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