Dare I say I cannot wait for the end of November? That is not a popular statement in this household. Hubby is insistent - at high decibels - that I be a football fan at this time of year. Which is fine because I do enjoy watching football - but not when there's a lot of yelling and screaming and jumping up and down no matter what's going on on the field.

Today, for instance, it's Ohio State v. Michigan State. Michigan State is my hubby's adopted team because the California Golden Bears have been wavering between crap and mediocre for the past decade. With all of his energy focused on Michigan State, I am expected to drop everything, plant my butt on the sofa even if I don't want to, and yell and scream right along with him.

Unfortunately for him, yelling and screaming is not in my DNA. I don't like doing it. I don't like hearing it. All I want to do is go into a quiet place and watch the game between doing other things. Have it on in the background, in other words. When there's a good play I'll clap and cheer, but most of the time I sit watching in quiet interest.

It's the same with other sports. He yells and screams at hockey - November to June. He yells and screams at baseball, April to October. He yells and screams at college football, September to January. Pretty much all year long, really. One of those things that we don't agree on.

I've pointed out that the coaches and players can't hear him. We're in California and they're not. That doesn't matter. When I mention that little detail, he flaps his hand in dismissive manner and continues bursting my eardrums.

There will be a brief break in the action once the main football season ends and the bowl games are decided. In the early part of December there will be a few divisional championships, Big 10, Pac-12, SEC and so on, and he'll watch those. But that's not huge because he doesn't have any real favorite teams in most of those divisions. Just Michigan State and - HOORAY! They just won with a field goal as time expired!  Loud clapping but no yelling (at least from where I'm sitting). Now, I do hope they do well in their bowl game.

Still, I can't wait for the end of December. At least with hockey, we only have games on weeknights. Weekends aren't taken up with sitting and watching and yelling and screaming all day long. I swear, it starts at eight-thirty or whenever he gets up and turns on College Gameday, and continues all day long until the last game ends at nine o'clock or later that night. It's loud and tiring and tiresome.

Today I spent most of my day upstairs, writing. I watched the game on mute so I could at least yell happy things at appropriate times and commiserate at not so good times. That was determined, to keep him from bugging me to come down and watch the game with him.

Yes, he's my hubby and we should do things together, but it's painful. Because MIL and hubby are both hard of hearing, the TV is set to BLARE. I wear earplugs and am nagged not to, even though it has no effect on him. And there's the yelling.

Another reason I stayed upstairs is that I am determined to get 'In A Green & Shady Place' finished and ready to go by the end of January. It's coming along and I'm happier with it now that I've changed it up, making it a bit less pleasant for my MC and getting rid of the pure vanilla unicorn happiness.

The first thing I did today was write a blurb for it. A former Harper Collins editor will be opening up his blog for pitches next week. I don't know what he's looking for, how many words or what genres, but if he's looking for what I have, I have my blurb written.

In my experience, the blurb is about the hardest thing of anything to write. How to you distill the most interesting bits of the story into a form that's only a couple of hundred words, one that's 'hooky' enough to interest a potential reader? I've got a link to an editor's blog that addresses that question, and I think I've done it with my 'back of the book' summary. Now it's resting. Kind of like a roast after it comes out of the oven. Tomorrow I'll take another look at it and see if it's nice and juicy or if it needs some work.

Once I get 'Shady' finished, I'm planning on getting to work on 'Genevieve'.

My goal is that next year, once things on the home front change into what's next, I will have three or maybe four of my women's fiction books ready to go, along with my erotica series. I'll issue one per quarter to build momentum and readership, hoping to develop a following who will buy these books and others that come along and will provide some additional income for a few years, at least.

Those are my goals. Now it's up to me to make it happen, as much as I am able. With that said, I think I need to finish this up and get back to work.

Have a lovely day!

Best~
Philippa

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