Along Came Summer … and Went

… So here’s what went down …

I woke up to my first day of summer vacation doubled over in pain, asking my husband to rush me to the ER. Twelve hours later, I was back home minus one very grumpy appendix.

Recovery was miserable.

Not just because my stomach was a wall of black and blue and my guts were on fire, but because the pain meds I had to take to manage my agony were all too effective.

In fact, they were blatant productivity killers … devious minions of mind scramble … wasters of time … and suckers of all energy.

Little assholes—that’s what they were.

During those few weeks of mindlessness, I spent hours nodding off and on in between blank stares at all the home improvement and cooking shows on TV. I might’ve even skimmed through all the click bait on Facebook on my cell because, apparently, when I’m forced to be lazy, I just have to know what all those Amazon products are that have a cult following. That’s about all my mind was capable of.

Sad, I know.

The next thing I knew, I was sleeping on sheets 40k reviewers insisted I needed to buy, and I began to blame those velvety cool sheets for making me wake up well into the afternoon each day. That, and the frickin’ coma causers, I mean, pain meds.

Then, when I ditched the pain meds in lieu of regaining mental clarity again despite my stomach pains, I fell down the black hole of Netflix Rom-Coms.

Yep. And another chunk of my summer vacation broke free and drifted away.

I kept telling myself that it was writerly research to be watching movie after movie, but really, who am I kidding.

Before summer began, I had a plan. A summer writing schedule to be exact. And I was becoming the ultimate shirker of my author responsibilities all because one of my organs decided to jump ship. But, alas, note the word in that last sentence … was.

I eventually dug my head out of the proverbial sand once I was fresh out of excuses, including being pain-free naturally—yay me—and I finally wrote something.

Hi there, you’re reading what I wrote.

I sat on this post for about a week, though, and got sidetracked again. Only in a good way. The culprit–new romance book releases. Writers read, and, if they don’t, they should. So that detour did count as productivity, and it ignited my desire to get on task.

Long story short, with just a few weeks to spare on my vacation, I finally pulled together my full outline for WINE NOT? over the last few days—the novel that I was supposed to start writing before appendectomy-gate.

The new plan … to keep moving forward and knock out my third Rom-Com in my Vineyard Pleasures Series one day at a time, even if my summer is slipping away. Then I’ll just reconfigure my writing time once I begin teaching again in August. I’m all out of expendable organs to slow me down, so onward I roll.

I’m thrilled with the new plot! This love story centers around Victoria L’Angevin, Julien’s younger sister. Unlike her family of vintners, Tori is an Archaeologist heading out on a crazy quest to find love among Norse ruins. I am beyond excited to begin this new adventure with her!