A Productive Vacation

I'm back from vacation and rockin' the house wireless connection. I love you internet! I shall never take a strong connection for granted again. I've got Pretty all loaded with my backup files. The backup CDs included my ebooks file - yeah! - but didn't include my cover art/photoshop file :( The inlaws are shipping the dead laptop to me since I didn't want to lug it on the plane or pay to check it at the airport. So it will be a few days before I find out if hubby can pull my data off the old hard drive. Fingers are currently crossed!

The vacation was wonderfully relaxing and amazingly productive. Finished chapter 5, wrote chapter 6 and started chapter 7 of His Client. I'm astounded by my own productivity. LOL. The current plan is to finish His Client by the end of June. Should be doable, but I have 2 out of town weddings to attend in June, so we shall see. I do want to get it done so I can turn back to Bound Forever and have that one finished by the end of July/early August. After that....well, right now I know what book I want to write (already have it outlined, too), but I know better than to try to plan more than 2 books in advance. Things tend to come up to throw a wrench in my plans. Not always bad things. Sometimes good things. But the schedule gets wreched nonetheless. So for now, I'm focusing on His Client followed by Oliver and Vincent's last book. Oh, and I want to write a short freebie for Arsen and Henry from Object of His Desire sometime this summer.

Meet Pretty

Meet Pretty! He's my shiny new laptop. I will admit, he wasn't a 'planned' addition to the family. My other laptop died today. One minute I was typing away on chapter 6 of His Client (finished chapter 5 last night - go me!), and the next...nothing. Seriously. Just died in mid-sentence. Went completely black. No power, no blue-screen-of-death. Nothing. Hubby thinks something 'blew' in it (yeah, he's an IT guy and he used that oh, so technical term). No amout of removing the battery, unplugging, re-plugging, praying and threatening worked to revive the old laptop. Needless to say, within an hour, we were leaving to go to the store to get a new one. No way in hell could I survive without one, especially since we're on vacation in Florida visiting the in-laws and I had planned to get a lot of writing done. Well, I could have survived, but I'd have driven hubby nuts. He's such a good hubby - he just nodded and drove me to the store. He knew he wouldn't get a moment of peace until I was happy again. LOL.

Good thing I did a backup before I left for vacation, and I email my working manuscript to myself every night. So all I lost was the couple of pages I had written this afternoon. And I might get those back when I get home - hubby thinks the hard drive is OK, so he should be able to pull it out of the old laptop and transfer all the files to the new laptop.

So now after today's drama, I have Pretty. And he is really pretty and shiny, and he likes to be petted. I even got him a new pink wireless mouse. :)

Speaking of my vacation, I spotted a gator yesterday evening as hubby and I were taking a tour about the island in the inlaws golf cart. The inlaws live on a little island that's just a big golf course and houses. Very nice and peaceful, but seriously, in the middle of f-ing nowhere. Takes 10 minutes to get to the gas station. And the wi-fi access bites. So slow it's painful. But on the upside, I'm writing more than playing on the internet since the internet is so slow.

That's the gator's head. He wasn't as far away as he looks, but the iphone camera doesn't have a zoom feature.

I hope everyone has a wonderful weekend, and for those in the US, I hope you have a great holiday weekend!

Rockin' the Tutu

It's an absolutely beautiful day here - 80 degrees and sunny. Another bonus feature of my 'office' (besides the fact it's very peaceful and quiet) is that I can open the garage door on days like today. So nice to be able to sit and write with a lovely breeze.

Writing-wise it hasn't been terribly productive. It's only Sunday afternoon, so there's still hope I can make some nice progress before the weekend is officially over. I got bit by Devon's plot bunnies yesterday afternoon as I was cleaning the house, so I spent a couple hours typing up notes for a possible new book idea. Then Eyre had to go and review Duty and Devotion by Tere Michaels, which got me thinking about how the book was sitting on my hard drive....and I ended up reading it last night. So productive weekend as far as cleaning and reading goes, not so much yet on the writing front.

Congrats goes out to Shawn Lane on the release of Only His Heart, the third book in her Only Forever series. Fabulous book, for anyone in the mood for a great read.

What else is new? Romance in the Backseat has a new m/m review site going live on Monday - Naughty Boys in the Backseat. Terry Kate, who runs the sites, is super nice and she's looking for guest bloggers for the new blog. Any topic. So if any m/m authors out there are interested, give her a holler. She's on FB and GR as Terry Kate or you can drop me a line and I'll get you in touch with her.

Josh Lanyon had an awesome post on the Loose Ends blog this past week on how writing doesn't come easy. For me, it gets harder with every book I write. When I was a newbie, unpubbed author, ignorance really was bliss. I 'like' but don't love books as I'm writing them. I love the ideas when I'm fleshing them out, but when I start to actually write a book, that love turns to like. And with every new book I work on, I wonder if it will be as good as my other books. Okay, not 'wonder'...I worry. So it was great to read Josh's post and see I'm not the only author who struggles with writing sometimes.

Oh, and I just had to share this pic. I went into the kidlet's playroom today and she had her barbies out. I can only surmise that since it's so warm and sunny today, she decided it was too warm for the Princes to wear pants. I will say, the outfits kind of match - pink/purple and Prince Phillip's shorts have the same blue as his tunic (kidlet found the tunic from his original outfit, but the leggings and boots are still MIA). Personally, I think the Prince is rockin' the tutu ;)

Links, News & Laughs

Congrats to Devon Rhodes on the release of Neighbors by Day, Naughty by Night!! It’s her new m/m/m story, which can be found in the Necking anthology.

For any fellow authors out there who haven’t stopped by Shawn Lane’s blog today, she has a great post on how you should just Don’t Do It.

Another head’s up for fellow authors (this time, for GBLT authors). Rainbow Romance Writers, a Romance Writers of America online specialty chapter, will soon open their first published author contest. Yes, I’m a member of the chapter, so of course I had to give the contest a shout out. I’m also very proud of the chapter - it’s barely over a year old, and it is the first RWA chapter devoted to GBLT romance authors.

And if you’re in need of a laugh today, I recommend stopping by Accidental Dong . I’ve linked to it in posts in the past, but…I can’t resist, and they have new posts up almost every day. My favorite recent post (and you have to go to the 2nd page to find it) is The Torpedo - “The quad ball is a bit troubling.” I don’t know why, but I laugh every time I see that one. On some level, I know it shouldn’t be that funny, but for some reason I find it ‘that’ funny. *g*

As for me, I’m writing smex. Yep, the guys are going at it again. The new book featuring Jasper and Nate, and tentatively titled His Client, is coming along nicely. I’m over 12,000 words into it - almost half way done.

The Crowded End of the Pond

I'm still working on the chapter in the new work in process that I said I'd finish by Sunday. Yep, the guys are still doing it. I got a lot written over the weekend, but spent most of the last work week re-arranging scenes I had already written. This is a newer book idea. I didn't sit on it for a good 6+months before writing it. So I shouldn't be annoyed with myself that I had to do a bit of re-arranging. Honestly, I don't know how 'panster' authors do it (those who can just come up with an idea and start writing). I feel almost lost if I try to write something without knowing exactly how the book will go. Must be the engineer in me - I like things organized. That's not to say I'm organized, but I like things to be organized.

Anyway, I've been busy writing smex lately. Pages of it. I tend to write long, rather detailed scenes. Not sure why, but I do. And as I've been working on this one, I'll admit the thought has flittered through my head - 'I wonder if everyone will think I'm a perv??' :) The guys are...kinda kinky, and it's a type of kink I haven't written before. Then I remind myself that I usually wonder about that as I'm writing at least one of the scenes in every book I've written so far. Since I haven't received any 'dear lord, woman, what were you thinking?!?' emails from readers yet, I'm thinking the shallow end of the pond is pretty darn crowded. ;) So I'm gonna keep my fingers crossed and let Nate and Jasper (the heroes in the new book) continue to have their fun. And they will finish this round of fun by Friday, so that I can move onto the next chapter and have it done by Sunday night.

Hope everyone has a great week!