Happy Halloween & Plans for November

Well, hard to believe that October is gone. I'm sad about it, as Fall and Halloween are my favorite times out of the whole year. Now we look forward to the grim, colder months of November and December--I don't even want to think about January, as it is too far away (and too cold).

Since in November people are generally doing NaNoBooBoo, I'm not going to do many posts here or at Muse during the month of November. No sense in doing so if hardly anyone is out there looking in. So, I thought, since everyone and their Aunt Sally is usually neck deep in trying to get their word count for NaNoHooHaa every dang day, I could use the time to work on a couple of my projects. I thought this would be a great time to concentrate on Six Shades of Hell, my #8 book in the Sabrina Strong series, since I have not had much time for it at all this summer when I began it. I think there might be three chapters or four written and I see there's 53 pages done in the document. I've made notes, and some are in my head, not even written down. So, I'm going to spend all of November working on the book and not worry about posting every week. I'll be around, of course, but not as much.

In the meantime, I plan on getting my non-fiction book, "Cat Whisperer", out next month. Trying to work on the cover. So far, this is what I've got...

picture of the 5 original kittens
from "Cat Whisperer"

I thought that the picture would be good in the middle of the cover, surround it (above and below) with maybe black banner, and that's where I'd want the title and my name. But I don't have a clue how to go about this. I can't find places that I thought I'd saved to go and use for making a cover. If any one can help me figure this out, leave comment. Over on Writer's Mayhem, we had someone who had shared a free site for making covers, but I've lost the links. It's hard to look through hundreds of my links thinking I could ever find it--got carpal tunnel just trying to find them the other day! When this person shared the link I couldn't download the cover-making thing-y because my browser was out-dated. I'm hoping with Chrome I can do this. But I need the links.

Anyway, these are the things that I'm working on, or will be working on.

Happy Halloween, and I'll see you around... with the usual updates and announcements for the cat book.

Fall and Halloween My Favorite Time of Year

from http://www.halloweenclipart.com/

Just a quick post. We are enjoying some magnificent weather and tomorrow is the last day we can be free to enjoy it. Thus I'm going to post a little up date here.

I was contacted by my publisher the other day, showing me possible cover art for the next book. I was ecstatic over it. I think it will do it justice. (No, silly, it's not the cat with the black hat here, that's for Halloween!)

I've been working on read-through and re-writes of Crescendo. At the moment it's going fine.

Although I'm signed up for NaNo, I won't be able to do this. I don't even know why I signed up. Possibly a moment of insanity touched me. There is no way I can do 50K words in only 30 days--having only a few hours most days in which to write. No freaking way! And I respect anyone who can do it w/o cheating, and without making everyone around them nuts because they're in a frantic pace--I'd have to cheat. I'd also be all snarly, and snap at my husband and have no time for anything else.

I simply have no time, not enough energy and not only that, I hope to be promoting Vampire's Trill soon. What with having several blogs to maintain as well, I certainly can't expect to find time to work on a book at that pace unless I stay up way past my bedtime. That may put my health at risk, and my job in jeopardy. Two things I won't do to myself.

Getting the fourth novel done in 3 months I felt was my best, and it will stand as such. My murmurrings probably upset those of you who want to do NaNo. It shouldn't. I'm merely stating why I feel no need to do this. It's really up to the individual if they feel like whipping themselves into something so frantic, and I feel takes them away from other important things when they have a job, family, children and a house to maintain. I just can't do that to myself or my husband. He said he would understand if I did it. But I told him I'm recanting and not doing this.

But I hope to get through this first read through of Crescendo and begin thinking about the next book I want to write which is a new mystery series. If it grabs me I'll run with it. I've got a few ideas which overflowed from something I had written years ago. That was actually what I was planning on writing for NaNo. I'll begin writing it on November 1st and see how I would have done. Poorly, I'm sure.