February Valentines and Project Updates

January has come and gone, which means I'm another year older. I shared my 45th birthday with the inauguration of the 45th President of the United States. I won't talk politics, but I'm with you when I say he's not my President. Still, I'm willing to wait and watch and pray, and hope maybe he might become what we all expect a good president to be.

My family took me out for dinner, and then my husband accompanied me to a Sock Social at a local bar. The event was to collect socks for the homeless. Considering a good friend used to be, I thought it a worthwhile cause. When I asked him his opinion, he scoffed at first, mainly because it was over 20 years ago, but when he thought about it, he agreed it was an excellent idea. Clean socks and underwear are the least donated item and the most coveted. Overall, the event collected over a dozen large kitchen-sized garbage bags full of socks.

It's high season for Girl Scout Cookies.

A friend wrote:

Word is you are a big cookie pusher on the East Coast 

in a criminal enterprise know as: The Girl Scouts. 

Headlines will read: Outraged Soccer Mom Leading Double Life 

How many lives have you destroyed with your Girl Scout Cookies?! 

The rehabs are swelling.

Yup, pretty much sums up the next six weeks of my life. But it's fun too. The girls are excited, and we have plans to use the raised money for an overnight trip (our first!)

And, of course, I've always got a project or three going on. I'm writing and beta reading. My cohort in crime, Francu Godgluck has finally kicked his butt into gear and is working on Of God and Monsters, book III. We'll be co-writing book IV at some point (probably 2018) about Richard and James (from Colt and Beo's story).

KC Faelan and I are cleaning up Metamorphic Heart for official publication and printing. Looking for that to be available in August.

Working with new author (to writing, but not to manga) Natsuya Useugi on a high fantasy, transgender novel. Getting to pass on all the information I've learned over the last three years.

On the personal front - two current projects. The first is another "short" standalone in the Southern Jersey Shores series. The two main characters will be new, but I've set in at T.J.'s bar, so readers of the series will recognize the side characters. Current due date for anthology submission is June 30th, but it'll be available on its own probably sometime in late summer, early fall.

Project two is the doozy. I'm co-authoring a dark prison romance with Richard Montgomery, an amazing poet who's spent too many years inside. I'm learning a whole new culture, a whole new language and finding it fascinating and heartbreaking at the same time. Expect truthful accounts of what prison is really like, they'll be no holding back on the honesty. We're already expecting this to be a full length novel, which I suspect will exceed anything I've written/co-written before. I won't even give a possible expectation date as the scenes are trickling in with the ideas before we plot it all out and mesh it all together. With luck, end of 2017, but I'm not holding my breath. Lol.

Meanwhile, the goal list continues...

Hope everyone had a wonderful Valentine's Day. Now go give someone a kiss.