It’s the weekend already! For me, it’s going to be a working weekend. In order to pressure myself, I’ve schedule editing and formatting for CAGED MAGIC so now I have to get the book done. Deadlines are important for that reason, and I’m going to try very hard to make it. It must be done by March 1 or earlier.

Linc is not happy with this plan. After all his complaining that I wasn’t writing his story, he’s balking big time because he doesn’t like the way the story is going. I swear there is just no making men happy  I also have Ram and Eli to worry about. Although Eli is very patient, think of a lion stalking his prey…he’s going to spring and I’m trying to hold him back until the next book, PRIMAL MAGIC that will be his story. And Ram keeps insisting he’s fine…um…he’s not. The guy is like a human live wire spewing electrical energy that can kill him. So not fine.

So what are you guys doing this weekend?

Did you all have a good week? Mine’s been good but gone by way too fast. I’m plotting out the rest of CAGED MAGIC and practicing my new resolution to relax and not get so uptight and worried. I’m basically learning a new process of handling stress–we’ll see how it goes

Wednesday, Wizard willingly went to the animal shelter with me, then we both came home depressed. It was so sad to see so many dogs that need homes and care. But we have to make a real decision about commitment and our lifestyle, and we’re still figuring out how much we may or may not travel now that Wizard’s retired. I did learn one thing, it’s probably best to go with a smaller dog. Wizard is not as initially comfortable with bigger dogs as I am. That’s something I’d forgotten since he’s so comfortable about Bailey, Cookie and Corky.  And if we get a dog, he or she will be for both of us, becoming a part of our family.

And for my happy news, the second and final book of The Plus One Chronicles released in Germany yesterday and did very well–breaking into the Amazon bestseller ranks by the end of the day (by the time this blog posts, that could change).

Book One NUR BEI DIR (ONLY YOU) Amazon de

 Trade Paperback

 E-book

 iBooks 

Book Two SEITE AN SEITE (SIDE BY SIDE) Amazon de

Trade Paperback

E-Book

iBooks

I’m so happy Kat and Sloane have gone international! I’d never have predicted that happening. The first day I released the first book, THE PROPOSITION,  youngest son (BLB) came over and asked me, “How’s the book doing?”

I remember exactly. “Well I just posted it on my Facebook page a couple hours ago and 60 copies have sold on Amazon. I’m thrilled.” We both thought it was really good, but none of us could have predicated the way it took off. And I wasn’t even thinking of international sales then. Actually I didn’t seriously think about it until foreign publishers began contacting me.

I’m hoping that I cab do something similar with  the SAVAGED ILLUSION Series, but there’s no way to really predict what will capture readers, all I can do it try. But it is a story I’m excited about so we shall see. First I have to finish CAGED MAGIC and whatever the publisher will need for EXPOSING THE HEIRESS. One step at a time.

As for the weekend, I think we’re going to see the movie American Sniper and I’ll be working. What are your plans? Whatever they are, I hope you have a great weekend!

I’m deep into writing, determined to keep going on CAGED MAGIC.  I’m so deep into multiple story lines, I swear I hear the guys talking to me at night when I’m in that almost awake stage of sleep. So far I’ve managed to keep myself from waking Wizard and saying, “Did you hear that?”  I mean seriously, doesn’t the man live with enough crazy?

Although, since he’s been home full time, I’m noticing that he talks to himself too. So take that Wizard! Crazy is courageous in this house!

And since I really can’t be trusted to blog with all the voices in my head, I’ll move onto Wednesday Worthy.  Today I’m cheating a little bit. Instead of searching out a possible candidate, I saw this picture in my FB Feed and snatched it because it’s Chris Hemsworth. That’s all the reason I need! According to Chris’s FB page, this is from his People Magazine photo shoot.

So…I’m finding those arms all kinds of worthy. What about you?

And a bonus Chris-pic just because I’m awesome like that:

Wow a lot has happened! I’m going to put pics here you may have seen on my FB page–feel free to skip ahead.

Okay so first, we woke up New Year’s Eve to snow:

This is what it looked like about 6:30 am. Stunning as we don’t get snow here–ever! So that was exciting and fun. We had a snow day! I had intended to work but we were having too much fun playing like children.

Then New Year’s Day we left for our trip to Solvang. We met our three sons there, along with their girls (one wife and two girl friends). I put a family pic of my personal FB page you can probably see here  if you’re interested. We all went on this wine tasting trip to celebrate BLB’s (youngest son) graduation with his B.A. degree. The trip was a blast, and I owe a special thanks to Special K (CPA Boy’s wife) for organizing it! And to all our sons and their amazing girls for making it work. These are memories we will treasure.

Even better, Bailey Dog joined us! This is him staying in our room while all the kids went to dinner (we were invited, I just wanted to stay in that night). He was showing off his brand new jacket that Middle Son’s girlfriend got him:

Wizard now calls him the “Red Cross” dog, LOL! Bailey was very good on the trip. We took him out for to explore the shops the last day, and stopped at one winery where they graciously allowed Bailey to come in, and we ate lunch on the patio of Cecco Risorante where they also happily allowed Bailey and brought him some water. We always ASK before bringing Bailey in anywhere.

Oh and I can’t forget this special cat, Cleo, we met at another winery the day before that:

Cleo likes to greet all the customers, and was super friendly as you can see. When I sat down, he crawled up in my lap and cuddled. Don’t tell Bailey though It’s our secret that I have a new friend.

Then Wizard and I went to Santa Barbara where we stayed another night to visit my brother and his lovely wife whom I haven’t seen in years. We never intended for so much time to go by, but that’s what happens in life if we don’t try harder to stay in contact with the ones we love. It was wonderful to them! I wish I’d gotten pictures, but we were so busy visiting, it didn’t occur to me at the time.

And then on the way home, we took the 101 home, and I can’t remember where this was exactly but not too far out of Santa Barbara. It was tricky to snap this pic of the Pacific Ocean while going about 70 miles an hour. It was gorgeous!

Compare that to the first pic of snow just a few days earlier, and you can see that Southern California can surprise us once in a while with a little variation in the weather

Now I’m so happy to be home, get back to my routine and work on Linc’s book, CAGED MAGIC! I’m hoping I can write straight through to the end without another interruptions. This poor book has been shuffled aside too many times.

So how was your New Years and weekend?

As we close out another year, I want to take a moment to talk a little bit about 2014.

There were some amazing highs. For instance, Wizard being able to retire, and BLB’s (youngest son) graduation with his B.A. and a few other things. On the professional side of things, I did a little math…. Before I get to that, I need to tell you that I didn’t keep a cumulative total of all my unit sales on the Plus One Chronicles, which includes The Proposition, Possession, Obsession and The Plus One Chronicles Boxed Set. So as this year closed, I took the total money I made off the books (Yeah, I tracked that, LOL, for one thing, the IRS insists on it) and divided it by an averaged price point to get a ball park figure on total unit sales.

I was expecting between 50k and 75k.

Wrong.

I’ve sold WELL over 100K units of The Plus One Chronicles, and that does not include my subsidiary sales to Germany and Brazil this year. I was stunned. That is a career high that covered part of 2013 and 2014.

My career low for 2014? Writing Exposing The Heiress  (Book 3 in the Once A Marine Series by Jennifer Apodaca) triggered serious burnout. Part of it was plain old fatigue and some of it was writing and rewriting that book to fit the changing needs of the publisher (that isn’t a criticism, that’s how publishing works). The book ended up consuming all my time, forcing me to push back all my other projects and causing me to lose momentum with readers. Letting down readers added to my frustration and that fed the burnout.

Burnout sucks. Self doubt sucks. I’m coming out of it now, but it’s been pretty miserable. So how did I get past it? Well I know people have all kinds of solutions; vacations, chocolate, writing exercises, change of scenery, help from friends, etc. But in the end three things really helped me:

1) PASSION

Even when trying to write actually upset my stomach, NOT writing was worse. Which means that my PASSION outweighed the heavy dread and bitter self doubt that kept up a running dialogue in my head. I knew I loved writing and telling the stories of the characters living in my head. The idea of all those voices in my head forever silenced left me unbearably sad. I just had to rediscover my love of telling stories which brings me to:

2) PERSEVERANCE.

Because no matter how burned out I was, I refused to give up. I kept at it, first determined to finish Exposing The Heiress (still need to hear back on the latest version, but that’s another blog), then I set about figuring out what projects I really wanted to write in 2015.  Just because I love writing, doesn’t mean it’s easy and that’s why perseverance matters. Get ready, because this is the ranty part of the blog: Dreaming is easy, but achieving your dreams? It had better be so hard, so challenging that you have moments of doubt. You had better feel like you’re trudging up an impossible hill, in the snow with a pack of demons nipping at your heels while trolls are shooting flaming arrows at you and hyenas are bouncing around, laughing at your efforts.

Why?

Because when you make it to the top? It will be so freaking amazing, even the laughing hyenas, flame-shooting trolls and nipping demons will celebrate. There is nothing like the feeling of achieving a challenging dream. It’s a rush like nothing else with a chaser of pure satisfaction. But to get that, we have to strive hard for something that feels a bit out of our reach.

And if it’s not hard? Then you aren’t dreaming big enough.

Just as important, when that beautiful dream at the very tip of the impossible hill takes an inevitable slide (and it will, because life is full of ups and downs), you know what will save you? Say it with me now,  “PERSEVERANCE.”

Okay now I’ll end that rant and let’s move onto the final thing that’s helping me come back from burnout:

3) SUPPORT. And that’s where all you guys come in. Thank YOU for the constant support! Additionally, I have Wizard, my family, my sister and friends. All of them have been there when I’ve chosen to talk about it. I don’t always do that because I think talking can morph into a habit of complaining that can become a slippery slope. A little venting and problem solving is good, too much weighs us down until we’re trapped in the same place. It’s a fine line, but I couldn’t do this without the supportive people around me.

So there you have a bit about my highs and lows this year. My goals for 2015 are to release CAGED MAGIC in the Wing Slayer Hunter Series and launch my very sexy, Savaged Illusions contemporary series. I’m dying to write that first book. It will be loosely tied to Sloane Michael’s world from The Plus One Chronicles but each book will be a stand alone story with a happy ending. It’s possible I’ll have more releases in 2015, but those two are my focus right now.

I hope you all have a safe New Year’s Eve and that 2015 rocks for all of us! If you’d like to share some of your highs and lows from 2014, I’d love to hear them!

Oh and FYI, I’m going to be offline doing some family stuff so I won’t post again until Monday.

So cool, the German edition of THE PROPOSITION released yesterday (Dec. 4th) on Amazon! They are releasing the trilogy in  two books instead of three, the first now and the second one in January 15th 2015. Here’s the link to the book on Amazon.de 

So in other news,  I’m two thirds of the way through the revisions on EXPOSING THE HEIRESS and holding my breath that this works.  This essentially had a been a “square peg into a round hole” revision to make it fit the new line. I hope I’m doing it, but I’m too deep in the middle of it to really know. So this weekend, more work. I’m hoping to get it done next week so I can tackle Christmas and get back to CAGED MAGIC.

And I’ve fallen in love with audio books! To relieve stress, right now I’m walking…and I’m doing a good two miles while listening to audio books. I swear it’s saving my sanity. I was MAD this week because it rained and I couldn’t go. Which is super petty of me since we desperately need the rain here in So Cal. And I can listen to audio books at the gym too, but I have to actually drive there Anyway, the book that I got hooked on is REAPER’S STAND by Joanna Wylde. The male narrator on that book is hot! So hot! Now I’m listening to REAPER’ S PROPERTY. Unfortunately there’s only a female narrator on this one, and not the super sexy guy  The point however, is audio books + exercise + stress relief for me.

What are your weekend plans?

So who went out shopping? I stayed home, I haven’t even started Christmas shopping yet.  I look at a few online deals, but didn’t buy anything. Mostly I worked. I’m about a third of the way into my revisions. I’m telling you this book EXPOSING THE HEIRESS and CAGED MAGIC are two of the most frustrating books I’ve ever worked on. But I hit a turning point his weekend on revising EXPOSING THE HEIRESS, and most of that is due to the fact that I had coffee with Biker Witch (my sister) on Saturday. We were just hanging out, when I was telling her what was going on with this book.

And I blurted it out; I feel so sorry for Hunt and Alyssa, I’m having to force them together sexually before they are ready. That was just a random comment, but it stuck with me all night, and the next day I realized what I had to do to make it work.

The point of this story is IT’S GOOD TO WALK AWAY FROM A PROJECT WHEN WE’RE STUCK ON IT. I’ve been doing that more and more lately and it’s helping. Plus having a sister like Biker Witch who will leaving me alone about it when I don’t want to talk about a book (sometimes I need to NOT think about it) and then listen when I’m ready is pretty awesome too

And now to the other side of writing.  So Wizard and I were watching some version of House Hunters that reminded me of a heroine I always wanted to write. So I tell Wizard about it, and he gets super excited. “You have to write this down.” And he’s throwing out ideas.

I’m like “Whoa dude! I have like four or five books to write before I can get to that.”

But Wizard has the solution to that. “So write faster.”

Seriously? LOLOL! I wish I could!

How was your weekend?