Friday, April 4, 2008

Vacation Accomplished

I need to get back to work so I can rest. The sod is down, muy perfecto. I finished about two thirds of my list of things to do & stuff I hadn't planned to do - like replacing bad irrigation heads (what a pain in the butt they were), planted flowers out the wazoo, powerwashed the brick patio out back, etc. The weather is going to be crappy late Saturday & all day Sunday. Tomorrow I have to dress up the mulch beds, plant a new grapefruit tree, scrub the soffits, clean the Durango & my truck & maybe the boat - hopefully all done by early afternoon. I won't get to paint the porch columns, maybe next weekend. No big deal - they look fine, but it's better to paint while everything looks fine than to wait 'til stuff 'needs' paint. We're too picky.

We never made it to the gulf coast as planned, but we did get a great day on the beach Wednesday. We went to Jacksonville today & bought a new chair for the living room. Being the dutiful husband that I am, I waited patiently in the mall parking lot with the sunroof open (& read) while Deb bought out Bath & Body - or whatever it's called. That was followed up by a visit to my favorite SeaSide stop, The South Beach Grill for a fantastic 'lunch' of pecan encrusted Mahi with a strawberry-mango-orange topping over a bed of rice (& a few cocktails). No oysters today - bummer.

My YA manuscript is ready to go. Amazon just announced last week that they will eliminate the 'buy' button for books not produced through BookSurge. I'm waiting to find out what's going to happen before forwarding my MS. I've decided that I don't want Amazon to make a dime from my work, so I need to see how this shakes out with the folks that I plan to use for publishing. If they cave in, I'm going elsewhere.

On another note (this is a windy post) - I usually write best in the wee hours of the morning. The other night I was set up on the back porch (me n' the cat). The porch is screened in, the chairs are comfortable & we have a large glass table, so I can spread out. Our property backs up to a nature preserve. Lots of critters roam through the palmettos & the haunted looking live oaks (& my back yard sometimes) & can sound pretty scary. Nubber (the cat) gets freaked out, for as long as he can stay awake anyway - usually no more than ninety seconds. So I started banging out a brand new story around 10PM. At 4AM I knocked off & started reading it. I couldn't believe it, the word count thingy said I had put down just under 9,000 words! It's a first draft but it just flowed. Tonight I'll pick up where I left off & see what happens. I don't work off of outlines, so I have no clue where this one is headed.

It's almost 11PM now - Time to make coffee.

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