Weekend camping

We had a big family camp out this weekend with my husband's family. It's an annual thing and as usual, we had a blast. No major injuries this year, last year we had a little one with a bee sting. At the left is the lake that our campground was next to. There are several campgrounds in the park and we had this one all to ourselves. A lot of the family members tried their hand at fishing, but the fish were smarter than we were and no one caught anything.

Night time was the best, with all of us sitting around the campfire just talking. It was warm during the day, but cool enough at night that we could enjoy the heat from the fire.

We saw one snake during the camp out and that was a water snake in the lake.  I think if you look close enough at the photo below, you can see it. There's also a fish just below it and to the left to prove that there were fish in that lake.

However, that snake was not the last one we would see for the weekend. When we got home on Sunday, we found the "little" guy below in our house. We live in a pretty wooded area and it's not uncommon for us to find a black rat snake in the house in the summer. I've gotten used to them and as long as I'm not surprised by them or step on one, I'm okay with it. My husband catches them and puts them back outside, WAY away from the house.

Carol

Latest News

I haven't posted a writing update in a while, so I thought it would be a good time. I've been feverishly working on my current romance manuscript. This one will be a sweet romance with a little touch of suspense, but mostly romance. I working on chapter eight of what I hope to be a twelve chapter book. Watch for updates here when I get it finished and hopefully a contact. Things have been a little slow this week thanks to a problem with one of my eyes. I went to the eye doctor yesterday and she dilated my right eye and told me it would be dilated for 24 hours. That was 34 hours ago and I'm still dilated. Luckily, she said my eye problem is not serious. It's terrible getting old.

Sales for all of my releases are doing well. I'm not rich enough to quit my day and I don't think that's going to happen until retirement. Speaking of retirement, I was bored at work the other day and figured out that I will be eligible to retire in 80 months from my government job. That sounded so much better than six years and some odd months. But, I digress, all of my book are now available as Nook downloads from Barnes and Noble. If you notice on their site, Saved by the Sheriff is also available there in paperback, for $23.90! Do not, I repeat, DO NOT buy my book there. I asked my publisher about it and she said they don't list with B&N and it's from a third party vendor. If you want to buy Saved by the Sheriff in paperback, please buy it from Amazon.

I came up with an idea for a new book today. Funny how book ideas come to me. I was thinking about the movie, The Devil Wears Prada (one of my favorites) and an unusual character popped in to my head. Obviously, I can't write anything like that movie, which was first a book, or I'd be sued, but I have a very basic idea to go with. I'll jot it down in my book for future reference and see what I can add to it before I get my current book finished.

I'm hoping to maybe have a table at a local community festival this fall and will have copies of Saved by the Sheriff there to sell, if I'm able to get a table. Watch the calendar on my web page for any local appearances that I may have. 

I also decided this weekend to try and eat better and exercise more. LOL Yeah, I've told myself that before and when it does work out, I eventually slide backwards. So, I'm going to give it a shot again. I started today by eating lots of fruit today for lunch and then took a walk, after I spent 30 minutes of my lunch hour writing. I felt better and didn't get sleepy around two PM, like I usually do. Keep your fingers crossed for me.

I'll try to be better about posting on here, but life seems so boring to me that I can't imagine anyone else wanting to read about it.

Carol

A Review: "Pushed Too Far"

Pushed Too Far by Ann Voss Peterson
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This was a fantastic book. So much mystery and so much suspense. The author did a wonderful job of detail, description, and dialogue. I was able to put myself into the setting and story. Even though you knew who was committing the murders, you sat on the edge of you seat trying to figure out how they were going to catch the murderer, but there was a twist and surprise when it did happen. I never saw it coming and I liked that.

This was the first book of Ms. Peterson's that I have read, but it won't be the last. If you're a fan of mystery and suspense, I highly recommend this book.



View all my reviews

Burned out

It seems that I get burned out with things I do a lot of very quickly. I love doing the NaNoWriMo project every November, but when December rolls around I don't even want to look at my manuscript, finished or not. It's usually January before I feel like writing again. The same thing happened last month with the April A to Z Blog Challenge where I blogged every day of that month. I got burned out. I even stopped reading some of my favorite blogs, didn't even want to look at them.So, my friends, it will be a slow come back for me to start posting often again.

To update on me, the last eight days have been busy ones. A camping trip over the weekend, a trip to the ER with my mom, my writers group meeting, driving all over southeastern Indiana on one day for my day job, and well, just work itself. That's another thing I'm burned out on.This week, I even calculated how many months it will be before I can retire from my job - 81 months. Of course, I doubt if I will be able to afford to retire at that point, but at least its a goal I can look forward to. Oh, and I was interviewed on Haven's Realm blog.

Thankfully, I was able to squeeze in some writing this week and finished chapter 7 of my current book. I'm guessing it will be about twelve chapters long, but I haven't plotted them on paper yet. I'll be on vacation from my day job next week and will just be staying home. Hopefully, I'll get a little more writing done.

Carol

Panning for Gold

Last fall during a weekend vacation, my husband and made a trip to central Indiana to try something new, panning for gold. Yes, there is gold in Indiana. A glacier, just one glacier we learned, brought gold down during the ice age and it stopped in the middle of Indiana. We were too late in the season last year and didn't do any panning, but did purchase a pan and scoped out a spot to come back to. Last month, we went back and today, I'm going to tell you about my experience. Let me say that we don't plan on getting rich doing this, but we found it to be a fun way to spend an afternoon.

Above, you can see me doing some panning. I was totally unprepared for what I would be doing and wore long jeans and hiking boots. What I didn't know is that I really needed to be in the water to be able to do it correctly, as my husband is doing on the right. He had a much easier time panning in the middle of the creek that I did from the edge.

This was again, more of a reconnaissance mission to see if we had the equipment that we needed and to see if we really knew what we were doing. The good thing is that we were alone in our part of the creek, so if we weren't doing something right, no one saw us. Although, there was a guy downstream from us that was from Nashville, Tennessee and he was taking the search for gold a little more seriously that we were. My husband told me to keep looking for black sand. "Black sand, huh?" I really felt like I was wasting my time. Then, as I panned away the sand, I saw a dark shadow appearing in my pan. So, I washed away more of the sediment. "Well, I'll be damned," I said. There in in the bottom of my pan was a little conglomeration of black sand, just like he said. "That's where the gold will be," he told me. Black sand is heavier than brown sand and gold is heavier that black sand. Hence, the panning away of the the sediment until you get to the black sand.


Since this was just a day trip and we had a long drive home, we panned for about two hours and then headed out. I'd like to say we hit the mother lode, but we didn't. We did find some really small pieces of gold and I wish I could show you a picture of what we found, but gold in this area is as small as the sand we were washing away. The photo below is not mine, but from someone else's gold find so you can get an idea of the size. The gold that we found was about the size of the smallest flakes in upper right corner this picture.  


We aren't giving up. We had so much fun on our trip that we're going again in a few weeks. What could be better than spending the day out in the fresh air, getting a little exercise and maybe finding a little gold?


Carol

Z: Zombies

My final A-Z Blog challenge post is about zombies. Believe me, I never thought I would ever be writing about zombies, but they seem to be all the rage now. I decided that I needed to see what all the fuss was about so I read Pay Me In Flesh by K. Bennent (aka James Scott Bell).

Until I read this book, my only knowledge of zombies was from watching the movie,  Shaun of the Dead and I laughed through the whole thing.

What I didn't do was laugh through this book. Pay Me In Flesh is about a lawyer in Los Angeles who finds, after being shot, that she was brought back from the dead and is now a zombie, or undead. While defending a vampire on a murder charge, she searches for the person who turned her into a zombie.

The end of the book left a lot of unresolved issues, enough that I assume there will be a sequel. The story was very well written, but I would expect no less from Mr. Scott, who is an excellent writer. I did find a few typos in the text, but not so many that it distracted my reading.

I asked myself if I would read another zombie book and my answer is maybe. If there is a sequel, I will likely read it, but I doubt I would add another zombie book to my library.

How about you? Do you like to read zombie books?

Carol

A-Z Blog Challenge

Y: Yippee, it's almost over

I suppose I really shouldn't say yippee, but I needed a Y word today and it seemed to fit. This was the first time I participated in the A to Z April Challenge and found it to be exactly that, a challenge.

Don't get me wrong, it was fun, but for me it was difficult to blog daily and coming up with the topics for a few of the letters was demanding. For the most part, the first thing that popped in my head is what I wrote about.

The toughest letters for me were P, T, W, and X. For the letter P, I came up with so many ideas, it was hard for me to choose just one. The letter that caused me the most difficulty was X and the one that caused me the most work was Z. Obviously, I haven't posted that one yet and I don't want to give it away. All I'll say is that I had to read a whole book for that letter.

Will I participate again next year? My answer right now is no, but I'm sure that when time rolls around, I'll suck it up and o it again. Hopefully, I've picked up some new followers. If you're one of them, please don't expect me to keep up with the daily posting. With a full time job and trying to write another book, there's just not time for me to do this daily and congratulations to my fellow bloggers who will complete the whole month.

Carol

A to Z Blog Challenge