Today’s Date: June 20, 2014

  Word Count: 2,134

  Observation: Finally, I got back to writing. It took me a while and lot of procrastination, but I sat down and wrote and knocked out over 2,000 words. I don’t know why this is so hard to write. It’s the book release slump. You release a book and then everything after that takes extra effort. It’s exhausting, but I will keep working at it. I have all weekend to get back on track, that will be nice. I will be a hermit, but at least I’ll get my writing done. The story, I think it might be hard to believe why the male MC doesn’t just follow his heart and everyone else be damned. It’s because the female MC is still damaged and that has to be discussed more. There has to be a real good reason. I think by the end of today, I got back to it. I need to create the moment. You know the one I’m talking about, the moment when your like, Oh yeah, now I get it. It’s coming soon.

  Today’s Date: June 19, 2014

  Word Count: 1,218

  Observations: My first words in about five days. Not good. It was hard this time to write with a house full of people a full time job and basic tiredness. I’m lucky I got those in. Can’t wait for the weekend.

  Today’s Date: June 11, 2014

  Word Count: 1,498

  Observations: I am so proud of myself. I woke up at 5:45 am because I had to run sprints on @junowrimo and I wrote for two hours before work. It was nice. It took me a minute to wake up, but once I was up, my brain was clear and I got some good words in. I might have done better if I wasn’t so worried about the exact time I needed to stop in order to get to work on time. I guess, I could be a morning person if I really, really, really want to be. I don’t want to be, though. I have a few 6:00 am sessions planned for this month, but you can’t bet them if they are productive. There are so many precious moments in this story. I am getting exciting. It has a lot of relationship dynamics that I’ve never written before. Can’t wait to get through it.

  Today’s Date: June 10, 2014

  Word Count: 2,121

  Observations: Thanks so much to Miami for sucking it up in the first half. I could write and get my words in. Today I added to two un-outlined scenes, but I realized I have dedicated six scenes to just one day. It might need some tweaking. All these conversations may not have to happen all on the same day. Makes for a high drama kind of day. Its a pivotal moment for the male MC. Before he only lied by omission, now he actually lied. Oh, Jackson, how are you going to find your way back. I also developed seem secondary characters, because both MC’s need some help in dealing with all this crap. Story is still flowing. I am good and Miami is trying to make a comeback. Done for the night.

  Today’s Date: June 9, 2014

  Word Count: 2,191

  Observations: Had a very productive writing session this afternoon. From 6:00 to 8:00 pm I got in over 2,000 words and formatted a blog post. Productive girl am I. I wrote two scenes where the male and female MC see each other again for the first time in a long time. I’ve never written story where I was enjoying writing the male characters voice so much. Trying to make him a nice guy when he has all these urges and animalistic desires under the service. I can’t wait for everyone to read about Jackson. He is H.O.T. hot. I hope he will be a book boyfriend candidate in 2015. He is that good. I can see some tweaking of Carrington’s voice. It was much better in book #1, but she has to carry more of the load in book #2. After all, the book is about her hope for him, right. And, managed to do more editing on book #1. I said I was Ms. Productive, today!

  Today’s Date: June 7, 2014

  Word Count: 7,902

  Observations: I started at 12:00 pm and ended at 11:00 pm with a lot of breaks in between. I wanted to write 6,000 this weekend and succeeded. I also wanted to see some movies tomorrow, but I can’t. I need a day to get Book #1 ready for submission. I enjoyed today’s scenes and had some emotion moments which had me feeling the emotion. I love it when that happens. I’ve soften Jackson a bit because. I need him to be likable because they still aren’t in traditional boy meets girl and fall in love rolls. Their relationship takes a crazy unexpected turn. I am also learning to build sexual tension because even though they are in love, something else is keeping them apart. I’ve wrote over 15,000 word so far in JuNoWriMo. I am back on track and looking forward to writing the rest of the story.

  Today’s Date: June 5, 2014

  Word Count: 2,091

  Observations: Had a great little word count today. I’m really happy with the story and its making me an emotional wreck. I’m so happy. haha. I found some interesting background noise for my writing sessions. The Young and the Restless. My mother tapes it and after the 1st round of the NBA Finals (San Antonio won), she watched two episodes. It seems like the melodrama puts me in the right mood for the scene I wrote today. It’s crazy. Who writes this stuff. It’s desperate and all consuming and dramatic. Perfect kind of vibe for my novel at the moment. You can do all the extremes in the first draft. I’ll tone it down in edits. I am still behind. I need to have some killer sessions this weekend. Next week is going to be crazy.

  Today’s Date: June 4, 2014

  Word Count: 1,773

  Observations: Yea! I got my writing mojo back. I’m so happy. So excited. So relieved. I wrote a nice love scene today and then the male POV regret scene after. Got some emotion and touched on some subplots. I’m really liking Jackson, my male lead. I love his voice. He so wants to be a good guy, but lets face it. He is a guy. One of my sprint mates doesn’t like to write sex scenes. I find them fun. I am trying to get away from explicit scenes and make them more universal. I don’t write New Adult Erotica. I think I have hit a nice balance. I need to do some catching up on the word count, but just so happy to be able to string a few sentence together in a cohesive story arc.

  Today’s Date: June 2, 2014

  Word Count: 1,596

  Observations: Ok. Well, I think I need some sleep to continue this novel. It’s not coming together. It doesn’t sound like I’ve every written a word of English. I hope against, hope it’s due to lack of sleep. So, this will be short because I need to take my ass to bed. I stopped just before the good part. Sex scene early in this MS. Ready to try again tomorrow.

  Today’s Date: June 1, 2014

  Word Count: 2,210

  Observations: Last night I took myself out to Ihop to have pancakes and bacon and a JuNoWriMo kick off party. I lead sprints from 12:00 am to 2:00 am central. I got back into the swing of writing and it felt good. I’m excited about writing the second in my Hope series. It’s a fun story and not as serious as the first one. It will be a good old fashion girl wants guy, guy’s dating someone else. Can she win him over. I contemplated for a minute writing another story. I got inspired by my trip to New Orleans and it’s a serious story, but I want to write something fun, this time. Save the serious one for later. It’s a little hard to talk about book #2 when it will give away secrets to book #1. So, I might not talk much about the plot, but I will talk about some issues I come across as I write. There will be many, I haven’t written a book since last November. Great first day and I can’t wait to write more.

  Another New Life

  Chapter One

  If something is to good to be true, it probably is.

  I embraced that quote. Wrapped my long arms around it and couldn’t seem to let it go.

  I lived my life by the philosophy that if you always expect the worst, you won’t ever be disappointed.

  I wasn’t born with this impending sense of doom in the pit of my stomach. I acquired it somewhere, but even as I get older and wiser, I could not get rid of it. For the past ten years, I managed my life but never lived it. I swayed somewhere between panic and numb. The only way I managed to avoid full-on nervous breakdown mode every other second was by pounding away on a piano at least once a day.

  Imagine where my nerves were today. I’d been on campus a week with no access to my lifeline until today. My new life was taking a bit longer to get used to then I hoped. Ha. Hope. That’s a new one for me.

  As I crossed campus, the music hall in sight, I felt my anxiety dissipate. I exhaled, but the shriek of my phone made my chest tighten. I knew it had to be my parents. Besides my roommate, no one else had my number.

  I sat down on the hard, unyielding, concrete bench beside the door. The bench mirrored the conversation I was about to have with my Mom and Dad.

  “Betsky,” my dad yelled.

  I pulled the phone away to avoid damaging an eardrum. At the same time, I cringed from the use of his invented nickname for me: a clever combination of Beethoven and Tchaikovsky. He loved the idea of having a classical pianist for a daughter. I didn’t have the heart to tell him I related more to Rachmaninov and Bendel. Believe me, Dad didn’t know the different between Rachmaninov and Rumpelstiltskin.

  “Hi, Dad.”

  “It’s so great to hear your voice,” he said.

  “Yeah.”

  “You are doing okay.” It wasn’t so much a question, but a suggestion. Every sentence he uttered ended in a silent, “I’m sorry.” I shifted from one butt cheek to the other, trying to get comfortable.

  He had things to be sorry for, but it didn’t matter anymore.

  “Miranda.” Mom’s false compassionate voice she used on clients came crawling through the phone.

  “Hi,” I said.

  “How are you? How’s school? What have you done since you arrived?” Her questions came fast and quick, and she continued to speak without giving me a chance to answer. “I noticed you left a few things in your room. I was going to ship them to you, but then figured you’d be home for Christmas in a few months. You can get them then,” she continued. I pretended to listen.

  At eighteen years old, my mother and I looked like twins. I’d grown into the spitting image of her, which wouldn’t be so bad if I didn’t hate her so much. It unnerved me. We both stood five-foot-seven inches tall. We had the same thick, wavy brown hair and light brown eyes. While mom preferred designer labels and heels, I’d made leggings and oversized shirts my uniform.

  I know hating your mother was cliché, but I had good reason. My mother was delusional. Not in a crazy, mentally ill kind of way, but in the strict translation of the word. She believed things with strong conviction despite evidence to the contrary.

  I heard her tell a friend once how she molded her moody and reclusive daughter into a brilliant musician. It was her patience and focus, which enabled me to earn a scholarship to the University of Texas at Austin. To Mom, it didn’t matter how I got here; the fact I got here proved she did something right. Did I mention my mother was delusional?

  Silence filled the line. I hadn’t noticed that she stopped speaking.

  “Hello.”

  “How’s your roommate?” she asked and paused this time to allow me to answer.

  “She is fine,” I said.

  “Well, tell me about her, where’s she from, what does she look like?” The interrogation started again.

  I avoided her questions once again, holding strong to the promise I made to myself when I arrived on campus. I didn’t want my parents in my life any longer. The decisions they made for me during my first eighteen years didn’t work out so well. It turned me into someone I didn’t like. Moving far away gave me a chance to forget about my past and start my new life.

  I pretended to listen for a few more minutes. I sensed an opening, which may or may not have interrupted my mother’s favorite speech.

  “Don’t hide behind your piano. Get out there and enjoy yourself.”

  “Ahha, I got to go.” I hung up minutes later. With any luck, I wouldn’t have to speak to them for another few months.

  I continued to sit on the unyielding ground; my butt protested, but I didn’t want to take my anxiety into the practice room. With limited access until next week, I would only have a couple of hours, and that wasn’t enough time to get rid of the pounding in my head. For the first time, in a long time, I took my mom’s advice and headed back to the dorm to find Darcy. My new roommate had appointed herself our freshman social director.

  Freshman orientation had me feeling like the first day of kindergarten all over again. I recalled how scared I felt. Not knowing what to do or say. Hoping no one made fun of my clothes and praying I wouldn’t pee in my pants before the day was over. That was exactly how I felt now.

  I came to school in Texas to get as far away from my old self and my old life as I could. The idea was to create a new life, but I had no clue what type of life I wanted. Normal felt too grand of an expectation. Darcy came to school to find a husband. Not my goal, but if it allowed me the opportunity to experience a normal college life, Darcy would be the perfect guide.

  I found Darcy near the dorm, and we headed to Jester Hall for dinner. As we entered, my immediate reaction was to turn around and walk away. The constant motion of students made me dizzy. School had started.

  We grabbed some sandwiches, and I followed Darcy as she worked the room. She waved and smiled at everyone as we made our way across the crowded dining hall. She’d been on campus for three days. How did she know everyone? I started to rethink my escape plan, but I was too far in, Darcy wouldn’t let me escape even if I wanted to.

  My new roommate, Darcy Jane Albritton, was a true southern belle from Magnolia, Arkansas. When we received our dorm assignments, a handwritten letter from Darcy followed soon after. As soon as I opened the envelope, little multicolor pieces of Longhorn confetti spilled out on my lap. That was Darcy. She invaded people’s space but in a pretty, glittery, charming manner. It would have made anyone smile, but not me. It freaked me out. Glittery and charming I was not, but maybe I needed to be to survive attending college in the South.

  I wanted to make a good impression, or at the least not alienate her before we met in person. I answered her letter with an email, and we continued to trade emails until we were due at school. She peppered her emails with questions. I answered them, but if my answers were vague, she didn’t seem to care.

  She filled her emails with detailed descriptions of life in the South. She provided me with a little glossary of southern terms, phrases, and other tidbits of information. One of my favorite; Never date Arkansas boys, only date Texas men. Arkansas boys may have farming money and ranching money, but Texas men have oil money. Enough said.

  I read it and laughed out loud, but in that pit in the bottom of my stomach I told you about, it was growing.

  What am I getting myself into?

  When we arrived on campus a few days ago, our first night as roommates went something like this.

  “—place beautiful?” She seemed to start sentences in the middle. “I have been looking forward to this day my entire life. Haven’t you?”

  I tried to answer, but she continued.

  “I feel like such a grown-up. I am a college student. How cool is that?” She started making her bed. “I mean, you’re from a big city, but where I’m from, kids don’t go away for college, and even if they did, they always came back home after graduation, if they make it to graduation. I’m not going back.” She crossed her fingers and showed them to me. “My ex-boyfriend goes to the University of Arkansas. Oh boy, he was so mad when I told him I got into UT.”

  My head ached from trying to translate her words through her thick southern accent.

  “Do you have a boyfriend?” She pulled out more stuff animals and sat them on her bed, one by one. Her question caught me by surprise.

  “Well?” she asked.

  “Well, what?” I rubbed my forehead.

  “Do you have a boyfriend?”

  “Oh, no, I don’t.”

  “Oh, goodie.”

  I’d never met anyone who used the phrase “oh goodie.” She pranced over to me, which was impressive considering I sat four feet away from her. She sat down on my bed and put her arm around my shoulder.

  “We can scout guys together.”

  “Scout guys?” I stood up, not used to someone being so close to me; well, not a girl. “I don’t think I’ve scouted guys before.”

  “Well, what do you call it up in Seattle?”

  I smirked at the way she put the accent on the Sea and not the attle. She giggled, which made me giggle. Our ability to laugh at nothing, we had that in common.

  I sat back down on my bed. She moved beside me, testing which distance was appropriate. I relaxed a little. It couldn’t hurt to have an actual southerner on your side when you’re a northerner going to school in the South.

  Funny, these things never crossed my mind until I moved to Austin.

  Darcy craved attention, but in a humble, sweet manner. Five days in, and I didn’t want to kill her. I counted that as a small victory.

  Darcy guided me over to a table. Two girls stopped talking as we approached.

  “Hello, ladies, you mind if we sit here?” Darcy asked.

  “No, please. My name is Brooke,” she said. “This is Becca.”

  “Hi, Brooke and Becca.” Darcy sat down and pulled me next to her. “I’m Darcy, and this is Miranda.”

  “Your hair is gorgeous,” Becca said as she glared at me while tucking her own thin blond hair behind her ear. “Is it real?”

  Brooke hit her on the leg. “Becca!”

  “Well, I was wondering.”

  “That’s okay,” I said. “I get that all the time. It’s real.”

  “Sweetie, where are you from?” Brooke asked.

  Did she just call me sweetie? Oh no, they branded me an outsider already.

  “Seattle, Washington.” I waited for the head tilt and nod. I’ve seen that a lot when I tell people I’m not from around these parts. Becca didn’t disappoint.

  “I went there last summer on a trip with my parents,” Brooke said. “My dad is a huge Pearl Jam fan, and we took a pilgrimage to see where it all began.” She made a grand sweeping gesture with her arms.

  We all laughed.