Hooray!!!!!

I did it!

While the story I wrote needs lots and lots and lots (and lots and lots and lots and lots...) of work, it actually wasn't the completely useless drivel that I've written every other year I've NaNoWriMo'd. That's kind of a nice feeling.

Just another day...

I've never been a big fan of my birthday. It's not the getting older that bothers me. I think it's more that I always expect my birthday to be this wonderful, incredible day and it's usually... not. It's not that it's a bad day, it's just... an average day, nothing really special. Kinda silly, I guess. I suppose part of me expects that the entire world should be celebrating the day of my birth, complete with bells and whistles, because I'm such a swell person. Or something like that. Anyway...

I really shouldn't complain. It's been a good day so far and it's only 8:00 in the morning. My husband woke me up before he left for work this morning with a brand new (to me) Brandilyn Collins book (she's awesome, if you haven't read her, you should). I took the day off work today, and that alone makes it a good day.

Dum-da-dum-dum

My husband clicked on the weather radio this morning while we were getting ready for work.

Today, we're anticipating near record highs... I think they said 76 degrees. Tomorrow, more of the same.

Wednesday... Not quite so nice. In fact, they said the dreaded words. "Chance of snow."

There's a chance of snow Wednesday evening. More of a chance of snow overnight. And even more of a chance of snow for Thursday.

Kansas is weird.

I feel like I should update...

We had Monday off work for Veteran's Day. I did absolutely nothing and it was wonderful. Three day weekends are nice... although sometimes coming back to work after longer than normal weekends and having insane amounts of work to do sometimes makes me wonder if it's worth it.

I didn't novel over the weekend, so I got a bit behind with nanowrimo, but I made some good headway yesterday and hopefully will get caught up today.

It's been kind of a rough couple months. There have been ridiculous things going on at work that have made me want to kick a few people in the head, and I think that stress kind of carried over into every part of my life. Things have finally started to calm down a bit, although a very, very tiny bit, but I'll take what I can get. I also finally decided that if something at work hasn't changed by the end of the year, I'm going to start seriously looking for another job. Enough is enough. I think just deciding that has made me feel a little better about the whole work situation. We'll see what happens...

It's hard to believe that next week is Thanksgiving. And, more importantly, two weeks from today is my birthday. I'll almost be old. Where did November go? And for that matter, where did September and October go? Last time I looked, I'm pretty sure it was the end of August.

I'm taking three classes next fall, two of them will be online. I'm not sure how that's going to go, since I've had some problems with procrastination in the past, but again, we'll see. I'm trying to take more than two classes a semester, so maybe I can get my two year degree in less than 5 years...

So... there you go. I updated. Thrilling, I know.

Just Plugging away...

Well, the novel is progressing nicely. Or progressing anyway. It turned out to be kind of a crazy weekend, so I got a little behind, but I managed to get caught up and a little ahead yesterday. The whole "planning ahead" thing actually works. Who knew?

Here we go!

Ah, November 1st. The official beginning of National Novel Writing Month. I started writing this morning and things are going great so far... maybe this year will be easy. I'm pretty excited about my novel this year... it's a thriller with some sci-fi sort of elements mixed in. Or at least, that's how it's starting out... where it ends up could be somewhere entirely different...

If you're NaNoWriMo-ing and want to add me as a buddy, or if you just want to check my progress, you can go here.

Surrender Bay - Denise Hunter

This week, the
Christian Fiction Blog Alliance
is introducing

SURRENDER BAY

(Thomas Nelson November 6, 2007)

by

Denise Hunter

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Denise lives in Indiana with her husband Kevin and their three sons. In 1996, Denise began her first book, a Christian romance novel, writing while her children napped.

Two years later it was published, and she's been writing ever since. Her books often contain a strong romantic element, and her husband Kevin says he provides all her romantic material, but Denise insists a good imagination helps too!

In addition to Surrender Bay, the second Nantucket book releases in April 2008. The title is The Convenient Groom and features Kate Lawrence, a relationship advice columnist, whose groom dumps her on her wedding day. Denise is currently at work on the third Nantucket book (Oct 2008) which is untitled so far.

ABOUT THE BOOK:
When Sam's estranged step-father dies, she inherits his ocean-front cottage in Nantucket--not because he kindly bequeathed it to her, but because he neglected to ever create a will. Sam returns to the island she left 11 years ago with her daughter Caden to fix up the house and sell it, but she isn't counting on is the fact that Landon Reed still lives two doors down from her childhood home.

As their long-dormant romance begins to bud again, Sam must face the fact that Landon still doesn't know why she really left the island. Will the secrets she's hidden all these years tear them apart? Or is Landon's love really as unconditional as he claims?

"I've always thought Denise Hunter was an amazing writer but this wonderful story sets her firmly at the forefront of compelling love stories. How Landon breaks down Samantha's determination that she is unworthy of love kept me glued to the pages. An amazing story!"

--Colleen Coble, author of Fire Dancer (Smoke Jumper Series)

April here. I have to be honest and admit that I've never been a fan of romance novels. The few that I've read have always seemed sappy, rather cliche, and full of characters that I don't relate to. It could very well be that I am an abnormal female, I don't know, but rather than sympathizing with the main character, I found myself spending most of the book wanting to slap her silly for being so stupid. There were some nice moments in the book, but as a whole, I didn't care much for it.