either one of my painted postcards or a collaged bookmark!

Shares

From Susan! Looks like she’s getting things checked off her Honey Do list! A new faucet! Love it!

via GIPHY

I’ve been blogging for many years now. We won’t talk about how many, but trust me, many, many years. It’s a daily ritual, like that first cup of coffee in the morning. I open up a fresh empty page and fill it with whatever’s on my mind or fill it with Author-Friends’ posts. I’ve only missed less than one handful of posts in many, many years. And this week, my blog fell off the face of the earth. And the world didn’t end. LOL

So, yeah, I’m being dramatic. It was inconvenient at most. But here’s why, because I have to share everything, right?

Sunday night, the Quaranado hit! I think I invented that word. Or maybe everyone had the same thought at the same time, but I’m claiming it. A tornado during the time of quarantine will be the Webster’s definition. So, we didn’t actually have a tornado here. Just really high winds. The local energy company called the amount of damage we suffered to our power lines the equivalent to 2000 ice storms. So, we lost power from Sunday night to just last night. Our generator kept the refrigerators (we have two because—8 people in the house!) running and our phones charged, but that was it. We ate a lot of tinned fruit and sandwiches.

My dd kept everyone so busy they didn’t have time to moan and groan. She had the entire family out building a fire pit in the front yard. We had roasted hot dogs last night! Our first hot meal in days. She also built a pen for the baby goats that are arriving today. So, she kept everyone from thinking too much about the fact we couldn’t take showers or even keep warm enough. We bundled in beds at night. Last night, my dd said that she’d always wished she could go back in time to live, but said “Fuck that!” last night. I was surprised because she adapted very well to the challenge.

When the power came on last night, I ran to the door to yell at the family in the yard. They screamed and came running. The neighbors called to see whether we were okay because they heard our cries from across the highway! 🙂

Anyway, that’s the story for why I was absent for so long. No, I didn’t die. No, I didn’t get the bug. I just lost power. And I’m embarrassed to say, I was the least adaptable member of the family. I unplugged fridges to make cups of coffee. I groused and painted in the dark.

I had a book released on Tuesday, and I soooo wanted to tell you all about it. It killed me not to be able to. And I had guests lined up this week. So, I’m going to work today to post their posts because they deserve the attention. Have some patience. I’ll backdate them all so they run in the order they should have. Pay attention and comment, because hey, we’re under quarantine and have nothing better to do, right?

I hope you’re all safe, that your lights are on, and that you’re surrounded by loved ones. I am, and that makes these trying times worthwhile. ~DD