Today is my last day of employment with the state of Texas. Tomorrow, I’ll be self-employed. Or is it unemployed?
I have three full-time careers at the moment. DSHS employee, writer and crime-fighting ninja. It was beginning to reach the point where I had too many things going on, so I was doing them all half-ass and I hated that.
I chose to focus on writing and left my ‘real’ job behind. But in the process, I’m having to leave behind the best, most amazing people I have ever had the privilege of working with. To spend 11 hours a day with these women for almost four years and STILL love them says a lot about each of them. Who wouldn’t love a boss that does things like this for you?
And things like this?
Me eating Will:
Yep. I’m butterflying sad to be leaving these chicks. They rock my world from 7am to 6pm.
And in memory of my awesome place of employment, I leave you with this flashback of what I “used” to do for a living:
So…Sky and Holder are quickly growing on me. I was writing a scene last night that involved geocaching, and it excited me that perhaps I could introduce this hobby of mine to those of you who have never heard of it.
Prepare yourselves. You’re about to enter into an underground world of intense, not so secretive treasure hunting. And I am not in any way endorsing this hobby for profit. I simply love to geocache and want to spread the word to those of you who have never heard of it.
First of all, a geocache is a hidden container. The containers range from micro (about the size of a pill bottle) to large (about the size of a toolbox). Inside the container you will find various things…coins, toys, sometimes $ (rarely $) and other crap treasures.
In order to find these “caches,” one must have a cell phone with gps enabled, or a computer (check!) There are MILLIONS of geocaches in the world.
MILLIONS!
I guarantee you there is one within a mile of where you are right now. Maybe dozens. I live out in B.F.E. and there are at least twenty in this tiny area alone!
Here’s where the fun comes in. My boys love geocaching! It’s fun, outdoorsy and best of all…FREE!
Go to www.geocaching.com and set up an account. Type in your location and you will be amazed at all the hidden containers just waiting to be found. You just upload the cache coordinates to your GPS, and you’re on your way! The only rule is that you leave the container exactly where you find it, sign your name in the logbook, take a prize and leave one in return. My boys love to take matchbox cars and coins to exchange for other toys they find in the cache. I’m pretty sure there is a geocache hidden in every single cemetery and rest stop in the United States. Don’t believe me? Check it out for yourself.
A few tips:
Wear pants…some people like to hide them in tricky spots.
Bring a map printout of the location of the geocache in case your GPS doesn’t work.
Get a backpack and throw some small items in there in case you see something you want to exchange for.
Bring extra paper and a pen in case the log book in a cache has been ruined from rain.
Print out the hints or write them down.
Have a lot of stinkin’ fun!
Here’s a pic of the very first geocache my boys and I found about a mile from our house. It was a tiny little capsule with a miniature school bus inside. We had to sift through a huge spider and spiderweb to get to it. I heard of geocaching just an hour before this pic was taken, but it was raining. I was so fascinated and had to check it out that I bundled them up and made them come with me, anyway!
So, there ya go! A fun hobby right in time for summer.
This morning, my dear, sweet, caring husband asked me if I thought my blog was “professional” enough. He stated the fact that my biography reads that I’m a ninja might turn people off. He tried to sandwich this by saying that he loves my sense of humor, but now that people are actually reading my books, I might need to take a different approach to what I put out there for public consumption. Comparing my site to other authors’ sites had him a little concerned.
I laughed at first, but then his words started to sink in. What if I AM a little unprofessional? What if my sarcastic posts DO turn people off? I grabbed my laptop and was about to do some ‘research’ into perhaps creating a more professional feel to the things I’m putting out there for the public to see. Before I ventured off into full-out author website stalker-mode, I decided to check my email first. I couldn’t have made this email up, and how perfect the timing was.
Colleen:
The first 2 chapters had my heart fluttering. It takes a lot to do that. Layken and will blow.my.mind. > > You have such an amazing talent. Thank you for sharing it with the world (just don’t return to the world of ninja fighting anytime soon, I want more books!!!!). > > Sorry for being so demanding, I mean if you want to be a ninja instead of making my life better with amazing books then by all means.
XXXXXXXXX
lol. What a perfect e-mail at a perfect time of paranoia. Of course I read it out loud to my husband, and immediately thanked this reader for her sarcastic e-mail that saved me from the realm of professionalism.
I had my boys assign a number to each name, then they randomly picked numbers. And the winner of the kindle fire is…
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Jennifer LaFon! Congrats Jennifer!!!! Email me your address and I’ll get it in the mail to you as soon as the post office starts running again next week. colleenhoover@msn.com
Slammed has reached it’s highest (lowest? I never know which term fits) rank today coming in at #215 in overall kindle ebooks. I sooo want to see the 100′s by June. How awesome would that be? Pretty damn awesome. Oh, and here’s some good vibes to my dear, sweet J. Sterling! <3
I just give my goods out for free. But since you all are pimpin’ it so beautifully, it’s the least I can do. How about we give Nickelback a break and make this giveaway all about Mr. Chuck Norris. Give me your best Chuck Norris comment, and I’ll draw two winners from the comments at random tomorrow to get BOTH signed books.
Createspace and Amazon have finally come to an agreement to ship internationally to Europe! ‘Bout time. This is good news numero uno.
Good news numero dos is that I got a new car! And this one actually has a/c and doesn’t die at red lights. I. Love. It. I know most cars are female, but my car is a boy. It’s a GMC Acadia, and since Will and Layken Cooper pretty much paid for it, I named him Cooper. And it’s fitting because GMC stands for ‘Gorgeous Mr. Cooper.”
Good news number three is that my mommy got a new car, too.
Good news (sort of) number four is that I have the opportunity at this point to become a writer full-time. I won’t be working at my eleven hour a day job for much longer. I’m nervous, I’m happy, I’m sad, I’m devastated…all at the same time. It’s not every day that people get the chance to follow a dream, so I’m thankful to my husband for working so hard and giving me this chance. <3
But hell. I am going to miss the shit out of my co-workers. The most lovely, amazing, selfless group of women I know. It’s not often you can throw a group of females together for long, long stretches of time and after four years they STILL love the crap out of each other. It’s rare, and it makes me sad to throw a kink in our harmony. But their support and encouragement despite what it means for them is exactly why they are the best gals in the whole dang world. <3 <3 <3
Good news number five is that I get to see my lil’ sis in two weeks. And if karma loves me, she and I will be seeing The Avett Brothers in concert.
In the spirit of Mother’s Day, I’d like to give a shout out to my mommy. Hi mom! *waving* Here are some things I love about you.
10) I love that you are a ‘cool’ mom. Growing up, I was never embarrassed by you. I always wanted to be the type of mom you were. I mean, what other mother (and grandmother at that) has an undying love for Lil’ Wayne? You butterflying rock!
9) I love that growing up, you never interfered with our goals in life. I never once remember you putting pressure on us to do something that would make us wealthy. You always stressed the importance of just being happy.
8) You gave me my sense of humor.
7) When others would suggest you seek a psychiatric consult on my behalf, you scoffed at them. You loved and embraced my oddities, rather than trying to flush them out of me.
6) You somehow maintained an open mind in the midst of a closed-minded world. I’ll never know how that happened, but I appreciate that about you.
5) You. Are. Determined. It took me a while to adopt this characteristic of yours, but I couldn’t be happier now that I have.
4) You love my husband. While it scares me that if something happened between he and I, you would take his side over mine–it also makes me incredibly happy to know that you love him enough to do so.
3) I love how when I call you, you don’t answer the phone with, “Hello?” You always answer it, “How is my favorite daughter? The one I love more than any other daughter on the planet, even my other daughter, Lin?” (Sorry, Lin. It’s totally true. I’ll record her sometime answering the phone this way. I try to get her to stop because it’s so unfair for her to love me more than you, but she can’t. She just loves me too damned much.)
2) I love the way you love my boys.
1) Not only are you the best mother ever, you are also the best friend ever.
I freaking love you, Mom. As Lil’ Wayne would say,
“Baby, I could bless you and you ain’t even sneezin’. I could have you dreaming and you ain’t even sleeping. I’ll be at your rescue and you dont even need me.”
Here’s another Mom Day present just for you. Lil’ Wayne freestyling ‘Single Ladies’ <3
First of all, a HUGE thank you to everyone that donated. Jennifer and Clay are so grateful at the outpouring of support they have received. Over 200 private and website donations were made, bringing the grand total to $4,520! So thank you, thank you, thank you!!!
I assigned each donation a number and used random.org to generate a number at random. Each person was given a number for every $10 donated. The number selected was #80. Who did #80 belong to?
Channa Borman!!!
Congratulations and thanks again everyone for your donations!
Channa, I’ll be sending you an e-mail soon for more information.
I butterflying LOVE my kindle. I love her so much, I came up with a fitting name for her. Kendall. Cute, huh?
I got a lot of writing done today. Mostly because I downloaded an app that had to have been invented by either Jesus Christ himself, or Steve Jobs. They’re one in the same, no?
This app allows me to right click on a document from my computer and click ‘send to kindle.’ Within a matter of seconds, my manuscript is sitting on the carousel in my kindle like a real book. I wish I would have known about this when I wrote my first two novels…it would have saved a helluva lot of time formatting in the end.
There’s a drawback, though. Because I love Kendall so much, I forgot about my family. This morning Heath woke me up and said he was going to the grocery store. He was gone for nearly three hours and when he got back, he walked into the house and yelled for the boys to come help him unload groceries. I told him the boys weren’t home, that I thought they had gone with him. (I really thought they did. I hadn’t seen them in three hours.) He starts to panic, thinking maybe they went to church on the church van. This freaked us out because they probably smelled like piss and wore mismatched clothes. I called my mom to make sure they weren’t there, and she said they weren’t. I started to panic when my HUSBAND starts laughing hysterically. The boys were hiding in his truck and they were playing an incredibly cruel joke on me. When he went outside to tell them it worked, my eight-year-old Cale said, “Which cussword did she say? I know she cussed, Daddy.” My husband said, “She said f*ck you.” Cale said, “I KNEW it!”
This is both hilarious and sad. Hilarious that my child was trying to guess which cussword I would say. Sad that he knew I would cuss. I really need to adopt the ‘butterfly’ method full-time.
So I know I already announced that I would be doing an Eddie and Gavin story. I’ve only been in this industry for a few months, so I’m learning. One of the things I’ve learned is that I find it much harder to write if I know something is expected of me. Hence the reason why this story isn’t flowing like I’d want it to. I don’t want to put something out there that I’m not in love with. I know this story will happen, I just have to be patient while the characters reveal a little more to me.
I re-started on a novel I had already panned out a couple of months ago. As I was writing it, I wasn’t quite sure I wanted to finish it. Not because I didn’t love it…because I DO! But because I was afraid YOU GUYS wouldn’t love it.
But I couldn’t stop thinking about it, so now that’s what I’m currently working on. I decided that Slammed and Point of Retreat were written before my attention was all over the place, and they just flowed out of me because I was focused on the characters and the book itself rather than trying to write what I felt I should write. So I’ll take this as another lesson learned. I honestly think that if I don’t love the shit out of what I’m writing, it’ll show.
Which leads me to my next book. This book I thought of…let’s see…four hours ago? I woke up at four o’clock this morning and couldn’t stop thinking about this idea. I immediately got out of bed and went and input my ideas into the laptop. The excitement I feel for this book is on the same level I had for SLAMMED and POR, so I’m REALLY feeling it. So, so, so excited.
I can’t tell you much about it yet, but I will tell you that it’s also a young adult contemporary romance. And…it’s also emotional. And VERY intense. Why does that excite me so???
Anyway…so now I have THREE things going on right now. And while I can’t promise you which one will be the first one I finish, just know that I will finish them. If not all three, at least two. Unless I get an even better idea along the way. I love not feeling pressured, not being stuck to a deadline, not being glued to a particular book. My creative juices flow when they have the freedom to do so.
And thank you from the bottom of my heart for being patient as I figure out the next book. It’s surreal to think that it’s only May and I’ve put two books out in the last five months. So here’s to hoping I can get that many more put out by the end of the year. Again, not promising. Just dreaming.
