CAN’T STOP LOVING YOU is 99¢ until August 1st.
CAN’T STOP LOVING YOU is on sale for 99¢ until the end of the month!
UK READERS: The book will go on sale for 1£ beginning August 1st!
Trying to Become a Game of Thronie
Every Monday night during their respective seasons, I watch the Bachelor or the Bachelorette with my
neighborhood girlfriends. We chat, catch up, eat dessert, and of course, critique the show. When our daughters were younger, high school age, we used to use the show as a way to tell them to “never act like that,” “never wear that in public,” and “NEVER do that in a hot tub with a guy,” all the while unable to stop tuning in to the outrageous behavior ourselves.
But eventually, our girls grew up and went away to college, and watching this show became a way for all of us moms to stay connected. We often gab through most of the show. I mean, we know when to be quiet for the important parts, but let’s just say we have a lot of fun. Plus did I mention the dessert part? 🙂
Game of Thrones with my husband is an entirely different experience. Long ago. I watched the first two seasons, until the blood and gratuitous violence sent me running away screaming. But hey, it’s the most popular show in the world. I began to feel like I was missing something.
So I made a deal with my hubby. “Okay, okay,” he said. “You can come down to the man cave and watch. But NO QUESTIONS.” After missing four seasons, it was HARD to keep all the questions for the end, but I’m proud to say I pretty much did it. Until last week, when I learned a meeting was set up between Jon Snow, King of the North, and Daenerys Targaryen, Mother of Dragons.
Now, Kit Harington and Emilia Clarke are two of the most beautiful people on earth, not to mention both very heroic characters, and my romance lover’s mind could barely contain itself with all the possibilities of their meeting.
“Have they ever met before?” I asked my hubby (during the show, of course, for which I got a semi-dirty look).
“No,” he said, without any inflection to his voice. As if the two most beautiful people on earth meeting up were nothing special (yawn).
Afterward, I explored the internet, which had erupted with speculation about the meeting. “The internet is exploding about this. You do know that, right?”
“Yeah,” he said.
“Well then, why didn’t you tell me? I mean, this is a BIG DEAL”
“I wanted you to experience it for yourself.”
Is this a guy thing, saying as little as possible? As a romance writer, guys definitely have different dialogue patterns than women, and we’re taught that. Typical guy-speak is more to the point, less packed with emotion-based words. And they simply speak…less. I suddenly had a vision of my husband and his friends gathering to watch The Bachelor…and the room being dead silent.
Too bad my girlfriends don’t watch GoT. We’d laugh and discuss and diss the bad characters. And consider (out loud) the endless possibilities of romance between these two. Uncensored. And, of course, eat dessert.
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Why Our Sons Should Cook
I’m not sure how hard I tried to teach my kids how to cook. The chaos of those last few teenage years all blurs now that they are in college and beyond (my oldest being 25).
I don’t think I’ve ever looked this put together and relaxed while cooking in my life.
I do remember at least telling my kids, including my son, who is 20, how important it is to cook.
“Why?” my son asks with a wide grin and a glint in his eye. “Isn’t that what a wife is for?”
He does this to torment, of course. Because he knows that he’s surrounded by two sisters and a mother who have spent years making certain he is a sensitive, kind man who respects women. (Plus, we would get physical if he truly gets out of line, Lol.)
It amuses me greatly to tell you that my son is more serious about cooking as an almost-junior in college than his sisters were at that age. He grocery shops every week and even has a grand plan–he makes enough food for four days at a time.
“Does that mean you eat the same meal four days in a row?” I asked. “But don’t you get sick of it?”
This is what my kids made: shrimp, turkey sausage, corn, potatoes, garlic, lemon, parsley–on the grill for 10 minutes and wa-la!
Apparently not. I think he eats a lot of chicken breasts and pasta. He still won’t eat red sauce or anything where the food touches another food on the plate but hey–not my problem anymore!
This warms my heart, that this son of mine can shop and feed himself. He, who was a sickly child, who was indulged with chicken nuggets and fries because he simply wouldn’t eat anything else. (I know, I know, I should have forced him or something, but what can I say. Thank God he eats more than foods that are beige now that he’s grown, and is big and strong and no longer sickly.)
Recently while I was nearing a deadline, my oldest daughter and my son cooked a fabulous dinner that they sealed in a foil packet and put on the grill. My daughter even made a homemade berry cobbler to go with it! I only had to wait 25 years for this. It was totally worth the wait! I nearly cried, to have someone–your children no less!–make you a fabulous dinner when you’re all stressed out. Nothing could’ve been sweeter.
My kids have always seen my husband in the kitchen too. He cooks pancakes every Sunday and makes amazing omelets. He makes pies and bread when he has time. I think this has had a great impact. Plus, my husband actually enjoys cooking, whereas I…well, let’s just say that if I didn’t have to eat, I wouldn’t be in the kitchen. At all.
I tell my son he’s going to be part of a busy household one day and it’s important to share all the tasks as you can. That it takes all hands on deck to raise a family. And that marriage is a partnership.
Hopefully some of that has sunk in. And in the meantime, he’s off to a great start. Not only can he cook for himself, he can cook enough at one time to feed a family of four 🙂
Life Post-deadline is Sweet
I love the time just after a deadline. The world seems so lovely, the sky so 
blue when you aren’t chained to your desk chair drinking coffee and eating Cheetos in your pjs at three in the afternoon, staring longingly out your window at the rest of the (normal) world.
Your family is wonderful, you just want to hug them and rejoin them in the routine activities of daily life that you’ve been missing out on for awhile. Cook dinner? Run a load of laundry? Drive someone someplace? Sure, I’d love to!!
And that manuscript–which you’ve slaved over for months–somehow managed to become a story, with chapters and a title, a beginning and an end. No matter how bad it is, it LOOKS like a book. It has lots of PAGES. And for this, well done! We have to celebrate the little victories in life, right? My friends, whom I miraculously still have after emerging from the writing cave, take me to breakfast to celebrate! Life is good.
It’s so nice to have an empty brain for just a little while before moving on to the next thing.
As I sit down to start the next story, the current characters are still in my head, talking and telling me everything. “I’m better than she is,” my old heroine says.
“I didn’t think you were catty when I wrote you,” I say back, then I assure her that I don’t love her any less than the new baby, thank you very much.
They’re very emotional, those characters, because the end of a book always is, and everyone (including me) is usually crying and feeling a huge sense of relief that finally, finally, things are going to work out all right! For me it’s equal parts crying for their happily ever after AND part thanking God that finally, I’ve found a way for the book to end that makes sense!
It takes a while for them to settle down, their voices to fade away as they settle into their well-deserved happily ever afters and I go about cleaning up my office.
I was replenishing the pad of sticky notes in my bathroom the other day when I suddenly began laughing out loud. I realized—this is not a normal activity. I have a specific place in my bathroom drawer where the pad of sticky notes gently fits. Right next to the toothpaste and my basket of makeup. There’s even room for a pen. Because…inspiration often strikes at night when I’m getting ready for bed. If my husband’s already in bed, I fear I will wake him if I start rummaging around the house for paper and a pen. And if I don’t write down whatever I was just thinking…it’s lost forever.
Normal people do not keep sticky notes in their bathrooms, do they?
Then there’s the fact that I haven’t been out in public for awhile. I squint from the bright light and stutter as I try to make conversation with people who are not imaginary. Neighbors I haven’t seen in months express relief that I’m still alive. It’s tough, I tell you, to talk with real people!
And then the yoga pants. I’ve spent weeks in man shorts or otherwise stretchy athletic wear and actually getting dressed and grooming myself takes some effort. Matching tops to bottoms, finding the right shoes…yes. Very confusing. Makeup? A whole new level of stress.
The most common question I always get is,where do you get your ideas? And I can honestly say, getting ideas is a complete miracle to me. I’m not one who has ten story ideas in my head at one time. God gives them one at a time, when I can handle them, LOL. Sometimes I wish He would work faster, but I sit here diligently at my computer, my ears tuned like transmitters, waiting for the signals.
I know the heroine for my next story but her hero…hmmm. I keep thinking and thinking. Who is her hero? Where is he? Someone who will drive her crazy like no one else can, and love her like no one else. Maybe if I go take a shower, I’ll find out.
In the meantime, I think I’ll go sit on my porch and watch the flowers grow. Have a lovely summer weekend!