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I’m not sure why it is, but for some reason, I always end up really, really busy at the end of the year, and I’m not talking about Christmas stuff either. It always works out that I have multiple deadlines and projects and writing stuff that gets piled up around Nov, Dec and Jan. Last year was crazy. I had 3 books and a short story that I worked on from mid Oct to mid January not to mention all the edits and galleys and crap. This year is worse, if you can believe it. I have two books I’m juggling that are due at the end of Dec and Nathan’s book is due at the end of Jan. The UPS guy dropped off galleys for a book yesterday and it’s due at the end of this month as well. Have I mentioned Im nowhere near close to finishing with Christmas shopping? I would get my mom to pick up some stuff for me since she’s due to arrive today but uhm most of the shit I have to still get is for her.

My daughter is so cute. She was being my “assistant” last night and helping me get some envelopes stuffed and addressed so I could get them out of the way. I can’t wait until she’s a little older because I’ll let her go to conferences with me. It will be good girly fun. She’s still a bit young yet.

Let’s see, what else. I did pick up the hunk of meat for our Christmas dinner last night. I have no idea what else I’ll fix with it yet. My husband’s suppliers inundate us every year with booze and hams, so I’m sure we’ll have a ham or three for the occassion. I’ll bring the booze to my dad and step moms since we’re not drinkers here.

And now I have to get back to work. I left my characters having hot monkey sex because dude, it’s 10 AM in the morning and the last thing I want to think about right now is hot monkey sex. Unfortunately for me, both the books I’m working on are stopped at hot monkey sex *sigh* I must wade through. And then I have to make a &*$#% shopping list :beam:

Edited to Add: I should really just learn to shut up. As I posted this, the doorbell rang, and the Fedex guy dropped off edits from yet another story. Merry Fucking Christmas! :purplelaugh:

I love cold weather. I love it when it’s grey and blustery and a little overcast. I also love a really bright, cold, clear night when the stars look positively brilliant. I also love a really cold morning when it’s frosty and the entire world looks bluish white (especially if Im hunting and get to watch the sun come up)

Speaking of hunting….that’s where I’ll be for a long weekend! Going out to some really beautiful, isolated country. No one around but us for miles and miles. Well us and the wildlife :lol2: It’s a long drive but I’m taking work with me and the kids have their movies.

My Christmas tree is up. It’s gorgeous. A lit Christmas tree just makes me happy. I’m content to sit and watch it for hours. Oddly enough, there is only one Christmas present under it so far and guess who’s it is? Mine! Shocking I know. The kids always manage to get the first under the tree but hubby is on the ball this year. I’m only about a quarter of the way done with my shopping. I swear Christmas comes faster every year. But I’m not one of these people who do their shopping in the summer just to get a jump because I figure what’s the point of having Christmas if when it gets here there’s nothing to do?

I hope everyone has a great weekend. We’re kicking ours off this evening as we head out. I figure we’ll get to San Antonio or so before we call it a night and then go the rest of the way tomorrow.

Baking weekend went quite well as did Thanksgiving. I have to say that the rib roast I cooked was all sorts of yummy and I will likely never go back to plain ole turkey evah again. And the homemade mac and cheese mmmm. It was a day for comfort foods for sure.

So now we slide into Christmas, which means Christmas trees, Christmas music, fires, hot chocolate and pressies. Christmas trees are rather scarce around here thanks to two hurricanes in the last three years *sigh* And the ones we have, oy! Let’s just say I’ve never paid so much for a live Christmas tree in my life! But it’s gorgeous so I’m verra happy indeed. But still… ouch!

Speaking of pressies…I’m uhm behind the times. My brain can’t keep up and I only just realized that I have stuff I donated to the auction for Jo Leigh and those auctions are now live. I’m offering a critique, which I can’t imagine why anyone would pay for my opinion, especially when Amy has offered to pay me NOT to give my opinion on many occassions, but an opinion I will give! You can hop over to look if that sort of thing interests you.

The other thing I’m offering is a complete collection of all my print books, including my Sharon Long titles, all of which will be signed and shipped free of charge by me. So if you want my entire library, autographed, you can hop over to that auction and check it out. Oh and uhm I realized after the fact that I left off Long Road Home, so if you read this and happen to win the auction, email me and let me know I forgot Long Road Home and I will throw it in for you :whoo:

This weekend is going to be loads of fun. It’s been declared family baking weekend. We do this a few times a year and the kids absolutely love it. I talked about what we were doing for Thanksgiving over at Writeminded a few days ago and how we were foregoing the traditional turkey and dressing stuff, so this weekend we’re going to search out some new recipes and get all the fixings to make our Thanksgiving dinner but we’re also having baking day. We make homemade sugar cookies and homemade chocolate chip cookies. Lots of raw dough is consumed and lots of finger licking happens :woot:

The chocolate chip making is always fun because we make four times the recipe. Talk about a huge bowl of dough! But we freeze the dough in tubes so we have cookies for weeks to come. All the kids pitch in and everyone has an assigned duty. Hubby always has to do the mixing, because stirring and mixing four times the recipe is hard work. Seriously. He’s the only one with the strength to get it all mixed up good enough :lol2:

I’m leaning toward a rib roast for thanksgiving. I’ll make homemade bread of course because my rolls are to die for. Other then that, I’m not sure yet what else we’ll be making. Maybe some homemade mac and cheese. Part of the fun is looking up new recipes, so it’s no telling what we’ll come up with.

If I don’t make it back before Thanksgiving, I hope everyone has a wonderful holiday :hug:

Be With Me hit the BGI and BN trade romance bestseller lists and it’s all due to all of you who bought my book. So thank you. I’m not worthy! :worthy:

I’m extremely grateful to everyone who went out and bought the book. My readers rock. :hug:

and okay so there ended up being three, because A. I have three kids and when I asked two of them to choose a number, the other got miffed so I let them all pick a number and B. I have tons of author copies and I need room on my bookshelves for the books I’ve bought and want to read :lol2:

So here are the three winners of a signed copy of Be With Me:

Emily, comment #19
Monica, comment #7
Brandy, comment #29

If you guys will send me an email to mayaATmayabanks.com and give me your mailing addresses, I’ll get your books out to you this week.

Edited to add: I know some of you have trouble commenting on this blog, and I apologize for that. If you’d still like to enter for a chance to win a signed copy of Be With Me, you can email me at mayaATmayabanks.com and I’ll include you in the drawing.

I’m in sort of a mellow, reflective mood. I’m doing some work and I put on some Hagood Hardy which I tend to only pull out when I’m in a quiet and reserved mood. I’m ready for colder weather. It’s funny that as much as I love cold weather that I’d be such a die hard southerner with no desire to live anywhere else. I mean we only get a few weeks of cold weather every year and yet I crave it every single year.

We’re heading out west (West Texas that is) to go hunting in two weekends. We usually go later in the year or early January when it’s colder than a witches tit. Last year I damn near froze to death and I loved every minute of it. So anyway, we’re going hunting for a long weekend and I plan to let my daughter have more fun than a human being should be allowed. She totally showed up her older brothers last year and she’s looking forward to doing it again. Besides, Amy has decided that it’s my job to feed her this year. She’s put in an order for deer meat, and me being the sap er uh I mean good friend that I am, have agreed to slay some deer on her behalf. It’s a hardship but someone has to do it.

I got lots and lots of shiny author copies of Be With Me on my bookshelf, and so I thought I’d give a couple away. Im terrible at updating this blog since I spend most of my time over at Writeminded or on our Yahoo Reader’s Group so I figure if you actually come by here and read this, you deserve a shot at winning a signed copy of Be With Me :lol2:

So I’ll give away two copies and I’ll leave this up until the end of the week or when I get bored with the entry, whichever comes first. Just drop a comment to be entered.

I’ve posted an exclusive excerpt of Be With Me which officially releases today.

Today, everyone should vote first and then go buy books :lol2:

I’m finally making progress on Amber Eyes, which if you don’t know, is the sequel to Golden Eyes. Amber Eyes is about the “lost” sister, Kaya who is mentioned in Golden Eyes. It was slow going for awhile because shit happens and that’s just the way it is sometime :idontknow:

I also had some smoothing out to do on Piers’ story, which is tentatively titled The Tycoon’s Elusive Lover and is book 3 in the Anetakis Tycoons series for Silhouette Desire.

All of which is to say that the release of Be With Me has completely snuck up on me. It’s not that I totally forgot but with NY print books, it’s not like there is one select day when everyone can get their copy and not a day before. Bookstores will often have books out early. Or online sites start shipping them early. There’s never any way to predict when the books become available and I’ve had readers emailing me since last week to tell me they’d found Be With Me. Barnes and Noble online has been shipping the book for a week now. So the excitement over the “official” release day is just semantics.

At any rate, official D day is tomorrow. I really love Be With Me. I like all my books but I love some more than others. Be With Me is one of my favorites. I had so much fun writing it and hated when I came to the end. I just hope readers will like it as much.