Jennifer Apodaca's Blog, page 198

Wing Slayer Worthy

Monday we saw BLB’s surgeon and got the expected news that there’s not much more they can do.  They are going to try one more (non surgical) thing, but the reality is that eight months in, we’re only talking degrees of improvement. But it could be enough to help with some of the pain, and we’d gratefully take that.

We’ve known the reality right from the start. In fact part of our greatest frustration is people telling US we don’t understand, BLB is young , etc. To which BLB relies:  “Human bones against asphalt, guess who wins?”

He cracks me up. And I know people mean well when they say that, they really do. So humor is a good way to handle it.

BLB is amazing, and he’s coping fine.  Nor is HE finished working/rehabbing on the leg, which counts for a lot. Yesterday, he was out riding his biking. He’s getting ready for the new semester and figuring out work. He will be fine.

I’d just better write faster to pay for things, which is pretty funny since I’m constantly jumping hurdles to write at all. Like a power outage yesterday. But that’s simply how life rolls.

Now onto Wing Slayer Worthy. I’m still working on rebuilding my files of pictures. I’m having trouble find blonds, and realized as I was searching, what the problem is.  The blond men tend to look alarmingly young. Good for them, bad for us

So let’s go with this candidate today:

What do you think? Wing Slayer Worthy?

 

 

 

Weekend Roundup

It’s been HOT! Perfect pool weather

I’m finally making some progress again on CAGE MAGIC. I think.  A friend and I were talking about our crazy-ass process of writing.  It’s hair pulling frustrating, insomnia inducing stressful, and yet it’s so addictive.

Now let’s talk about distractions One day last week I was writing and got a text from BLB’s girlfriend. The text looked like this:

With the words: “Can BLB have him?”

I answered back, “Forget BLB, I want him!”

But that didn’t happen.  Of course,  now I think about this puppy all the time. And when I showed the picture to Wizard, he actually said, “I like him.”

I’m pretty sure that puppy is gone though, so I’ll just keep my focus on writing

How was your weekend?

Whatcha Readin’?

Happy Friday! Wizard is off today, so I may only write a half day, we’ll see. I finally had a breakthrough on something I’ve been stuck on for a loonnngggg time now, so I need to work. But Wizard often lures me away from work and into the pool. Given the 100+ temps around these parts, that’s not hard to do. Tomorrow I”m going to my local chapter of RWA meeting and really looking forward to it.

On Tuesday, two of my good friends had releases. Laura Wright’s newest release her in Mark of the Vampire Series ETERNAL BEAST. And Kate  Carlisle’s news addition to her Bibliophile mystery series PERIL IN PAPERBACK. I was even able to get out of the house and to Barnes and Noble on Tuesday to buy both books.

But I couldn’t decide which one to read first! The decision was agonizing.

So I copped out and started reading Lorelei James’ ALL JACKED UP.  Usually I love her books, but this one isn’t my favorite.

So that’s what I’m reading. How about you?

Have a great weekend!

Wing Slayer Worthy

It’s Wednesday again! Days and weeks are just flying by. I’d really like to have more to show for it. Sigh.

Okay, I used up some old credits to get this pic, some my options were limited. Plus it takes forever to browse so many photos. I’m gong to have to find a faster way! But here’s our candidate for today:

So what do you think? Is he Wing Slayer Worthy?

Weekend Roundup

Such a good weekend! Wizard threw a great party with family for me.  For six months I told him not to make a big deal about this birthday.

He didn’t listen.

I”m so touched. He threw the party, Biker Witch had an awesome chocolate layer cake made–the top layer had caramel filling the the bottom layer had raspberry filling. So delicious! I can’t show the whole cake because it has my age. I don’t care if you guys know my age, but it’s not good to have too much specific info on the Internet for anyone to find. So here’s a pic of the top half:

Biker Witch said she wanted both of me to celebrate my birthday I love that cake so much! And Biker Witch gave me a very special piece of jewelry that I will always cherish.

Then my sons and their girlfriends, and Bailey also gave me a special gift that I love beyond words.

I won’t talk about this anymore, I promise It’s just that I’m writing this blog right after we got home.

In other news, I’m making time to write! Wizard is really helping, giving me the space I need. CAGE MAGIC is different in a very fundamental way, and as a friend point out, it’s scaring the hell out of me. But I have to write the story that’s true to the characters.

Now lets not talk about me anymore! I want to hear about your weekend!

P.S. I soooo have to go to the gym this morning after that cake!!!

Happy Friday!

So…yesterday was my birthday. I got up happy, quickly checked email, made coffee and read. Then went back to check email…my desk top computer was dead.

I. Mean. Dead.

I was dumbfounded, trying not to panic, and wondering why this year is just freaking endlessly hard. And even more curious, why is it that every single time I have a plan, an all-day plan to work on Linc’s book, something happens?  But shaking off the pity party, I’m thinking, hmm, it’s not a blue screen, in fact, it’s nothing. This isn’t a virus it’s a hardware issue.

BLB came downstairs, and I told him what was going on. “After you have your coffee and whatever, can you help me get to the power cords?” They are behind a billion pound desk so access is difficult. I was hoping something was jarred loose, or we’d just get lucky.

Always calm BLB said, “Sure, Mom. But more importantly, Happy Birthday and what do you want from Starbucks?”

That stopped my worry.  “You’re going to Starbucks?”

He grinned, and spoke slowly so I could follow along. “Yep. To get us coffees for your birthday. What would you like?”

I nearly cried. Such a little thing that made me incredibly happy.  This kind of little gestures and thoughtfulness touch me deeply from my kids.

After that, BLB worked on the computer, calling his techie friends and determining it was the power source thing inside the hard drive tower. When Wizard came home, he and BLB conferred and agreed. Then Wizard put the hard drive in the trunk, took me to dinner, then took the hard drive to Best Buy to have the power source thingie replace. He and BLB probably could have done it, but this was simple, faster and pretty inexpensive.

As I’m quickly typing this up on my laptop, Wizard is hooking up the computer and backing up everything of his. I had my books backed up, but not some photos and misc. stuff. I will do that ASAP. All is well in the kingdom again. It was a nice day otherwise, my kids sent flowers, everyone is being lovely. And Wizard has a party planned this weekend. I didn’t want all this fuss, but why would Wizard start listening to me now?

Now for a totally random subject change: When my oldest son, CPA boy, goes into the office on the weekend to catch up, Bailey gets to go with him. Bailey loves it and works hard to keep his position as Weekend Worker Dog (see picture of how hard he words below).  Sometimes there’s other people in the office to, then Bailey can be found curled up on their laps. That dog is spoiled!

Hope you all have a great weekend! And today, Friday, I am working on Linc’s book!

Wing Slayer Worthy

Holy Cats, it’s AUGUST 1st!!! How did that happen? Hey, so do you guys want to see what I look like exhausted from conference and wearing my new glasses (as opposed to the contacts I usually wear)? Promise you won’t laugh? Okay, fine, go ahead and laugh…

Yeah, I know, tacky (strap showing!) and tired.  Go ahead and laugh. Wizard blinked once when I came home, then recovered and told me I looked...waited for it…sexy.  SNORT! I love a man who will lie to me with a straight face about how I look! And yes, I am THAT blind in case you were wondering. I actually see better out of contacts which is why I wear them most of the time.

Moving on now.

I’ve been trying to work on CAGE MAGIC, and so Linc is on my mind.  So when searching Big Stock to find images to buy the rights to share the pic here, this is what I came up with:

He looks a lot like Linc to me. But what do YOU think? Is he Wing Slayer Worthy?

P.S., Ram, Shayla and Ginny (from the eNovella FORBIDDEN MAGIC) are on my mind too as they are very much in this book…their story is still unfolding.

 

I’m Back!!!

Hey! I so missed you all! Conference turned out to be fabulous. I’ll give you the book end photos:

First, Laura Wright and I hosted a small Cocktails with Laura and Jen (a FaceBook Event). Here’s a pic from that:

I’m not going to try to name everyone there, but Laura is at the head of the table, and I’m to her left. It was so much fun.

And for the end, the big awards night, here I am with Tessa Dare after she won the RITA for her book A KNIGHT TO SURRENDER (I’m on the left, and Tessa is on the right holding he well deserved RITA statue)

A few highlights:

–The Literacy Signing surprised me.  Many people came up to me and asked that I keep writing The Wing Slayer Hunters, which really touched me.  And I had an even bigger surprise, but that one I’m not talking about, LOL!

– The National Readers Choice Award ceremony/buffet Thursday morning. That was lovely! I was a double finalist, but did not win. Huge congrats to JD Tyler who won for PRIMAL LAW!!

–Lunch with Laura Wright, Elisabeth Naughton and Alexandra Ivy.  Smart, funny and super talented women!

–Friday I had lunch with Silver, and really enjoyed that. Then onto the Dialogue workshop with Laura Wright, Alexandra Ivy,  Darynda Jones, Elisabeth Naughton, Sylvia Day and myself.  The audience members were spectacular! They wrote out dialogue in five minutes and shared it with us. Silver rocked the house with her piece!

–Saturday I hit some great workshops and attended the glittery RITA/Golden Heart Awards in the evening.

I saw a ton of friends as well. Plus while I only got to a half dozen workshops, they were extremely beneficial.

Now I’m ready to work! I’m writing CAGE MAGIC while waiting for revisions on the Entangled book, and have a few other things in the air.

So…now lets talk about you all! What have you been doing?

Off To Conference!

I’m heading out to conference today, and finally excited to go.  I’m doing a dialogue workshop Friday at 2 pm with Laura Wright, Sylvia Day, Alexandra Ivy, Elisabeth Naughten and Darynda Jones.  I think it’s going to fun! My portion of the workshop is: Bromance Dialogue: Cracking the Guy Code.

I will be buying rights to more pictures, but right now, the one I have is one I bought to go on my Apodaca FB banner, but then we rejected it. Too young, and the flag in the background worried me. I didn’t want to come across as offensive. Because I’m writing about a security agency made up of former marines, I felt the flag deserves a big more respect than guy standing in front of it wearing a towel and dogtags.  (And FYI, when I buy rights, I use iStock or BigStock).

 

So what do you think? Did I make the right call cutting this guy?

I won’t be posting on Friday, so have a great weekend, and I should be back on Monday!

 

Weekend Roundup

Good weekend! But tiring. I spent hours cleaning up the blog and FB. A lot of posts are gone, but those are the past anyway and we’re all about the future here, right?  I’m not going to get into a big discussion about the why of it, except to say this: I believe in doing the right thing

On Bailey News–I had this on my FB but it vanished. Here’s Bailey after getting into a box of donuts:

Bailey is fine now but he spent the night getting his stomach pumped.  He somehow jumped up and knocked the box of donuts off a table  (this is at Bailey’s house, not mine) and wolfed down four before he was caught. Unfortunately, two of them were chocolate.  Bailey’s fine, my sons’ wallets however, are suffering.

I’m feeling better and better.  It’s up and down, but that’s normal with what I have. Wizard keeps telling me that I can call him anytime and he’ll come get me at conference if I don’t feel well.  I rolled my eyes and said, “I’ll be fine. I can rest in my hotel room.”

“Well you do have a birthday coming up. A big one.” Okay he didn’t say a big one. He yelled out how old I’m going to be. And he laughed. Went on teasing me about getting old.

Then I tried on my gown for the Awards Ceremony at Conference and showed him.

He was working on the computer, looked up and froze. “Holy shit. Forget me picking you up, I”m coming with you.”

“But Wizard,”  I said innocently, “What are you worried about. You know I’m getting old now. No one will even notice this old gown on me…”

He narrowed his eyes. “You’re screwing with me, aren’t you?”‘

I laughed and headed up with the stairs. “Every chance I get, Wizard, every chance I get.”

Yeah…I may be old but I still know how to get to Wizard

How was your weekend?