November Featured Writers and a special Promo

Tomorrow is a special day. First of all, it's my youngest son's birthday!! *pauses while you all sing him Happy Birthday, PS his name is Isaac* He turns three. Something that hit me today (it may have hit me last year but if so, I've forgotten) is that I did my first Nano on my son's first birthday. So as along as I do this every year, then the number of years will be the same as the year my son turns. My first year, he was one, my second year, he turned two. See where I'm going with this? lol

As I'm busier than a one legged man in a three legged race, I didn't push for new authors this month, so only found one new one at this late date. Her name is Carolyn Arnold, another author I follow on twitter. She has been promoting her upcoming release by tweeting teasers out of the new release. I asked her to tell me something quirky about herself, and she said that sometimes, she'll end up flicking a light switch repeatedly. The light goes off, but is it really out???

She is due to release a new this month, and a sequel to her first in December. So I think it's a great time to showcase her first book. Also, I'm planning on helping her with her release with a blogspot. So, if you're looking for a good book in her genre that you can soon follow up with the sequel, Carolyn's mysteries maybe just the thing!

Carolyn Arnold is the author of several novels in the mystery, thriller and suspense genres.  TIES THAT BIND, the first in a police procedural mystery series surrounding Detective Madison Knight, was her debut novel and published May 2011.

Carolyn was born in 1976 in the rural town of Picton, Ontario.  While her passion for writing dates back to her teen years, it wasn’t until 2008 that she completed her first novel.  She lives with her husband and her two beagles in Southwestern Ontario.

For more information on her books and upcoming releases, please visit her official website http://carolynarnold.net/

Ties that Bind can be found on Amazon here: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/146352210X/ref=cm_sw_r_tw_alp_Y3gbob159B5D4

And on Smashwords here: http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/62102

And if you'd like to follow the author's blog and see what she's up to, you can go here: http://sassy3421.blogspot.com/

Next up, another author from twitter, Naty Matos. She's been unfailingly kind and has shown great, ture interest in others :) a good way to catch my eye! She was ever so kind to fill in a last minute hole left from my busy schedule and lack of true planning :) She tends to listen to 80's in both English and Spanish while writing. I give you our latest featured writer:

Naty Matos was born in the city of New York, from Puerto Rican descendant parents. She grew up in the beautiful Island of Puerto Rico and now lives in the city of Atlanta.
She holds a Bachelor's Degree in Clinical Psychology with a Minor in Mass Media Communications and a Master's Degree in Mental Health Counseling.
Naty writes Christian fiction and non-fiction. 

She maintains a blog on Christian Living Topics at www.therisingmuse.com

The devotionals inside Growth Lessons are based on the life experiences of the author, questions from fellow Christians and the Word of God. They will motivate you in times of trouble and it may answer some of your questions about how to live your every day life in Christ.

It's a great way for new Christians to figure out the Christian Lifestyle, but also a great tool for seasoned believers to afirm their faith. It will serve as a reminder of the little things we sometimes miss in our journey with the Lord.   

To find her book you can go to

Smashwords: http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/97235

And Kindle: http://www.amazon.com/Growth-Lessons-ebook/dp/B005WZ1BGK/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1320126689&sr=8-1

And my own book, which will have it's own official Launch Party in about a month or so, is available. My first print review is being done. In the meantime, you can buy it ;) I already have a special promotion for those who buy the print version from Lulu.

HOWEVER, since the first of November is my son's birthday, I'm giving away gifts! That's right, for all of you who have read to the bottom of my featured writers post today, I'm giving you the code to recieve a Smashwords copy of Cerisa's Quest FOR FREE!!!!

Go here, add it to your shopping cart then put in the code, WD94D! This is a limited number of copies offer. IN other words, first come first served, then I'm turning off the coupon :D So GO NOW if you want a free copy of an Epic Fantasy.

hehehe hahahaha

::giggle:: It's Halloween!!! Happy Halloween!! Tomorrow's (the first) is my son's birthday :) and you know what? He's going to be three! I'm excited!!

It's NaNo time and I think I've finally decided on my story! A horror story I wrote for Forever Nocturne's online magazine due out tonight has inspired me to write a full length story. When I get the link, I'll share it :D I also have to do some rewrites and edits that I haven't finished!! Maybe I'll get a chance to do the rewrites tonight :) If I can find the damn notes!!

I'm hoping to write 75-100k next month, with 55k at least for the NaNo story and the rest on a fantasy. That way, if I'm "not in the mood" for my horror, I can write on the one I should have been writing on all this time. :P

So gear up and get ready!! Prep your meals, finish your research, sharpen your pencils, and put away all the red pens!! Time to write your heart outs or cheer on your friends that are doing it!!

Ready, Set, GO!!!

And the cover is

AWESOME. I love it :) It's finished way faster than I could have imagined. Which is wonderful for me. I was able to revamp Winds of Fire's Print cover, and I'm going to use it on the ecover as well. My MIL is almost finished with her painstakingly accurate edits (I lost my other file and the wrong one was uploaded :( could have been worst...I could have liked the cover :P) so I can remarket it with the appropriate changes.

I'm having a hard day medially with my allergies. Learned that their was an atmospheric inversion here...no freaking wonder I can't breathe! But, I did get some organising and thought done on my shorts! Best be getting to writing. Saturday, I'm writing and painting :)

Tomorrow, I'm finding the dad-blasted benadryl. I have looked high and low, but tomorrow, I'll find it. I have to.

Anyway, back to the cover...I put it up on smashwords here and on kindle, which should show up tomorrow. Still messing with formatting on smashwords (they don't like paragraph indenting and a few other minor things, but wanted a running start at my print release, which will be the official release :) In the meantime, I'll just keep plugging away at formatting and my other writing bits :D

Well, I'm going for it. I'm going to self pub THAT book which has been known as Cerisa and the Dragon, quest for Riverhand & various & sundry other ideas. The final verdict? Cerisa's Quest. Why final? Cuz I've paid (paypal gods willing!) for my cover to be done for ebook and print versions :) This one is really clean and beyond the levels of my other works :)

I'll let everyone know about updates as they happen! But it'll be quick. I guess that's one good silver lining to my car being out. Couldn't go to work yesterday (was sorely needed) or today! (still needed ;( but what is a girl to do!) I'll keep working on my writing stuff. I got my meds on Monday thanks to friend Amanda driving me there to get them.  That'll help me get my focus for the others! Hopefully by Saturday :)

I still have that painting to do. It's driving me crazy. I hate messing up. Although, to be fair, the painting looks cool, just not what it's supposed to look like LOL So, have a larger canvas now. Maybe I'll find the energy to paint today :)

ON another note, we're getting so close to NaNo time!! Have a mentioned I'm excited? whoohooo

The last night of my car's life.

Well, if you follow my blog, you've read about my cars last day and had a glimpse into the night. But here's the REAL story...

So, with no phone, I used yahoo texting to arrange for a friend to help with trailer to take the car somewhere besides the freeway. I don't know how the staters are in other states, but the WA State Patrol is anal retentive about keeping the freeway clear of junk cars so we knew we needed to get it taken care of. You have 24 hours after they've tagged it until they impound it, or something.

With that arranged, I just had to wait for my husband to get home via Mom/Dad. When he came home, he started talking and I thought I wasn't going to go help get the car. Well, there were a few problems with that. The biggest one is there were things in the car, like the boys school boxes with the $#!+load of work they've don'e this year, minus the stuff that got thrown away. My husband hasn't grasped the concept that I need proof the boys have been taught something other than how to use an XBox 360 controller.

I mentioned in the last post the stress of walking with my kids by the freeway. It was another stress not having a phone. (due to money). I'd held up pretty well. Until my husband was saying I couldn't go. I started crying. Yes, I admit it. I started crying. I'd avoided it all day cuz I know how much it upsets the boys and just like that, I was leaking saltwater.

My 7yo came in to tell us not to fight and that he doesn't like it when we fight and we had to explain we weren't fighting that I was just stressed about the day. Gave him hugs and my husband and I went to get the car. Apparently, my husband has a weakness for tears I didn't know about before. Usually, he seems mad when I'm crying. I think it threw him for a loop. I don't cry about things like this. I'm an emergency person. I'm fine until the emergency's over. So to have me crying like that?

So, we get to the car. The day had been cold, windy, and trying to rain all day. If we'd been on the Seattle side, I'm sure it would have poured. My husband opens the trunk of the car the minute we get to it to get his coat that had been left there from the fair. If you've read the day part of this, you know what he found--nothing!

I looked at him and said, "Remember the coats I told you we had to wrap around Isaac? Yeah, that included yours." He looked sheepish and shut the trunk. He and the friend of ours who'd met us there, Virgil, checked out the engine, and then tried to turn it over. And there went the antifreeze, squirting all over the place.

Definitely not going to get it running. Virgil pulls a wench out of the truck and does all the connections etc, which he'd had ready, sets it up, and with my husband (Nathan) holding the casing, pulls the hook. Nothing but a few grunts. Not good. The electric wench didn't want to be released. After much grumbles and tries, they get out a power tester to check the wires, it lights up. Real purty too. But, when they press the button that would pull the car back up, there's not enough power to light the bulb much less pull a hook with a car attached to it!

More grumbles. Of course, we're having the man jokes floating through all of this. We've all been firefighters together out of the same station so we fell into a good rhythm of working together. (Remember the side of freeway hell I mentioned? Even they were hugging the vehicles cloes and trying to avoid being on that side. Experience is a harsh mistress.) We get a different cable that has the latch thing on it (I can't remember what it's called!) to hand crank it.

The guys decide they want to push it as far as they can first. They tell me to get in the car. I can't hear squat and there were a few misconstrued signals. One was when I was supposed to hit the brakes. They let it roll back down the tire ramps. And come explain to me how I'm supposed to hit the breaks so it won't roll back. Well, the whole damn trailer is tilted so how am I supposed to know they meant before the car was actually on it?? Really.

We take another run at it and when I feel the forward momentum stop I jam the breaks. Once in a while I'm turning the key so I get some power back in them. Nate (my husband) gets the hook on the hand wench and goes under the car looking for a good place to hook it. All of sudden he pops his head up and yells, "Don't let go of the brakes! If you do, I'll be killed!" I nodded to show him I understood but by that point, I'd misheard them like three times * I didn mention my hearing issue from allergy/winds right? * and he got this really worried look on is face.

He has life insurance.

He looked at Virgil then back at me and ducked his head under. I put both feet on the brake, worried about the power brakes failing while he was trying to latch the hook on. Then Virgil's head goes under to make sure they had it right. I'm sweating now, despite the cold. I have two men's lives under the hood dependent on brakes of a car that's off...

Virg goes over to the hand part that cranks it (it's going to drive me nuts that I can't remember what its called!) and Nate stay's under while they tighten the tension. When the tension is good he comes out from under it and had this joyful look on his face. Apparently, he's wondered if I thought I'd be better of with him dead (he's bipolar, not so unusual) and had proof I preferred him alive! Duh. Geez.

Anyway, this put him in a stellar mood, all things considered :D I guess you never know what the silver lining of a situation might be... :D

The last day of my car's life

Well, you know the cranky-arse feeling I had yesterday? It wasn't cuz I got up too early. It was cuz the fates had bad plans for me yesterday and the aura of those plans was implementing itself on me as forewarning. Yeah. Well, it could happen.

 

What happened? Well the long and short of it is my car blew a head gasket. (I didn't know what it was until later.) ON the freeway. With all the kids in the car. With no warning. Under an over pass. Just before an on-amp (which, if you're following this, you realize, it happened right AFTER a damn off-ramp!)  Going 70 miles an hour and it's an automatic. So, no power steering, no brakes, nothing. I was able to get it over to the shoulder w/o a) hitting anybody coming on the freeway and b) not get rear-ended by the hundred people going 80 miles an hour behind me.

 

But after that, with the exception of my kids, the luck ran out. I popped the hood, and found the resevoir for the antifreeze dry which it hadn't been when I left Yakima, and steam popping out. It's a closed system and I couldn't find a way to see if the radiator was dry as well. I waited for it to cool down to close to what the engine normally runs at, then tried to start it. I was only half mile from exit which was about a quarter mile long, then a quarter mile to a gas station and a McDonald's playland. Thought if I could nurse it to there, we'd be good. But, no. So I went looking for water/antifreeze. Found a gallon of antifreeze in the car. Put that in. (probably not the best idea :P) it sucked it right up, even with the car off, which I didn't know it could do. Um, nope, not a mechanic. I've changed fuel injectors, O-rings, clutch cable, clutch, spark plugs, oil, ran a radiator flush etc on an 80 something car like 15 years ago, but I married into a family that likes to fix their own stuff so have forgotten most of everything except how to change a tire.

 

When I pulled over it was just past 10:30 am. When I put the antifreeze in it was 11:30 am. Mind you, I've had three kids in the car, from 10 down to almost three. We had grand plans. After I ran around and did stuff I needed to do, some of which involved talking to my ex re our son in NM, and getting my meds from clinic, we were going to go to the Zillah McDonald's, have lunch, then do school there. Fun morning/afternoon for them, before I ran off to work at 2ish.

 

Anyway, at 11:30 the natives were getting restless so I let them get the kiddo out of his carseat. Thankfully I had gotten them crap food and ice tea at the gas station before we left. The one with only 50/50 antifreeze for same price that I could get straight antifreeze at another gas station :P

 

A few minutes before noon, when I tried to start the car with the engine was barely warm, it sounded B-A-A-A-D. I said, there's no way this thing is restarting. I got out to check it again and the antifreeze was pooled by the tire. I sighed and said, "Okay boys, we're walking!" (I'm not goin to go into the scary double dump truck that had it's wheels over the shoulder line...) We got out, got the stroller, tied the carseat to it, wrapped up the little one in lots of coats left in the car from the fair day (thank god!)

 

Did I mention that in all the times I got out to check on the engine/resevoir and oil, that no-one stopped? Did I mention that I don't have a phone right now? Yeah.

 

So we'd walked almost halfway to the exit ramp when a lady pulled over (at seventy she was nearly to the ramp before being able to stop and walked back to meet us. She let me use her phone and the boys and I crawled in gratefully! THANK YOU LADY WHO'S NAME SOUNDS LIKE MI-CASA (my house in spanish :D) to the woman with allergy and wind filled ears.

 

She took us to the McDonald's we'd planned on being at before noon anyway (irony that we were sooooo close!) and I bought the boys lunch and a ride  home arrived. Did I mention how awesome my boys were? They were saints! Awesome awesome awesome! I don't know how to express the dread and sorrow I felt at having to get my kids out of the car to walk along the freeway. I've been married to firefighters/EMTs and I've been one. Walking along the freeway is one level of Hell as far as I'm concerned, no offense Dante. But they were troopers! We left the car at 12:10.

 

So, that evening, we had a friend w/ truck/trailer who helped us haul the car back to our house. When we arrived at the car, it was tagged by state patrol. Do you know what time it was tagged for??????????????? For a quick recap-no cops, state, county, or local had stopped/driven by going east or west during this whole thing. And my car was tagged for 12:30!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! OH I SAW RED. I get tired of things ALMOST being okay.

 

So, instead of getting an electric fireplace for our freezing cold house with no heat since the pellet stove broke, we are getting a truck for 200 that has to have a new fuel pump put in. And god knows what else. There goes our gas bill. Triple! We were planning on getting for my husband and it would be no big deal for him to go ten miles a day in it, but as a run-around, two working people's truck?? I'm ready to cry again just thinking of it.

 

So, I paint real pretty and write real good (yes that was intentional!) Anyone have a car they want to trade for a little work? :P

 

 

I'm so not a morning person

Halloween is coming. (Psst I don't have a title yet and already that blank line is staring accusingly at me!) I love Halloween, almost as much as Christmas. OMG I just now realized I haven't taken out my decorations yet! See? That's how crazy things are. I'm really not adjusting to this whole work thing very well. I have to work. Really no choice in it. But daa-aaaamn. I'm so tired. And right now it feels a lot like working for free. I hate commission work. I'm working per item, but I still have to wait until the sale goes through.

So, yeah, insert a lot of whine and rant here. Okay. Done? I'm not, but I'll quit for now. I like getting out of the house but I don't like working so much. I don't hate this job, thank god, but I do hate not having time for my other stuff and the stress of having a job. It's hard right now.

Anyways, I'm so not a morning person. The more rarh in a post, the earlier it is I probably wrote it :D

So, I think this weekend I shall decorate for Halloween and make a special Halloween cake. I made a trial run at the recipe and the cake was delicious. I'm picking up my thyroid meds today, so that should help me find the energy. Let's hope so. I'm also taking three kids along to pick up meds at two pharmacies, see my ex to talk about the drama in our children's lives (I'd never go back to being a teenager or young twenties!) and see someone on the way home then off to work. Doesn't that just sound like a grand day?

MAYBE, I'll get to buy the canvas I need and the baking pan I need and the electric fireplace since we have no heat in the house and get to write today. Likely? No, but I can wish, can't I?

I'm feeling pretty darn negative right now. Sorry :( The things going on in my life are the kind of things that make my artistic endeavors hard/impossible and it frustrates me. But I'll pull through. I always do!

Stress is going to either keep me motivated or it's going to kill me. I vote for the former. So here's to keeping motivated!