I did it my way...

As the end of 2016 draws close, a lot of us are prompted to look back over the year usually by Facebook. To date I have declined to do this. There are a lot of reasons as to why I have not wanted to look back over this year. To be completely honest about it it wasn't really that great of a year for me. At least, not at first.

2016 for me started off pretty freakin bad. It has, however, ended up going out with a bang. I started out the year not sure where I was going without a contract, without any means of supporting myself, pretty much I was lost. Then I sent my book out (several times) and I got a publishing contract and things have been fabulous ever since.

I've learned over the past year that while you do have to keep in mind where you have been, you cannot allow where you have been to dictate where you will go in life. I managed to get out of an abusive marriage. I managed to get a publishing contract for a book that I worked for a long time to finish. I also even hit the All Romance ebook bestseller list with my book.

In short, I guess what I've learned the most from this year is even when you feel like you have hit rock bottom so hard that you found new depths to it, things can turn around. You just have to keep believing in yourself. Which is, admittedly, one of the hardest people to keep believing in.

Old old old computers are sooooooo slow

As you know, my computer died. The blue screen of death came across its monitor and it was bye bye Pinkie. I have a new to me computer now. It was donated to me by my mother. I guess it works ok, but it's very very frustrating because it's so very very slow. To tell you how old this computer is it's running on Vista. I don't even have half the features I did on the other computer on this one, ugh. I suppose it will have to do until such time as I have a new computer. Which will only take until I have about $450 to my name, yeah. That should only take me what 15 million years? Anyways, I'm still here, the fires are still raging, we are still about a foot behind on rain. I'll be posting pictures of Pinky's burial here soon it was such a lovely touching moment. I'm sure you're all eagerly anticipating it.

On a bright note, I am almost finished with the sequel to Family Fortune. Which I'm sure warms my editors heart because she's been anticipating it almost as much as I have. It's so nice to have someone else in my life that thinks and talks to my characters the same way I do. But I know I'm not crazy because I can tell the difference between fantasy and reality. Well, most of the time I can.

So once my new dinosaur cools off, because apparently it overheats really easily since it's so old, I'll get to finishing the new book. Thanks so much for sticking with me. I love y'all, thank you bye bye.

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Christmas movie???

I just found out that Die Hard is considered a Christmas movie. I had no idea. I thought it was an action movie.Of course, I must profess ignorance on my part, I've actually never seen any of the Die Hard movies. Ever. If that makes me wrong, I don't ever want to be right.

So what to you says Christmas Movie? Or Christmas? For me, it's putting up the tree and the music. The scented candles I burn in the house to imitate the scent of an evergreen tree and the goodies that only seem to get baked around that time of year. We don't get snow down my way very often, so yea, we have to make our own sense of the season. I love the rehearsal for the Christmas Pageant at church, hearing the kids recite the lines that we all learned when we were their age. The Christmas carols. 

My favorite three Christmas movies are "It's a Wonderful Life", "Miracle on 34th Street" and "The Bells of Saint Mary's". There's one particular scene from The Bells that I always found funny but also appropriate. The children are supposed to pick a song to sing to Jesus, and the nun is asking them which one they chose. Instead of telling her, they start singing "Happy Birthday" to the baby. That one small moment reminds me every year that it's Christ's birth that saved up all. He didn't distinguish between race, religion, color, gender, sexual orientation, or anything else. 

Anyway, that's enough on religion for now.  Season's blessings on all of you!

R.I.P. Pinkie

I'm so sorry I have neglected you for the past few days. I have had serious technical issues. My computer, Pinkie, died. It is a sad tale, full of late nights, long hours, huge documents, monster edits, and finally triumph as I managed to get my book published this year.

Here is the obituary, for those interested:

It is with heavy hard drives that we announce the passing of Pinkie, better known as Kat's computer, on Friday, December 2, 2016, after almost a week of illnesses and reboots. The Valiant Laptop served well, helping the new author finish a nearly 100k word book (which was published just last month), establish a blog, twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn accounts, as well as helping Kat do the outlines for 5 other books, 4 of which are being fleshed out as we speak. Pinkie was preceded in death by it's battery, which died just 6 short months ago.

Pinkie leaves behind a devastated author, various collected backed-up works including but not limited to two partially completed manuscripts that are sequels to the aforementioned published work, a paranormal ms, a thriller/spy ms, and the premises for several other works.

In lieu of flowers, donations can be made directly to Kat or by purchasing her published book. All proceeds will go towards a memorial for Pinkie, in the form of Pinky, a replacement computer.

Praying for Gatlinburg

Just the other day, I posted about the number of fires in the State of Alabama, how we have lost over 22,000 acres to fire just since the first of October. Gatlinburg, Tennessee is also on fire. They are actively evacuating it as we speak because the fires are entering the city. People are literally losing everything they have. And there's no way to stop it.

I've seen photos and video from those who are there, trying to escape it. It's bad, very very bad. I've been through those mountains, and really there are places where the fire will just whip itself into nothing short of an inferno because of the contour of the land. There will be no escaping it. I pray everyone makes it out safely. There is a storm system moving in from the west, but with the winds it has in front of it, it might do a LOT more damage before it does any good.

For now, just pray for those in harms way. Once we get to where we start picking up the pieces, we need to pull together as a country, as a species, and prove that we are one.

The Merits of being Idle

Every once in a while, you have to take a day off. Relax. Chill. Be lazy. Basically, recharge.

I've been going 9 to 90 this past month, working at pounding out one of the sequels to Family Fortune. I'm getting close to finishing the first draft and I have to say, it's shaping up quite nicely. There's a bit more action than in Family Fortune, but that's a good thing, right? I'm hoping I can finish it off by the end of the month so I can do the second draft of it and get it to where it's presentable to the publisher by the middle of next month. But you know what Dickens said about the best laid plans of mice and men.

Being off today really did help. I got to spend time with my family - most of whom I hadn't seen in a while. I got to do my nails. Which sorely needed it. Even got my laundry hung up and put away. Amazing the things you can do when you aren't agonizing over plot lines and plot twists and how you are going to bridge from this scene to the next one. Okay, okay, I confess, I did a little work on the book today, but I swear it wasn't much. Just ironing out a kink in the grand scheme of things and having one character confess a change of heart to everyone and then dealing with the fallout from that. Yea, I love writing. It's an addiction with me. But it's better than a lot of other addictions I can think of.

So, happy Sunday everyone! I hope you enjoyed the day off as much as I did.