Happy Memorial Day!

Have a great Memorial Day, enjoy your friends and family,
but don't forget what the day is all about. Thank a vet!

Caturday!

Jack plays Tetris, the home game.

How to make a baby

Everything you ever needed to know - today at Fictionistas. For real. Check it out here.

A question for your Thursday

Men spend their lives doing things like fighting fires, defending their country in times of war, walking on the moon, chasing criminals, directing multi-million dollar companies, being captains of industry, traipsing through the deepest, darkest jungles, killing bugs and blah, blah, blah.

So why can't they put a new roll of toilet paper on after they use up the old one?

Just saying.

The party's over

My parents go home today and reality returns. Time to get back to eating right, working out and writing. Which isn't to say I've completely abandoned those things, just that I may not have been as strict about them as I normally would be.

In other words, I'm up 2 pounds and behind by 10 pages.

Time to get motivated and back in the groove! Who's with me?

Best Birthday Ever

Friday afternoon, my dad insisted I go with him to run errands. And run we did. Store after store with no real purchases. (I should have known something was up when my father wanted to go try shoes on.) I got cranky as I was near death from starvation, having eaten so little in anticipation of the big seafood dinner we were going out for.

Except we weren't going out to dinner.

When we finally got home, I walked into a house full of family and friends waiting to surprise me for my birthday. It was crazy. People flew in, drove for hours, prepped massive amounts of food and generally shocked the daylights out of me. It was an amazing outpouring of love.

To everyone who was there, thank you so much for being a part of that very special night. I won't ever forget it!

Caturday!

Once again, Jack's delicious-looking haunches brought out Finn's inner vampire.

It's the most wonderful day of the year!

It's the one day of the year when two very special people with a love of sparkly things and a penchant for saying exactly what they're thinking share a birthday - that's right, Mr. T and ME!

I pity the fool who doesn't wish us a happy day. ;o) Now I must eat cake for breakfast and bring out the bling.

PS. Happy Birthday, Mr. T!

Anyone seen Iron Man 2 yet?

My parents flew in yesterday (and boy, are their arms tired! ba-dum-bump) so tonight we're headed to see Iron Man 2, a movie that Hotrod and I have put off seeing until they got here.

Have you seen it? Did you like it? No spoilers please! I will say we really enjoyed the first one and I'm a big fan of Robert Downey Jr. I love how he's turned his life around. You've got to give him props for that.

Have a great day!

A hero without fangs or fur

If you don't know who Bryan Anderson is, you should. He's an amazing guy who hasn't let losing both legs and a hand in Iraq keep him from doing everything he wants to do. You can read more about him here, then enter the Knight Agency's Real Life Hero contest.

I'd rather be reading

But I have too much writing to do! If I get my 5 pages done today, reading will be my reward. Besides the writing, I have to make a trip to the post office - which means getting out of my "work clothes" and into clothes that can be seen in public, and I need to work out and fold some laundry. See, this is where an assistant would be very handy. A real assistant, not like the one in the picture. I have plenty of those.

Today is like a whole day designed especially to make me miserable. Not the writing part tho, because while writing is super hard work (and anyone who tells you different is a BFL (Big Fat Liar), I'm starting to get into the swing of this book and I'm enjoying the pain, I mean, writing process.

What are you up to today?

PS. Friday is my birthday. Just giving you plenty of time to prepare. ;o)

A Very Special Caturday

My first Caturday video! That's right, peeps, I'm kicking it up a notch. Enjoy!
PS. Don't expect too much. It's just cats being cats.

Who ever said life was fair?

I'm over at Fictionistas talking about getting ahead in life. For real. Come chat!

Did you know?

Did you know the print version of All Fired Up is now available for pre-order on Amazon? And Barnes & Noble?

Also, I'll be signing it at the RWA Literacy Signing in Orlando this coming July.

Just throwing that out there.

One less excuse for using an ereader

Pure awesome. No longer can people complain that they don't like ereaders because they miss the smell of books. Just spray a little of this and you're good to go! lol - I love it!

According to the ad copy:

The smell of e-books just got better

Does your Kindle leave you feeling like there’s something missing from your reading experience?

Have you been avoiding e-books because they just don’t smell right?

If you’ve been hesitant to jump on the e-book bandwagon, you’re not alone. Book lovers everywhere have resisted digital books because they still don’t compare to the experience of reading a good old fashioned paper book.

But all of that is changing thanks to Smell of Books™, a revolutionary new aerosol e-book enhancer.

Now you can finally enjoy reading e-books without giving up the smell you love so much. With Smell of Books™ you can have the best of both worlds, the convenience of an e-book and the smell of your favorite paper book.

Smell of Books™ is compatible with a wide range of e-reading devices and e-book formats and is 100% DRM-compatible. Whether you read your e-books on a Kindle or an iPhone using Stanza, Smell of Books™ will bring back that real book smell you miss so much.

Beautiful Cat Needs Great Home

If anyone knows anybody in the Spacecoast area of Florida who might be interested in a great cat, email me.

Max, the cat you've seen many times on my Caturday posts, needs a wonderful home to adopt him.

Here's the story: he was originally meant for my niece but after going to live with her, it seemed she was allergic to him, so he came to live with us and did fine until we adopted two new cats, Jack and Finn. They wanted to be friends with him, but he wasn't having it. So, he went back to live with my sister-in-law and niece, but this time it turned out my SIL was the one who was really allergic to him. (My niece had something else going on.)

He came back to us and now clearly needs to be an only cat. He's sweet as can be with Hotrod and me, but bring another cat into the picture and he gets super freaked out. We're heartbroken we can't keep him. He's a great companion, very affectionate and loves to play. He just can't abide other cats. I have no idea how he would respond to a dog, but he did live just fine with some birds.

If you know anyone who might be interested, leave me a note in the comments and we'll talk. I'd love for him to go to someone we know or to a home that came highly recommended.

Caturday!

Today's Caturday has been canceled on account of bad behavior.
(Which Jack would like you to know that Finn started.)

I'm a steppin' machine

So yesterday I posted that the first day with my pedometer on I only managed 7500 steps. Well that changed yesterday. Maybe because I was more conscious of my movement, I'm not sure, but I did 12,424 steps. About 6 miles. Three of those miles were on the treadmill as part of my workout, but still, they count! I'm pretty psyched about that number and am hoping to repeat it today.

I also had a little breakthrough with my workout yesterday - I ran for five minutes straight without stopping, falling off the treadmill or crying like a little girl. I've been running for small intervals for a while now but never really more than 1 or 2 minutes at a time. I guess that work is starting to pay off. I'd love to be a runner. Seems like they can eat whatever they want.

Today needs to be a big writing day for me. I'd love to hit 3k words for the day.

Hmm. I guess I'm all about the numbers lately. 3000 words, 12,000 steps. Kinda bizarre for someone as math-challenged as me.

You've got to move it, move it!

Yesterday, I did two things to improve my life as a writer:

1. I bought a new chair, a Herman Miller Aeron, because it seems to be the one chair most writers mention when they talk about "great chairs" and the chair I have now...well, let's just say I have a love hate relationship with it. I loved it when I bought it, but now I hate it. It didn't hold up well at all and sitting in it has become a study in tolerance.

I can't wait to try this new chair out. I hope it arrives soon. I have high hopes! I'll keep you posted. (For those of you on the fence about spending this much cheddar on a chair, I'd like to remind you that you can write it off.)

2. I've started wearing a pedometer to measure my steps. I've read numerous places that you should shoot for 10K steps a day or about 5 miles. I only managed 7500 yesterday so clearly I have my work cut out for me. (And that figure included my work out time on the treadmill.) It doesn't take a genius to see that the writing life is way too sedentary.

What have you done to make your life better lately?

Now hiring

I can't seem to shake this foggy feeling. I just want to nap! Or lay by the pool. Which would lead to napping. Problem is napping accomplishes nothing. And I have tons to do. Such as:

1. Shop for a fountain so the landscaping can be completed.
2. Shop for food so we can continue eating.
3. Write so I can meet my deadlines.
4. Workout so I can keep fitting into my jeans.
5. Do laundry so those jeans are clean.

Anyone want to volunteer to be my assistant? The pay is zero but you get pool privileges.

Home

I'm home from RT and pretty wiped out. If I was a cat, I'd still be in bed. Being social can really leave a person feeling like they've been hit by a truck. I had a pretty good trip, though - I actually managed to work out every day I was there. Odd how priorities change, huh? Still, I met some great people, including my Orbit editor, Mike, the sales guy, authors Nicole Peeler, Jaye Wells, Mark Henry, Diana Rowland and a bunch of other people my sleep-deprived brain can't remember at the moment. Met a really cool indie bookseller from California. Finally met Toni Blake in person. And Jia from TKA (she rocks!) and I also ate one of the best burgers I've ever had - a bison burger! Man, I could eat another one right now. And then again in five minutes. Lara Santiago knows what I'm talking about.

I had an awesome roomie, the lovely and talented Victoria Alexander, who taught me the value of conflict in writing. ;o)

Today is all about catching up and getting back to work. And possibly napping. What about you?

Caturday!

Dis my impreshun of you in da morning.