Out in the country in Central Texas, the skies are huge and storm clouds and sunsets can truly be dramatic. With houses and trees blocking the sky here, it’s hard to get a vista like this.
It’s chilly this morning. Love it! It’s supposed to get to 95. So I need to get out and enjoy this while I can.
But I’m also off to write. We’re celebrating birthdays today, did preschool graduation last night, so busy, busy. Need to write!
When I went to the writer’s retreat some years ago, I was madly editing a book I needed to turn in, but also taking walks and photographing the landscape and farm animals and birds from a birding blind. So much fun!
So yesterday I managed to get through 10 chapters of You Had Me at Cougar. I’m working on the last 6 chapters today, but have grandbaby duty this morning. I’m going to try and run to the grocery store before he gets here. And then have to pick up my granddaughter later, so it might be rough. I want to upload the proofed Saving the White Cougar today to all the sites, if I can do it. It’s on preorder so it will be out on September 1st.
Tomorrow my granddaughter will be here all day and that means swimming, hip hop dancing while I watch the baby, we’ll be doing workbooks, reading 1st readers, and painting more suncatchers. She has the butterfly one picked out for tomorrow.
A wild day in all. So I’m hoping I can get most of my work done on the two cougar books today!
It’s blessedly cool out this morning, lower humidity and we’re supposed to have storms this afternoon about the time I pick up my granddaughter from pre-school. Naturally. lol
The last time we were in the deluge, I just told her we were going through the tropical rainforest and she said, “That has lots of houses in it.”
Uh, yeah. Not typical of a rainforest. How did she get so smart? But she has a great imagination and she plays along. She asked me yesterday if the dragon in the eggshell that is emerging is real or not. I said not real. Otherwise it would be out already and breathing fire. So it’s good he’s not real. lol
Well, I’m off to get groceries and then I’m afraid I won’t have time for proofing UNLESS baby sleeps. Here’s hoping.
Old country roads make me think of the past. This one is in Salado, Texas, an old stagecoach town.
I managed to reach chapter 19 on Jingle Bells, and have 6 more chapters to proof and then I’m off to work on The Best of Both Wolves edits.
We had 5″ of rain yesterday all at once. It looks like we’re not going to have any rain for at least a couple of days. I wish it would spread out and last all summer instead of one big deluge!
My friend in Minnesota tells me that when the Junco arrives, it means snow is coming. Well, it sure worked here in Texas too.
We still have snow on the ground, still freezing temperatures through the night and this morning. When I saw how many people died at home due to hypothermia because of the week-long hard freeze we had and no electricity, it made me wonder how cold it had to be to get it. The horrible fact is that none of those people had to die.
Apparently, there are no hard and fast rules.
Today we will get to 58, and perversely, 70 tomorrow.
I heard someone say that Texas never gets snow. Sure we do. I’ve been in snowstorms in Amarillo, whiteout conditions trying to drive home to Canyon from work in Amarillo. I’ve slid all over the black ice roads trying to get to Fort Hood in an ice storm along with countless others when they didn’t close the fort early enough. In Crawford, I have pictures of the number of times we had snow, both at my home and later when I lived at my mother’s. In Houston, I’ve only lived here for six years, and we’ve had snow for 3 of those years. My pipes froze in Crawford a couple of times. My pipes froze here. I’ve been stuck in Dallas during a snowstorm and couldn’t get a flight out.
So yes, we do get cold weather. It doesn’t last this long–a week of way below freezing temperatures down to 10 degrees, but yes, we can get freezing temperatures, snow, and sleet.
And even if we don’t get it very often or for very long, there shouldn’t be any reason why we had to go through what we did this week and for people to die because of it.
Okay, I’ve got to get to work on this book. It’s nearly at 100K, I thought I was cutting some out! At least I’m writing about summer. Heat, paddling, swimming. I should be writing my Christmas book!
I’m a long ways from finishing White Wolf but I’m getting closer. 🙂 It’s been a job with changing out the whole new beginning, and I’ve deleted some scenes, added a ton more and I definitely like the story better. Minimum word count is 80K, I’m now at 96K, and I’m sure I’ll be deleting more, just not sure what to take out and what to keep. I still need to write more.
I don’t often include the bad guy’s POV in the book, but in this case I did because I did in the original story he was in. And because it adds more conflict.
Dove and Snow and Ice
We still have freezing temperatures, still have some snow on the ground. Electricity has stayed on. Thank God! Because of the screw up by so many concerning the electric grid failures across much of Texas, the word is getting out that for 2 days–or more, electric customers will be charged $400 per day. Like everybody can afford that, right?
So we can thank those who, as usual, are making the big bucks and failing do to what they should have done to prevent this from occurring in the first place. Heads should roll, comes to mind. And when we have a crisis this bad–people are still without electric, some counties are on boil water orders–with no electric, how is that possible?–more pipes will burst without electric–some people are without water, plumbers are stretched to the max, and we haven’t even thawed out to see how bad it will be, we should all just head to Cancun, right?
Meanwhile:
The New York Times states: “The number of confirmed Covid deaths in the U.S. is on pace to exceed 500,000 in the next few days.
Yet the alarmism continues. And now we are seeing its real-world costs: Many people don’t want to get the vaccine partly because it sounds so ineffectual.
About one-third of members of the U.S. military have declined vaccine shots. When shots first became available to Ohio nursing-home workers, about 60 percent said no. Some N.B.A. stars are wary of appearing in public-services ads encouraging vaccination.
Nationwide, nearly half of Americans would refuse a shot if offered one immediately, polls suggest. Vaccination skepticism is even higher among Black and Hispanic people, white people without a college degree, registered Republicans and lower-income households.” The New York Times
Why? It’s safe, it’s effective. It reduces the downtime of being sick if you get Covid. We need to dumb down the rhetoric. With all the high-fluting medical jargon, people aren’t getting the right message. And more people are going to die from it. I don’t understand it, but hey, what do I know?
Put it this way–if everyone gets the vaccine, maybe we can open businesses up again??? Maybe no masks after the 2nd dose and the time waited for it to be effective, right? Anyway, I can’t worry about people not taking care of themselves. I just have to worry about doing what’s right for my characters in my books. Would they take the vaccine? You’d better believe it.
I saw a post that said:
2020: The Year in Hell
2021: The Year Hell Froze Over
Okay, I’m back to the book, living in the wonderful world of fantasy where we have a happily ever after!
Azalea in snowPeople pushing a car free after spinning out in the snow in Waco, Texas, yesterday.Jerry Larson/Waco Tribune-Herald, via Associated Press
I used to work in Waco. But it’s a mess here too near Houston.
Texas is under snow and ice! And a lot of other places in the south that normally aren’t either. Electric outages all over. Rolling blackouts. Water isn’t being pumped to some homes.
I’m afraid my sprinkler system probably broke, despite trying to weatherproof it. And my kitchen sink pipes froze last night. So I’m hair drying it, trying to unfreeze it, hoping I don’t have a flood of water like I did in Oklahoma one time. And the worst? It was Christmas Day. I had to have a friend turn off the water for me because it was frozen and I couldn’t budge it, and when the plumbers came the next day, they found termite towers in the wall behind the plumbing they had to repair. Talk about costly!!!
Anyway, still frozen, still writing tons and rewriting tons and moving stuff around in White Wolf. It will be a mess for a while, but it’s getting better. I’m up to chapter 7-8 and those are mostly like I want them. 15 chapters to revise, rewrite, move around. 🙂 But it’s getting there!
Now if I can only unfreeze my kitchen pipe and hope I don’t have a crack in it!
Frozen rose. Flowers blooming before the deep freeze hit.
Stay safe and if you’re in the middle of this Polar Vortex–we haven’t had this kind of cold since 1985–stay warm the best you can!
Garlic chives and onions flowering, pretty and edible!
Off to write before I get together with my daughter and her baby. It’s spring break this week so she has off, which means trying to catch up on a million things. I don’t have spring break. I have a looming deadline, but I still want to take spring break too. lol
It’s harder to capture the autumn colors here, unlike our fellow friends in the more colorful regions of the world where fall explodes with vibrancy. So for us, capturing some of the colors here is much harder. And of course, I only brought my 50mm with me instead of the one I use to shoot for scenery because I thought I was only going to take pictures of baby. But the fall colors caught my eye too. Next time….
One year, the pear trees were wild with color. I’d never noticed it before, but I think we had just enough rainfall and cold weather to make it happen that year.
I’m back to edits on My Highlander. When baby went home last night, I was working on them, making all the changes that needed to be made as my story idea changes with the progress of the novel. It also helps me to see what I need to add to make the scenes more vivid, colorful, just like a fall scene–not flat, but memorable.
Whether you have fall or not, embrace the beauty of your world.
Somewhere, I have a picture of a rusting child’s antique car–used as a garden ornament, but unseen by most in Old Town Spring. It captured my eye as my family continued walking and I paused to take a picture. I hope it turned out and I want to share it, once I find it! Even a rusted out old toy car can be beautiful–full of stories.
Have a memorably fun day!
Terry
“Giving new meaning to the term alpha male where fantasy is reality.”
We had stormy skies on and off all day, but it didn’t storm. We’re supposed to have more tomorrow, but it’s been going that way, huge thunderheads, no storms, 80-90% of rain, no rain. So we shall see. 🙂
Have a lovely day!
Terry Spear
“Giving new meaning to the term alpha male where fantasy is reality.”
