How to lose a day...and love every minute lost

Today was just weird. I’ve started a novella that’s not due until January, but since I have a novel due in February and the synopsis and first chapter of the third in my
Demonslayers series also due in January, I decided to get the novella written early, especially with the holidays coming.

Anyway, I started work on it Tuesday and the writing just flew. I finished my first chapter, and then I wrote the second one yesterday and it was still just cooking along perfectly and then today...well, today I got sidetracked.

First there was the beautiful buck in the backyard. He hung around all morning, drinking out of the barrel, nibbling on the bushes and just doing his damnedest to look absolutely glorious.

They’re such beautiful creatures—except when they’re nibbling on all my plants, but since there’s really nothing left in our yard to nibble, I could finally appreciate how pretty this guy really was.

Then I went back to writing and yet my mind was drifting, and I started thinking about Jayne’s rerelease that was announced in her newsletter and for the life of me I couldn’t recall the title. (Help me here, Jayne! I’m sure it was one of your Amanda Quick historicals—Scandalous? I CAN’T REMEMBER!!! Sheesh!)

Anyway, I went to the bookshelf, but since I have so many of Jayne’s books they’re stacked two deep, so I started digging through and my day just...sort...of...floated.........
awaaaaaaaaaaaaaay......

Am I the ONLY ONE who can’t look through her own bookshelves filled with books read numerous times without getting caught? It’s like a hypnotist waved something shiny in front of my eyes, and the next thing I knew I was perusing some of Jayne’s really old titles, and then I saw my stack of LaVryle Spencer books (Damn but I miss her stories!) and started flipping through Hummingbird which is one of my all time favorites. And there were all those books by Anne Stuart, and of course Lori Foster’s shelf that led me straight—well, straight in a convoluted manner—to Christine Feehan’s shelf and Angela Knight’s and then I looked up and it was dark outside, and I have no idea where the day went!

I should feel guilty...actually, I do feel a little guilty, and to atone I stayed up and wrote the third chapter of my novella, but inside I was smiling like crazy. I felt like I spent the day with a bunch of old friends and it was refreshing and entertaining and so restful. Do books do that for you? Not only entertain, but take you away to the point where the real world totally disappears? I think that’s the magic of a good story, and it’s a magic that never goes away. I can’t imagine getting rid of my books—ever. They’re my friends, my refuge, my place of renewal. If you read this blog, I know you understand because you’re probably the same way.

In a lot of ways, I think that makes us the luckiest people around.