New Fur Baby... Oliver

This is a chance to meet my new fur baby, Oliver... Olli for short. He's 4-years-old. I got him from the Toowoomba RSPCA. I wanted to hopefully get a friend for Willow who still was having a rough time after Droogie's passing. So 8 weeks on, Olli has come to live with us.

It turns out Willow wants nothing to do with him, but since his arrival, she has calmed right down and is no longer waking me up every half an hour to check if I'm still alive and with her.

Truthfully, I totally forgot how full-on a 4-year-old cat can be... Willow at 17-years-old is nice and quiet... well, most of the time. Olli is like he's had 50 energy drinks and constantly on the go until he suddenly conks out. We've had to modify the cat enclosure because apparently, he's also a climber and can jump really high. At the moment, he is an indoor cat until my poor brother (Ted) can modify one end of the cat enclosure so that the little bugger can't scale the cat wire and escape━Maybe we should have named him Houdini.

According to this chart, Willow who is 17 is really 84 so she is an old fart. and Oliver who is 4 is only 32. I wanted a fully grown cat and not a kitten as I didn't want to have to deal with litter box training. Plus, I think more kittens get adopted than fully grown cats do. So I'd rather give a second chance to an older cat... but compared to Willow he's a spring chicken. He follows me everywhere and has taken over my bedroom as if it's his own. He's most active at 2 a.m. Why? Why can't they be active during the day and sleep all night? At 2 a.m. He loves nothing better than to run around the tops of my wardrobes & bookcases.

Willow ignores him more than anything, if he gets too close she'll his at him, but at least they aren't fighting. Hopefully, in time she'll become friends with him. I'm just grateful that having Olli here has calmed Willow down because I was worried that I was going to lose her as well. Her appetite has finally come back and she is eating normally again. If I'm honest, she's probably even eating more than she did before. She's even smoochier than ever and demands her cuddle time from whoever she thinks is not paying her enough attention. Maybe we should change her name to Diva. She can be a demanding little thing when she wants to be.

Hello 2018

HAPPY NEW YEAR TO ONE & ALL

I'm not having New Years Resolutions this year... because let's face it━ who really sticks to them? I've broken more than I've ever completed. I do have a few things I want to do but it doesn't matter if I complete them all or not... just as long as I work on them at some stage during 2018.

FIREBORN PUBLISHING—6

·       Hidden Hearts 3: Going by The Book (Travis) (0/40)

·       Moon Runners 3: When the World Stops Shaking (0/40)

·       The Diamond Rose 2: So Pretty on The Outside (5,003/40)

·       The Diamond Rose 3: Sometimes It Hurts (0/40)

·       The Freedomers 2: Craine’s Everlasting Faith (0/40)

·       The Freedomers 3: Drake’s Broken Prophecy (0/40)

MLRPRESS—9

·       Experimentals 3: Messages from The Dead (1,509/40)

·       Intended Mates 2: Dancing to The Sounds of Madness (0/40)

·       Lancaster’s Way 3: Pre-Loved (5,052/40)

·       Lancaster’s Way 4: Riding Fences (186/40)

·       Lancaster’s Way 5: A Stuart Family Christmas (0/40)

·       Sons of Evenmore 3: Fear the Scarlet Moon (1,186/40)

·       The Lines of Marsden 4: The Trail of Red Roses (26,003/100)

·       The Lines of Marsden 4.5: On The 12^th Day (Asher) (500/40)

·       Toowoomba Boys 4: Securing the Heart (0/40)

PRIDE PUBLISHING—5

·       Destiny House 1: Saving Shane (0/40)

·       Destiny House 2: Needing Norman (0/40)

·       The Connelly Chronicles 3: Because Of You (0/100)

·       Wardens of The Guild 3: Heart Strings (108/40)

·       Wardens of The Guild 4: Gilded Cages (0/40)

Now, they're written in no particular order... just that I do all my lists alphabetically for each publishing house... I don't plan on having them all finished. I just plan on having them all started and at least 12 of them submitted to their respective houses.

Saying Goodbye To Another Year

Another year has come and gone... and as much as I loathe to say it I got fuck all done in my writing life. I can tell you that I sent one last email to Fireborn Publishing about Moon Runners 2: I Won't Let You Go... I'm still not sure what's going on there. I know Brenna L has been ill... But I assume someone else would have let me know something by now.  Though, tomorrow is the first step in the rest f my life and when I get my writing life back on track... I got most of my plots worked out━well, kind of.

I'm not shy about telling the world that this year I'm so fricken tired. I feel like I haven't slept a full week for the whole year. Hopefully, next year will be better. Willow is getting worse in keeping me awake. sadly, I'm not a person who can sleep during the day as I always wake up worse than when I went to sleep. Poor Willow has not been coping too well with the heat.

I wasn't one of the people brave enough to go out and get a bargain at the Boxing Day Sales on the 26th... Emily & Elliot tell me it was crazily packed with people in Toowoomba. I did the sane thing and sat at home and watched the cricket 4th Test Match between England & Australia... even though we've already won the Ashes it's still good to watch... and that night we had Big Bash which is 20/20 cricket.

We have been having some wickedly hot days this summer. Thank God for Aircon. Without it, Mum & I would have melted. It got up to 39⁰ C one day, (I think that's about 102.2⁰ F) Let's hoping it starts to cool down soon.

Emily is getting bigger with every day that passes and she can't wait for March to roll around so that little Grace (unless the name changes) is born. If it doesn't cool down then at least let it rain so it feels cooler... the only problem then is I'd have to mow more often... LOL... it's a lose-lose situation.

MERRY CHRISTMAS...

 MERRY CHRISTMAS

FROM MY FAMILY

TO YOUR FAMILY

Update On Plotting For 2018

For the last 2 days, I've been re-reading my own stories... because low & behold I should remember which character belongs in which series. So I have mountains of notes beside me...

for the next few days, I'll be working on the plotting for the last 3 stories in the Lancaster's Way series #3: Pre-loved (Chet & Grady)... #4: Riding Fences (Kelly Mack & Joshua)... #5: A Stuart Family Christmas (Not sure who about yet but one of Riley's brothers and will be set in Australia... Noah & Riley will be visiting Riley's home for the holidays).

This would be so much easier if I remembered all the character names and my existing storylines...  Remember not all of these will get written in 2018 it's more for me to remember where the hell the story is meant to be going━So far I have done...

1 - Sons of Evenmore 3: Fear The Scarlet Moon
2 - Sons of Evenmore 4: Pieces of You
3 - The Lines of Marsden 4: The Trail of Red Roses
4 - The Lines of Marsden 5: On the 12th Day
5 - The Lines of Marsden 6: And Then You Die
6 - Experimentals 3: Messages From The Dead

ANNOUNCEMENT TIME!!!

Okay, I have been thinking about this for a while now... I know I have said there will be 6 books  & a novella in each series... but for the life of me, I don't know how to make it possible anymore. You see→ I totally fucking stuffed up, and the first series will only end up with 5 books. Which in my eyes/mind for continuity sake means each of the next two series can only have 5 books & a novella. Thus on a whole, I lose three books.

I've tried to figure my way around it to keep the extra books in... but it's not happening. so my series of 21 books has become a series of 18 books (each series within the series consists of five full-length novels of 100+ K... and one 50-ish K novella) that is about a secondary character that I just want to write about... series one novella is about Keely & Asher.

I feel gutted about this, but I guess them's the brakes. I can only write what the characters dictate to me, and these guys and girls are telling me━the time of the vampire is over, and the time of the demon is about to rise.

One Of Those Days... Pets & Other Distractions

I'm having one of those days where if it can go wrong than it's going to. Willow decides yet again that if she is awake, then I have to be up with her, and as soon as I get up, get dressed, sit in my recliner, and turn on my freaking  computer━because hey, if I'm going to be up at that ungodly time of the morning (5 a.m.), then I'm going to try and do something productive. No sooner had I gotten settled, when the little witch curls up and goes to sleep.

So I stopped in at Facebook for like 5 minutes to check on some stuff, and low and behold, 3 hours later I'm still there... so not getting the work done that I wanted to do... I have since shut Facebook for the day, and will hopefully be able to concentrate better. Though, I did have a nice chat with Cinders.

It's now 9:30 a.m. and I'm ready to eat again because I had breakfast at freaking 5 a.m... We had screen doors fitted to the front and back door so at least now Willow can see outside again so she isn't as annoying/bored as usual. She loves watching the cars and trucks driving by of a night. 

Okay, today I still have to work on some of the synopsis plans... they may change some when it comes to the actual writing stage because let's face it. I've never been good at following my own synopsis when I've attempted them before, but at least they will give me an idea of what I was planning.

Tomorrow I have a major announcement about The Lines of Marsden series that I will share with you all. I've thought long and hard about it and there's just no way around it.