I picked the midget tomatoes and the little bell peppers from the garden and the zinnias are getting to be miniatures too now with the onset of cooler weather, so I thought it would be cute to have the fairy in the garden reading a book after picking the vegetables for dinner.
Everything has a story, you know. But if she takes too long, she will be in trouble while she’s lost in the book, another world, another reality.
So here are my problem pictures. I had forgotten the last one had long hair, but I liked the shorter hair on her. Hey, we’re told all the time to be artistic!
This is the last before I go on to even tougher assignments, but I’m determined to do this! And I want to learn more.
All right, so I reached 14,000 words yesterday on Cougar Christmas Calamity. You know, I look at a page that only has the chapter heading on it and I wonder how I can write a WHOLE book? But it’s like taking one of these photo challenges. It looks sooo impossible, yet with perseverance and a whole lot of work, it comes together. Since I’ve been writing years and years and years longer than I have been painting figures (six weeks, learning to use a Wacom on top of that), I know I have a LONG way to go. I still have a long way to go on the book too, but it will get done!
I’m signing a contract for 3 more books with Sourcebooks, which I’ll write next year and will come out 2021: White Wolf (David Davis story), Billionaire (she-wolf bodyguard’s story–everyone’s been asking me for hers next), and Red Wolf Christmas (need input from fans on this one!–Maybe Josh’s brother who runs the reindeer ranch.)
I was out weeding and pulling my zinnias that are looking really ragged and the weeds and grass I couldn’t get to without pulling them out, so another major project to work on. But little bit by little bit, it will look great too.
I’m off to write before the day slips by too much more!
Still practicing how to blend with background and paint long hair. I wondered how it would look with a render–a computer generated person.
I’m out planting mums this morning. I picked them up for a light purple accent, so had to get them out. I still want to move a couple of boxwoods that are not getting enough water or sun. And I have one yellow ligustrum I need to plant. So I’ll probably do that this morning while it’s cool and the sun’s not beating down yet. The front yard gets a ton of sun, so I have to plant really early or really late out there. It’s still getting hot here.
And I’ve about finished Cougar. I will probably change the name. I made the cover, for the most part. I’m going to read through Cougar one last time, and write the dedication, and assign an ISBN, get it copyrighted. So many things to do. But I need to start edits on Tangling with the Wolf novella that came back to me. I have 9 days to turn it back in.
Ugh, sun’s coming out. Off to hurry and plant! I feel like a vampire. Oh no, the sun, arm over eyes to shield myself from the devastating rays. Hmm, I wonder if that idea came from how bad the sun is on our skin??? A point to ponder, if you have the time or inclination.
The birds love the water fountain. So do the squirrels. I do too. There’s something relaxing about listening to a fountain bubbling away. Or a stream too.
I’m 100 pages into proofing Red Wolf, 145 pages to go!
We might get rain next week. I sure hope so. I was out pulling weeds this morning in the semi-dark to beat the heat, but it would help to have wetter ground to pull weeds. Do you ever notice that weeds thrive no matter if they have water or not? Maybe I should just grow weeds. They’re happy!
I always get up early, but 4:30 is a little early now when I don’t have to get up that early for little one. But my daughter wanted to go to the hardware store and a garden center on a Saturday before the heat and crowds came, so at 5:30, we were out and about.
So we got to see the sunrise before the hardware store opened, picked up mulch, which I just put down before it gets much hotter, and of course need more.
But neither of us have very big cars, so we can’t get all that much and we both needed some. Stores were all empty and that was great!
It was fun though. We haven’t been able to do this since last year. We always go together once or twice during the spring or summer.
I’m busy trying to revise Red Wolf and still trying to finish it. I changed a few things and that meant major rewrites and moving sections all around. What a job. lol But someone’s got to do it. And it always means it’s better.
Have a super safe day! I’m home and staying there now!!!
It always gets away from me. I think sometimes that maybe it would be best to just have…grass.
But taking pictures of tons of grass would be downright…boring.
Okay, little one will be here any second. I was out weeding like crazy and cutting back some rosebush branches that were dead.
And I was using the Wacom to paint a tulip, first lesson. I am so bad with the Wacom, it’s like being a toddler and learning how to draw with a crayon. So trying to learn a painting skill with it on top of that makes it doubly bad. I was doing better on a bottle, lemon, and pear with the mouse. I did them with the pen also. But I’m sure as I get more used to it–practice does make things better!–I will get better at it.
The pen doesn’t want to curve when I want to curve. It wants to squiggle.
This is the first lesson in painting color onto blown-out highlights in Beyond the Brushes. We haven’t gotten the training in edges yet. I have 3 other practice pictures to work on after this. But I’m also going to pull up the first 3 pictures of the bottle, lemon, and pear and redo them to get more practice in. My Wacom wouldn’t work yesterday so I gave up on it and just worked on Red Wolf. I had worked on that all day, but was taking a break from that to paint the picture.
They show people doing beautiful pictures with people and pets. The fur critters is what I want to do.
Went to the grocery store yesterday, and was glad to see that most people were distancing and wearing masks. This woman came up to me and said, “Ma’am. Ma’am.” And I looked up from peering at the meats to see my daughter in a mask. lol We’d had the same idea.
Okay, off to get my day started. I actually managed to write 3,000 words yesterday, yay! and shooting for 50K this week. I need to get started on the edits to Highland Wolf, but I don’t want to stop writing on Red Wolf and have to figure out where I’m at in the book again.
My daughter started a bunch of seedlings: tomato plants, bell peppers, sweet baby watermelon, thyme, and basil, so I planted everything also. My tomato plant toppled over in high winds and I had to start tying it up. My daughter had given me the seedling about 6 weeks ago, and it has all kinds of flowers already. Just keep watching to see if any of them became the first tomatoes.
Have a great day!!! Need to get my dogs up, and start the routine again!
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.
