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*