Yellow gerbera daisy, Iris, Yellow Asian lily, Purple Azalea
Okay, so I wrote 400 words on Red Wolf yesterday and I couldn’t get anywhere with it and wham! I get Wolf Fever’s 10th Anniversary Edition to proof, along with the new novella. I started on that, figuring it was easier to proof than to write the other novel, and I need to turn this in 9 days from now. I’m up to page 84 of 361 and raring to go this morning.
But first, my computer crashed and I was in the middle of redoing a cover for Scepter of Salvation. And of course when I brought up Photoshop, it wasn’t one of the pictures that was recovered. Of. Course.
And I have no idea if Red Wolf was recovered properly either. I haven’t opened it up yet.
That is my morning, and it’s going to get better. I’m going to make sure of it! Off to get going on Wolf Fever! So I can get back to Red Wolf!
Have a wonderful day free of stress, if that’s at all possible in the world today.
I planted a whole lot of the seeds there, and I hope that’s purple salvia and not just weeds. Otherwise I should be tearing them up right now and not waiting!
Here it is in one flowerbed, but I haven’t seen any sign of it this year. It’s a perennial, so it should keep coming back. I have another flowerbed where it seems to have vanished too.
Here it is in another flowerbed and it’s growing strong. I need to take pictures of it. And the other with just the seedlings, that’s a new flowerbed. They’re really beautiful if I can just keep seeing them year after year. And yes, for master gardeners, I’m sure the seedlings are all too close together. So what do I do? Try to transplant them? Or keep trying to figure out my plot for this book and carry on?
I managed to reach 10,000 words on Red Wolf. 70,000 to go. Still need a great plot and conflict between the hero and heroine! I’m also redoing a cover for one of my fantasy books. I’ve looked at tons of book cover artists premades, but don’t see what I’m looking for and when I try to have something custom made, I usually am not that happy with it.
I could say that my writer’s block is because I’ve written probably 70 books and it’s hard coming up with brand new plot ideas. I could say it’s all the alarming news about the coronavirus and what is in store for all the countries of the world that are dealing with this–and believe me, I worry about everyone everywhere! I could say it’s because sometimes this is just my method of madness and if I keep writing I will have an ah-ha moment and know just what I need to do to fix it.
And I could say it’s a combination of all three and I’d probably be right. But I persevere in the face of real catastrophe while I try to concentrate on the deadline book, because the deadline isn’t going away.
I saw a plane flying overhead this morning as I walk to the mailbox to pick up all my spam mail and around the block for my morning exercise. I hear one later and I wonder, where are they going?
Isn’t the WHOLE world under lock down? Should you be traveling in an airplane or a cruise ship right about now? Why would you?
Fleeing somewhere that’s been hard hit and then possibly carrying the virus somewhere else? Not that I blame the people who think they’re not carrying it and want to go to somewhere more isolated, but….who knows?
I see the numbers go up and up and up. And yet, it’s just the tip of the iceberg. We have no idea how many people really have it. Mild cases. Not so mild cases. We don’t have the testing for it. Those who have it can’t get tested because they’re not the right age. They don’t have proof they’ve been infected by someone who has it. Yet they have it.
We finally went into lock down ourselves in our county.
Over 40 teams around the world are working on a cure. Pray that they find one soon.
We will get through this. The economy will come back. But it’s going to take time.
I said I wouldn’t go anywhere for 3 weeks. I try to stay home for 2 weeks at a time. That’s to ensure that if I get it, and it’s incubating, I can stay away from others and not spread it. It’s been a week and I’ve got to go out again. *sigh*.
So I thought, no problem, prescription medicine, pick up at the window. Then my daughter tells me their marriage is in grave danger if my son-in-law doesn’t have Dr. Pepper and their food isn’t being delivered until Thursday. If I get this from going into the store, I want Dr. Pepper to know it’s all their fault.
Okay, still trying to find a great conflict between the hero and heroine of Red Wolf. I have 9,000 words now. Seventy-one thousand to go.
The neighborhood got together to do a Zoo Day with stuff animals in our yards so kids could visit the zoo on another day of stay-at-home activities.
My computer keeps locking up so I will say I finally managed to get 2,000 words on Red Wolf. I was trying to think of an opening, and I finally figured out one after several false starts. And I wrote 400 words on Seducing the Vampire. I’ve had Coronavirus news writer’s block.
Huntress Pasha wants revenge against the vampire who had decimated
her family of hunters and she’s sure she’s found her mate—a hunter who
saved her and helped free her family. But he is a hunter turned vampire
now and as much as she hates the vampires for what they’ve done to her
and her family, she scorns any notion of settling down with one.
Zachary is in love with one hot-blooded huntress and he’ll do
anything to save her and her family from the vampires who had taken them
hostage. But now, he’s one of them, and he can’t come to grips with
what he’s become. He’s on a mission to help Pasha eliminate the vampires
who destroyed her family and hopes he will fall in battle, an honorable
way to die—as a hunter eliminating rogue vampires who threaten mankind.
But just maybe being a hunter turned vampire isn’t the worst thing
that can happen to him, if he can have an edge against the vampires, if
only he wasn’t shunned by the huntress he has lost his heart to.
When I was thirteen, my mother took me to a college play, Dracula. I fell in love with the vampire and felt he should be loved and loved back in return. Not under his control, of course. So that’s where my series began. Not when I was thirteen, but before I began writing wolf shifter stories.
I’m suffering from coronavirus news writer’s block. Ugh, got to get back to writing!!!
At the grocery store yesterday, they had us standing 10 feet away from each other. They were cleaning carts, the clean ones were inside the store. They had hand sanitizer they would squirt on your hands before going in and coming out. It wasn’t crowded inside and no long lines. They were limited how many went into the store. A good thing! I also finished my taxes. Yay! I still need to do my car registration for April. You can register online, yay! But you have to go in to have a car safety inspection. Boo!
Working on Red Wolf. Or trying to, but taking my morning walk in the dark before too many people are up and about and it gets too hot.
I published Vampire Redemption, but still waiting on the links for most of the sites.
Vampire Redemption
Huntress Pasha wants revenge against the vampire who had decimated
her family of hunters and she’s sure she’s found her mate—a hunter who
saved her and helped free her family. But he is a hunter turned vampire
now and as much as she hates the vampires for what they’ve done to her
and her family, she scorns any notion of settling down with one.
Zachary is in love with one hot-blooded huntress and he’ll do
anything to save her and her family from the vampires who had taken them
hostage. But now, he’s one of them, and he can’t come to grips with
what he’s become. He’s on a mission to help Pasha eliminate the vampires
who destroyed her family and hopes he will fall in battle, an honorable
way to die—as a hunter eliminating rogue vampires who threaten mankind.
But just maybe being a hunter turned vampire isn’t the worst thing
that can happen to him, if he can have an edge against the vampires, if
only he wasn’t shunned by the huntress he has lost his heart to.
Our health reporter Donald McNeil writes: “If it were possible to wave a magic wand and make all Americans freeze in place for 14 days while sitting six feet apart, epidemiologists say, the whole epidemic would sputter to a halt.”
Not entirely true. Sources are saying the virus can be shred 3 weeks after getting it!
Anyway, so some of my fans have said they’ve seen notices that the borders between states are closing. Not true! Quit panicking!! Or is it?
Nearly 70 drugs may be effective in treating the virus, researchers reported. Some medications are already used to treat other diseases, and repurposing them may be faster than trying to invent a new drug, the scientists said.
In the meantime, my daughter and SIL continue to self-isolate and stay at home and work. She is in charge of the distribution of food to children at the schools. He is a computer analyst.
She has been trying so hard to grow some produce from seed, babied her lettuce that died in a frost, tried again and they were doing great before the heat really starts to hit–and then? Sir Rilo the corgi struck! Yep, he went after everything in her garden, including radishes and green beans. I have to watch my havanese with my tomato plants. They will pluck off the tomatoes and happily eat them.
In other news, in Oregon the police are asking people to stop calling 911 because they ran out of toilet paper.
I was afraid this would happen. The pandemic, I mean. When the folks in China became sick, it didn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out with all our world traveling–it would spread. And spread. And spread.
I wasn’t a panic buyer. Just like I didn’t panic buy before Hurricane Harvey hit us. I was just getting some fresh fruits and vegetables when I realized tons of shelves were empty. I didn’t panic buy even then, but picked up a few more items, like dog food, and am glad I did because I was nearly out and the shelves were too.
What I didn’t expect was for everyone to be so unbelievably unprepared. For the healthcare systems to be so overrun in some areas. For the same thing to happen in other areas too if people don’t come to their senses. That there was soooooo much denial of the problem from our leadership which exacerbated the problem. Why???? Because people listen to our leadership. They believe in what they have to tell us. We have this under control. We don’t have an issue. I. Am. Smart.
Right. So smart, we have a pandemic here without barely any testing going on. Stay home. Live if you can. Die if you can’t.
I just read about a 39-year old woman who died in her apartment. Someone was infected at her workplace, the woman who died had been tested, but she wouldn’t learn about the results for 5 more days. Don’t bother. She no longer needs to self-isolate.
It’s scary to think that self-isolating will fix the problem. For how long? Forever? Until those who have it either live or die? And then what?
I always try to be positive. My dad used to say he’d never met someone who was always so optimistic about things as me.
My mother said when I received yet another rejection from a publisher that I was always so upbeat. “But, Mom, that was a good rejection! They said send something else!”
It was one of those form letters and they sent it to everyone, right? But I was an optimist and I knew they really meant it.
So when our great leadership was saying everything was okay, businesses and governments were still sending their people flying across the world, flying across the States…and spreading the disease more. I kept thinking, this isn’t safe. We shouldn’t be doing this. Don’t do this. But no, everything’s fine. We’re fine. We have it under control. I. Am. Smart.
I love how places say they have no cases of the virus. Right. If you don’t test, you don’t have any confirmed cases. It happened in West Virginia. The governor was praised because he had no cases. Right. They had done no testing! The wife of the man who was their first case, well, two because she got it from her husband, had to fight and fight and fight to get her husband tested.
Or if you cover it up, you don’t have any cases either. Nope, everything is hunky-dory here. Right. Denial works too.
In a case like this, honesty is the best answer. Burying heads in the sand won’t make it go away. But maybe the truth will help us to get a handle on it.
I want to be positive and upbeat, but I’m angry with our leadership, with the way they’ve mishandled it. I feel for the people who are having to work for UPS and other delivery services who are sick and have been told they can’t take off from work, for those who are working at the grocery stores, exposed to everything every day, to our EMTs, and medical staff, first responders, police force. For everyone who has to work when others can stay home and self-isolate.
I don’t want to think about the economy right now. I am sticking my head in the sand about that. It will bounce back once we truly have the virus under control. I know it will. Everyone will be eager to get back to work. Everyone will be producing goods and offering services, socializing, just like it never happened. I don’t want to think of a negative scenario on this. It will happen. I say so. Because I’m a dyed-in-the-wool optimist.
from a distance…
Oh, and if you use unmatched socks or paper towels or corn cobs if you’ve run out of toilet paper, DO NOT put them in the toilet. I thought that was a given, but apparently that’s a new problem. Shaking head.
Stay safe and if you can help out those who need help, great, if you’re in one of the professions, including grocery store personnel and home deliverers, that are helping people, I applaud you and thank you, and if you’re self-isolating, thank you too!!!
When will people in power listen? And why not take this seriously in the first place? Way before my dad died like fifteen years ago, this was what he said. Way before all the movies showing pandemics, apocalypses, zombie movies that all had to do with viruses that caused this. It doesn’t take an epidemiologist to tell us this was where we’re headed. Yet did anyone in power listen?
Yes! In some countries. And my hat is off to them for doing something about it once they realized there was a problem.
Yes, we are not doing enough testing in this country. How can we know who is sick and who is not?
So unless you have a doctor’s note or were around someone who tested positive (uhm, how do we know if someone did if nobody’s getting tested?–which was exactly the case of one woman who had it and was extremely ill from it), had traveled, or are a first responder, medical health personnel, you’re not going to be tested. I don’t even have a doctor. My clinic closed down. One day they were there. The next day, it was an urgent care facility with a nurse and no testing whatsoever.
But then, they had free testing in Houston, just one place, and 3 mile long lines, and it was for anyone, so who shows up? Young women who are the least likely to have it or suffer from it. No elderly who need to be tested.
In Los Angeles, did they just say they’re no longer going to test for it? They’re just so overwhelmed?
Didn’t the epidemiologist say we need to know who all has it, who has recovered to help get a handle on this and find a cure and… Whatever.
So then we have over 100 people attending 4 different weddings in NYC? Spring breakers cramming the beaches in Florida? One 20-something saying something to the effect, “If I get it, so I get it?” What then? Pass it along to those who don’t have it, because that’s exactly what would happen?
A Japanese man saying he’s going to pass his virus to others. An American who licked ice cream and put it back on the shelf and shared it with the world. He did buy the ice cream, but they had to destroy all the rest! And of course he was arrested. A local man being arrested for saying he had the virus and he didn’t? Teens in the UK blowing on vegetables to pass along the virus if they have it? A man licking his hand and rubbing it along the pole on a subway?
What is wrong with people?
Thank God we have some really decent folks and businesses that are trying to help out when everyone’s struggling to stay well and provide for those who are needing the help.
I try to look at only the positive side of things. I shouldn’t read all the news articles. But I do look for positive things too.
If you ran out of bleach, guess what? Soap is supposed to be better than bleach in the fight against the virus!
Okay, I’m going to try and get back to work on the books. I did manage 2,000 on Seducing the Vampire, but Red Wolf is languishing.
Have a good, safe day! In our community, they’re doing a decorate the door, so people can stay home and do something to share with the community. My kids are doing it. Me? I’m trying to write!
This is the first book in the Arctic Wolf series and this will be the 10th Anniversary release with a new novella. For those who already have the ebook, you can download the new version on March 31. For those who already have a paperback copy, the novellas will be in their own book in the future.
Love, love it. Goes with my blanket. ~~Barbi Davis
Well, I’m spending way too much time on reading articles about the coronavirus, and need to spend more time thinking and writing.
But lots of articles about what could work has come out of this. Like the use of copper–which we no longer use:
Canceled trip to Seattle/Vancouver–it was supposed to be for the end of April. So had to cancel on the kennel, Amtrak, still need to do the airline reservation, but they said to wait until 72 hours before the flight leaves. I’ll probably try on Monday. Thankfully, I had trip insurance and it seems that means I can get a voucher for flying some other time.
I’ve been staying home, though we don’t have an order in place for it here, but they’re not doing hardly any testing either, so who knows how many we really have who are sick with the virus. And it can easily be spread when someone has it before they’re showing symptoms. So, the next time you cast an evil eye at someone who has allergies–post nasal drip, and a cough–remember that person might be perfectly healthy. It’s the guy or gal on the other side of you who looks as healthy as can be who could be carrying the virus.
Picture I took of a black face sheep on the Isle of Skye, Scotland
So in other news, my editor said they were giving my Highland Wolf book the title of: Wolf in Plaid. It will come out April 27, 2021. So excited! Love the title. Can’t wait to see the cover and share.
Reporting on the Goodwill News during these difficult times:
Florida distillery drops booze for sanitizer
A Florida craft distillery has halted making alcoholic beverages in
favor of hand sanitizer – and it’s giving the stuff away for free.
Copper Bottom Craft Distillery in Holly Hill announced the BYOB offer –
you bring the bottle, they will fill it – on Wednesday. Within hours
they had given away 20 gallons, mostly in 4-ounce pours. Customers
included representatives from a
sheriff’s office and a fire department. There were obstetricians,
medical clinic workers, school teachers and service industry
professionals.
“We’re just
trying to spread some goodwill,” said Jenni Craig, who owns the business
with her husband, Jeremy, and his parents. “This is a crazy time going
on right now, and we want to do what we can to help.”
– Suzanne Hirt, Daytona Beach News-Journal
In You Had Me at Wolf, I have a St. Bernard named Rosco. He carried a little barrel of doggy treats around his neck at the ski lodge and was a rescue dog. I loved this picture circulating for our emergency times! One of my fans said after she saw this posting: Help! I need help! lol Keep a sense of humor. It will help to get through the dark days ahead.
I am determined to get more writing done today! Have a good one. Hunker down. Change everything you own out to copper. Good luck with that!
