June 9

Little dog is at an interview for doggie day camp. I took her this morning and she passed the "meet new doggies" test. The next test was for Mom to leave and for her to enter the play yard with all the other doggies her size and play. I am feeling anxiety separation-lol- they have web cams so you can go on-line and watch the doggies play. It is awfully addictive to watch the doggies. Sort of like the puppy bowl on Super Bowl Sunday. (If you have never seen this, on Animal Planet TV channel, they have three hours of puppies playing in a small scale sports arena. Crazy.)

This is good socialization for little dog and she will be much happier playing at day camp when I'm at school than sitting at home alone in her kennel. So, this crazy human wants to believe.

The things we do for our pets.

Have you ever taken your fur baby to a day camp or a boarding hotel?

June 8

Note: this is a housekeeping post to catch you up on what is going on in my life.

I think I must have received close to 16 documents via e-mail this morning for the residency week at Seton Hill University Master's program. I'm still sorting and printing them all out. That put me a tad bit behind in all my daily tasks-such as writing this blog. The good news is that this is my last residency. I graduate June 26th with an MA in Writing Popular Fiction. Yes!

I hope that come July, I can put more effort into on-time blog posts and visits with other blogger friends. In the meantime, I'm treading water, trying to keep my head up. If I am slow with a blog or a message please put it down to my head in too many clouds.

I have a number of writing friends with new releases and I hope to put some time in celebrating their work~along with my own starting in July.

If you are waiting for "The Counterfeit Bride" please note that while it has a June release date, the publisher tells me it will be mailed out in August.

One last note: This weeks Craft blog is on procrastination- you can find it at www.nancyjparra.blogspot.com

Cheers~

June 7

The woods behind the house is so thick with foliage that it is dark and medieval looking. Mosquitoes hang out in the shade. Small critters move about unseen. The dark blue lake ripples with the wind. A big blue heron, fishes at the bank while 24-inch, snapping turtles come out to sun themselves. Dragon flies so tiny you can mistake them for mosquitoes flit about mixing with dragon flies so large they make humming birds look small. The air is warm and heavy with moisture and the scent of lilacs. Cottonwood fluff floats by tickling the nose and pretending to be snow flakes. The sky is a hazy brown from heat and far off wild fires. The deck is too hot for bare feet and smells of heated cedar wood. Ants scurry in long lines. Bees and wasps bump around attracted by the flower scents. I saw our garden snake. He is now four-foot long. I think that may be the reason I haven't seen any toads, yet. Early summer is so full of life- large and small. Cheers~

June 6

I've noted that the on-line presence has dropped in the last month. I have fewer blog hits, see fewer tweets, and fewer people posting on Facebook. Why? Is it something that I have done? Is it because I have spent the last six months immersed in school and am not giving good content? Not visiting enough blogs? Not tweeting well?

Or is it simply that the shine is off social media and people are not reading as much? Have you seen a dip? (I know my friend Judy has not- congrats to her for getting so many people to view her blog and to enter her launch contest. Yay for her new launch.) But Judy and all her hard work aside, how is everyone else doing?

Do you think more people are spending time outside now that summer has come? More people on vacation? Or have we lost a portion of the audience to the tornado damage, floods, fires, etc. that are going on in the USA right now? I mean, seriously, if you home and life are endanger you're not going to be tooling around the internet.

Or is it a positive thing? Are more people back to work or working on new projects that they don't have time for social networking?

What do you think? Is your experience positive?

June 3

This weekend is Chicago's Printer's Row Lit Fest. I have gone a few times and it is great fun. There are tents and tents of books for sale. There are authors speaking and groups to join. One year we went in the rain- blah. One year it was so hot I almost died. This year I have a couple of friends who will be there talking on panels, signing books and supporting their writer's groups. If you are in the area, you should go. The whole thing is free-like a street fair and if you love books, it's the place to be.

For my friends from other parts of the world, do you have a lit fest near you?

I hope you have a fabulous weekend.

June 2

We are having a weather war here- one day it's turn on the heater- the next it's air conditioning-then heater- then AC. There seems to not be any temperature that is not extreme this year. What happened to temperatures in the 70's? The plants and animals seem to take this in stride as everything is green and growing. As a human being I am spoiled. I can keep the ambient temperature from getting too hot or too cold simply by pushing a button.

I watched a Bruce Willis movie last night called Surrogates. The concept being that sometime in the future human beings live in their pajama's, rest on an easy chair and live their lives through the beautiful, always perfect robot they control with their minds. According to the movie this is done because people feel safer. Their robots can get in an accident and they will simply buy a new one. As they say- "you can be anyone you want to be." Creepy really. While it's convenient to have central heat and AC, and as a writer I tend to live my life in pajamas, I really am glad to be able to go outside and feel the air on my skin. Hear the birds singing. Dig weeds. Meet my neighbors. Live life in a very real way. Cheers~

June 1

We are twenty days away from the beginning of summer and twenty days away from the time the days begin to grow shorter. I do love long days and can't believe that the time is closing in to where they begin to shorten again. The years slip away so quickly. This month is already filled with events- along with my final week of residency and my graduation from the Master's program. I'm sure you will all be relieved when I am done and can talk about something else-like the tiny turtle we found crossing the sidewalk looking for a new pond.

In the meantime, I'm hoping to keep my head above water and promote my new release, work on my presentation and write a proposal for a new series. The devil is in the details and there are a lot of those lately.

Do you have summer plans? Please share~