Blogging on Blogging!

I recently read an article from a few years ago that the Pioneer Woman makes a cool million a year from her blog. A million dollars. Before she had her TV show I had discovered her and read them occasionally and found them really entertaining. But to attract that level of advertising income, just wow.

My husband, when informed, felt I should drop everything and take up blogging as a career. And I am glad to have a husband who regards what I do as a business as well as what I love more than almost anything else. But if it was that easy, everyone would do it. Drop a few lines and bam! Millions of people read it every day.

I believe it’s a special gift just like any other, and a writer’s life might not be as fascinating as a woman who lives on a cattle ranch with all kinds of amusing characters and has a real gift in sharing it with us.

So…I get up, shower feed the cats. They are excited about that but probably most readers wouldn’t be. Then I sit down at my desk and work. Well, after making coffee. Critical plasma to writing words. And as a publisher and editor those tasks take up a good part of my day. If I’m feeling really radical I go to my local indie coffee house and sit in their beautiful courtyard surrounded by all the art created by the owner and work there. And until it’s time to cook dinner or put on a load of laundry or maybe go outside and pull a few weeds in the garden, that’s about it. Nobody is going to pay a million dollars for that.

But while sitting at that desk, I get to travel in the stories I write. My characters certainly have exciting lives. It’s not that different from the fantasy games we played as children where one person was the princess and another might be a knight. Or an alien or well…this month I have five releases. I didn’t write them all at the same time and it’s just coincidental, but it’s a record for me. And not one I expect to repeat soon, but fun!

So while I don’t think I’ll ever be a million-dollar blogger I will continue to enjoy the Pioneer Woman’s anecdotes and recipes and enjoy my glamorous job.  Which I can do in my pajamas if I like.

I hope you’re having a great October. Fall is my favorite season with my birthday, wedding anniversary, and Halloween I kinda have to love it.

One of my releases this month is in Mari Carr’s Wild Irish world. When I was invited to write for it, I hadn’t had the chance to read the series…so I settled in to enjoy. I loved it! My story is entitled  His Wild Colleen and is a crossover to the MacKay Destiny series I share with L.J. Garland. I hope you'll have a chance to check it out and let me know what you think!

 Maureen Higgins is on a mission to spread her wings in the US of A. Pen pals with Laura MacKay since grade five, she’s always dreamed of the places her friend told her about. And new experiences. When Laura mentions her cousin Andy is in charge of an Irish pub in Baltimore, it sounds like just the opportunity she’s been waiting for. She boards on the first plane she can get a super-saver fare on. It takes every bit of her savings, but surely her friend’s cousin will hire her. He’s practically family, after all. But when she meets him outside Pat’s Irish Pub, nothing about the tall man with arctic-blue eyes makes her think of a relation.

Andy MacKay’s dream has always been to open his own pub and restaurant. The kind proprietors of Pat’s Irish Pub three thousand miles away from his home in Cedar Valley, are willing to take him on for a few months and let him learn the business. It’s all going well when a five-foot-nothing Maureen from Ireland shows up expecting him to hire her. Her red-gold hair and sparkling green eyes captivate him, but he doesn’t have the authority to hire and fire. And she doesn’t have the funds to make it on her own in America. Or working papers… Out of sheer kindness he invites her to stay with him. Innocent. Helping a friend of his cousin…and lying to himself.  He needs to get her on a plane asap or his attraction for this feisty colleen is going to lead him where he is not ready to go. There will be time for relationships later, after his business is up and running.

But why can’t he convince his libido and his heart to wait? Not if she keeps looking at him like he’s the last scoop of creamy ice cream on the hottest day in summer…