We’ll be at Trish’s fan page (because she has the most fans) giving away prizes and chatting from 6-9 CDT. Hope you can come by!

You can buy the bundled set at Amazon, BN and Kobo.

13 more days, many of them crazy. This week shouldn’t be so bad (knock wood). Last week was NUTS. 2 days of testing, then I had to take my friend’s place in two ARDs because she got hurt playing basketball with the kids, then we had a guest speaker. Two days our schedules got shuffled, and then one night I stayed late for the Teacher of the Year award dinner and ceremony. Not to mention Josh coming home, getting a new oven and having it installed.

This week:

Work on novella
Read through Don’t Look Back. I got my rights back and am going to self-publish it.
Launch party tomorrow night with Trish and Norah for our bundled book set.
Faculty meeting
Help the kids write songs using the iPads
Cook
Get used to Josh’s schedule. He’s interning at the local paper for credit, supposedly 20 hours a week.
Blog at the Samhain blog. I haven’t had anything out with them in 2 1/2 years, but I’m still on the blog schedule, so…
Exercise.
Try to get the house in order. Between Josh moving home and kitchen construction, it’s a disaster. Which is why I spend a lot of time outside!

My behind is DRAGGING this morning! I didn’t get home from the Teacher of the Year dinner and awards until nine. It was all really nice–dinner at the high school and then awards on stage in the auditorium, along with the best and brightest of the students. The senior who is the valedictorian will be going to UT, and I know her mom, so I introduced her to Josh, just so she will have a contact when she gets up there. Anyway, the principal said some nice things about me, and several parents who were there did as well. Josh was my guest since Fred couldn’t make it, so I think Josh was impressed that people actually like me.

The night BEFORE, we bought an oven, so another long evening. It arrives at the store today, then my WONDERFUL step-dad will install it Sunday. You cannot imagine my excitement. It’s been almost a month with no oven! Would still be, if not for me posting on Facebook and Mom seeing it!

So Josh has been home 3 days and last night was the first I’d really spent with him. He starts his internship on Monday.

Anyway…next year remind me to save more days to take off in May! I always say I will, and I don’t!

Today was my grandmother Gigi’s birthday. It would be her 101st. Hard to believe she’s been gone nine years.

I’m ridiculously excited that Josh will be home this week, even though I saw him Friday (he came down to get money for an apartment) and I’ll see him today, but he’ll be home for the summer on Tuesday. I keep texting him to see what he wants me to buy at the grocery store, any special meals, all that. It makes me sad that this will probably be the last summer he comes home since he’ll still have the apartment next summer.

It’s the first of four crazy weeks, the countdown to the end of the school year. SO MUCH TO DO!

1) Work on short story.
2) Testing 2 days.
3) Teacher of the Year dinner, followed by an award ceremony.
4) Adjust to having Josh home.
5) Cook.
6) Exercise.
7) Figure out how to deal with two books whose rights reverted to me last week.

Please, a clone would be useful right now!

Life is insane. I’m teaching 5th grade this week, the kids who passed. I split them with a tutor, and we have them almost all day. All we do is Social Studies and Art, and even that is like pulling teeth! They’re acting like they’re already on summer vacation! And we put a lot of thought into these plans–the kids went on a field trip last Tuesday around 10:30 and we planned until almost 3, only taking a half-hour for lunch!

I think I have most of what I need for this week–I spent over $50 getting supplies for last week, stuff that made huge messes, btw–tissue paper and corn syrup and food coloring and salt!

May is just crazy. Crazy. And I’m making myself more so by writing 2 short stories this month! Alllllllmmoooosssttt done with the first, which I need to have to my editor tomorrow.

1) Finish short story
2) Get stuff for punch for baby shower/get baby shower gift.
3) Get pots and potting soil for plants I keep buying.
4) Cook more.
5) Exercise more.
6) Go see Iron Man.
7) Go to baby shower.
8) Get Mom’s birthday and Mother’s Day presents. (Her birthday is the day before Mother’s Day. My grandmother’s birthday was the 12th, Mother’s Day.) I have 2 little things for Mom, but want to get something else.
9) Start new short story, book dates with editor and formatter.
10) Edit the first short story when I get it back from the editor!
11) Submit a book to some advertisers.
12) There was something else but I forgot.

This is only part of the crazy, y’all!

Saturday night Fred and I went to see Jurassic Park in 3D. Now, I’ve seen this movie so many times, I can recite the dialogue. A LOT of my phrases come from this movie. But I wanted to see it in 3D. There are plot holes (BOY HOWDY) and the ending is awful (T Rex saves the day!) but it remains one of my all-time favorites.

I do not have sophisticated taste in movies. I sent back Les Miserables without watching because I didn’t want to be depressed. The movies I love, the ones I can watch over and over again are mostly a mix of romance and action. Except Harry Potter.

This was going to be a top 10 list, but I couldn’t stop!

1) The Mummy. OMG, I love this movie. Even the mummy was in love in this movie.
2) Lord of the Rings, the whole trilogy. But if I had to pick a favorite, it would be Two Towers.
3) Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. I love the first movie, too, but this is my favorite.
4) Independence Day
5) Harry Potter, the first and last best
6) X-Men, the first
7) Avengers (okay, maybe no romance there)
8) O, Brother Where Art Thou?
9) Pirates of the Caribbean
10) Wall-E
11) Star Wars (the first best)
12) Speed
13) So Proudly We Hail
14) Romancing the Stone
15) Bridget Jones’s Diary
16) Ghostbusters
17) Best in Show
18) Perks of Being a Wallflower
19) Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein
20) Battle Cry
21) Silverado
22) How to Train Your Dragon
23) Pride and Prejudice (BBC)
24) Tangled
25) The Commitments
26) The Princess Bride
27) Foul Play
28) The Money Pit
29) Jaws
30) Star Trek–the new one

I’m listening to an audiobook now by one of my FAVORITE authors and, well, I’m ready to call it quits. The couple has no chemistry. She’s attractive, he’s attractive, whatever. They’ve both got interesting backstory. But they don’t belong together. I think it might be that she is too perfect–she can bake and give massage and make jewelry and do yoga and all those bazillionty things, and he’s not really flawed either. Their stories aren’t really tied together–she’s his housekeeper, not really invested in his life. I’m not sure which of these things, if any, is the cause. I’m just bored. I don’t buy the romance, other than convenience, and I don’t really buy the mystery. I’ll finish because it was $14, and I’ve never stopped reading a book by this author, but that’s the only reason.

How do you create good chemistry between characters? How do you define it?

Things are changing at school again. Less than half of the 5th graders passed the STAAR test on the first go-round, so for the next two weeks there will be intensive tutoring, until the next round of testing. They’re pulling teachers to work with small groups, and two other teachers and me will take the kids who passed and do fun stuff with them all day long. Well, fun for us We’re doing Civil War history and westward expansion, art and some music, I think. I think it will be fun. We’ll take them out to play kickball and all the fun things about teaching. I’m planning with the two other teachers, which is new for me.

I finished the post-apoc and sent it to Amazon serials. If I don’t hear from them in a reasonable amount of time, I’ll submit to Samhain.

And I have a May 6 deadline for a short story. ACK!

1) Adjust to new schedule.
2) Write like the wind. I only have about 6000 words on the short story and I need at least 15000.
3) Cook
4) Keep up house
5) Keep up exercise.

I’d really like to clean up my craft room but that can wait until next week when the short story is turned in.

Last week was crazy and FAST. I got a lot done but not everything. And yesterday was crazy busy getting ready for my party today, lots of last-minute errands, breakfast with Cindi, coloring my hair, updating my website (which included remembering the ridiculously complex password StartLogic forces you to have) and…working on the post-apoc which is kicking my butt entirely.

Anyway, this week:

Celebrate with my family! We’re going to the country because that makes the commute easier for Josh, and it’s where I always celebrated when I was a girl.

Work on short story.

Work on revisions of post-apoc. Really REALLY want to submit it this week.

Promote Cowboy.

STAAR testing–2 days of hall monitoring and running around like a crazy person. I got new trainers so my feet aren’t killing me at the end of the day. Also got a pedometer that I need to figure out.

Fiesta!

Exercise, because this weekend is very bad for my diet!

Maybe sew something. I have a dress cut out.