Today Did Not Start Well

I freely admit this and I warn new acquaintances--I AM  NOT A MORNING PERSON!

No matter what time my morning begins

A loud crash woke the Princess Pup and me up at eight this morning. We both bolted upright. She looked at me. I looked at her. I heard the shower running. My first fear was DH had fallen and knocked himself out.

We both jumped out of the bed and rushed into the bathroom. DH was fine. He was sitting on the edge of the garden tub checking his feet while waiting the few seconds for the tankless water heater to provide a comfortable, lukewarm shower. He had knocked the trashcan into the garden tub.

Thankfully, I'd emptied it last night since our garbage pickup is on Fridays. Why do we have the trash sitting on the tile in the corner of the tub? Grandpuppy has taught the Princess Pup how to pull used tissues out of the trash and chewed them up.

I'm so glad I'm past having periods. I can only imagine what this pair would have done with my sanitary napkins.

So I crawled back in bed because I didn't have to get up until nine a.m. Except I overslept. When I set the time my alarm last night, I forget to tap the "Save" icon. So I woke up at nine-thirty-three. There was no fucking way I was making the ten a.m. yoga class.

I took the Princess Pup out for her constitutional, and I'd grabbed my wallet and keys to make a Starbucks drive-thru run.

Nope on the caffeine. Or rather not yet anyway. Both DH and I forgot to roll the garbage bins to the end of the driveway for pick-up, and I heard the garbage truck as the Princess Pup was taking her damn time picking the proper place to poo.

Finally, she did her business, and we ran inside. I had to clean her bottom. (Long, fine hair and poo mixes TOO well.) DH came out of his office from a meeting, all happy and cheerful. The bastard. I ask him to take the trash bin out.

I released the clean dog and ran back out to the garage. For course, he took the recycle bin out first, and the garbage truck was two houses away. I grabbed the trash bin and rolled it out just in time.

I went back into the house, trying desperately to remember what I needed to do next. Oh, yeah! Caffeine.

By the time I ordered my caffeine on the app, the garbage truck had trundled down the street. Luckily, Starbucks is in the opposite direction. I went through the drive-thru to claim my sorely needed caffeine. The barista teased me about not coming inside because I've spent three hours a day in the dining room for the last few weeks trying to finish the latest wip.

Which is turning into an epic tome that will be around 400 pages when it's done.

Anyway, I got home. Made breakfast (my usually is a cinnamon bagel with plain cream cheese and two hard-boiled eggs), sat down with my laptop, and GK messaged me he needed his last two checking account statements.

I messaged back to confirm which e-mail I needed to send them to. He called because he hadn't talked to us for a week. (I asked him for monthly proof of life calls prior to this summer's Israel-Iran cock-waving contest.) He also had his flight info so DH could pick him up when he's back in the States in a couple of weeks.

He made the mistake of bringing up Stephen Colbert and South Park. I told him he needed to watch Superman. I now understand how the character Elyse Keaton felt in Family Ties. But we still love each other.

Because I don't make Cincinnati chili for just anyone.

So after almost forty-five minutes on the phone, we ended the call. I finished my breakfast and actually read the rest of my e-mail. I wrote this blog post. And I'm finally through two-thirds of my caffeine.

Which means I'm as functional as I'm going to be. 

Time to get started n the book that refuses to end.

Because I've got a hot date for pizza and The Fantastic Four at six p.m.!

What the Hell Is Going on with Suzan?

It's been a little insane at Casa Harden over the last few weeks. The chaos started with one of DH's remaining uncles passed away. It ended with me slipping on ice, tripping over a landscaping brick, and somehow falling on the frozen ground instead of the concrete driveway the day before the Alberta Clipper swept through our area.

I'm still unsure how I managed to injure my right thumb in that delightful show of clumsiness.

Hey, at least, I didn't fall on Princess Bella. The poor thing was merely trying to hurry to get her final constitutional done for the night because even she was cold wearing a t-shirt and her winter coat. (She's a toy breed, and you have to bundle them up because they cannot control their core temps the way a larger dog can.)

There's been a lot more happening in between the emotional and physical aches, but I won't bore you with those details. What it comes down to is I am behind.

So woefully behind.

And what happens? I get invitations from two different editors asking me to submit short stories for their holiday anthologies. For 2025! By the end of the month!

*sigh*

Folks, I literally just finished sending last year's Christmas presents to people!

So, what does it all mean?

It means I'm busting my ass trying to get the books y'all are expecting. I merely took the dates off the Release Schedule because looking at the page was triggering my anxiety.

Today, I skipped yoga, I made sure I had plenty of coffee and tea, and I will be back on the keyboard as soon as I get home from the COVID booster stab.

That's assuming I don't bash my brains on the asphalt in the pharmacy parking lot.

Long Day

The clock just rolled over to Saturday, and I haven't had two seconds to even really write. There's a lot of things going on, some of which are other people's stories I'm not at liberty to discuss. But you know something? Sometimes, other people need help. And I'm going to help people who gave me help when I needed it

This will probably piss off some people expecting new stories NOW.

Honestly, I've been stressing about getting things done, too, which doesn't help my concentration. After a super-busy week and today's events, DH told me to put everything down and took me to see Wicked.

It was awesome! I've read the book twice and seen the musical twice. 

And it did relax me. So, I got home with renewed vigor tonight.

I think.

I still pretty tired, so I'll start fresh tomorrow.

When Computers Do Too Much for You

Last weekend, I planned to replace the hard drive on my work laptop because I literally ran out of space, and I didn't had an extra slot for an additional drive.

Well, DH had been paid, and I entered all the bills and receipts, both business and personal, and reconciled accounts on Quicken over Thursday and Friday. I closed the Quicken window, realized I'd forgotten a receipt, and reopened the application to enter the info before I started my laptop's backup.

And for some reason, an update decided to re-initialize my data file. And by reinitialize, I mean the update blew away the data file I'd spent two days getting up to date and created a new, and very empty, data file.

ARGH!

Thank goddess for backups! I still had the mid-October backup on a couple of different storage mediums. Then I spent Saturday and Sunday re-entering everything I'd entered on Thursday and Friday.

And of course, NaNoWriMo started on Friday.

So, I'm a week behind on installing the new solid state drive. I also 7K behind on my NaNo project novel and 15K behind on A Cup of Conflict.

The family funeral on Monday, the election on Tuesday, and my annual cancer check-up on Wednesday have not helped my mood whatsoever.

Some stories may come out later that I planned, but dammit, I WILL get them done!

Banging My Head Against the Wall

For the last month, I've worked very hard to stick to a diurnal schedule. Taking exercise classes in the morning and going to bed at the same time as DH has helped. Part of the reason is so I can unpack boxes without waking DH because even if I'm super quiet, Princess is Bella treats every item suddenly appearing in her domain as a threat.

Silly puppy.

However, I'm finding that I'm not getting much writing done. We're back to DH consulting me on various items. Or simply plopping down on the chair next to me to talk about his day without any regard to what I might be doing.

*Sigh*

I feel like I'm caught between two worlds, and I can't do either well.

Plus, I've got friends who want to visit, but none of them actually live anywhere near me. That means traveling by plane, train, and/or automobile.

Maybe it's a good thing we're getting away for the weekend. I'll take my mini laptop with me, and maybe find someplace quiet to write.

Writing More than Showing On the Stats

Over at my main website, I keep a list of stats on current and future writing projects. Right now, it doesn't look like I'm doing much of anything. My NaNo project is an Alter Ego book, the first in three(?) years. 

Also, I'm double-checking for typos in Magick and Murder after finding a few I missed in Fae and Felonies while proofing the paperback. Also, there's the annual Christmas short to write. I need to have everything done before DH and I set out on our first real vacation since GK was born. (The treks to Ohio to visit family do not count as vacations because they definitely weren't relaxing. Neither were the staycations to fix house stuff.)

After we return from our trip, I've got two eye surgeries scheduled in December to fix the cataracts I have thanks to the tamoxifen. Like I told my oncologist, if there's a weird side effect to a drug, I'll have it. Merry Christmas to me.

But that also means, my writing may be limited until my body processes the new bionic lenses, as my buddy Jo would say, and we figure out if I need glasses or just reading glasses or *fingers crossed* I don't need anything at all. By January, I should be able to drive al night again.

Can I now? Technically yes, but I don't feel comfortable doing it.

This is just one of many things a person deals with on the way the big 6-0. Yet, I still want Barbies for my birthday, and I plan on hitting my favorite comic book shop when I'm in Houston. I feel very paradoxical at the moment.

However, I will be taking Baby Blue with me on vacation. DH no longer flies so the drive to our destination will allow me to only write. While technically a laptop, Baby Blue isn't much more than a glorified tablet with a keyboard. She only has WORD and EXCEL loaded, and the wi-fi remains turned off unless there's a dire emergency that my phone can't handle. And there isn't much a smart phone can't handle these days. However, I only have my personal e-mail on the phone.

If all goes to plan, I should have a few giant updates on stats at the beginning of December. Then, things will be quiet until the beginning of January.

P.S. The entire Justice series is currently on sale at all retailers (or it should be) until December 10th. Pestilence in Pumpkin Spice (Soccer Moms of the Apocalypse #1) is $0.99 until Deember 31st!

Last Week of the Year

This is normally when I take stock of the year and plan out projects for the next.

2022 was NOT a good year. (Read it in Judy Geller's voice, aka the fabulous Cristina Pickles from Friends.)

I'm nearly 250K behind in my annual word count. Delayed one novel and dropped the ball on two others that I'm trying to finish. Whatever free time I scheduled was utterly taken over by personal stuff.

Four deaths in the family. In fact, I have paperwork from the attorney for my mom's estate I need to fill out and return. DH and his sisters have been doing their best to clean out their parents' house. Some of this was stalled by one sister breaking her wrist and another one contracting COVID-19.

The kicker was the text we got from GK in the wee hours of Christmas morning. He left his apartment to head to work (military works 24/7/365), only to find broken glass where his car had been parked. We were on the phone with him for a total of four hours. The first hour was when he was waiting for the police to come. The other three were after he got home later that night.

I was proud of him for dealing with the police and the insurance company, or what he could get done since this was a major holiday. But he needed to vent last night. Today was the first day of his leave, and he planned to come home. And his car being stolen was the cherry on top of a series of crap in trying to get his leave lined up.

GK made an appearance at his staff sergeant's Christmas party last night, but he didn't get falling down drunk. He was determined that hell or high water, he was driving home for his leave.

So while we wait for his arrival today, I'm looking at my calendar. My first half of 2023 will be spent catching up on all the projects. By catching up, I mean writing. I probably won't publish anything new for the next six months that doesn't already have an pre-order date.

After I update and release everything I need to, then I'll see about the projects of the heart I want to write. Most of those are already listed on the work in progress list on my reader website.

It's the best I can do. I didn't realize how shredded emotionally I was until today. I'm not even hoping the last seven days of the year will be smooth. I just want to survive them without having a mental breakdown.

Tiny Steps

Last night, I stayed up to work on admin tasks that needed to be done. Little things like reconciling the business accounts, updating one of my websites, and trying to restructure my calendar for the rest of the year.

While looking at my projects, I opened one of the files for the manuscripts I need to finish this year. I told myself to write one sentence. No heavy guilt trip for not touching it over the last three weeks. Just one sentence.

I went through the other files. Just one sentence. By the time I went to bed, I'd typed 466 words between the four manuscripts I need to finish and a book of the  heart that probably won't see the light of day until 2024 or so. But those 466 words were progress, dammit. The last decent writing day I had was September 18th, the day I woke up with the dang sore throat.

Sometimes, life throws you some pretty hard rolls. It's okay not to want to write when you're laying under that heavy roll. You need to do what's right for you to recover from what hit you.

In my case, my imagination has always been my refuge when life got shitty. By giving myself permission to only write a sentence, I got a couple of pages written.

And last night, I dreamed of a space adventure. A fun dream for the first time in three weeks. Maybe my Conscious and Subconscious realize they need to work together to pull themselves out of the morass they've sunk into.

Just a Quick Note

...to say I am still alive. I'm trying to wrap up Hero Ad Litem since it needs to be uploaded this weekend to Amazon.

Publishing three novels in thirty days. What the hell was I thinking?

Except this was NOT the original plan. But life rolls happen.

So if you see large gaps in my release schedule for 2023, it's me trying to carve out some time for me. The last thing I want is to burn myself out and stop writing. None of us will be happy with that scenario.

Reality Strikes

If you're reading this on Friday morning, I'm at the vet. It's time for Bella's six-month check-up. I also need to make an appointment with the groomer while I'm here. For Bella, that is, though I need a haircut and my nails trimmed, too.

I've been dealing with my Kickstarter campaign so much over the past couple of weeks I got behind on household tasks. So yesterday, I tried to get caught up on personal and business accounting tasks. People want to be paid.

I get it. I like to be paid, too. And I really can't afford to have my electricity or internet turned off.

Reality has been weird. My Kickstarter campaign has been going gangbusters, but the flip side is my FIL has been in and out of the hospital over this same time period. He fell and broke his hand and his hip. This was roughly six weeks after he fell and broke a couple of bones in his opposite foot.

He had to have surgery to repair the hip. Then he got a MRSA infection at the surgical site. Needless to say, DH and his sisters are worried as hell. March has been a rough month, and I haven't listed everything that's happened.

I'm exhausted with the roller coaster ride our lives have been over the last twenty-eight years. What I'd like is not to retire from writing and publishing, but to retire from the constant drama. A weekend away would be awesome, but I don't dare make any plans because the minute I do, the One True God Murphy will throw something at me.

And none of this is a stupid April Fool's joke. I'm too tired for that nonsense.

Coronavirus Pandemic Day 54 - I Forgot My Cancerversary

DH pointed out there may be another reason for my insomnia. My second cancerversary was on April 19th.

With all my medical appointments getting canceled with the state shut-down and my own worry over friends who've caught the damn virus, I actually forgot. But my Subconcious didn't.

Now that the governor is easing certain restrictions, my health care providers are rescheduling my appointments. So, of course, I start my first Monday in May with a mammogram.

Maybe that's where a boatload of my constant anger is coming from. I did everything right to deal with one disease, only to face another one that could be just as deadly. One of the reasons I got through the cancer shit was reading and researching. Talking to my healthcare providers about options and percentages. Feeling like I had some control over my care and my future.

And then, like a sneaky little bastard, COVID-19 races around the world, doing weird shit. You have no idea when it's going to hit. Your only preventatives are hand-washing and face masks. And those aren't 100% effective because half the Goddess-damned country thinks it's a hoax or that it won't affect them.

*sigh*

So I'll handle what I can and post naughty pictures to let off steam. I hope the rest of you have a much better Monday.

The First Setback of the New Year

After bouncing business things off DH while we were mall walking (hey, it's fucking cold here, and the last thing I need is bronchitis right before I head to Vegas for a writers' workshop), I came to the hard decision to push back the release date for A Touch of Mother by a month.

I simply did not get the writing in that I should have during December. Getting a stomach bug that went for a good three days started the downhill slide. Then, I spent a lot of time with GK while he was home on leave for twelve days. I spent more time doing homework for the workshop. And the main crime in this novel is child sex slave trafficking.

There's a part of me worried sick about my own child given current events. A part that doesn't want to deal with certain elements of this story.

While I do not write graphic detail regarding the crimes in the Justice series, my mind still fills in the blanks. Especially given the shit that goes on in the world today. So now I know what's holding me back, I can work past it and resume my writing.

On the plus side, the Season of Magick Anthology is already uploaded and ready to go, so there won't be a delay in its release. I also am flying into Vegas a few days earlier than I planned (got to love cheap deals on flights and hotels in Sin City!), so I'm holing up in a hotel with a Starbucks and will write my ass off on the Millersburg Magick Mystery series.

In conclusion, I'm girding my loins and plowing on. I do sincerely apologize to all of you that pre-ordered A Touch of Mother for my tardiness. I want to make this an awesome story that's worth your time and money.

Not Again...

I got three books finished and pre-published before this year's personal life explosion.

My father passed away. It's not something I can talk about yet. So things will be quiet on the blog front except for some pre-planned posts about Hero De Novo for tomorrow.

Thanks for your patience.

And the Beat Goes On...

Things are starting to get back to a semblance of normal at Chez Harden. I've been trying very hard to finish up the first draft of Hero Ad Hoc this week.

Last night, I blew past the original 80K target. However, the story is in its denouement, that last bit of wrapping up the plot threads except the dangling two that lead to the next novel.

Since this is the middle of a trilogy, it appears as if everything my heroes worked for is lost. It also means I'm ready to jump in the last book with both feet. With all the craziness in the world and in my own life this year, I need that happy ending more than ever.

Three Funerals and a Wedding

I didn't get the post I'd planned for today done. One of DH's uncles died over the weekend. Visitation is today, and the funeral tomorrow. I find myself once again scrambling to wash my dress up clothes needed for the events.

That's the third death in the family within the last 365 days. We've only had one wedding. I'm getting to the age where that's the normal ratio, and it sucks donkey balls.

The Family Drama Keeps Pulling Me Back In

Frack! I couldn't even make it through the first book of the next eight I want to release before more cow defecation hit the spinning turbine. Shit is happening that I can't talk about at the moment for someone else's privacy reasons. It's getting taken care of, but taking care of it is time-consuming as all get out.

My formatter had sent me the Kindle e-book file for Ravaged on Tuesday, September 26. I haven't completed reviewing it yet. It should have been a two-day job max. I'm not even at the half-way point on A Modicum of Truth either, and I'd planned to have it finished by now.

Why can't I have normal adult first-world problems? I have a friend whose kid is trying to decide between Harvard and Yale. Another friend and her S.O. are debating on whether he should take a promotion across the country when their youngest is also in his senior year. A third friend is simply thankful that her teen driver is all right after a drunk adult hit her daughter's car head-on when she was on her way to school.

If I weren't high on cider, donuts, and pumpkin spice lattes right now, I'd probably be curled up in my bed with a bottle of tequila, bawling my eyes out. But then, nothing's stopping me from going to the store for a bottle or two.

On second thought, maybe I should head over to Kroger for a bigger chocolate cake...