"Crazy Busy" is the new normal

In spite of life being crazy busy with the new puppy, I managed to get my zombie fairytale story polished and sent off well before the deadline.

My next project will be a little different: this time, the monsters are your neighbors. I'm currently working on a short story about middle America and its reaction to "the war on terror." The anthology I'm targeting closes at the end of the month, so I'm crunched for time . . . again. Good thing I do my best work under pressure.

The presentation I gave on writing horror seemed to go over well with our local writing group. I think everyone had fun exploring their dark side. Eventually I might turn these presentation into some sort of ebook for writers.

I also found a new well of creative inspiration: prompts on Twitter. I set up Hootsuite to collect any tweets that come through with the hashtags: "writingprompt" and "prompt," so now I have a stream in Hootsuite that's exclusively prompts (though the occasional complaint about friends who are chronically late occasionally shows up in the stream). If you find yourself staring at the blank page, you might want to check out those tags!

Now I've got a whole slew of prompts waiting to spark my muse . . . I just have to make the time to use them!

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Recently finished reading:



The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror


The Zombie Survival Guide, by Max Brooks

Currently Reading:



The Help, by Kathryn Stockett

New addition

Although I did great for the whole first part of the month of Story-A-Day May, the last week was a bust. I think I got a story done for the last Monday of the month, but nothing for the rest of that week. Oh well, there's always next year.

Part of the reason the last week was so busy was because we were preparing for a big anniversary weekend. We planned on spending the evening at the casino in Hankinson on Friday (our anniversary), coming back Saturday, and then taking my parents fishing on Sunday. And we did all that . . . with a slight addendum.

Every time we go south, it's become a tradition to stop in Fargo and play with the puppies at Great Pets. I was especially looking forward to it this time because I lost my dog to a brain tumor a few months ago. Hubby had asked if he could get me a dog as a present for our anniversary, but I told him, "No. I'm not ready for another dog. Besides, I'll never find another dog I love as much as I loved Missy."

So, we stopped at Great Pets on Saturday, and they had a BUNCH of puppies. I decided to stop and play with one litter they'd just gotten in (about 10 pups). After I played with them a few minutes, hubby asked the storekeeper if we could take one out and play with it in the puppy area. I picked a black, block-headed looking girl pup to play with (thinking she would be the least likely one to tug on my heart strings). As the lady grabbed that one, she also grabbed another black pup. If one pup is fun, two is a blast, right?

And then something unexpected happened . . .

I fell in love with that second pup, the one I hadn't even asked to play with. Something just clicked.

And this is my new pup, Roscoe Pascal.

I really don't know how this happened. I wasn't even a dog person before my dog Missy. Now I'm a dog person, but I'm a hardcore "purebred-German-Shepard-and-always-girl-dogs" kind of dog lover. Or I was.

He's 1/4 Shar Pei, 1/4 English Bulldog, 1/4 Boxer, 1/4 Springer Spaniel (how does THAT happen?). He's jet black with four or five white hairs on his chest and a cinnamon-colored ticking on a few spots on his back. And when he looks up at you, his floppy-jowls and down-turned mouth make him look like a Grouper fish.

And I adore him!

So now I'm trying to juggle "writing time" with "puppy-time." I can't wait until he gets a little older and I can be working away on my latest manuscript in my writing room with him snoring peacefully on a blanket in the corner.

For now, though, I have to work in my writing time during his naps.