Day Trippin'

Hello, Fire Enthusiasts. How’s it going? I hope you had a Happy Easter, a nice long weekend or are simply doing well. I won’t take up too much of your time this week. There really isn’t much to tell…

There has been a delay with regard to getting started with the editing on my latest offering. I’m told it should get started very soon. Once I have a feel for how long that process might take I will begin sending out the information on the cover reveal for it. My thanks to all who have asked to be involved in this project. I appreciate the heck out of you for doing so. If you have yet to sign up and would love to be considered, please just let me know here in the comments. I’m easy. I will send out an e-mail with the blurbs and cover of my new book. It is a paranormal romance for those of you who have been away in writer’s cave or parts unknown. The cover is gorgeous, but you can see that for yourselves when I send it to you. If for some reason you change your mind or are unable to be involved – no worries.

For those who heard that I am transferring positions at the day job, I spent part of last week at the new facility and will spend a couple more days there training before taking hold of the reins, as it were, on April 8^th. It is a cold storage that my company bought a few years ago. It has a handful of production lines in it and a lot less people. The difference here is I get to smash my dreadful alarm clock and get up with the sun. *grins* The ten years I spent getting up before God did (3 am) seem to be over. I will be acting manager at this place, in charge of nearly everything except the maintenance. I’ll let you know how it goes…

My family took advantage of the long Easter weekend and took a day trip to the coast. We live in the California Central Valley so it’s only a three hour drive to get anywhere. As hot as it gets in the summer, the fact that we are that close to everything makes it really a great place to live. Anyway, we started our day in Morro Bay. We had lunch there and did some window shopping. At the bottom of this post you will find a photo of a bar here because I used the real-life location in my second novel, Flash Point. We then moved down the coast and stopped in San Luis Obispo. My oldest son visits there with his pals all the time and wanted to show us his hang-outs. There’s a record store there that is pretty famous: Boo Boo Records. It has a little bit of everything. We left with a handful of cds: a re-mastered version of Boston’s first album and Black Sabbath’s first album for me since I couldn't seem to get it on iTunes. We then headed to Pismo Beach for dinner and the famous Splash Café. We had the award winning Clam Chowder Bread bowl as you can see.

All in all it was a nice day. It was cold and cloudy near the water at both Morro Bay and Pismo, but SLO was nice. The four of us had a good time and we got back home safely at about 10 pm. Have any of you locals been to any of these places? I’d love to hear about it.

We’ll talk soon. 

Easter Week

Hello, Fire Enthusiasts. Whether you observe Easter or just celebrate the break this week provides, I’d like to wish you all the best.

This week has been crazy busy for me at my day job. I work as a supervisor of the First Shift in the Packaging Department for Sun Maid Raisin Growers of California. You know, the raisins with the lady on the red box? Yeah, that’s me. In any event, the employees had to use up their 2010 vacation before April (for me, that is about 120 of them), which never happens, so we had to stretch as thin as we possibly could, which made things rather stressful; attempting to run production with a skeleton crew. I survived the experience, as I always do, but there is always concern until the week is over. The last week before the Christmas shut-down is much the same - in that we are trying to squeeze in so much production and special projects in before the two week break.

With this in mind, I had little time to write anything this week until now. I will, therefore, be using this weekend to write that book review that I promised you that I would for Menopause in Manhattan. I’d like to start reading something else, too, but we’ll see. I’m still sitting on Patricia Cornwell’s latest as well as a few of your novels, my blogosphere friends.

Without getting all gushy on you about my favorite film from last year, my family picked up a copy of the Academy Award winning Best Picture, The King’s Speech on DVD. I saw it Thursday night. I should have waited for the weekend since I had to get to bed (you'll recall how I'm up at 3:00 am and am in the office by 4:00 am), but I couldn’t help myself. I reviewed this film twice last year; once for this blog and once for Kings River Life Magazine. If you have yet to see it, you can check out my review here. Or just see it! I won’t fault you for it. ;)

So, what else?

Well, I have several author/writer events planned for the month of May. I have a Street Faire in a neighboring small town near my own in Reedley, California. That one is for the magazine that I write for. After that I’ll be in Fresno, back in my own town for a book club that I’m doing, and then there is the annual Kingsburg Swedish Festival during the third week. If you’ve read my novel, Dance on Fire, then you recall that this is the big event for the year. With any luck there might be some vampires.

I have another author event in June; however, it’s going to be at this point that I think I’ll finally know whether all of this hustling is paying off or not. If so, I shall continue with some modifications. If not, then we’ll slow this train down... However, I don't want to end this post on a downer, so we'll just reserve judgement until then and see how things go.

In the meantime, enjoy the rest of your week. I know I will.

On the other hand, my sacrifices are nothing compared to His. Just sayin'.

We'll talk soon.