MONDAY MUSINGS: IN NEED OF MOSEYING AROUND

Mosey: to move in a leisurely manner.

My husband and I decided this past weekend was to be designated rest and relaxation, and furthermore, we planned it to be a three-day weekend for us. We both needed it and Dan had been giving me the, ‘you’re doing too much and need to pull back on the work schedule’, lecture. He’s right, not that I wanted to admit it to him, lol!

My schedule has been incredibly brutal the past few months. I've had to put in several six-day workweeks, which left me worn out and cranky. Everything, including things I normally enjoy doing, became an effort. I realized my husband was correct when I finished up my workweek on the fourth so tired I cried. So, I took off a week to indulge in moseying mode. Most of last week was sleep and rest approach to it. Once I felt relatively rested and human again, I hauled out my list of spring chores and broke them down into small projects and leisurely made my way through the top of the list. I’m not going to angst over page two onward. Just doing it in a steady manner and have accomplished quite a bit without exhausting myself.

I designate each nice morning to sitting in the sunshine and watch nature at work and it’s perfect for contemplating life, hearing my thoughts. I spend some afternoons lying in the warm sun getting in touch with the peace of nature and watching the clouds. Sunshine is great accompaniment coffee drinking and reading. It puts my life into perspective.

I want to start walking a half a mile a day in the early mornings. I need the regular exercise to get those endorphins going in my system after a winter of sedentary life. It gives you energy to tackle the rest of life with a measure of enjoyment. Relaxing allows for my creativity to revive. I actually felt like writing and have done several poems—my favorite therapy, let me tell you, that felt pretty good. Been feeling like an amputee lately because I had no energy or desire to write.

Friday we headed down to my sister’s and spent the day. We had a blast. Afterward, Dan took me out to dinner. We had a nice leisurely dinner involving wine, good conversation, lots of laughter, just unwinding, and making plans. It was a good day.

Saturday and Sunday I moseyed up to the kitchen table to enjoy breakfast prepared by my extraordinary breakfast cook, aka, my husband Dan. I did a lot of moseying around the homestead this weekend. I puttered in the garden areas, clearing dead stuff out, raking the protective covering of leaves away, while listening to the birds and the wind in the trees. We were able to get a few projects done inside. Sunday was mowing the lawn before this week’s rains come in. We had some spot work to do on the roof where a limb had broken off the tree in the back brushed the back of the house during heavy winds. Dan and my son Jake took care of that while I did other things.

One of the good things about having the time to hear my thoughts and be reflective is I've determined I need less stress in my life and in work. So, I’m looking at training in another skill that’s much less intensive so I do have time to let my creativity out to play. I don’t do well when I’m on the New York minute and I’m out of balance.

This has been a nice mosey along week. I’m enjoying it.

• How about you? Have you had time to mosey? Or are you on the New York time clock?

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?

Favorite Ways to Unwind

Highest Stakes

By: Emery Lee
Publisher: Sourcebooks
Price: $15.99
Publication Date: April 2010

Synopsis:

When Captain Robert Devington returns home from war, this hero's only thought is to win the girl he has loved since first spied her riding hell-for-leather across the Doncaster heath.

In a desperate scheme to win her, he proposes an outrageous racing wager, a wager for love. The horse race, a nail-biter, sets the plot in motion.

In a shocking twist of fate, he loses his love, the life he knew, and his country, but with the passage of time comes the opportunity for retribution.

In the end, the good ultimately triumph, the wicked get their just deserts, and the not-quite-so-wicked are given the chance for redemption. Love, of course, conquers all.

I'm please to welcome Debut author, Emery Lee, Over Coffee. I was curious how she relaxed, especially after a long day of writing. Her answer surprised me.

• What are some of your favorite ways to unwind after writing?

My Twitter response would be: With a steaming cup of Twinings Lady Grey!

My expanded answer might be something altogether different:
While I have several hobbies I greatly enjoy: reading, riding my horse, and even playing the Celtic harp, I can’t say that I ever need to unwind after writing as writing is how I unwind!

My literary adventure first began nearly three years ago as a badly needed outlet for pent up creative energy. At the time, I was in a very stressful job under a boss who allowed me little freedom or opportunity to exercise creative thinking. It was this frustration in my professional life which initially drove me to explore writing, though I never dreamed it would ever come to fruition.



I have always enjoyed a great book to the point that I might easily have ignored the world collapsing about my head while buried in one, but this absorption magnified tenfold once I found my story in The Highest Stakes and began writing.



Writing for me is such a fantastic sensation—to create, to paint with words the pictures you see in your mind’s eye, to imagine characters and breathe life into them, to instilling in them the thoughts and emotions that emanate from your own soul.



I have never experienced in any other activity the powerful sensations that I discovered in writing.


Time ceases to exist.

Reality fades to black.

The universe becomes my own creation, one that I can mold and shape to my will.

All things imaginable become possible.

Writing for me has become the most liberating experience I can ever describe.
Now, would you care for one lump or two?

• To readers and writers: How do you unwind?

We have 2 copies of The Highest Stakes to award to 2 people who comment today. US and Canada only. Be sure to leave me a way to contact you.

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A bit of Background:

• 
  All thoroughbred horses in the world to this very day can trace their blood back to three specific Arabian stallions imported to England in the early part of the 18th century. Against this backdrop comes a painstakingly researched novel with breathtaking scenes of real races, real horses, glimpses of the men who cared for them, and the tensions of those who owned and controlled them.
• 
  In 18th century England and Colonial Virginia, when high-spirited stallions filled the stables of the lords of the land and fortunes were won and lost on the outcome of a race, a love story unfolds between a young woman for whom her uncle's horses are her only friends and the young man who teaches her everything about their care and racing. When she's forced into marriage, his only hope of winning her back is to race his horse to reclaim all that was stolen from him—his land, his dignity, and his love.

Read a Chapter Excerpt

Reviews of High Stakes

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Emery Lee is a life-long equestrienne, a history buff, and a born romantic. Combine the three and you have the essence of her debut novel: a tale of love, war, politics, and horseracing. A member of Romance Writers of America, she lives with her husband, sons, and two horses in upstate South Carolina.





For more information, please visit http://authoremerylee.com/.