I have been writing like a madwoman.
I'm also writing about a madwoman, but that's a different blog post.
In the past week I wrote over 25,000 words. In the past two days alone I added 34 pages to the YA novel that will be releasing from Katherine Tegen in the Fall of 2015. My brain is rolling, my fingers are flashing, and this book is very nearly at its close.
But so is my social life and ability to function in the sunlight.
So, the boyfriend put me in the canoe for the Fourth of July and we just went away for about five hours. The novel has hijacked my brain and demanded all my time, so I haven't been paying as much attention to the blog as I usually do.
I'm making it up to you with pictures of animals. This is how we make things better on the internet.
One of the awesome things that happened was jumping a few deer. They didn't think it was awesome but I did. The first was a buck, that came busting through the woods down to the stream. He must've been super thirsty because he hopped out into the water without taking any notice of his surroundings whatsoever. When he finally did look up, I swear to you that deer's face actually registered shock. I don't know if he'd seen people in a boat before, because he debated for about twenty seconds before snorting at us and bolting.
That's my hand while I show the boyfriend a really large mollusk. Meanwhile something awesome is happening behind me.
So that was pretty cool. The only other time I've seen an animal actually look shocked was back in high school when I came driving over a hill too fast and took a skunk by surprise. That story didn't end as well, and you don't want to see the pictures.
This kitty no want pet.
Further on down the line I got to see a very feral member of my favorite species. I assume he was fishing. I wanted to go to the bank and say hi, but judging by the look on his face I think he might have tried to kill us.
Oh, but it gets better. Just when I thought life couldn't be more awesome, I totally got hit in the chest with the canoe while I tried to move branches out of the way. I got them out of the way. The canoe was so very grateful that it conveyed this by a surge of forward motion that knocked me down. It was actually kind of cool because I have canoe-bow shaped bruise on my chest now. There are no pictures either of the incident (boyfriend thought I was drowning) or the bruise (boyfriend said that's in bad taste).
My last critter picture for you is a baby beaver. Yep, a bitty baby beaver who I believe was also quite shocked at seeing people in a boat. You can see in the picture he's got his tail up, debating whether or not slap. He didn't, and I was thrilled because then we got to surprise his mommy and daddy downstream, who DID slap and I'm sure he got a pretty serious talking to about stranger danger later on.
So, that's what I did this weekend, along with a ton of writing. I could blog to you all about my writing, but that wouldn't have cute pictures involved. A writer at work is not a pleasant picture. There's a lot of staring at nothing and occasional grunting. I also tend to gesticulate while I work out dialogue so I appear to be quite insane.
Not that you didn't already suspect that.