Counting the Days

A vacation is what you take when you can no longer take what you've been taking. ~ Earl Wilson

By this time next week, I will be on vacation. I cannot tell you how much I have been waiting for this. Not because we're doing anything super-exciting. We're spending the week at a cottage in PEI, which sounds nice, but after about 3-4 days I'm generally looking for something to do and starting to crawl the walls. And that's if the weather's good. It would be better if the cottage we rented had comfortable furniture I could hunker down in and read to my heart's content. But after 30 minutes in any of them and I'm in need of chiropractic care.

Why not pick another cottage? Well, this one was 'inherited' I guess you could say. My fiance and his ex-wife would come here every summer with their son for two weeks. Now the two weeks is split, we get it one week, she the other and the boy stays down for the entire two.

After the crippling effects of the furniture and my inability to get through more than one book in the week, I suggested maybe we consider going elsewhere next year. Somewhere closer to home even where we could take the dog. He gets stuck in the kennel now because we take one car and between the boy with his booster seat, food, toys, suitcases, etc, there's no room for a big, goofy golden retriever. And to be honest, I want my pooch with me, but taking two cars all the way to PEI just doesn't make financial sense. But if it were only an hour's drive away on the Nova Scotian coast, that I could do.

Anyway, this year I'm taking my lawn chair with me which will help a little. Better than the plastic jobbies they have on the deck. It has a footrest and cup holder and if I use a pillow at my back I might get a couple hours reading time in before I need to jump on the yoga mat and start doing some back bends.

So if anyone has some great summer reads to recommend, let me know! I have a week to decide what I'm taking with me.

A Mid-Summer Check-In

I can't believe it's mid-summer already! Ack!!

Vacation is soooo close I can feel it. Just 4 working days left and then one week away to (hopefully) sunny Prince Edward Island. We rent a cottage there for one week in the summer and I am taking with me a stack of book as well as WIPs. One is just an idea and needs fleshing out, the other (Fractured Sight) needs work before I can continue. So while the Boy and J build sand castles on the beach, I plan on putting a dent in my TBR pile and working out the kinks in FS and/or outlining the new idea.

I'm continuing to work away at ITS, and the more I write it, the more excited I get about book two which bumps two of my secondary characters, Spence and Caelie into the starring roles. Spence has a disturbing phobia towards marriage, so much so he has just declared he would rather be sacrificed to the lava gods (he's recently back from a brief sojourn on the islands). Of course that comment now has my brain in overdrive while his backstory begins to form in my mind. I already know Caelie's backstory, which is rather heartbreaking at best. It will be fun piecing together how these two will get together and figure things out.

But first I need to finish ITS and get that fired off to agents. My goal for completing it has been pushed back. I'm giving myself until the end of September. I'm making good headway and things are falling into place, so hopefully that will be a doable deadline.

In the meantime, tonight I am meeting my critique partner, Pam Callow, for coffee so we can do a little catch up. She's been flitting about to one conference after another promoting her latest release DAMAGED and January's upcoming release INDEFENSIBLE which picks up a few months after Damaged ended.

What are everyone else's plans for the summer?

In the Infamous Words of the Go-Gos...

Vacation all I ever wanted! Ah yes, I am going on vacation. Finally. I have been counting down the days for about two months now. I so need a break from the every day. So early tomorrow morning I will be off to the great Island of Prince Edward. I haven’t been there since I was about 9 years old.

I am taking with me about six different books to read, one full manuscript (Salvation Falls) to read through and edit and write the synopsis for, my netbook so I don’t have to write everything longhand, and my notebook jammed full of ideas, some on loose pieces of paper shoved between the pages. I’m hoping to decide, or at least narrow down, which idea will get fleshed out and outlined for this year’s NaNoWriMo.

I’m also taking my yoga mat so I can get in a daily workout (or just simply find some zen moments on the beach).

By the way, I finally got to watch the movie adaptation of Jane Austen’s Persuasion the other night and loved it! I’ll have to reread that book again.

Hope everyone’s summer is going great and I’ll check back in with everyone upon my return next weekend!

Oh, and one last thing – you may have noticed I took a break from blogging over on Pop Culture Divas (formerly Miss Make A Movie). But starting in September I’ll be back to my usual monthly post over there. In the meantime, check it out – we have a new post every weekday and traffic has been increasing steadily.