Jennifer Lyon
Monday, December 14th, 2015
Weekend Roundup

My weekend looked like this:

Kermit typing

I’m trying to get as much writing done as I can, but it’s not enough! My process sucks but I love this book even when I hate it :-)

In other news, we got our tree up, I’ve made a dent in Christmas shopping and finalized some Christmas plans. It looks like Bailey will be spending a couple days over Christmas with us, which always makes us happy.

How was your weekend?

Friday, December 11th, 2015
Happy Friday, and A (Joke) Holiday Newsletter

Happy Friday! Today I’m rerunning a Holiday Christmas Letter I wrote as a joke for the MurderSheWrites blog back on December 10, 2007.  For anyone who does not share my twisted writer humor,  please skip today’s post.  And please note, no husbands were actually harmed in writing this letter :-) 

 

CHRISTMAS  HOLIDAY LETTER

Dear Friends and Family.

What a year it’s been! I can’t believe the holidays are here again. Right away, you’ll notice my return address has changed to Folsom Correctional Institution for Women. I can explain.

It all started because I wanted to write a romance novel. Doesn’t that sound lovely? So I told my husband and kids. My husband said, “Does that mean I’ll get more?” He waggled his eyebrows in the universal male symbol for Me-Want-Sex. Then said, “What’s for dinner?”

My kids looked at me blankly, then suddenly remembered the school projects that were due TOMORROW! They needed poster board, glue, magazines, glitter and they need it all right now!

So I figured I’d start writing my book tomorrow, after I cooked dinner, bought poster board and cleaned up the awful mess from above mentioned glue and glitter.

The next day I got hubby off to work and the kids off to school. I poured some coffee and sat down to write my book. Then my mother called and wanted to have lunch. “Mom, I’m busy. I’m going to write a romance.”

A tirade unfolded in my ear, “I had a wonderful career as a dancer until I got knocked up with you. Then it was four months of morning sickness, four days of horrendous labor, colicky screaming day and night so that I couldn’t keep a sitter to work…my career was ruined! And all I want in return is to go to lunch with my daughter!”

So I’ll start writing my book tomorrow.

The next day, I got hubby off to work, kids off to school, and barely turned on my computer when my husband called and said, “Guess what! Mr. Big is in town and I invited him to dinner tonight. I told him you make the best homemade lasagna. We’ll be there for drinks at 6:00 pm. Uh, and honey, this time can you straighten up the house before we get there? And tell the kids to be good?”

Later that night, while Mr. Big was draining glass after glass of wine, he asked me what I do (uh, hello? See the home cooked lasagna?), I told him I was working on a romance novel. He waggled his eyebrows, although he was so drunk only one eyebrow lifted and said, “So you write that sex stuff bored housewives like.” I knew then that we didn’t have enough wine for me to get through the night.

The next morning, I snarled everyone out of the house, straightened up and THIS TIME, I got my laptop and went to Starbucks to write. I ordered myself a nice latte and sat down to work.

The gym-moms schlepped in. You all know about the gym-moms right? They drop their kids off at school and go to an actual gym. These women run around with words like “Juicy” on their toned rear ends. I could write the entire states of Massachusetts and Mississippi across my rear end and have room for the state capitals too. One of them asked me what I was doing. I told her writing a romance novel. She looked down her nose, “Oh I don’t read that trash.”

“Honey, you have “You Wish” on your ass! You ARE that trash. Just saying…” I pointed out nicely and tried, again, to work on my romance. I even managed to tune out the gym-moms chatter about their diets (what the freaking hell is tofu?). But alas, I only got a half page written when the school called on my cell.

Both kids had the stomach flu. Desperately wishing I could have a sick day, I picked up the kids and took them home to spend two days in a House of Horrors. Two sick kids and a husband who still thought he should go to poker night. I set him straight! “No way, dude! I’ve tried all week to work on my book. All I want is two hours to myself.”

My husband got a sudden call from his boss saying he had to come into work right away and he took off like the hounds of hell were chasing him. The selfish weasel.

So I guess I’d work on the book over the weekend.

At the kids’ soccer game, I had my laptop going, trying to write my romance. One person after another asked what I was doing. All the men cracked the same joke. “Need any help with the research?” Then they waggled their eyebrows in case I was too stupid to get that they were talking about sex.

I didn’t get one page written. Not one. And the team mom yelled at me because I brought fruit roll ups and juice boxes for snacks, and “They Are Not On The Approve Snack List.”

Just then my husband had the audacity to show up. Think he ever got his sorry hide out of bed and took the kids to the games? Not unless it was snowing at Satan’s house, you hear what I’m saying? No, true to form, he arrived at the very end of the game, acting like he’s the best father ever for making the effort. And to top it off, Ms. “You Wish” Ass tittered around, flirting with him. My husband puffed up like an overstuffed peacock. Ms. “You Wish” Ass, in the long held tradition of trashy women, decided to make fun of me and said, “She’s so involved in her trashy book, she didn’t even bring the right snacks today.”

My peacock husband said importantly, “I have to help her with the research on all the sexy parts.” Then he waggled his eyebrows at Ms. “You Wish” Ass.

In that instant, I saw the light. I didn’t want to write a romance! I wanted, no I needed to write a book about murder!

My husband was my first research subject.

Now I have lots of time to write here in the Folsom Correctional Institution for Women. Oh, and I’ve lost all of Massachusetts and a good portion of Mississippi off my ass.

Merry Christmas!
Just A. Joke

Wednesday, December 9th, 2015
Wednesday Worthy

Question: Do you know how to tell you’re really tired?

Answer: Realize about 6pm that you’ve been wearing two different earrings ALL DAY LONG including appointments and errands.

Yeah, I think I hit the wall :-)

Then I made the mistake of showing Wizard that I was wearing two different earring ALL DAY LONG. He laughed so hard my ears are still ringing. Whatever…

So for Wednesday Worthy, this is our guy.

Fine art sepia toned portrait of beautiful young fit man at the beach

What do you think?

Monday, December 7th, 2015
Weekend Roundup

 

I had some potentially exciting news yesterday. I can’t talk about it yet, but I just wanted to say that opportunities sometimes come out of nowhere on a Sunday afternoon. You just never know!

Otherwise, we’re a little (A LOT!) behind getting started on Christmas, but that’s okay. Wizard is around to help, it’ll work out. I’d love to get this book totally drafted before January, which is completely unrealistic with the holidays. I have a better chance of getting a puppy for Christmas than finishing a draft of this book. But a girl can dream, right?

Either way, I’m excited with a thousand plans for the new series running through my head.

And I’m starting to think about Christmas baking. I’m going to only do a few things this year, but I’m trying to decide which cookies and desserts to cut out. Do you guys bake? Have you cut back in recent years?

How was your weekend?

 

 

 

Friday, December 4th, 2015
Happy Friday!

Okay some of you may be aware that Wizard and I are fairly close to the mass shooting that happened on Wednesday in San Bernardino, CA. We are fine. Emotionally, we are as upset, horrified and outraged as all of you, but we weren’t in any danger. I’d like to give a huge shout out to first responders, emergency workers, law enforcement agencies and support personal. While they couldn’t save everyone, their quick actions very likely prevented even more injuries and deaths. And I’m going to leave it at that because I want to this blog to be a place we can come together to have fun, to support each other, and to care about others. But we won’t give any emotional energy or power to those who are evil. So moving on…

Happy Friday!

Dog casual friday

I’d love to have a Casual Friday, writing in my comfy clothes all day! However, we’re going to be gone all morning doing some followup with specialists for Wizard. It should all be fine, but we need to do the follow ups with two different doctors just to be sure. But if everything goes the way we expect/hope it will, then life will return to normal which is awesome.

Yesterday oldest son stopped by since he had a meeting in the area. Oldest son is the one who broke his wrist, but he got the cast off Wednesday and is doing well. He’s so happy. The fracture is healing solidly and he can SLOWLY do some rehab on it. He misses weight lifting but it won’t be long before he can start again.  It’s nice to see him without the cast. He didn’t complain much, but I know that wrist really ached for a couple of weeks, and the cast was annoying.

By the way, when Wizard was in the hospital, Oldest took me out to the store to get things I needed for Wizard when he came home.  He insisted on driving and pushing the cart…all with his broken wrist. Everyone looked at me like, What is wrong with you lady? Can’t you see he has a cast on? Help him! But anytime I tried to do anything, Oldest got all snarly. He’s so much like his dad! I probably won’t be winning Mother of the Year Award this year.

This weekend, I’m going to try to write and clean. I’m going to have to start Christmas shopping too, but I’m finally getting in the mood so it’s all good. It’d be even better if I could sleep a full night, but we can’t have everything we want :-)

What are your plans?

Wednesday, December 2nd, 2015
2015 Goals & Wednesday Worthy!

It’s December! The end of 2015 and I’m floored. How can another year have just slid by? Wizard and I had planned to do the floors in our house and take a trip – didn’t happen. Once we dealt with the water leak in our kitchen and my expensive tooth issue, we decided to put it on hold for next spring of 2016.

And the vacation? Well we’re taking a trip with the kids the very beginning of next year, but we’re planning it this year and that’s half the fun, so we’ll count it. We’re staying in the state, hanging with the kids for a couple days (at least two the kids, one is still working out if he can go), and then we’re going to do a couple days on our own. We’re really looking forward to that. Especially now that Wizard is feeling better since the hospital scare. We’ll find out more about his health when we see some doctors for followup, but overall he’s doing really well.

Now onto writing goals for 2015. I both exceeded my goals and fell drastically short :-) I’d planned to launch my new series late this year, but then I got the rights back to the Wing Slayer Hunter Series, and I had to decide if I wanted to republish those myself.  This is called a Career Planning Curveball. And a Career Risk. And also a Recipe for Insomnia, LOL!!! As you all know, I decided to republish the WHS Series, and that is why is exceeded my goals as I technically published more books this year than I planned.

However I fell short in not launching the new series. It took months of getting the WSH series ready and planning the release and promotion, pushing back the news series. Every decision has a cost.

But the important thing is that I’m at peace with my decisions for 2015. One thing I ask myself as I’m outlining or changing any career plan is, “Is this a decision I can own whether I succeed or fail? And that means if it goes bad — this one didn’t but other decisions I’ve made have — I live with my choices. I  try to own them and not cast blame everywhere else.

Luckily this decision on the WSH’s hasn’t come back to test me on that :-) However other decisions have and I sometimes have to strive to remember, I own my choices; good, bad and anything in between.  

So this year worked out, but now I’m determined to launch my new series next year AND continue the WSH series. It may not be as fast as I want (because I have to believe in the books I put out there) but I’ll do it if I possibly can. But all that means is that I have goals for 2016 and that’s a good thing.

Now let’s move into Wednesday Worthy, The Bald Edition:

 

Classic portrait of a sexy muscular shirtless man outdoors in sepia tones

Classic portrait of a sexy muscular shirtless man outdoors in sepia tones

So tell me, do you think this guy is worthy? And tell me about your goals this year. Did you hit, miss or somewhere in between?

Monday, November 30th, 2015
Weekend Roundup!

I missed you all! So Thanksgiving…does anyone remember Wizard teasing me because I bought a new toy for Bailey Dog since we were going over to Bailey’s house for Thanksgiving?

Well guess who gave Bailey the toy before I had a chance? WIZARD!! He was so proud too and Bailey though he was the best thing since dog treats.

Sneaky Wizard, LOLOL!! Bailey loved his Abominable Snow Monster squeaky toy.

Thanksgiving was small and so nice this year. There are some pictures here on my FB page, but I didn’t take many. I  just had my phone out briefly to show my new iPhone cover then I put it away and concentrated on family and fun. By the way, the cover looks like this:

iPhone wine cover

The “wine” in the glass is liquid and moves, it’s pretty cool :-)

Overall, it’s been a good long weekend. But…OMG this book. So I always have this conversation with myself:

Me talking so Myself: Our next book is going to be EASY. We’re going to make it simple and short.

And Self doesn’t say anything until about 1:53am.  “Hmm, but I have this idea…and tells me all about it.

Me, “That sounds complicated. And impossible.”

Self, “But awesome, right?”

“No!” Me snaps. “I’m not getting sucked into your trap. SIMPLE!!” EXcept for the rest of the night I’m thinking about this complicated idea. And the more sleep deprived I am, the more gullible I am.

Self says, “But you have the experience now, you can totally pull this off.”

Me, “I don’t know…”

And guess what? Sneaky Self convinces me I MUST WRITE THIS BOOK! Then I try…and OMG it’s hard. So hard. And it’s not working, except I love it so much I will make it work. Eventually. But it’s painfully slow as I keep struggling with the first 100 or so pages and driving me crazy. And yet, I love it even more so I can’t abandon it.

But right about now, as the holidays are pressing down, people are begging me for the next Wing Slayer book, all I can think is why didn’t I just stick to my plan to write a simple book????

Okay your turn, how was your Thanksgiving and your weekend?

JenniferLyon.com