The Daily Round: Renewal

Everyone is busy, these days.  "How are you?"  "Oh, my Gosh!  I'm so busy.  I have..."  The litany seems endless.  Work, kids, money troubles, the economy, politics and voting, reading, writing, blogging, promo...  We certainly do not lack for things with which to fill up our days.

Is this sustainable?

Many religious traditions maintain that there is a day of rest once a week, where even the Creator took it easy.  What a slacker!  Or, maybe, what a smart thing to do...  Renewal is an underrated task, after all.  We don't "feel" as productive when we focus on it, we prefer to skip lunch and stay late, working around the clock and burning the midnight oil.  That, after all, is what gets the job done.

But what if, this year, we try something different?  What if, once a week, we stop?  Turn off all the geegaws of modern technology, banish the television (or at least commercials - the mute button is a thing of beauty, as is the DVR), and really rest.  Just one day a week.  What might happen then?

Try it, and find out.  After all, what do we have to lose?  Our stress?

What's so good about all that stress, anyway?

This Week In Promo

Here's a quick update on what I've been up to, blog-wise, this week:

Nine Naughty Novelists invited Rachel and I to guest post this week, and I wrote about promotion and how to get started without becoming overwhelmed.

Today I was over at Silken Sheets and Seduction for my regular bimonthly post (I post on the first and third Saturdays there). Since it's my husband's birthday this week, and we're going away for this weekend once he gets up and around, I decided to share some of my thoughts about mini-vacation planning. It's my opinion that mini-vacations are necessary parts of serenity, and don't necessarily need to cost money. It's all in how we think about it. "5 Tips for Planning a Mini-Vacation."

Enjoy!

Happy Valentine's Day!

Welcome to the Valentine's Day Blog Hop!  In celebration of the day, I'm sharing a short flash piece, below, originally written for a story challenge.  I hope you enjoy!  Click the image, above, to visit the other talented authors with blogs in the hop.  You'll be glad you did!



Zeta woke to the lovely strains of Chihuahua in full bark, accompanied by the symphony of shrill hungover White trash.  God damned trucker hotels.  The barking cut off with a yelp and sympathy for the stupid animal burned through Zeta’s chest.

Figured.

He rolled out of bed and took a piss, then set the coffee on to brew.  He moved the owner’s manual for the ancient Helium tank back onto the bed.  The tank itself sat there like a huge, half-rusted torpedo from the sixties.  Here’s hoping the thing worked as well as a torpedo, or Monroe was gonna kill him. 

Thank God that dump had water pressure.

Then again, heavy water pressure on bruises wasn’t the sort of thing a man wanted to wake up to…

He managed to grab the bottle of vodka from the counter next to the coffeemaker without dripping too much water everywhere.  Some half-drunk yuppie kid gave it to him last night at the bar, wobbly with martinis and Zeta’s blowjob.  Kid wasn’t half-bad at it himself, Zeta’s lower brain reminded him, but he swigged the vodka instead of focusing on his morning leftover reaction. 

Didn’t taste nearly as good as it had the night before.  The label read “Grey Goose Vodka” with a picture of a fjord and geese flying overhead against some mountains.

Mountains…

Hell, he tried everything else…

Then he heard it.  The door rattled and jiggled, then the unmistakable turn of a key.  He snatched his gun off the towels by the toilet and waited, heart pounding.

“Hey, gorgeous, I’m back!”

The aroma of eggs, bacon and coffee hit Zeta’s nose like a steam train and his stomach yowled like a starving cheetah.  Christ.  Why did his assailant have to bring food?  He’d be a helluva lot easier to shoot if he’d been some snaggle-toothed asshat with body odor.

Of course not.  It was the yuppie from the bar.

Christ.  How the hell much Vodka did Zeta drink?

And what the hell was the kid’s name?

“I know you said you’re in a hurry to get to Oxnard, so I got breakfast for us.  Oh, good.  You’re almost done.”  The yuppie set the food on the table by the window and grinned at Zeta.  His large brown eyes crinkled at the corners, and smile lines just starting by his mouth gave him a friendly appearance. 

Yup, he was as hot now as he was in the bar, vodka or no vodka.

And he was stripping…  A steady pile of discarded clothing littered the floor behind him as he approached Zeta.  “You just let ol’ Chico wash your back, hmm?”

Zeta stubbed his toe getting out of the shower.  “No, I really can’t.  Monroe will kill me if I’m late.”  He paused, a towel in his hands.  “You go by ‘Boy’ in Spanish?”

Chico shrugged, stepping into the water but not quite closing the curtain all the way.  Man, he had a nice ass!

“My nickname is Chico, so that’s what I put on my fake I.D.  You really go by the letter ‘Z’?”

Zeta flushed.  “My name’s Alex.”

“’Xander’ begins with an ‘X’.”  Chico winked.  “And my name is Pedro.”

“To my best friend in grammar school, Xander sounds like a ‘Z’.”

“What was her name?”  Chico finished in record time and joined Zeta on the mat to dry off.  He pulled the towel out of Zeta’s hands and finished his back with quick movements that reawakened all of Zeta’s senses, then slapped his ass.  “Go eat while I finish.  We have to get on the road.”

“How do you know it was a girl?”  Zeta dressed in jeans and his Elvis t-shirt, sandals and a belt.  He stuffed the rest of his clothes into his duffel and then went to investigate the food.

“Because no dude would name you Zeta.”  Chico bent and kissed his neck, then whispered in his ear.  “So hurry up and eat, will ya?  I want to see if you make as much noise driving when I go down on you as you did last night.”

Zeta’s heart started pounding.  This was seventeen kinds of stupid, but damned if he wasn’t gonna do it.  Monroe didn’t have to know about his new partner, and besides.

It would make the drive go a lot faster.

He grinned at Chico, chewing a bite of bacon and eggs, and the most gorgeous yuppie Latino on two legs grinned back.

Damn fine truck stop.

Several Recent Articles

Happy Bredesmas!  As we pause to take stock as February winds on and January just goes "poof," I realize that I haven't shared my recent articles with you.  Shame on me!  I figured I'd make up for it by listing all of them in one post, rather than an individual post for each one.

In January, the theme for the Beyond the Veil blog was "Inside Publishing."  While I don't really feel like I could be characterized as being "inside" publishing, I share my views in "Aunt Noony's Inside Look at Publishing."

For the Silken Sheets and Seduction blog, I wrote "Happy Bredesmas." I share a little about what the holiday means to me and talk about one of my favorite crafts, candlemaking.

Bestselling author Delilah Devlin was kind enough to host Rachel and I again as guest bloggers, for which we wrote "Be Like a Groundhog; or 'What To Do After the Resolution.'”

I had two articles on my publisher's blog, one as a guest for another author who couldn't make their regular post.  In it, I talk about how I organize my novels despite not using a formal outlining process.  "Hate Outlines? Timeline!" Then, today, I share "Squeezing It In:  5 Tips for the Overstressed Neterati."

Enjoy!

Life After NaNo

Please join me today as I discuss life after the National Novel Writing Month, today at the Writer's Retreat Blog.

Thursday 13: Thirteen Herbalism Terms Defined

In the study of herbalism, I come across a number of terms that are both interesting and mystifying, since they're not things we use in everyday conversation. I thought I'd share 13 with you - out of a list of quite a bit more than that! o.O... Never knew whatcha didn't know, huh? Me neither.

So. Here we go:

1. Abortifacient: A drug or other agent that induces the expulsion of a fetus.

2. Alterative: An agent that produces gradual beneficial change in the body, usually by improving nutrition, without having any marked specific effect and without causing sensible evacuation.

3. Analgesic: A drug that relieves or diminishes pain.

4. Anaphrodesiac: An agent that reduces sexual desire or potency.

5. Anesthetic: An agent that deadens sensation.

6. Anthelmintic: An agent that destroys or expels intestinal worms; vermicide; vermifuge.

7. Anthocyanins: Any of a class of soluble glycoside pigments that are responsible for most of the blue to red colors in leaves, flowers, and other plant parts.

Bonus: Glycoside: Noun: A compound formed from a simple sugar and another compound by replacement of a hydroxyl group in the sugar molecule.

8. Antibiotic: An agent that destroys or arrest the growth of micro-organisms.

9. Anticoagulant: An agent that prevents clotting in a liquid, as in blood.

10. Antiemetic: An agent that counteracts nausea and relieves vomiting.

11. Antihydrotic: An agent that reduces or suppresses perspiration.

12. Antiperiodic: An agent that counteracts periodic or intermittent diseases (such as malaria).

13. Antipyretic: An agent that prevents or reduces fever.

Source: Jeanne Rose,The Medicinal Herbal, Aromatherapy and Herbal Studies Course, 2001, page 102

The Seduction of Words

Let's face it:  words are sexy!  Come visit me on Silken Sheets and Seduction and tell me YOUR favorite words!