Yep. That’s right. I’ll be doing NaNoWriMo. Again. This is the 3rd year I’ve attempted it and well, I haven’t completed it any year that I’ve tried. Why? Variety of reasons and excuses, namely edits and Thanksgiving. In previous years we’ve had family visiting for the Thanksgiving weekend and when my family visits, well, there’s rarely any typing time without a million and one interruptions. And I’m not really one that can just write crap words just to have word count. My OCD has a fit each time I’ve tried, a fit to the point I have to go back and fix it or I can’t move forward, so…

Then there’s edits. When I get edits, I can’t just sit on them and wait. I want to get them done NOW. Mine are usually so involved that well, it takes hours, days, sometimes a week or more. Let’s hope that doesn’t happen again this year, however, I am expecting edits back on Arrested Holiday and Ink Spots. We’ll see how that goes!

For those of you that don’t know what NaNoWriMo is, it is National Novel Writing Month. It’s 50,000 words in 30 days. Adds up to about 1667 words a day, 7 days a week. To some that’s not a lot. To others, you might as well be asking them to write all 50,000 in one day. For me, it depends on where I am in the story as to how much 1667 words actually is.

Some people are NaNoWriMo purists and they write 50,000 words on just one book as was intended. The rebels have shown up though and I’m one of these. We work on multiple books, stories, etc… to get to our 50,000. Most of my readers, I know would love me to write 50,000 on one book and honestly, I would too, and honestly, I’m planning on it. But, probably not for NaNo.

What will I be working on? Hmm… Forever in Blue Jeans, most likely. It’s Book 3 in the Blue Jeans and Hard Hats series. It will likely be followed by Polar Shift, which is Book 2 in the Denali Heat series. Over there on the side bar you’ll see there are other works in progress listed as well… Turn Two, which is a book that follows a couple of the characters from Stick Shift; Bound for Pleasure, which is a short story that is part two of six (tentatively) in a BDSM series I’m looking to self-publish; Get Lost, which is a book that won’t leave me the hell alone about a woman that leaves it all behind and moves to the mountains.

I have a lot to work on, a lot to choose from, a lot to keep me busy from here until 2012 and even beyond that!

So, today, I’m making the NaNoWriMo plan, stocking up on coffee, trimming my nails, napping because I will be starting tonight at Midnight a long with a lot of my fellow writers. I will be taking my son Trick-or-Treating tonight as well…

I think, I’ll give some coffee away this month, too. Would y’all like that? I think some of you would! What about tea? Cocoa? Yeah, I think we need to do a giveaway of some hot, stimulating beverages. Hmmm… so what’s going to be our criteria?

I’ll be doing a post every week to update y’all on my NaNoWriMo progress. I’ll give a pound of coffee or a thing of tea or cocoa away to one random person that comments on that post. If no one comments, then, I get the prize! When you comment, please leave your email address as well so that I can contact you and if you prefer coffee, tea, or cocoa! (I know I need to do a giveaway for my non-US resident readers as well… I’m working on it!)

Oh, and I promised y’all an excerpt! How about one from Cracklin’ Rosie?

Excerpt:

“Exactly how much coffee do you plan on drinking?”

Shit. She looked down at what she’d been doing, scoop in mid-pour with coffee grinds. The filter was nearly full and she’d lost count of scoops. When had he come in the house? “Haven’t you ever heard of knocking?”

“I did knock. Once. You didn’t hear me. You didn’t hear me clomp across the wood floor either to stand behind you.”

He was right again, damn him. “Once? Gee, give a girl some time to answer, why don’t you?”

“As deep into space as you were, I don’t think it would have mattered how many times I knocked.”

She ignored him and lifted the filter carefully from the basket in the coffeemaker and dumped the grinds back into the coffee canister. And then started over again counting out how many scoops she wanted. Was twelve ounces going to be enough?

“What are you doing in here?” In her line of work as owner/waitress at the diner, she had to be gracious all the time, courteous. In her own home, she didn’t have to be. He set her on edge and if he ever so much as touched her between her legs…

“Couldn’t keep my mind on the job.”

Dangerous. The man was dangerous to her peace of mind. “Try harder.”

“Oh there are things I wanna try harder at, but the roof isn’t one of them at the moment.”

She wasn’t gonna ask. Nope. She wasn’t gonna give him one more measly inch. She grinned to herself. Not when she wanted the six or seven inches in his jeans. “What’s it gonna take to get you to go back outside?”

“Nothin’. You’re just so sweet and cute and rumpled from being in bed. I wanted to see you again.”

Cute and rumpled? She chanced a quick sweep of her blue with gray polka-dot pajamas and bare feet with light blue polished toes. She knew her hair was a tangled mess without having to touch it or look at it and she could all but taste the morning breath she sported. Oh yeah, real cute.

Then there was the matter of her not having a bra on. Her nipples were straining against the soft cotton of the blue T-shirt and where she should have been mortified or embarrassed, she couldn’t find it inside herself to lie like that. She honestly didn’t care if he saw her without a bra or without clothes at all. Truth be told, she wanted him to see her naked. She wanted to see him naked. She wished she could make up her own damn mind instead of flip-flopping back and forth. “What if I’d gone back to bed?”

He waggled his eyebrows at her. “Then we’d be having this conversation between the sheets.”

Okay, well she walked right into that one. “Good thing I didn’t then. Those boots would have made a hell of a mess in my bed.”

“Oh I’d have kicked ’em off.”

Rosie shook her head. The man had a comeback for everything. “What do you want, Decker?”

“You.”

“Yeah? Are you sure you want to discuss this now? I haven’t had much sleep, and I’ve not had my coffee yet either. I can’t be held responsible for what I might say.”

“I’ll take my chances.”

He crowded her against the edge of the counter and bracketed her in with his arms on either side of her hips. He was still hard and was pressed into her lower belly. Sweat glistened on his body and all she wanted to do was lick him.

“Fine. I’m pissed at you. You…” She poked him in the chest with her finger, ignoring the electric zing that flowed up her arm. “You fucking left last night. I couldn’t believe you left me standing there on the porch like that. You’d just found out something that no one else knows in this town knows except for my very best friend in the world, and you just left. What the hell was that about? I want you so goddamn much that I can’t goddamn sleep. I want you to go away. I want you to finish the roof and then go away.”

“Why?”

“Because you tempt me.”

“Nothing wrong with temptation, Rosie. I fully believe in giving in to temptation.”

End Excerpt

Have a Happy Halloween!

~lissa