Ok, so going to TSO and staying for the meet and greet afterwards might have been totally awesome but perhaps not my brightest choice since I got home after midnight and have to be up this morning at five am for work. It's going to be a long day. On the upside, the show was fantastic and my youngest daughter got to go for the first time and got her ticket autographed by all of them. She wanted to take one of them home with her (it's the rocker hair and the fantastic voice) but we left the group intact and made a promise to go see them again. (like we don't promise that every time, sheesh). This was Bethoveen's Last Night. Great music, a fantastic blend of classic and rock and if you ever get to see Flight of the Bumblebee played on electric guitar with a laser show, do it. It's so freaking cool. I'm hoping they do Nightcastle sometime in the future. That album has some seriously great music on it.

On the writing front, I finished my Office Party short story but still don't have a title. Had a few suggestions but I'm not decided. If you would like, go and take a peek and let me know what you think the title should be.
 

I've finally got the release date for Hades, the second book in the Pantheon series. It will be released on February 17, 2012 in paperback and ebook.

Needless to say, I'm excited. I love the series and I love the book. Hercules has always been one of my favorite characters. I love a man with a sense of humor and his is out of control, lol. Can't wait to hold it in my hot little hands
 

We finally got snow. Since I live in North Dakota, snow in December is nothing strange. No snow on the ground for Christmas, however, is. We had our first brown Christmas in the twenty years we've lived here. Got snow last night so at least something is sort of normal.

Work is slowing down which will mean an extra day off each week. Good for my writing, bad for my paychecks. What a trade off.

Writing is going in fits and spurts. More fits than spurts, lol. Today, I've been doing the copy edit on another author's work and enjoying it. Fantasy with a heavy layer of humor. Love it and very little editing needed. He's meticulous in his wording, grammar and punctuation. The occasional mistake is the result of oversight, not bad editing. No author can effectively edit their own work. You know it by heart, each word and each mark. You get to the point that you don't even really see it anymore. I go back over my own stuff and catch missing words, mispellings or even where I rewrote and forgot to delete the old stuff. It's never perfect. That why the second, third or even fourth pair of eyes come in handy. Another reason to love my second job.

My biggest writing problem right now is my brain is in two universes, no kidding. On one hand, I'm working on Styx and Stone, a futuristic, espionage type romance. One the other, there's a cat type man who kidnaps a good Texas girl (poor alien, lol). I've got vivid scenes from both in my head but I can only work one keyboard at a time.

Jane, I need that cable to download my brain more than ever....

A touch of fantasy...

http://www.deborahmcnemar.webs.com
 

Christmas shopping, done
Wrapping presents, done
One day of work left to go, coming up far too fast.

Still have pumpkin bread to bake and a baby dress to sew. Still, far ahead of where I thought I'd be. No snow yet. North Dakota in winter without snow is a truly weird place to be, let me tell you. I just feels wrong.

Posted the beginning of a new short tonight. May be a novella. I won't know until it's done. It was an idea I had back at Halloween and never finished but I can't stop dabbling at it. I don't write vampires and werewolves but there you go. Still have Styx and Stones (the last Pantheon novel) to finish and I'm only at chapter four. Working on that one, too. Got a new one to edit from Bluewood. The problem there is, the book is so much fun I have to read and re-read and re-read before I can edit. I think that will be enough to keep me busy through the new year, lol.

A touch of fantasy...

http://www.deborahmcnemar.webs.com
 

Found a way to get me in the Christmas mood since it appears Mother Nature is being stingy with the snow this year. I'm a chocoholic. I freely admit it. One of my favorite desserts ever is Death by Chocolate. Before you start thinking it's some kind of fancy recipe, nothing could be further from the truth. It's so easy even I will make it.

Make a box of brownies. Cut them into small peices and layer in a 9x13 cake pan. Sprinkle with Kaluha or Amaretto or, if you want to avoid the alcohol, even hazlenut syrup (the kind you make flavored coffes with). Over that, spread chocolate mousse and then whipped cream. Done. It's rich and simple.

I made it for my crew at work and it helped put me in a more christmasy mood. Hubby helped me put up the tree, more to play with the train set we bought our grandson than for any real desire for the tree, lol. Laughing at him playing with the stupid thing also helped. He's a forty-seven year old truck driver, big tough guy that he is, and he's also the proud owner of the Bumblee transformer, too. Got to love a man like that. Oh, wait. I already do.

A touch of fantasy...

http://www.deborahmcnemar.webs.com
 

"We were chickens in a barrel down here.”

“Fish.” The word escaped before she could stop it. Both men turned to stare at her and she flushed. “The saying is fish in a barrel, Mr. Bellinger. Chickens would be on a fence, I believe.”

“Fish in a barrel. Chickens on a fence. Ducks in a row.” Walter turned his glare back to the other man. “I don’t give a damn what you call it, I didn’t like it.”

Ok, so it was just a bit of fun out of the chapter I deleted and my daughter made me put it back in. I agree with her. It fits the story at that point but why does everything I write have to have those tongue in cheek, sarcastic dialogue moments? I know I'm sarcastic by nature. I even have a sweat shirt with a donkey on it that reads "I'm a smart one" (I believe in truth in advertising, lol). But I can't even kill anyone these days (literarily speaking of course) without some smart elec comment made and/or expected.

Hades was like that. I never knew what was going to come out of Hercules' mouth. At the time, it was fun. But Walter is more fumbling than that. He's the ultimate Nerd. And I get to make him sexy? Ok, so I personally think smart is sexy but the rest of the world seems to want muscles and domination. I prefer the smart guy to the bossy, overbearing man. How do I blend the two? I can give Walt a work out routine but I will never be able to make him smooth. Manipulative, not dominating.

Whimper...

A touch of fantasy...

http://www.deborahmcnemar.webs.com
 

My husband and I finally broke down and bought a high def flatscreen tv. You have to understand, the one I took off the stand to make room for the new addition weighs more than I do in that huge, tube tv kind of way. Watching tv now and I realize, this is going to take some getting used to. It took a while to get used to using a laptop and WiFi. Maybe it's a matter of time. Maybe it's LED vs LCD vs Plasma. I don't know.

Blue ray vs DVD. Is there a difference? Do I care? Maybe. I'll find out.

On another note, I deleted the chapter I wrote yesterday and started it all over again. Sometimes you just got to take a step back and take another look.

I'll pop a video in tomorrow morning and see if it helps...

A touch of fantasy...

http://www.deborahmcnemar.webs.com
 

Writing today on the last book in the Pantheon series. I haven't written on this one in a while. It's not the world I have trouble getting back into, just the head of my female main character. See, the main male character has actually been in the last three books and he's rather like an old friend. Her? I'm not so sure about. She's very self-contained and emotionally fragile. To pair them up, abuse her trust, blow them up and then get them together? I'm going to have to work for this one. She's going to give me fits and I know it.

Submitted Wilding Heart the other day. Got the list of tweaks for the cover art today. (Please understand, most publishers don't want you to send cover concept art. This is a slightly different situation since I already have the other two books published through them and they expect me to do this now. I wouldn't suggest any new author trying it.) Now, I know I'm one of the lucky ones who have some kind of artistic control over my cover art. My oldest daughter does the artwork and she does a wonderful job. The tweaks will be done over the next week or so. I love that part, seeing the cover come together. Makes me wish I was any kind of an artist.

On a happy note, my husband finished reading Pantheon and called it a "really good story". Except for the sex, lol. All two love scenes. Still, this is the one guy in the universe who will tell me it stinks if he doesn't like it so the good review from him means the world.

A touch of fantasy...

http://www.deborahmcnemar.webs.com
 

I'm going to chalk today up to a learning experience. Seriously. My hubby and I have been refurbishing an old mobile home for our youngest daughter who wants to get out of apartment living. Now, this trailer is no prize. Holes in the floor, rotted carpet and backed up plumbing. (What can I say? It was free.) Hubby replaced the floors, put in new carpet and linoleum and replumbed or fixed the pipes. Today we were supposed to finished the last bits to make it liveable.

Yeah. Right.

Somehow, I thought "we" was just a verbal typo of "he". How wrong I was. I found myself on the working end of a screwdriver installing smoke alarms. Not bad. Then I was expected to change door locks. I panicked. I couldn't help it. I've never changed a knob before in my life. If you want walls painted or floors cleaned or even curtains made, I'm your go-to girl. Not maintenence. Not me. It turns out, it's not so difficult. I then caulked the kitchen sink and the new bathtub surround. I discovered later that caulking does come off your hands if you scrub hard enough but I think my jeans are history.

Still, the trailer is done and I learned a lot. The next time a character needs to change to locks and kick her old boyfriend to the curb, I won't have to call my hubby for directions. I can simply write with confidence. However, if a motor needs overhauled or I need to bypass an electronic lock using a condom, he's still my guy...

A touch of fantasy...

http://www.deborahmcnemar.webs.com
 

It's been a long time since I've blogged. According to WDC, 15,299 days. That would be about 42 years and, since I wasn't blogging at the tender age of 2 nor was the website in existence, I think they counted wrong.

Life changed again last wednesday with the addition of a granddaughter. Arianna Lorraine. Only 6 1/2 pounds. Tiny thing and then we were told she had a hole in her lung and she was hurried off to Neonatal ICU for 4 days. She's better now, the hole sealed itself and she'll be coming home tomorrow. Just one of the small things we'll be giving thanks for this week.

On the writing front, Bluewood Publishing (www.bluewoodpublishing.com) released Pantheon in August. Hades will follow shortly and I still have book four to write, lol. With the holidays and the fact that I work retail, time to write is going to be hard to find. The third Fae Tales book is completed and in edit mode ( thank you Midnight Dawn for taking a peek at it for me). Once the Pantheon series is complete (no, no Coalition series to follow, lol) I've got an alien cat man on my brain that won't leave me alone. We'll have to see where that one goes.

It's good to be back at WDC. Have to hang out and look up some familiar faces.



A touch of fantasy...

http://www.amazon.com/Pantheon-Deborah-McNemar/dp/1927134544/ref=sr_1_1?ie=...
http://www.deborahmcnemar.webs.com


A touch of fantasy...

http://www.deborahmcnemar.webs.com


A touch of fantasy...

http://www.deborahmcnemar.webs.com