MONDAY MUSINGS: The Art Of Relaxing

Coffee on the porch

It was a quiet day around the McKye homestead for Father’s day. Hubs had the early morning to do edits on his manuscript and I got to sleep in. Not that this was hard to do since I had stayed up late the night before doing my own writing and keeping an eye out on progress of the thunderstorm. Just in case.

A bit later we had a chance to sit around and drink some coffee outside and catch up on our week before it got too hot and muggy. Chatted about all sorts of things and, of course, the latest changes in stories and publishing. He deplores the need these days of stories having to be nonstop action from the get-go. God forbid that the reader might have to wade through any narrative before someone dies or is kidnapped or some danger rears its head. The need to grab your audience but still do a good set up of a suspense story is a fine balance, I agree. He does make a good point about Michael Crichton, Patterson, Dan Brown, and even Robert B Parker’s books. There is a lot of descriptive narrative, but the point I made was these authors were established long before this new style came into play. I bet if they were debut authors submitting, there would be chunks of that narrative cut. But because these authors are well-established moneymakers who’s going to tell them they can’t? They’re bestsellers. Their name alone sells books.

        

Hubs is an early bird. He should have a lifetime supply of worms by now. The day doesn’t matter because he’s usually up by four or four-thirty a.m. everyday. Sleeping in late for him is the very rare six. Of course the poor dear generally falls asleep in his chair before nine in the evenings. I finally had to order the HD recorder because he can’t seem to stay awake for his shows, which frustrated him to no end. So now he records them. I’m telling you, that recliner is like a lullaby for him.  

I’m not, by nature, a night owl, although I did go through my phase of it many years ago. But with my blog and getting that ready tends to keep me up a bit late—especially when the stoopid formatting issues start to rear it’s ugly head. I make sure I have a good nap to handle that and those are the days I sleep in until eight, otherwise I’m up by six-thirty because that’s prime writing time for me. It's quiet, I'm fresh, and there are no distractions (the internet is off).

I treated hubs to dinner Saturday night at his favorite steak house and plied him with his preferred top shelf margaritas on the rocks with salt. He enjoyed that. Son got his dad Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows and I was able to get him some of his most wanted goodies from Cabellas. I even found the perfect card, featuring a recliner type chair on it and all the sweet mushy stuff. I saw it and laughed. It suits him so well. Then I left the room and shut my office door because he wanted to watch golf. I’m a player not a watcher and televised games tend to drive me bonkers. Tonight we had a nice dinner and watched the, oh so excellent, Game of Shadows.

It was a nice relaxing weekend for the both of us as we’ve been running way too much of late—Hubs with his job as a community Outreach Coordinator for the army, and me running around doctor's offices and getting things in order for Son and college. Some how I don’t remember preparation for college being quite so onerous and time consuming. Just a few more things and we’re done. Good thing. I’m about done in after all this. Last week was hard and I was run ragged by Friday and so practicing the art of relaxation was nice.

• How did you spend Father’s day? Do anything special?