Holding Pattern

Yup, that's my life these days. I'm...not in a funk, precisely, but I am feeling very introspective these days. I have a birthday coming up on Saturday (39--OMG, I'm staring down the gaping maw of 40, holy hell), I'm trying not very successfully to wrangle my ex to sit down with me and negotiate our divorce, Christmas and New Year's is coming, so it's kind of a weird time. A time for navel-gazing and figuring things out--what I want for me and the kids, how to get there, all that crap.

Of course, that means I haven't been around much at all--not in any of my usual haunts on these here intertubes. I have been lurking a bit, but not posting much at all. Haven't been doing much at all in the real world either (other than surviving 10 days of my kids having swine flu and various personal irritations like postage mix-ups and fixing scratches in my laminate flooring with a brown pencil crayon and stuff).

In other news, my van is making a horrible noise that three mechanics have told me is likely the flex plate for the torque convertor. For all of you mechanically uninclined folks, that most likely means a $100 part and $800 labor. In other words, they have to pull either the engine or the transmission to replace one little part. But one of the delights of living in a small, close-knit community is that people don't like to see people like me get the shaft. An acquaintance has offered to do the work for free, because I'm a single mom and he knows my finances are tight. So I'm going to bake him a couple of authentic Danish Kringles and dedicate a story to him, and talk him up to everyone in town. I think I almost cried when he offered to do it, and it just makes me feel so good to be living in a place like this.

In other other news, my buddy's trailer is being repoed. Not the bad news you might assume. She doesn't own it anymore but her name can't be removed from the mortgage, so a repo means she can start rebuilding her credit that much sooner. On top of that, as a thank you to me for all the help I've given her in her recent troubles, she gave me her kitchen appliances. We swapped out my 30 year old fridge and stove for her 5 year old ones (and OMG, her oven is a conventional/convection combo--and it's self-cleaning!), and for the first time in my entire life I have a dishwasher. I put it through its inaugural run tonight, and I am so freaking stoked. The Saell family rockets into the 1970s! Yay!

On the not so bright side, my muse is silent. I have three WIPs on the go and none of them are calling me. I was thinking of doing a short erotica piece to get my groove back, so we'll see. I need to write something to dedicate to my philanthropic mechanic. :)

Okay, when I disappear, I really disappear

Yes, it has been a while. More than two weeks, in fact, since I last blogged.

Can't say I even have a good excuse. I've been putzing around the net, lurking but not commenting, ignoring my writing, not doing much housework, just generally being a bum. I think it's likely the weather getting to me as it always does when the days finally start getting dark and short.

In addition, H1N1 has hit my house. My oldest came down with a fever, aches, joint stiffness and a cough on Wednesday, my daughter--always prone to extreme gastrointestinal distress--started bazooka barfing on Saturday morning, and Blammo got me up at 4 Monday morning with vomiting and headache. He had a nasty, phlegmy cough that made him sound like Tom Waits, a fever of 102 and a stuffy nose when we got up this morning. I took the day off work so I can keep a close eye on him. Unfortunately, whenever I give him enough Tylenol to bring his fever down and dampen the headache, he stops acting sick and starts acting like a regular, hyper kid who's cooped up indoors. Oy.

So far I have not succumbed, but usually once Blammo gets something, I'm next. I'll update in a day or two to let you know.

Good news is, it seems to be mild in all three cases. Firstborn was back to school yesterday--he still had a bit of a gucky throat, but wasn't even coughing anymore. Daughter is perfectly functional, but still symptomatic enough that I'll keep her home one more day. And Blammo is possibly the least miserable sick kid in the universe. No lying around and moaning for him. A shame, really. There's nothing like a mean virus to take the edge off a kid.

I am hoping to buckle down and get some real work done soon. I've just been...sorting out some stuff in my head, and I think I've mostly figured it out. Word meters should be maxing out fairly soon.

I know, famous last words... :P

Excerpt Monday

It's that time again. This month, I dredged up something from under the proverbial bed, the prologue of a novel I started years ago. The story is set in the same world as Crossing Swords--but about 300 years before the events in my published books.

I plan on dusting the cobwebs off of this one fairly soon and giving it the attention it deserves. The story deserves to be told. If only there were more hours in the day...

So, it's been a while...

...and just so you all can stop worrying, yes, I'm still alive.

I've been in a bit of a holding pattern the last few weeks. School's started, but I'm not back in my groove yet. I managed to bang out about a thousand words on The Mermaid's Curse yesterday (celebrate the little victories, heh), but my house is still a mess. My grass is not cut. My filing is still waiting to be done.

Mostly, I've been indulging my internet addiction. Not blogging so much myself (although I did a couple posts on LVLM if you want to take a look), just misbehaving in other people's houses as it were. My one comfort in that is that the addiction cycles on and off, so I know it won't last much longer. And part of me is happy to just do nothing. After the summer I had, I need to recharge. Just...have some time without anyone needing anything from me. My poor kids. Their mother is running on empty. I'm just glad they're mostly self-sufficient--as long as I keep them in Froot Loops, Mini Wheats, oranges, grapes, frozen pizzas, a couple home-cooked meals a week, and they can find a clean pair of pants in the mountain of unfolded laundry in my room, they're okay.

I've also been sick with the plague for the last several days and took three shifts off work (two of those were extra, so it's not so big a loss, really), and the time alone was...beautiful. I got hardly anything done and don't feel guilty at all.

In other news, my youngest, Blammo, has taken a bizarre interest in vegetables, and has developed the ability to belch on command. Daughter is almost taller than I am and can no longer borrow my shoes because her feet are bigger than mine (which means she'll likely grow up to be an Amazon). Firstborn has apparently discovered an attraction to the opposite sex. I know this because he now showers every day without being asked, asked me to get him some whitening toothpaste, and has started scrubbing his acne. I'm worried.

In other, other news, I received galleys for Chancellor's Bride the other day. It's due out in print in May, yay! Unfortunately, I have nothing to put under the "Coming Soon" heading at the front of the book. :( Which means I really need to get working on my...stuff. Soon.

If any of you all have a whip handy, feel free to ply it. I can take it.

That's it.

people are weird....

Okay, so I stuck a tracker on my website about a month ago, and now I can indulge my inner voyeur without getting myself arrested. This has, however, introduced me to a whole new world of bizarre and questionable Google search terms and the (I would expect) bizarre and questionable people behind them.

Most are pretty reasonable and applicable:

touching inside panties soaking

girls derty nickers with damp patch in [not mom-safe]

in side my knickers (not sure how these two hit my site, since I don't think I've ever used "knickers" in my fiction...)

steel between her legs

sitting across the office she parted her legs and showed me her [ahem] (have to credit this one--a complete sentence and every word spelled correctly)

he lightly touched her [ahem] with his tongue (again, astonishingly literate)

[coughcough] me through my panties

tear my pant with your teeth

romance thrust breasts hands (bwahaha! Why bother with filler words, let's cut to the chase, shall we?)

But other search terms give me mental images that I will never be able to scrub away, such as:

smell mom panties (oh, ewww)

.....or the one that made my eyebrows hit my hairline:

snake in my [place where no self-respecting snake would willingly go] (do I really need to comment further?)

So what do these people do when they get to my website? An astonishing number of them, even the aforementioned snake fetishist, spend between 20 minutes and a couple hours poking around, reading my free samples and looking at my bio.

Now, I've read some interesting books and seen some cool shows based on people who can read others' thoughts, and as a kid, I always figured it would be cool to have that ability. But looking at those last two search terms, I'm thinking I probably don't really want to know what's going on in people's heads. All things considered, I might just stop looking at my tracker and invest in a telescope and see what kind of normal, everyday shenanigans the people across the street get up to...

Excerpt Monday!

It's Excerpt Monday again, and I'm posting the first chapter of the f/f/m fairy tale menage I was insane enough to start writing last week. It's based on The Little Mermaid, but has a few twists. First, the merpeople are pretty much a bunch of elitist jerks. Second, the Sea Witch isn't evil, just...justifiably bitchy. Third, she wants in on the HEA.

Go ahead and read if you dare. :D

Another review for Chancellor's Bride

BookUtopiaMom just gave The Chancellor's Bride 7 1/2 stars out of 10 over at Uniquely Pleasurable. Here's a snippet:

"Right away, the sensuality of the prose in this novel grabs the reader by the lapels and refuses to let go.....The brief prologue immerses you in both erotic and intelligent imagery, establishing a high standard for the rest of the story to meet. It continues in that vein throughout the novel, and in actuality, is probably one of its strongest assets. Even when I had questions and doubts about motivations, I could always rely on the author’s voice to compensate for it."

This is a bit of a mixed review, the kind that's extremely helpful to me, pointing out a lack of clarity regarding one character's motivations that I know has bothered a few other readers.

Just shows me that while I am certain that my characters' motivations and conflicts make sense, I need to work a little harder to convey those things to the reader, who is less well-acquainted with my world and its denizens than I am. And that I shouldn't rely so heavily on my voice to carry the reader past those points of doubt or confusion.

But I'm absolutely jazzed that despite the stated flaws, she still found it a "lush, seductive read", and would give other books by me a go. Now I just have to try to finish Collin and Harral's prequel (which will be short, I hope, though I know myself well enough to not promise that), or get another m/m(/f) to start calling to me. Because I did absolutely love writing this one.

:)