Jennifer Apodaca's Blog, page 182

Halloween Worthy!

Happy Halloween to all who celebrate the Holiday! I have something like seven bags of candy all ready for the Trick-or-Treaters on Thursday!

But I don’t have a pumpkin yet.  I planned to pick one up yesterday and it didn’t work out, so I either get it today or I suck

Middle Son, however, not only has a pumpkin but he’s carved it and sent me the picture:

Middle Son did this freehand. He’s the most artistic of all of us, so I’m not surprised.

For our Worthy Guy Today, let’s play Who’s Hotter for Halloween:

Thor:

 

–or–

Wolverine:

 

Who do you vote for?

 

It was a low key weekend, which was nice. Although CPA B...

It was a low key weekend, which was nice.  Although CPA Boy and Special K are tormenting me by sending cute super cute pics of a dog they are thinking of getting. A little Min Pin that looks like a sweetheart. He’s a rescue, and I think he’s a few years old.

Who me? Jealous? Totally!

But then I got another text from Special K informing me that CPA Boy wants to name him Buttercup.

BUTTERCUP! For a boy dog! My son said this! So I did what I always do and relayed this to Wizard. Wizard got this hilariously offended look on his face,  stomped off and got his phone, then called both special K and CPA BOY’s phones and said under no circumstances where they to name this boy dog Buttercup.

And I realized two things at the point: My family is nuts (uh, DUH!)  and CPA Boy cleverly set up his dad using me and Special K.

Kudos CPA Boy! I fell right into your evil trap.

I also worked, of course. Cleaned a bit. And then last night Wizard and I went out for dinner. I was good and stuck to my chicken fajitas.

Then this showed up at the table.

 

Probably because I ordered it.  If anyone finds my self confront can you send it back? Please? I’m running out of clothes to wear! And excuses!

How was your weekend?

Happy Friday!

True Story:

So Wizard is HORRIBLE this time of year.  When we first married, he barely ate sweets. Somewhere along the way, I totally corrupted him and now he loves Halloween candy. This year he opened one of the bags of candy early. “Here Witch, eat this.”

“No.”

“Come on, Sug (short for Sugar–don’t ask).

“No.” Insert pouty witch face here.  ”I didn’t work out for seven weeks. I’ve eating too much and fat.”

“I love you.”

” I can’t fit into my jeans.” Umm, wait, did that sound whiny?

” That’s okay, I like you better out of your jeans.”

Damn it, I ate the candy. Seriously, Wizard. Is. Evil.  I’m trying! Getting my butt in the gym, but I have zero self-control right now and Wizard is not helping!

Changing subjects here, I was flipping through my random sheets of notes that I make while working on a book, looking for my handwritten time line. What I found was this in the pages of notes was this:

“Be thankful, and very grateful for your readers.”

I wrote that down on my note pages when the series hit the top 10 of contemporary romance at iTunes.  The Plus One Chronicles were still there on Thursday when I’m writing this blog–so I have a lot to be grateful for and it’s good to stop and remember that.  I’m keeping that little random note to myself

Enough rambling! I don’t think we have any special weekend plans. I need to clean house, write, and hang out with Wizard. What are you doing this weekend?

 

Wednesday Worthy

Raise your hand…

…if you want him to get out of the water we can get the full view.

 

Weekend Roundup

Just a reminder that the OBSESSION Blog Tour is still going on. The grand prize is a $50.00 e-gift card and there are two runner-up prizes of $25.00 e-gift cards.  Go to my home page for the schedule of blog stops where you can enter.

I’m a tad less stressed now as my awesome editor for Entangled gave me until Dec. 1st to turn in THE COWBOY MARINE. Of course, in exchange I may have agreed to write another book. I’m not sure how that happened, but frankly, I’d have given her anything short of Bailey Dog for the extra time, LOL! I don’t have many details on the new book I agreed to, but I’ll share more when I do. And frankly, I jumped on the chance as soon as she asked me

Overall, Wizard and I had a good weekend. We went to see the movie GRAVITY. Sigh…I didn’t love it as much as I wanted to, and neither did Wizard. But others obviously do love it since it’s kicking butt at the box office.  Everyone has different tastes.

I finished writing all my blogs and interviews for the blog tour, so now I can full concentrate on the COWBOY MARINE! And I need to keep rehabbing my leg at the gym.  I really REALLY need to get back to my full workout routine.  All that sitting and eating shows.

So how was your weekend?

 

Happy Friday!

Okay, so I’ve been sort of lying.  Remember when I said Wizard wanted me to go stay at the hotel last weekend? I wasn’t lying about that exactly. He did want me to go. But Wizard was gone too. He’s been in the UK for a week on business, and that’s why he wanted me to go. He likes me to get out of the house when he’s gone.  But he finally FINALLY got home yesterday afternoon. I actually missed him. A lot

So that was my small lie. It’s a habit I developed when the kids were small and Wizard traveled more often–we keep it quiet when he’s traveling.

You’d think I’d have gotten a lot of writing done. But this book wasn’t working so I had to replot and work on character motivation. I am making progress though,  it’s just not enough.

Oh and I saw my RA doc yesterday.  He got the full story of how I mildly tore my Achilles. Actually he called it a “small rupture” which sounds much worse than it was.  It’s healing fine, although he can still see evidence of it. Here’s the part that made me laugh. He said “Most people tear their Achilles playing tennis or something more strenuous than dancing. But the way you described your dancing…yeah I can see it.”  OMG I busted up laughing. Then he asked me if it was worth it. “Yep, totally. I’d do it again.”

There’s really nothing exciting going on this weekend for us.  How about you?

Wednesday Worthy

I can’t keep up! Okay let’s get some of the promo stuff out of the way.  For the OBSESSION Blog Tour schedule, check my home page The grand prize is a $50.00 electronic gift card, and the two runner up prizes are $25.00 e-gift cards.  Sometimes the posts don’t get up when they are scheduled because the blogs are run by real people with real lives  I’m grateful to each and every blog hosting this tour and appreciate their work!

And secondly, all three books in The Plus One Chronicles; THE PROPOSITION, POSSESSION and OBSESSION have been in the top 50 contemporary romance list at iBooks (iTunes/Apple). This list changes daily (I think) so it may shift by the time you all see this.  But I’m thrilled. It was a surprise because my sales there have been modest, and then started trending up over the last month and soared when OBSESSION came out.  It’s an interesting market study–it seems a chunk of people waited for all the books to come out before buying.

Lastly, I’m slacking at answering comments. I see them–I just don’t always answer.  I’m truly sorry. I swear I mean too. But for weeks now, I’ve been working until bedtime (often getting nowhere!) and something has to give. Like all the dust in my house.  Even my vacuum cleaner misses me.  And FYI to Logan and Becky, the H/H in THE COWBOY MARINE–you two are driving me crazy.  Can’t we all just get along and write a nice simple not–too-freaking-sexy story? Is that too much to ask?

But I digress…

Enough of all that! Let’s move right into our Wednesday Worthy. Now it looks to me like some witch tried to “capture ” this guy and he’s highly amused by the puny attempt.

 

So what do you think? Is he worthy?

 

 

Weekend Roundup

Oh before I forget, the OBSESSION blog tour starts today.  I’ll be Book Monster Reviews Blog. The tour schedule should be on my home page.

The weekend was fun! I was at the Orange County Chapter of RWA Birthday Bash and had the chance to visit with lot of friends I haven’t seen in a while.  Victoria Dahl was an interesting speaker, discussing the Unsympathetic Heroine. She’s very passionate about writing heroines that are more realistic and pushing the envelope.

Her opening joke had us all laughing and I’ll share it here even though it’s wildly in appropriate

What does a Scotsmen wear under his kilt?

On a good day…lipstick.

Yep, I laughed!

I didn’t get as much time as I hoped to visit though. I holed up in my room trying to work out some characterization issues.  I don’t know if I’m making progress.

Friday night I had dinner with BLB (youngest son). We were chatting away and didn’t even notice our dinner was delayed until the manager came up and said they’d sent BLB’s dinner back because “it didn’t look right.”   Both BLB and I said no problem and thanked them for letting us know.  Eventually they brought our dinners and all was well. BUT the restaurant insisted on offering us free dessert anyway.  Both BLB and I were surprised. We really weren’t upset or even inconvenienced. But it was lovely of them, so I’ll just say here, Thank You Cheesecake Factory. That was classy.

Saturday night I met CPA Boy for dinner. Special K was going to a concert with her sister, so it was just the two of us. What was nice for me is I was staying across the street from the mall, so I just walked over.  I wound my way through the mall and found the restaurant. We had fun, and then I was ready to walk back.

CPA Boy insisted that he had to walk me back. This meant he was going to cross the entire mall twice for him.  But he refused to be reasonable and walked with me. I pointed out that I travel all over and always manage to arrive safely.

However, as I turned the wrong way in the mall, he said,  ”With your sense of direction, that’s a miracle.”

That’ s sadly true. Shhh…don’t tell Wizard or CPA Boy, but I lost the car in the small two-level parking garage on Friday night, but I found it…eventually.

Now I’m home and banging my head on my desk trying to write this book. How was our weekend?

Happy Friday!

Another week gone! How does that happen? Insane!

This weekend, I’m escaping to a hotel for a weekend with my laptop.  Saturday I’m going to the Orange County Chapter of RWA Birthday Bash where Victoria Dahl is a speaker and I’m looking forward to that. I’m going to hang out with friends and then work, work, work.  I absolutely have to get a crap-ton of pages written.  I can do it, even on my laptop.  I don’t know how good my internet access will be.

Much to my amusement, Wizard has 110% supported this idea.  It’s like he’s trying to get rid of me or something, LOL!

Oh and I went back to the gym twice this week, yay! I’m going very slow and careful with my Achilles, but it is seriously doing great now.

OBSESSION is continuing to stay up on the charts and rankings.  I know I keep saying it, but thank you all so much! I love Kat and Sloane (and Drake). They came to me when I was in a difficult place, showing me how love, a sense of humor and patience can heal.  Now I get to share them with the world, and it’s an amazing experience.

Enough of that! Tell me what you’re doing this weekend! I always want to know

 

Wednesday Worthy

 

This is wild. We haven’t even started out official promo of OBSESSION yet (Carla and I are both a little frazzled right now) and the book just took off.  Here’s what I know — there’s just no predicting what will happen with a book.

Readers are in control.

And these days with self publishing, I think readers have even more say in what takes off and what doesn’t. It used to be we (readers)  were at the mercy of what the publishers and book buyers in the bookstores decided to put out for the public to see.

But now readers can find any book they want to online. That gives them more power than ever. As a reader, I really love that!

But enough of my rambling  Just to let you all know, I think the official blog tour starts on the 14th. I’ll get that info up soon. Now let’s move on!

 

Here’s our Wednesday Worthy candidate that I snagged from Twitter.  Say hello to Hugh Jackman:

What do you guys think? Is he worthy?