It's the most...craziest...time of the year!

I hope things are going well for all of you during this crazy time of the year.

Around here, I figured I'd take this week off from the day job in order to get things ready for our holiday. And by take the week off, that, of course means that I've answered several day job emails so far and have two meetings scheduled for tomorrow. *insert unimpressed look here*

And the kids have been to two parties so far, with another happening later today, Hubs is heading to the dentist and I have to hit the post office to ship off that one package that I forgot all about until late last night.

But, aside from all the craziness, I'm really looking forward to when things grind to a halt with the outside demands and we all take some time to hang out and enjoy just being able to spend time with one another.

So, here's me, wishing you and yours a very relaxing (as relaxing as it can be) rest of the  year. I hope your holiday celebrations, whatever they are, bring a ton of joy and laughter.

It's almost time for New Years Resolutions. Have you given those any thoughts yet?

I've been quiet...sort of.

It's been much longer than intended since I've updated the blog. And now I'm sitting here in front of the dreaded blank screen wondering where to start.
My Spring and Summer (so far) have been packed full with all sorts of adventures and planning for the next one. We've been doing the typical suburban parent thing of running the kids everywhere--side note, do think other parents would get behind me if I signed up as an Uber care and charged them to transport their darlings all over the place? And would that mean I could keep my own kids allowance money to pay for their trips? Hmmm....
I'm kidding. Mostly.
Hubs built me an amazing garden set up which has quickly taken over everything. I'm loving all the fresh veggies! The oldest kid is in football (of course) the youngest is swimming and I discovered I turned the Stud in my novel into a Dud.
*deep sigh*
It took a lot of hair pulling, teeth gnashing and more than a little wine to get me to admit it, even to myself. But my wonderful Hero is now a Beta-man with absolutely nothing interesting about him. He was playing it too safe to get the girl. When I was speaking to an editor about what I'd done she looked me dead in the eye (with her husband sitting on the other side of her, I might add) and said, "Here's the thing. All men are assholes. You can't get rid of it."
So, I'm re-writing. A lot.

That's why I've been so quiet lately. What have you been up to?

And, since it's National Book Lover's Day, I'd like to be the first to officially invite you all to the Emerald City Writers' Conference Reader Appreciation Event! It'll be held October 17 from 6-8pm in the Bellevue (Washington) Westin Hotel grand ballroom (on the 3rd floor).
We're working on the official flyers for the event, but in the meantime, this is the program ad. Isn't it pretty?

Hope to see you all there!

Taking the time for yourself

Hi all,
I've been taking a little break from blogging (as you've probably noticed) and this past week I called a time out on pretty much everything else. Like most of us, I've been burning the candle at both ends and really needed to regroup. I was burning out due to the increased demands of the day job, the kids constant requests, the feeling that I needed to write more and more and move up my timeline for publication. Toss in the fact that any goofing off I was doing on social media was filled with the hard selling "Buy my book! Look at my book! Review my book!" type posts and I needed to step back.

The past several days have been filled with family & friends. No writing, no social media (except for what had already been scheduled) and no pressure. I helped my Hubs & kids load wood from the 150-ish foot tree we had cut down. It may not sound like fun, but we were together, laughing while we worked. (And I'm still sore from doing it...I need to work out more) We headed North to the tulip fields, one of my favorite things to do. My boys are getting to the age where they no longer find it quite so fun to tromp through the fields while I take all the photos I can, but they were pretty good sports about it all. We went out to eat, drank quite a bit and laughed.

These are the moments I've been missing. The moments that I've stuffed so full of everything that I was forgetting to enjoy.

No more.

Now I'm back. I may not blog every week, but I'm back to doing what I want to do and having fun while I do it.

I hope you all have had a great Spring Break (if you get one) and get a chance to take a few moments for yourself too.

If you want to steal a few minutes on FB, I'm featuring 25 Days of Cowboys over on my FB page. Stop by and say high. I'd love to see you. https://www.facebook.com/authorcarmencook

Carmen

Flowers, romance and the 'oh my!' factor

Earlier this week a few of the local romance writers (members of Greater Seattle RWA) were asked to judge at the NW Flower and Garden show. Anna Alexander, Olivia Waite and I were thrilled to agree--once we got over the initial shock of being asked. I mean, a garden show? really? My master-gardener mother-in-law had a much harder time accepting that this is something I would be asked to do because of my writing, but we were excited. We were to judge the displays before the show opened to the public to help pick which of the displays spoke to the theme of "Romance Blossoms."

We were given our clipboards and set to work...and quickly realized that while we might not be master gardeners or landscape artists, we were very critical when it came to the subtleties of the displays telling a story. We spent a lot of time checking out the details, reading the descriptions and discussing if the various display lived up to their promises.

And, as a person who loved to dabble in the garden myself, I felt incredibly humbled by some of these displays. The gardens were gorgeous, all across the board. We wished we could have awarded them all something, just for the sheer amount of time and effort all the artists put into each display.

Overall, it was so much fun and we loved every minute of it.  Rather than try to narrate my way through all the photos, I'll share bits and pieces...

This steampunk inspired garden captured all of our imaginations. It was a spectacular display. We later discovered it was a first time designer who put this together. My cell phone photos doesn't do justice to the level of details in this display (or any of them really).

This rustic cabin display really captured our imaginations. It wasn't until our second pass through that we discovered the very subtle nod towards the Fifty Shades of Grey trilogy. (When we mentioned it to the coordinator she hadn't realized the tie in at all. At the time, we were the only ones to see it.) Ultimately, we all decided we'd love to spend a weekend here.

I called this one my "happily-ever-after" garden. And, again, my cell phone photo doesn't do it justice. There were so many really wonderful things happening in this display, with an assortment of textures, mediums and levels. I would love to have this garden in my back yard. (There's a Valentines Day gift idea! LOL)








There were so many really wonderful details in the various gardens:

I hope you've enjoyed this little peek into the garden show. Which is your favorite so far?

And lastly, I'll show you one more really spectacular garden. This one was huge, but every angle you looked at it you discovered more really wonderful details: