Life's been pretty sweet

Okay, it hasn't been all sweet, by any stretch of the imagination. But the good has mostly outweighed the bad of late. It has been really busy, though, which is no excuse for not blogging, but it's all I've got, so there you go.

My personal life has been kind of all over the place. The divorce drama has not died...it's merely mutated into something less costly in the financial sense, but more frustrating and disheartening than ever. This latest to-do (and no, I'm not going to elaborate in public, but it's probably even worse than what your imagination can conjure) has made me wonder, yet again, how some people can be terrified of marriage because it's a "serious commitment", but will often think nothing of having a child with that person they're too chicken to marry. You want to be stuck dealing with someone for the rest of your life, no matter how much you'd like to never see or think of him again? Have a dang child with him. Marriage is easy to get out of--especially these days. Kids are forever. Oy.

My job is going well. I like almost all the people there, and there's so little of the bullshit that went on at my previous job. It's fewer hours than the breakfast place, and I therefore have less money piling up under the mattress, but I still have plenty to get by, and enough to even exercise a little largess here and there. Likewise, the kids are all right. Steady as we go, onwards and upwards, and all that.

My royalty checks are still nice and big(gish), though they'd be bigger if I had more books out, for sure. Working on that. :)

I've been seeing someone fairly steadily since mid-November. It's been bumpy, but somehow we've managed to hang in there this long. He's...well, he's funny and brilliant and kind and honest and sweet. And a little weird--perhaps just weird enough to appreciate my own particular weirdness. And he's pushing me to write, and I think I need that kind of kick in the pants to launch myself full-on back into the habit at this point. So if I have a new book contract in the next month or so, you'll all know who to thank.

I'm still largely ignoring housework, and most of the writing I've been doing has been in emails to friends rather than fiction, or comments on blogs. I've been trying to stir up enough interest to join in on some discussions going on in the online romance community, but lately there hasn't been much posted around the neighborhood that arouses my passions, so to speak. Anybody feel like posting something outrageous enough that I can't resist jumping in, please do so. I'd appreciate it. :)

So there's the update. Still alive, cautiously optimistic about my life, but still dealing with stuff I'd rather wash my hands of. Gonna try to blog more, if I can think of anything to say that won't bore you all to tears, lol.

Hugs.

been a crazy couple of weeks...

My life, it has been a little....squirrely for the last bit, hence I haven't been around much. But lo and behold, the Purolator lady came with another box of books for me--for my May print release and sole foray into hot guy on guy on girl action, The Chancellor's Bride. I'd post a pic like usual, but I can't find my camera. At the moment, I can't put my hands on my toothbrush. I THINK I might know where it is, but we'll see...

Anyhow, if any of you would like to leave a comment here, I'll have my 7 y/o random number generator, Blammo, choose one lucky person to win a free copy.

And if you can come up with any suggestions as to where I might find my toothbrush (I've already looked in the deep freezer, heh), I'd be much obliged. And if you lead me to that elusive instrument of dental hygiene, you get a free copy, too!

Blue collar guys...

Don't know where this post came from, but it's something I've been pondering of late as I do my best to hurl myself back into the sexual marketplace.

I don't know about you all, but there's just something about a blue collar guy that turns me on. Say what you want about a well-groomed man in a Hugo Boss suit and expensive shoes--for me, there's nothing sexier than a man with a little dirt under his nails, a man with forearms defined by weilding nailguns, screwdrivers, sawzalls, wrenches, a man who knows how to assemble a carburetor or fiddle with a timing chain, rewire a house, solder a copper pipe or fit the perfect mortise and tenon.

Maybe it derives from my youthful days as designated coffee-fetcher and flashlight-holder for my heavy-duty mechanic dad as he worked on the cars? Mechanic by trade, he was handy in myriad ways. I remember him finishing our basement from bare concrete and naked ceiling beams--he did all the plumbing, wiring, carpentry and tiling himself (with a little "help" from us kids), and I'll admit I picked up a certain flair for creative profanity from him as I got older and he guarded his tongue less.

Maybe it comes from the occasional trip to pick him up at work with my mom--the teenaged me waiting in a lunchroom where every inch of wall and half the ceiling was plastered with posters of naked women, indelibly associating sex with the smells of diesel fuel and motor oil in my already half-way bent mind.

Maybe it's because a man who's good with his hands when it comes to laying tile or installing a bathtub faucet or cutting the perfect dovetail joint makes me think he'll be good with his hands when it comes to...other things? Maybe the roughness of sweat and physical work translates into visions of roughness and sweat in other contexts in my subconscious?

Whatever the reason, seeing a man with a streak of black on his forehead, a dozen little cuts and scars on his hands, grime permanently imprinted into the whorls on the pads of his fingers, and flecks of paint or silicone caulk on his t-shirt just...does it for me. Holy hell, does it ever.

A blue collar guy doesn't need the body of an Adonis to impress me (although the ubiquitous plumber butt-crack is maybe not the hottest thing ever, heh), he doesn't need a face like David Boreanaz or Clive Owen or Brad Pitt. All he needs is to be reasonably attractive and have the ability to take something that's broken and fix it, or take something that's nothing but a pile of raw materials and build it, and I'm drooling. Drooling, I tell you.

How about you guys? Any of you ever get the hots for your mechanic, or want to jump the bones of the guy who came to install kitchen cabinets?

Guest blogging at Victoria J's

Victoria Janssen, fellow girl-on-girl avenger and totally blammo author of Harlequin Spice books like this:

And THIS (OMG, holy crapping damn this cover is HOT!!!):

...has been kind enough to invite me to guest blog over in her neck of the woods. Topic du jour: Writing f/f and f/f/m for the female gaze--a subject very dear to me and one that doesn't get addressed enough. The post goes live tomorrow (Friday, August 28), and I hope you all will come by to check it out and share your thoughts on how you think authors get it right, and how you think they get it so very, very wrong.

In other news, I spent the day moving kitchen stuff and shopping with my friend, trying to get her properly set up in her new digs. And miracle of miracles, the ex phoned to say he'd like the kids this weekend. He's been working 12 hour shifts, 7 days a week for about a month, so they've seen him for all of one afternoon since my friend and her kid moved in here the last week of July.

So guess what? I have the whole house to myself for two whole days. I ought to be able to get everything clean that fell to chaos over the last five weeks, watch some porn, and have the time and privacy to drill that hole in my skull to let the pressure out. Now where did I put the masonary bits...?

Hugs. :)

August Excerpt Monday!

Time for yet another Excerpt Monday. This week, for lack of anything more timely, it's a snippet from my recent Samhain release, The Chancellor's Bride (m/m/f polyamorous erotic fantasy romance), which is selling like whoa and like damn at MBaM (but could always do better *ahem*).

And miracle of miracles, this excerpt is actually clean enough for my mom to read (if she were so inclined), but hopefully intriguing enough to, uh...intrigue you all. Yeah, so I used "intrigue" twice in the same sentence. It's late. Go ahead and sue me, I dare ya.

Hope you guys enjoy it. If you do, and you want a copy for nothing but a cheesy pick-up line, allow me to direct you to my currently stagnating cheesy pick-up line contest. Because the stagnant cheese is getting a little ripe--as stagnant cheese will--and all I need is a few more entries and I can wrap that baby up. :)

In other news, I am not in the nuthouse just yet. Ask me again in a week.

OMG help me

Well, we're well into week two of my buddy and her three-year-old demon spawn staying at my house, and not surprisingly, nothing is getting accomplished. My word-meters are stagnant, emails in my inbox go unanswered and there are still 842, 560 dirty dishes in the sink. Every time I go to work, I think to myself, "I don't want to be here, but god help me, I do not want to go home." On top of which, she won't be able to move out for another week or so. Oy. My liver ought to give me a medal for not descending into full-on alcoholism at this point.

But lo, it is a long weekend, and the little guy's dad is going to take him for three nights. Angels are singing right now, I can hear a whole choir of them in my head as I type this.

Does this mean I'll be able to get my house clean or my WIPs written or anything productive done between now and Monday? Probably not. But I will make myself at least start an article for Victoria Janssen's blog--we're tentatively scheduled for August 28th, which is later than I'd like, but I did leave it til the very last second of the very last minute so I'm not about to complain. It also gives me more time to procrastinate, and my therapist says my self-esteem benefits from concentrating my efforts on what I do best, so procrastinate I shall.

For article ideas, I'm thinking "Writing F/F for Fun and No Profit", lol. Or how about "F/F/M: Two Hot Babes Seein' to Mah Manly Needs"?

Um, no.

I think my topic of discussion will be "F/F/M: Not Just a Straight Guy's Fantasy". Coming on the heels of Bound by Steel's print release (August 4th, BTW), and in light of my EC-aimed project, Vessel, I think it's topical, at least for me. I only hope I can do the subject some justice, especially since my brain no work so good right now.

I also have to arrange for some promo for next Wednesday (the 5th) to do at the Samhaincafe, and plan a contest or something for a print copy of BbS.

And I know most of you all have not entered my (admittedly half-assed and hurried) pick-up line contest for The Chancellor's Bride (still holding at #6 on Samhain's bestseller list), which is something that will have to change, because I absolutely refuse to announce a winner when there are only three qualifying entries. So get to it! I mean it. I'd say all the cool kids are doing it, but clearly most of the cool kids have other things to do.

And that's about all the coherence my brain can manage today--which does not bode well for my performance at work tonight, but oh well. They love me there, even when I mess up every two seconds and can't string an understandable sentence together.

Hugs. And if I don't blog again for a while, it will be because I've been committed--perhaps voluntarily. Maybe in the nuthouse, I'd get five minutes in the bathroom without all hell breaking loose on the other side of the door. A girl can dream...

Summer Reading Trail: July

From the Trail Head at VoireyLinger.com:

Follow this trail and discover great new writers this summer. These free reads include short stories, serial installments, deleted scenes and book excerpts from published and unpublished authors. This trail will run from the beginning of June through the end of September, and stops will be updated on the first of every month, so you can enjoy a summer of reading. You are encouraged to explore authors' websites and blogs, to take a moment to leave them a comment and to bookmark sites and visit often.

My own contribution to the July Trail is a brief erotic scene (m/m, f/f(/m)) connected to my upcoming release, The Chancellor's Bride. This particular scene does not appear in the novel--in fact, this will be the only place you'll be able to read it until (unless?) I get my butt in gear and write the rest of the story.

From the moment I wrote Collin and Harral's characters in Bound by Steel, I was determined to give them their own story, and that's what I did in The Chancellor's Bride. But when C's B begins, Col and Harral are already an established couple. Part of me still wanted to explore the very beginning of their relationship, that initial spark that drew them to one another. I wrote their first meeting a few months ago with the intention of posting it as a free read as release day approached. The July Trail gave me a great opportunity to do that.

Hope you all enjoy! And don't forget to follow the trail and read more stuff by some great writers!

Ahhhh....

So despite a delay caused by my inability to convince the ferry service to transport my children on a boat full of combustibles and toxic chemicals, I managed to get the little...uh...treasures off to their dad's for a Canada Day that will hopefully be filled with lots of laughs, togetherness and roasted marshmallows, and a minimum of bickering, fire-pit mishaps, and firecracker-mangled body parts.

This means that I....wait for it....HAVE THE HOUSE TO MYSELF FOR TWO AND A HALF DAYS!!111!!!111!

WOOT!

Odd thing is, I hardly know what to do with myself. I've already tidied the living room; got the kitchen mostly in order; went on a quest with my dog-catcher buddy to catch a stray husky (it eluded us, the sneaky devil); collected the laundry from all over the house (literally--there was a pair of dirty socks in the deep freeze. Don't ask); got the garbage ready to go out to the curb tomorrow; walked my dog with her new jabby collar that prevents her from strangling herself while simultaneously crushing the bones of my hands; eaten pizza (frozen, but still not bad); poured myself a Caesar; spent an hour looking at stuff on the internet I wouldn't want my mom to know about; watched some TV; did some editing; and now I'm watching Futurama (the episode with the anchovies) and doing this blog post. And coming to a realization that has shaken me to my very core.

I actually *gasp* miss my kids.

Now don't get me wrong, I'm overjoyed to see the rotten little cubs leave the den to go hang with papa bear for a few days. But it is hard to adjust to the lack of noise, arguing, mayhem and general distraction they create. But I swear, as god is my witness, I will not waste this time alone. I will write. I will fold nine loads of clean clothes and *shudder* put them away. I will vacuum and dust, without having to worry about a pack of young'uns following me around undoing all my good work. I will stay up as late as I want reading dirty books. I will dance around my house in my underpants if the spirit takes me.

Cue bagpipes and a gut-wrenching close-up of Mel Gibson's face as you scream one single, inspiring word with me: FREEDOM!!!

That is all.

All right, already!

Okay, okay, you all can stop nagging. Oh, wait, my mistake. That was my conscience nagging, telling me I've been a lazy, unorganized, neglectful lump.

I promised a winner, and a winner you shall have, even if it kills me--which it might, and won't you all feel horrible then.

And, contrary to what some of you will have expected, it was one of the clean entries that tickled my funny bone the most. Yeah, I'm in an odd mood these days, so sue me.

So the winner of the lolcat contest thingie and proud owner of a copy of Healer's Touch embellished with my John Hancock (hehe, I said "cock", hey, I haven't changed that much), is Tarl, for this G-rated yet apt caption:

Yew got Lytning bug in yer hairs. I gets it for yu!

I'm sorry, but it was too cute, and too perfect. And I know what you guys are thinking--all those orifices and penis jokes, and this is the one I pick? Next thing you know, I'll start writing Young Adult or Sweet Romance, and when that happens, the men in white coats can't be far behind.

Congrats, Tarl! Well played! If you'd send along your mailing info to kirstensaell(at)yahoo(dot)com, I'll have your book dispatched forthwith. :)

Excerpt Monday!

It's once again time for Excerpt Monday, folks. This month, I've posted a steamy bit from The Chancellor's Bride, so if you all want a sneak peak, go look.

For some more steamy excerpts, try:

Evie Byrne, Historical Romance (R)
Aislinn Kerry, Paranormal (R)
Kim Knox, Erotic- Sci-fi Suspense (R)
Ella Drake, Sci-Fi Romance (NC 17)
Annie Nicholas, Sci-Fi Romance (NC 17)

Or go tp the Excerpt Monday site!

I promised a contest...

...and a contest ye shall have.

In honor of the print release of my second book, Healer's Touch (40% sex/volume), I am asking, nay, demanding you all come up with some brilliant diamonds of lolcatesque wit in my "Caption that Cover" contest. And no, I did not steal this idea from the Smart Bitches' post of yesterday--allow me to direct your attention to exhibit A, my comment timestamped 9:26 AM, May 27. Hah! In their faces! In fact, I bet those Bitches have been lurking around here and stole the idea from me! But I'll get them, don't you worry. And when I do--

*ahem*

As I was saying, I want lolcatspeak, and I want funny. And I know you all can deliver it. Enter as many captions as you like, and the winner will get a signed copy of the title in question.

Here's the blurb, for your edification:

She’s determined to break his eight centuries of celibacy—at any cost!

Darjhian healer Aru has been in exile for eight hundred years, barred from the Deathless Land and parted from his wife. Now fallen from grace and no longer immortal, he can never return to her.

Yet he cleaves to his marriage vow and holds himself apart from everyone—especially Viera, the former prostitute whose sexual energy provides the power needed for his healing work. She presents a temptation he must constantly hold at bay if he’s to keep to his vow.

Viera isn’t interested in fighting temptation. She wants Aru. He wants her. What could be simpler? After three frustrating months working with him, her need for him has reached the breaking point. He claims he can never touch a woman again, but Viera isn’t the type to take no for an answer.

Over four glorious nights, she shows Aru everything he’s denied himself for eight centuries. But a shadow hangs over their passion. Aru is keeping secrets about the nature of his mortality. And now he faces a terrible choice…

Break Viera’s heart, or risk destroying her with the knowledge of what he truly is.

Product Warnings

This title contains: graphic sex, including anal sex, f/f and m/f/f; bad language; inappropriate use of a kitchen work surface; flagrant tickling of ivory; and a wagon-load of good, old-fashioned voyeurism.

Deadline for entries is Wednesday the 10th at 11:59 PM.

Excerpt Monday!

It's excerpt Monday at Romance Divas, where promo-minded Divas have provided links to snippets from WIPs, contracted works and soon-to-be-released books. I posted the link to my own Chancellor's Bride--and FYI, I've also put up three new excerpts for works in progress on the Free Reads page of my website, if you all are interested in what I'm working on.

Go. Read. Have some fun.

Butterfly Swords by Jeannie Lin (with poll)
Cami’s First Kiss by Bria Quinlan
Excerpt Monday by Mel B (silentdreamer)
A Halloween Novella by Vivienne Westlake
Monday Excerpt by Maureen McCarrie
Monday Excerpt by Crista McHugh
Another Time, Another Place by T. Sue Versteeg
Monday Excerpt by Kinsey Holly
Del Fantasma by Becca Sheridan-Furrow
The Chancellor’s Bride by Kirsten Saell (Excerpt rating: PG, Site Rating: NC-17)
Scenting Cinnamon by Ella Drake (Rating: NC-17)
Asking for It by Kate Willoughby (Rating: PG-13)
21st Century Courtesan by Eden Bradley (Rating: Adult)
Excerpt Monday by Evie Byrne (Excerpt rating: PG, Site Rating: NC-17)
A Run for the Money by Gina Ardito
The Scroll Thief by R.F. Long
Resisting Kane by Stephanie Adkins
Inheritance by Lynne Chandler
The Encounter by Rose London (Rating: Adult)
Dying Embers by B.E. Sanderson
More than Magic by Babette James
First in the Soulguard series by Amber Gilchrist

Ooooh, shiny!

My new website, that is. After many trials and tribulations (which almost culminated in me seeing just how many billion pieces I could smash my new Vista-powered laptop into when it flat-out refused to unzip a zipped folder) I have built a new Wordpress website.

Well, actually, Elle Media designed it. And my fellow Diva and new favorite person evah, Jeannie Lin, whose book Butterfly Swords recently finaled in RWA's Golden Heart contest, went into the bowels of my webhost's FTP and actually got it up where it's supposed to be. Suffice to say, I now dream of Jeannie with the dark brown hair, her slender, gracefully tapered fingers stroking her keyboard and lovingly caressing my website into submission--much more effective than my standard bash-with-hammer-see-what-falls-out method.

This new site is not as graphics-heavy as the old one (not many nekkid pictures for y'all, sorry), but it will be super-amazingly easy to update. My old sitebuilder required me to have a huge program installed on my computer, to make any changes on that computer, then save them, then publish them to the project, then log onto my host and upload the altered file. I had to do this whether making a whole new page, or changing one typo.

Plus, there was no way to update from another computer, unless I wanted to go in and rewrite code onsite--and you can probably imagine how THAT would have turned out. Not long ago, I added a page (my Purple Panties story *ahem*), and it made all the content on my Kaemon & Egraen story pages disappear. I couldn't even figure out what had happened, let alone how to fix it.

Now, I can log on from anywhere, and make whatever changes I want in about three minutes, yay!

So with this new, easy-peasy to update site, what can you all expect? More news. More free reads. More ME! Hooray!

Read an Ebook Week

More than a day late, and a few bucks short, I'm here to remind you folks that it's Read an Ebook Week. Now, for me, pretty much every week is Read an Ebook Week, but for some of y'all, not so much (which is why I picked a publisher who also does print).

I'm not going to bore you all by sermonizing on why ebooks are totally blammo. If you're here, even if you're the type who swears you'll give up print books when someone pries them from your cold, dead fingers, you can probably list many of the benefits of digital books. What I am going to do is tell you to head over to ShannonC's website and check out her author interviews here, here and here. Being the glutton for punishment *ahem*, I mean dedicated ebook fan and supportive buddy that she is, she asked me to participate, as well, and my interview will be up tomorrow. For any of you who haven't yet given my books a go, she'll be giving away one of mine to one lucky commentor, yay!

You might also note that she mentions Crossing Swords in her romance book meme, as one book she wished she had written. I don't think I could find a better compliment anywere. Thanks, babe. :)

Cheers.

ETA: My interview is up. :)


There. I blogged. Happy now, Seeley? :P

Romance and Valentine's Day

I've always been kind of indifferent to Valentine's Day. Part of it is my general lack of sentimentality for "special" days--especially those arbitrated by the greeting card and floral industries. Part stems from a (now ended) 15-year marriage to a man with similar deficiencies regarding overt demontrations of romantic feeling, which enabled me in my continuing ambivalence toward the hearts/flowers/candy trappings of V-day. To me, Valentine's day means little more than a busier-than-usual night at work. Simply put, I'm just not a member of the day's target demographic.

Don't get me wrong. I have a strong romantic streak. I do write romance, after all (even if there is a surplus of hot sexx0ring in it). Even way back when I was writing straight fantasy, my characters had a habit of falling hard for one another and I was all too happy to oblige them. But romance, to me, is less about dinner under candlelight, slow dancing (unless you're talking the horizontal variety, heh) and a dozen red roses, than it is about simply being with someone you love. Snuggles on the couch while watching a good action movie (I don't really do rom-com, either, lol), a pair of arms surrounding you while you stand at the sink washing dishes, a kiss when you need it, or even when you don't. If you don't have those things, no amount of flowers and heart-shaped chocolates once a year is ever going to make up for them.

I'll be spending this Valentine's Day without anyone special to share it with. That's cool, though. As I told my buddy Leah, my heart has everything it needs right now--kids, friends, family and a general happiness with my life and the person I've become. There's no shortage of love in my life, even if the romantic side of things is currently on pause.

I hope you all have a great Valentine's Day, whether you adore the assorted accouterments of the day, or are indifferent to them. Whether you're one half of a couple or in between relationships or a confirmed single. Love is love, and chocolates--even ones that aren't heart-shaped--still taste pretty darn good.

And for all of you who could use a laugh, I stole this from JenB's blog:

Happy V-Day! *mwah!*

Guest Author at LVLM

Dudes! Author and fellow Samhellion Anne Rainey is over at Loving Venus- Loving Mars, talking about her new Samhain release, Burn.

It's all about the hot girl-on-girl-on-guy action, plus there's a $10 Amazon GC up for grabs, too! Head on over and leave a comment for a chance to win.

Just do it. Doooooo eeeeet!!!11!

Happy New Year!

All right, it's more than half a day late and many many many dollars short, but I'm saying it anyway. And to celebrate, I'm changing up my blog. Don't know if I'm in love with the template I picked, but I am too lazy and inept to seriously customize this thing, so it will have to do. I have visions in my head of awesome graphics and gorgeous colors but they all look like gobbledegook when expressed in HTML, so forget it.

I'm also supposed to be cleaning my house right now (it's a New Year's Day tradition), but I just don't feel like it. I hit the internet instead of the bottle last night, but still ended up with something of a hangover. Internet hangovers differ from alcohol induced ones in that there is less nausea but a bigger headache.

So I'm relaxing, trying to collect my thoughts before I write my mandatory daily wordcount for January (500 words a day ought to be doable even for me, right?). If I stick to that, I'll have Chancellor's Bride in my editor's hand by the end of the month, and then it's on to something new--that is, something I started sometime in the last year or two, but only let myself write a few thousand words of. I think I might try that f/f romance idea I've been kicking around. Not a lesbian romance, mind you, an f/f romance--there's a difference that's hard to put into words, like the difference between Gibson's London Dry Gin and Tanqueray (I'm always up for a booze analogy the day after a party).

I know many people make New Year's Resolutions. I've always seen them as pointless set-ups for feelings of failure, and the prevailing sentiment among my acquaintances seems to bear this out. Therefore, in the spirit of self-validation and optimism, I'm making some realistic resolutions for the coming year. In 2009 I resolve to:

Keep drinking when I feel like it
Clean my house less (totally doable)
Be more content with what I have
Put on ten pounds (heck, I may even exceed my goal here)
Smile more

If you all have any resolutions, feel free to share in the comments. Realistic ones only, please.

:)

Oooh! Oooh!

In the "Squee" column, just lookit what I got! I knew I was getting it, I'm even the one who wrapped it, and I'm still all excited.

*Victorian tinsel strategically placed to obscure my mild-mannered alter ego.

You know, one thing I love about Samhain is that they have so many titles available from MBaM in SONY pdf. Including mine, heehee! AND even if you've already bought them in a different format, you can go back to your bookshelf and get them in SONY. Yay for my TBR pile!

In the "Total bummer, I haz sad" column, my dog started peeing all over the house yesterday. I'm hoping it's just a bladder infection, but whatever it is, the vet won't be back in his office until Tuesday. So if Slip doesn't like cranberry juice, she's just gonna have to stay in that cage for the next several days. Poor dog...

If it isn't a bladder infection, I don't know what we're gonna do about it. Heroic measures are out of the question for us. But as big a pain as she is, I'm not quite ready to send her off to that big old dog-hair covered couch in the sky...

But adding to the "Squee" column, my kids haven't gotten into a single argument so far today. We didn't forget to go to the liquor store yesterday when it was still open. I made $150 in 6 hours at work on Christmas Eve, our turkey is smelling totally blammo, and I have ten scratch and win Bingos to get through before supper. Oh, and I'm two glasses down, so I'm feeling all warm and fuzzy, too.

Merry Christmas, everyone! Hugs and big ol' sloppy kisses for all of you!

I feel like a kid again...

...Christmas just does that for me. Not the getting, but the giving, the stuffing of stockings and piling of loot under the tree. The kids shaking parcels and trying to figure out what on earth is inside them before ripping them apart and holding that treasured whatever-it-is aloft and doing a victory dance...

The turkey and stuffing and mashed potatoes with a gallon of gravy, and an excuse to drink before noon, dammit! Being with family when we're all half-cut and laughing at just about anything.

I love Christmas. Love it.

Whatever holiday all of you all are celebrating, have a great one!

XOXOXOX

I feel all warm and fuzzy...

You know what's awesome? When a fellow writer, when asked for examples of good, intense fight scenes, cites your book as one of their three favorites.

That is all.