Time to kick back for a week...well, at least try to.

click on book to go to excerpt

As I write this blog, it's a beautiful, sunny afternoon. Before starting the blog,  however, I was lying on my bed enjoying a breeze through the slider and open windows, and  feeling good about having uploaded the second book in my Oasis series, Branded in Oasis.  I was also thinking  I should really take a week off because the final two weeks before release of a book are intense and time consuming. I spend on average, probably, eight to ten hours a day rereading the story for editing and formatting errors. Sometimes a few of those "pests" make it through, but fortunately, being self published, I can easily correct and update my books on Amazon and other sites.

Anyway, getting back to my nap (or nap that didn't happen); while lying there I started thinking about using my blog to layout  ideas for books for the remainder of 2014 and into 2015. My current series (Oasis) has at least one more story to be written (a mystery romance titled Crashed in Oasis), but I've also been thinking about writing a novella in the same series of maybe fifty pages. It would be the story of two characters introduced in book one and expanded on in book two, namely, Bertram Babcock (the wicked step brother) and Cowgirl Kitty (I haven't given her a last name yet). I so love these characters that I want to know their story, but I have to put fingers to keyboard to find it out. As for the novella's lineup in the series, it would be book 0.5 and I would make it free as a lead in to the series.The title that keeps coming to mind is Bertram's Kitty.

So...that's two stories I need to write.

I've also been feeling drawn back to my Romance on the Ranch Series a.k.a. Kisses Series. I really want to write a romance between "mature" characters that are in their late fifties or early sixties, and I have a tentative title of Forever Kisses. But another book in that series that keeps begging to be written would be titled Rock Star Kisses, and it's the story between Tessa Branigan and Sean Barfield, teenagers in Christmas Kisses, who are now in their early twenties. Sean is a gifted musician who became a rock star.  He met  Tessa when they were teenagers. Tessa has always battled a weight problem. At school she was teased by the class bully who called her "Tubby Tessa."  I really want to write their story, but it probably won't happen until early 2015.

Reflecting back, It has now been six years since I started writing and three years since I was able to quit my "day job." Writing full time is now my day job, and I treat it as such with timelines, goals, and deadlines. I work about six hours a day until, as mentioned above, two weeks before release of a book, and then I spend hours (overtime) on final edits.

Okay, now that I've set some goals on "paper" I might try that nap again.

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