How did it get to be Friday again? It’s the new year and I thought time might slow down, but nope. Is it just me? So crazy! But on the upside, I’m loving writing right now. It’s just different, freer than it has been in a while. I refuse to think about deadlines, and am just letting the story happen.

Later I’ll get crazed. It’s inevitable because that’s just how I am. I care so much about the readers who have invested in Wing Slayer Hunters and hung in there waiting that I want to give them the story they deserve. But thinking about that now is counterproductive. So I’m just writing, deleting, rewriting and letting the story mature and develop.

And while I have you guys, I wanted to say that I do try to answer the comments, but missed out on Wednesday. When I went to answer, the blog or something was acting up and not posting my answers, then I just didn’t get back to try again. But I always read them comments and always appreciate them!

So this weekend: Tomorrow I’m having lunch with Biker Witch so we can catch up. I’m going to try to make my local RWA meeting on Saturday because Candace Haven is talking about writing a “Fast Draft” something I’m very weak at, and “Revision,” something I’m decent at but can always improve. But it depends how much writing I get done today. And then I’m also going to start reading COWGIRLS DON’T CRY by our own Silver James! I can’t wait!

So what are you doing this 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.

Hey guys! I’ve missed you all! Our holidays were great but nonstop and man, I’m ready to go back to writing today! So a quick recap: Christmas Eve we had Biker Witch (my sister) and her Biker Hubby out for dinner. That was totally kick back and fun. Then Christmas day we had two sons plus their girls out and Special K (my daughter-in-law) cooked dinner. And let me tell you, THIS is what I missed out on in having all sons! Special K made a delicious dinner of Chicken Pasta Marinara. I didn’t have to do anything

And okay I know boys are capable of making dinner too But it’s amazing for us to have these special girls that our three sons have brought to our lives! Better than any material gift that’s for sure.

Then Sunday we got to see Middle Son and his girlfriend, and she made carne asada fajitas. Awesome! We had a great time with them too.

Another awesome thing, we had Bailey for almost a week. He was good as gold, and we loved having him. The first three days we went for walks and he chased lizards and played, but then, his hips started bothering him. Bailey is getting older, and his hips can really hurt. Holy Heartstrings, that is hard to see–he looks at us with big sad eyes that beg us to make it stop. Middle Son told me what to do, so I got the meds for him and it helped. Also I went out and bought him a new bed (for our house, he has a kennel he loves at his house) so he could get more comfortable:

When Bailey wasn’t with us, he slept in the bed until the meds kicked in and he felt better. Let me tell you, both Wizard and I were STRESSED over this, so worried about the dog who has given all of us so much love. Middle Son had told me this happened, and I could hear the worry in his voice when he talked about it, but seeing it firsthand is wrenching.  Bailey’s feeling better now, and he’ll be okay.

And when we took him home, Middle Son and his girlfriend were so calm and confident, helping Bailey while going out of their way not to make us feel bad. Middle son thinks the stairs in our house are aggravating Bailey’s hips and said, “I’ll order baby gates and have them sent to your house.” And I thought, this man cares so much for his dog AND his parents. He doesn’t want to deprive Bailey or us, we’ll just work together to solve issues as Bailey ages and has more challenges.

Seriously, I hugged both Middle Son and his girlfriend. We all love Bailey and want what’s best for him.

So over all our Christmas was good even though Bailey had a couple difficult days. He has a lot of people who love him and will work together to take care of him.

How was your holiday and weekend?

So I this idea, I’ll do a short, quick holiday video. Sixty seconds max. And you know what? Wizard has time now, I’ll ask him to film it for me. It’ll take us, what, a half hour?

Um, yeah, I forgot a tiny little detail — Wizard is a perfectionist. Suddenly, we were doing test shots all over the house trying to find the best location and even moved the Christmas tree and rearranged furniture. Yep, even the Fed Ex guy was amused, because of course he came by to deliver something I’d ordered as we’re filming right in front of the front window. Totally embarrassing.

Although two days before the UPS guy came by while I was cleaning with music blaring and there’s a possibility that I might have been singing…and dancing…with a mop. However as far as I know, that is not on video so I’m going to deny it ever happened

Anyway, we finally got the video to Wizard’s satisfaction, until we uploaded it and realized the sound was too low. So we did it again the next day. We’re getting the hang of this, although our next goal is to learn to edit the videos, making them tighter and cleaner.

So to the answer to the question: How long does it take to do a sixty second video? TWO DAYS!

If you haven’t seen it on FB or Twitter, I’ll try to embed it here: And if you’ve seen it, skip down!

That’s me unedited, just chatting. But it’s also sincere, I really want readers to know how much I appreciate them.

In fun and slightly random news, Bailey Dog is coming over today and is staying with us until Sunday

I’m hoping to blog on Friday, but if not I’ll check in next week. I wish you all a warm, safe and joyous holiday with your family and friends!

After an epic battle and I mean EPIC, my meds are supposed to come today! And we’re nearly done Christmas shopping, so things are really looking up!

How about you guys? Are you all making progress?

And while I have your attention, do you have a favorite Christmas cookie? I can’t decide if I do so I’m thinking hard and confusing myself. My overall favorite cookie is chocolate chunk, but that’s really not a Christmas cookie. What if someone asks me and I don’t know the answer? Or what if I desperately need to bake something? See my dilemma? So do you guys have a favorite?

Okay, fine, enough talk about cookies and Christmas

Now onto Wednesday Worthy. Now this isn’t a super tough dude, (umm, look at his tats–it’s like his mom chose then, LOL!). But I like his smirk and abs so I thought, why not give him a shot. Right? Cause we’re totally generous that way–we let the wannabe Hunks come in a audition. And keep in mind, even if he doesn’t make the cut for the big jobs, there’s always job openings at the bar (alcoholic or coffee–we’re a full service lair here), or package carrier, dog walker, you know, the usual stuff.

So what do you think? Is he worthy?