Maybe life is glamorous for other writers, but for me, it’s work, work, work, work, work… Kind of like the song Rihanna sings, but without the sexy clothes or Drake reaching for my goodies. *sigh*

Today, for instance, began with some editing. I broke around 10 AM to conduct a live chat with my plotting bootcamp, then it was back to editing. Around 4 PM, I broke again, because my dd and I had promised to meet a friend for dinner. When we returned home, we had little girls in tow, so we spent an hour in the art work room, trying to keep them out of paint and ink, while we doodled with projects. When my dd left, I went back to editing. Then I remembered, oh yeah, my blog. Gah.

And writing? Grrrrr… I have to finish this project for another author before I can even turn my attention to my own words. Don’t get me wrong, I like editing. It gets me out of my own world. I don’t have time to read for pleasure, so editing equals guilty pleasure + income, so I rarely complain. It’s just that I’m running behind schedule, and I hate being late, but there’s only one me…

So, if you’re bouncing around websites while you break, and happen to come across this post, let me know I’m not the only one work, work, work, working on a Saturday night.

I escaped my desk for most of the day today. Totally ignored my schedule. We’ve had workers underfoot replacing our furnace and AC. I skipped out to sit in my dd’s AC when I could, sat with a fan blowing across me when I had to be here. Not a productive day, and when I’m melting, I’m not particularly clever. Never mind the work crew had a couple of cuties. NOTHING could distract me from my discomfort. Tomorrow, they’ll be back in the early morning to finish up the second day of the installation, so I’m wondering if you all have any advice for how to keep cool when the AC is off!!

Also, remember yesterday’s scavenger hunt is still ongoing!! Be sure to enter! ~DD

“I don’t want to wear a pink bow!” the 5-year-old yells, and then she runs to get the “perfect bow”—a gargantuan blue blow that makes her look like a cartoon character, but hey, she’s happy.

“Lala, you’re going to be late!”

“I’m not finished braiding my hair!”

“J, have you brushed your teeth?”

By the time they’re walking down the long drive to meet the bus, I’m sitting back, sipping on my coffee, and secretly laughing my ass off, because I didn’t have to do squat—been there, done that.

My dd comes back from seeing the little one up the bus steps and says, “Hey, before you go back to your office, wanna watch Deadpool 2?”

Of course, I was in. I LOVE superhero movies. She wanted to pre-screen it before she decided if any of the kids could watch it, because we saw the first one, and Ryan Reynolds has a potty mouth (not that I mind that so much—I prefer kids being exposed to bad words and a little flesh as opposed to violence, blood, and guts). So, we settled in to watch.

All I can say is I’m glad we watched it at home because I would have been “That Woman”—you know the one who laughs too loud and has to make comments all the way through the movie. Loved Ryan Reynolds (I have a crush on him), loved Josh Brolin as Cable. Laughed myself silly over Matt Damon’s cameo as the redneck talking about Wet Wipes and toilet paper and Deadpool with the little baby legs. The parachuting scene?! HaHaHa! The soundtrack was fun as well. I laughed again when a Céline Dion song played, because it so wasn’t suited for the movie, but was somehow still perfect.

After the credits rolled, I had to find the video. Céline’s music isn’t my music. I don’t have a single song of hers on my iPod, but this is fun! Hope  you enjoy it! Loved Deadpool in high heels. 🙂

Just to update for those of you who’ve been worried, my dad came through his surgery. He’s in pain, of course, but already feeling grumpy and ornery, so that’s good news, too. 🙂 Despite all the dire “news” the nurses gave us about what exactly was going to happen to him in surgery, the doctor (who we met five minutes before dad went back) told us it was going to be an easy, 30-minute procedure to put some screws into his bone to support that broken femoral neck. Easy-peasy. And it was. He’ll have rehab, and we’ll force some adjustments once he comes home to make sure he doesn’t hurt himself again, but all’s good.

I’m posting this late. Today’s been a bit of a whirlwind.

My dad, whose picture with me I’m sharing above, fell outside and broke his hip—or his femoral neck, to be more specific. He went out to weed-eat, because he likes to putter and do things for himself, but he fell and hurt himself. I found him fifteen minutes later, called my dd, because I couldn’t move him. Why didn’t we call an ambulance? 1–dad didn’t want one; 2–we live in a rural area, and our volunteer fire department would have answered that call (nuff said); and 3–my dd’s had some training, so I wasn’t worried she’d hurt him when she moved him. And in the end, she had him in the car, without a lot of pain, inside five minutes.

The local hospital took pictures and confirmed he’d broken his hip, loaded him into an ambulance and shipped him to Little Rock. Mom and I went home and packed and high-tailed it to the city, where we’re staying now. His surgery is tomorrow, shortly after noon. I’d appreciate your prayers and good thoughts. He’s over 80, has diabetes, is on dialysis, has heart disease. He’s a tough man, an Air Force veteran/retiree, and we just plain don’t want to lose him. And he’s not ready—not by the amount of fuss he gave us about getting our own rest today. 🙂

Oh, and that picture was from my 60th birthday party in June. Dad loved the picture props.

It’s been a sad, sad day. Every time I turned on the TV today, it was to see some amazing video of Aretha. So, tonight I’m sharing my favorite Aretha song. I was torn between this and You Make Me Feel Like a Natural Woman, but listening to them again, I’m touched more by this one. So, here you go…

For the past year, my daughter’s been systematically “downsizing.” What does that mean to her? She’s been “decluttering” rooms and tossing or giving away things she doesn’t actually use. She’s gone on a closet-cleaning craze where she places everything on hangers—backwards—and if she hasn’t turned the hanger, meaning she’s taken out the garment and worn it, at the end of the year, it goes.

She’s now turned her attention to my living space.

She supervised a closet review, where every single piece of clothing was dumped onto my bed and reviewed. “Does it fit? No?” Gone. “When was the last time you wore it?” If I can’t tell her it was in recent years, it’s gone. Yes, it is nice to have room to slide my hangars, but gah!

Now, she wants to trim my bookcases, because—shame, shame—not all my books fit into my three tall bookcases. I’ve tried to make room, double and triple stacking, but, to her, that’s not good enough. I can trim some of the books I read for entertainment. Very few are those I’d want to read again. However, that’s not enough.

She’s running up against my stubborn hold on my research books. After all, I need all those occult and mythology books. Who doesn’t have rows of them? Or at least, what writer who loves to delve into mystical topics doesn’t collect research materials? The problem is, my occult and mythology collection is larger than my local library’s and the two colleges’ libraries in town.

I have many, many spell books. Translations of writings from Egyptian sarcophagi and The Land of the Dead, and Sumerian, Norse, Eastern European, etc., “monster” books that I love to thumb through when I’m wishing I could write more stories like my “mummy book”,  Crescent Moon, or my Vikings in Space story, Ravished by a Viking. The problem is, as my dd  and my sister point out all the time, that those stories don’t sell as well as SEALs and bounty hunters!

If you could see me now, I’m frowning and my shoulders are drooping. I love to write my action heroes, but just like I need a varied diet to keep my body healthy, I need to vary what I write—for my own enjoyment and mental health.

I have a SEAL book to finish for Entangled tomorrow. Then I have a SEAL/bounty hunter book to write by the end of the month, and a bounty hunter book due by mid-September. My schedule is crazy-full. I have another Beaux Reve Coven story I’d love to start, but I keep pushing it off due to hard deadlines. And what I really want is to start something new and exciting. Something that pulls from those Sumerian and Egyptian tales, but I have to be smart. Have to make money. You know, to pay my bills…  🙁

So, here I am, having just finished editing another wonderful author’s story, and I’m opening the file for “Spider”—a SEAL story that has plenty of action, in and out of bed. By the end of the day, I have no doubt I’ll be dreaming about what happens next, and forget about my momentary melancholy. I have the best job in the world. I live in my head, most days. I live many lives, many adventures, and I learn something new with every book I write. This time, I’m researching modern booby-traps, like “alarm mines”. Not as exciting as reading about those pesky ice dragons, but—maybe—I’ll pencil in some time in my future schedule for something fun.

So, a question for you…

Do you pretty much exclusively read contemporary romance? Or do you love a paranormal tale, too? If so, what would you love to read?