Done!

With a week to go until my deadline, Windemere is finished! YAY! And lest my editor read this and faint dead away because she thinks it's only first draft finished, I mean the polished, finished book is done. Happy dance! I'll read through it, make sure I caught any and all typos (and apologize in advance for any I might miss) and then BAM! Off it will go.

And then? Then I will take a few days off and relax now that the pressure is off. It will come back, in the form of edits, but that's okay. I can deal with that.

So, we're nearing the halfway point of the summer. Already??? I know that technically, summer only began what? Three weeks ago? But as a baseball fan, the turning point in the season is the All-Star break, which is this week, so I think of it as the halfway mark of summer as well. Although, it is hot enough to fool me into thinking it's August - what's up with this weather? It's ungodly, really.

Anyway, my plans for the remainder of the summer are really quite simple. I'm halfway through Julia Quinn's Bridgerton series. I'll hopefully get a few blog topics out of it because, quite frankly, I'm not enjoying this series as much as I thought. Mostly because it seems to me each of Quinn's heroes is more of a jerk than the last. I know of at least one blog post I want to write, and it was inspired by these less-than-heroic-heroes. For the first time since I bought my Kindle, I've made notes in Romancing Mr. Bridgerton (the one I'm reading now.) I've never made notes in a book, but this one was irritating me to the point where I had to, because when and if I review it on Goodreads, I want to make sure I don't forget what some of my beefs with it were.

We have a family vacation coming up, which I am really looking forward to - I haven't taken a real vacation ins years. We aren't the type to take a yearly family vacation, so when we do, it's really something to look forward to and I can't wait for this year's! And other than that, I'll be polishing Don't Tempt Me to get it out the door and under submission. And aside from research, I have nothing else going this summer. Go. Me.

Gotta love summer!

Summer Reading

Last November, as many of you know, I broke down and got a Kindle and promptly fell in love. Since then, I've read something in the neighborhood of 30 books. I don't know if I'd read 30 books in the five years preceding my Kindle. Back before I had kids, I would read about a book a week, but since then? Maybe a book a year. I didn't realize how much I missed reading until I bought that Kindle and I've been making up for lost time since.

Over the winter, I tackled Sabrina Jeffries 'Hellions of Halstead Hall' series. I'm current on Stacia Kane's Downside Series. And now it's time to restock the Kindle with a new series.

A few years ago (okay, about 6-maybe even 7) I bought Julia Quinn's It's in His Kiss. And to be honest, I never finished it. I'm not even sure I made it five chapters before tossing it aside. That summer (and I know it was summer. I just can't remember if I was pregnant with the Boy or if he was a baby) no matter which author it was, I just couldn't get into the book. I tried to read A Loving Scoundrel by Johanna Lindsey, two or three Eloisa James books, and the Julia Quinn. I don't think I finished one of them and I don't know why.

Fast forward to last summer. I was in CVS and saw Just Like Heaven by Julia Quinn and, on impulse, grabbed it. While the kids played in the pool later that afternoon, I devoured that book. It was awesome! But it was, I'm ashamed to admit, the only book I read last summer. Bad me.

Then I got my Kindle and you know the rest...

Two weeks ago, after finishing the last Hellions book (A Lady Never Surrenders, which was pretty good, by the way. Sabrina Jeffries was one I hadn't read and ended up with the first Hellions book on impulse), I needed something else for the shore. You have to have a book at the shore. And I found A Night Like This, by Julia Quinn. It's the second of the Smythe-Smith series. Devoured that in the two days I was at the shore. The next one won't be out until next spring, though. Wah. :(

But now I'm hooked on Julia Quinn and that's good because I plan to read her entire Bridgerton series (I believe this is the series that introduces us to the Smythe-Smiths) which is 8 books long. I started The Duke and I last night and I'm already a third of the way into it. And that's how I plan to spend my summer - reading Julia Quinn. Oh, and outlining a book I plan to write come fall. And that's pretty much it.

So, what's on your reading list for this summer?