Happy Sunday and weekend, all :)

Today’s post is going to be random. Kind of the way my mind is most of the time, yanno?

I’m on a writing retreat this weekend, about 75 miles north of where I live. It’s a quaint small town with enough restaurants and amenities nearby to keep us happy, but not enough nightlife to be distracting. For those who haven’t done writing retreats, I highly recommend them. They can increase your productivity tenfold, provided you have people with you who have the same goal: WRITING.

Here is a typical look at our schedule:

11am Friday – arrive and meet at restaurant for lunch. Plot and brainstorm during lunch, catch up.

12pm – 5pm Friday – writing in hotel room.

5pm Friday on – dinner, relax, chatting, brainstorming.

Saturday 9am – 5pm – writing with the exception of breakfast and lunch, during which we plot, talk, brainstorm. The main hours of the day are quiet with us writing; we talk and go over any stalled areas during meals.

Sunday 8am-12noon – writing.

12 noon – retreat ends & we go home.

This year’s been a productive one (yay!)

Now I get to drive home in a computer. Not a car, a computer. Or so it seems. I’m used to my 14 year old car and its easy means of pressing a button to favorite a radio station. This rental car I’m in (because my car is being worked on, hence the need for a rental) is a Chevy Malibu. Talk about bells and whistles! It took me 30 minutes to figure out the cruise control and I *still* haven’t figured out an easy way to navigate between radio stations. That’s my biggest complaint – getting pre-set channels should be user friendly and easy. But all the favorites I pick don’t show up in the listing.

We had some excitement at the beginning of our weekend. The whole town was under a “boil water” advisory because supposedly some samples of water came back contaminated. That means no soda, water, or anything made with water at restaurants. Turns out the ban was lifted the evening we arrived, and the reason for the ban in the first place? The EPA used dirty sample containers that were unsealed when they got them.

Now, it may be just me, but don’t you think the EPA would have been more efficient and safety-precaution oriented than that? Because they had dirty containers and the need for safety rules, an entire town went crazy without water for 3 days. I did notice in the paper that this town will no longer have the EPA doing testing; they will use a private firm.

Yeah. Smart move.

Happy Sunday and enjoy the water whereever you are!

I will be offline most of this weekend because I’ll be on a writing retreat. These are wonderful things. You get together with another writer (or several, your choice) and go somewhere like a cabin or hotel where you can solely focus on WRITING.

You can’t just surf the internet and lose focus. You can’t go run to the grocery store or houseclean. You are in a place with others, your mission is to write. It’s scary and wonderful all at the same time :)

Meals out are a chance to socialize but also keep on the writing track: we plot, we brainstorm, we talk about future plans for books. It’s an energizing way to keep the weekend focused.

Come Monday (6/23), my book 2 RAGING FIRE will be featured in an E-Reader News Today (ENT) ad so be sure to check it out at its 99 cents sale!

Hope everyone has a safe and wonderful Easter weekend :))))

This has been a productive and great weekend for me. I’ve been on a #writing retreat, the kind where you hole up with other writers and you crash-write all weekend long. Of course, there are breaks in the evening, etc., but otherwise, the focus is WRITING.

Happy to report that I did 10,160 words = that’s approximately 40 pages, in one weekend. This is a great way to jump start that creativity or tackle that mid-book-slump hurdle.

Hope everyone has a great weekend and look for more posts soon!

Many thanks to those of you who were able to visit Keta’s blog yesterday and leave a comment. Della is our lucky winner and she wins a free copy of Water’s Blood in digital format :) What does everyone have planned for the week and weekend? Wednesday, known as hump day, is the marker between the Monday blahs and the Friday excitement. Looks like warm weather is *trying* to come to the South, so I am hoping the weather will be nice. I’m going on a writing retreat and will be pressing my little fingers to the keyboard all weekend to get mucho work done on RAGING FIRE, Book Two of the Elemental Clan Series, which is due out this summer. Writing retreats, whether done alone or with other writers, are a great way to pump up the creativity. You learn each other’s patterns and what works and what doesn’t, and it’s helpful to have others there to brainstorm. So…for this Wednesday and weekend, what are y’all doing?