A different kind of #WIP Wednesday

Back to school for the Baker spawn!

I usually share snippets of manuscripts I'm working on for #WIPWednesday, but today was the first day of school for my kiddos and I'm feeling a little nostalgic and a lot proud of these two WIPs that I've been working on since 2006. So instead, here's what I'm working on when I'm not writing.

Hilton Head Island!

It's hard to believe how big these kiddos are getting. Or how fast the summer flew by, though at times it felt like it would never end. (Usually when I was paying summer day camp bills. *g*) We squeezed out every bit of fun we could with baseball games, surprise picnics, playdates at the park and two weeks in Hilton Head where we didn't do anything other than relax on the beach, swim every day, and continue our longstanding family tradition of competitive trash talking during mini golf.

Thing 1 before he was promoted to goalie
(with the monster pads and stick that entails)

The Boy (aka the Bub or Thing 1) is eight and starting third grade this year. He's a voracious reader whose favorite book is War of the Worlds, followed closely by the Harry Potter series. Bub is in the gifted and talented program where he has already surpassed me in math, and he plans to be an astrophysicist when he grows up. He announced his intentions when he was four and very nicely explained the difference when I asked him if he meant astronomer. He loves reading, cooking, anything to do with military history (especially the Civil War) and any and all things LEGO. His favorite subject at school (aside from recess) is Japanese, and he's also teaching himself Portuguese and Spanish. He starts soccer in two weeks, though that's really just a way to bide his time til ice hockey season starts back up in October. He loves watching the Chicago Blackhawks, going to minor league soccer (Go Indy Eleven!) and baseball (Go Indianapolis Indians!) games, and he can recite sports trivia and scores almost as well as his father. He has won the last five family sports bracket contests in a row, predicting tournament winners (in World Cup soccer, the NHL, and college basketball) with almost as much accuracy as that famous octopus. We have eaten an inordinate amount of crappy Hungry Howie's pizza as a result, since we always play for no-veto restaurant selection rights.

Grr Zelda. Animal lover. Fashion maven.
Future roller girl.

The Girl (aka the Barnacle or Thing 2) is starting first grade. She's only five, but even though she's a year younger than her classmates she can hold her own. She's pretty fierce. She plans to be a veterinarian when she grows up, and she loves animals of all sorts. She spent her summer reading nonfiction books about reptiles, though she doesn't particularly like them because they're not fuzzy. She said it was research. Her favorite band is Fall Out Boy, and I have been informed numerous times that she's sure her favorite television show would be Monster High, if only I would stop ruining her social life and let her watch it. Alas, she's going to have to get by on her looks, because I'm not budging on that crap. As it stands, she can usually be found watching My Little Pony instead. She'll start learning Japanese this school year, but she's been teaching herself Spanish, mostly so she can sass her father (who also taught himself Spanish, so the polyglot gene is well-embedded). She is excited to be moving up to U-8 soccer a year early, mostly thanks to the fact that she spends a gratuitous amount of time either outside practicing or begging to go outside and practice. She can also cut a mean backstroke and butterfly, and she'll probably join a swim team next season. She loves the Blackhawks as much as her brother and father do, but instead of playing hockey she's waiting to be old enough to join the Naptown Roller Girls junior roller derby team. (Only two more years!) She even has a shirt with her derby name on it--Grrr Zelda, in honor of her family nickname, Griselda. Or Zellie, affectionately.

Next week we'll get back to manuscript snippets, I promise! Thanks for indulging my proud mama moment.

I'm a Hoosier, and I'm taking a stand against hate as part of the LGBTQ Push Back Giveaway

I'm thrilled to be a part of the LGBTQ Push Back Giveaway on Diversereader! There are 224 authors, bloggers, and publishers who are donating something to this massive giveaway. All you have to do to enter is donate to an LGBT charity of your choice in the next two weeks and then enter the giveaway. If you can't donate, you can help by spreading the word. Every little bit helps, and everyone can enter.

As a Hoosier, I'll be donating to the Indiana charities that support the LGBTQ community here. Freedom Indiana was instrumental in getting the most vicious part of SB101 (aka the Religious Freedom Bill) amended, and they're not stopping there. While it's true that business owners can't use SB101 to discriminate against LGBTQ people now that Gov. Pence has amended the language in the bill, we have a lot more work to do. We want to get LGBTQ people recognized as an official protected class here in Indiana, and Freedom Indiana is working hard on organizing protests and campaigns to bring awareness to the fact that SB101 was only the tip of the iceberg here.

The Bub carrying a sign he made for the Stop the Madness Rally,
as well as the sign he carried in 2008 when we protested Prop 8.

I've taught  my kids that it's wrong to discriminate, and my 8 year old and 5 year old are both appalled at the thought that someone could be turned away because of their sexuality. They have stood up to friends on the playground who spout homophobic tripe, and I've seen the eight year old stare down a full grown adult on more than one occasion when we were out in public and heard someone make a derogatory comment.

I'm proud of my kids, and they're the future of Indiana. We saw quite a few children and young adults when we joined in with Freedom Indiana to march in downtown Indianapolis after SB101 was signed into law. My kids chose to go because they wanted  to protest LGBTQ Hoosiers being treated like second class citizens, and they wanted to show the rest of the world to know that not everyone here agrees with the legislature and the few small-minded business owners who were willing to go on record supporting the bill.

The Barnacle made her own sign as well. So proud of these kiddos!

It also underscored the importance of the charities here in Indiana who not only fight for equal rights but support LGBTQ people in need, especially children and teenagers who have been turned out of their homes or made to feel like they are wrong or broken in some way. One of my very best friends works with the Indiana Youth Group, and some of the stories she tells about the LGBTQ youth there break my heart. 

So join me in pushing back against SB101 and the treatment of LGBTQ people as second class citizens. Instead of spouting vitriol and hate like those who are in favor of the bill, let's push back with kindness. Let's put our money where our mouths are and donate to charities that support LGBTQ people, both to help further their missions and to show the LGBTQ community that they are loved. They are valuable. They are not second class citizens

Some of my favorite organizations right now:
Freedom Indiana
Indiana Youth Group
#Pizza4Equality

And don't forget to visit the post over at Diversereader once you've donated or spoken out to get yourself entered in the giveaway!

Renaissance Bru and book release goodies questions!

Lady Barnacle and Sir Bub had an awesome time.

We've been busy here in the Baker household with the start of school and the weekly October birthdays, but I'm finally out from under the stress of planning an enormous joint birthday party for the kiddos that involved taking twenty children and their adults to a Renaissance Faire a few towns over. Needless to say, the momentous occasion of the Barnacle turning 4 and the Bub turning 7 was feted with appropriate grandeur. For reasons I still don't understand, I found it necessary to not only make elaborate favors for all the guests but also make my own costume. It's important to note that I'm deathly afraid the sewing machine my in-laws gave me a few Christmases ago, so I made my costume with hot glue. And it rained all day. I count myself very lucky that my costume didn't disintegrate...but what a story that would have been, eh?

I've been lazy about blog and website upkeep in between frantic birthday planning. It's hard to type with hot glue burns on your fingertips, anyway. Plus I was busy getting Island House through its final edits, redesigning my web banners, and writing a few new things that are in the submission pipeline now. But think of it this way: radio silence from me usually means more books are on the way! And look, you get a picture of adorable children and me and Hubs making fools of ourselves to make up for it. *g*

On that note, I'm pleased to announce that even though my holiday novella wasn't picked up for Dreamspinner Press' Advent Calendar this year, it was contracted as a stand-alone release in December 2014. Delayed gratification, thy name is Late Bloomer. It'll be worth the wait, I promise! I'll also have a few more future release announcements later in the month.

I'm also ramping up for release parties  and general hullabaloo for next month's release of my first novel, Island House. I'll be doing a release party on Dreamspinner Press' blog and probably taking over its Twitter for a bit, so I'm looking for ideas from you about what you as a reader look for in a release extravaganza. Do you like contests to win a free copy of the book? Do you want book-related swag? Charm bracelets? Gift cards? Post cards and magnets with pretty men on them? Posts introducing the characters? Snippets that didn't make it into the book?

Throw me some ideas for what YOU'D like to see happen during release week for Island House. This is my first book in paperback, and I'm excited to do it up right!

Back from the beach, heading to the Bay

The beach, just a few steps from our door.

The beach!

 My blog and Twitter have been a bit dark lately, even though I have the best of intentions (I did, I swear) of updating while I was on vacation. It'll be easy, I thought. I'll get so much done at the beach! The kids will be worn out from playing in the water all day, and I'll get to sit out on the big porch and listen to the waves crash while I finish my latest book.

In a perfect world, my kids would be angels and I'd be done with my Christmas anthology novella submission for Dreamspinner Press. The one that's due Aug. 1. (Oy.) But I don't live in a perfect world, and I don't know why I always romanticize vacation so. The Bub and the Barnacle are hyperactive whirlwinds at home, and they're twice as bad on the road. In reality, I actually lost 2,000 words on my latest manuscript because my laptop battery had a heart attack of some sort (sob), my kids slept about a total of 12 hours the entire week, and I now have first-hand knowledge that the going rate for a hooker at the gas station in OMG-is-this-actually-a-town North Carolina is $20 for half an hour.

Dark and foggy at 1 p.m. Guess
this is why they
call them the Smokies?

("Mom! That guy is paying money to spend time with that lady! Can I ask people who talk to me for money?" "No, son. No.")

Road trip shenanigans.

We also had less-than-perfect weather for our drive. We're Midwesterners, so mountains are a foreign concept. Driving through them in the rain and fog with two bored children who like to try to out-shriek each other with inane noises when they're bored? Not something I'd recommend.


We did have fun, though. And now I kind of want to write something historical with pirates after spending some time out on the open sea on The Black Dagger with a fierce (but tiny) pirate crew.

The Barnacle, who opted for a fierce
pirate mustache with her doo-rag.

The Bub, firing water cannons off a pirate ship.

In a few days, I'm dropping the kiddos off with the in-laws and heading off to San Francisco to visit friends and belatedly celebrate my 10th wedding anniversary (hey, Hubs and I are getting it in before our 11th, which is in August, so it counts, right?). I have every intention of writing, Tweeting, and blogging while I'm gone, but you know me... *g*

Soggy soccer games and steamy summer fiction!

This has been a busy week here in the Baker household. The Barnacle's preschool let out last week so it was the start of her summer vacation, and the Bub's last day of kindergarten was Tuesday. It's been stormy and gross here, which means I've been stuck inside with grumpy kiddos who had gleefully been awaiting the arrival of summer for weeks (there were charts and a video count-down diary involved...the Bub is very thorough).

All kindergartners read apocalyptic classics, right?

Luckily, the Bub is a bookworm like me, so he's been amusing himself by getting a start on his summer reading. I bought him the abridged version of War of the Worlds thinking it would get him through the summer as a reading project. It's 150 pages (and he's 6 with the attention span of a gnat) so I'd planned to spend the next two months cajoling him into sitting long enough to read a page or two at a time. He plowed through it in two days. He even snuck it into bed with him so he could finish, as I found out when he started yelling "It was the germs!" at 11:30 p.m., hours after I thought he was asleep. Hubs and I had to promise him we'd have a book club discussion about the end of the book over breakfast the next morning just to get him to shut up.

It was still pouring this morning when I dutifully marched over to the soccer fields to watch the Barnacle and the Bub play and Hubs coach. Seriously, they play in the rain. It's not like they're in a feeder system for the Premier League...this is U6 rec soccer! Let's be honest: They're primarily in it for the snacks afterward.

Maybe the smile was just on the inside...

Anyway, despite being soggy and frozen, I had a smile on my face because Diving In released today! It's part of the Dreamspinner Press Make a Play Anthology, which is filled with a lot of steamy sports action to start your summer on the right foot.

I loved writing this piece, and not just because it meant I got to watch YouTube videos of water polo matches. (Hubs wandered in during one session, looked at the laptop, shook his head, and walked back out of the room. What? It was research!)

Diving In has Speedos, hot sex, and a hint of angst and pining--everything you could ask for in a pool or beach read. (Or the in a I-wish-I-was-at-the-pool-or-beach read for those of us who are land-locked and/or stuck in the eternal misery that is a Midwestern spring.)

If you pick it up, I'd love to know what you thought of Diving In. You can find me here, on Twitter, or on Goodreads. *g*

---

Diving In

Being the pool boy makes it easy for Max Jansen to ogle his long-time crush, water polo player Everett Caldwell. Never mind the fact that Max owns the company and is extremely overqualified for the task of monitoring chlorine and cleaning skimmers. He's just happy to watch his unattainable dream play—until one day Everett invites him over and suddenly Max is his platonic plus-one for everything from movie nights to racy industry parties. Then Max learns the one-time Olympian isn't as straight as everyone assumes, and he isn't sure how long he can hold out before his crush grows much deeper.