When you're out of material...

Look through your pictures!

Ladybug has been sick for two days... and now she is no longer sick and driving everyone bugshit--time for her to go back to the babysitter's and dad to go back to work.

And mom? Losing her fricking mind--I mean that.

Christmas knitting? Oh yeah--I've got that.

Papers to grade? An 8 week backlog, thank you!

Finals to write? Only two, really-- not so bad...but, uhm, need to be written and copied by Monday afternoon.

Any writing going on? Of course. Granted, only about two pages a day, but that's 'sleeping dragon' writing, not 'dragon in the blood' writing, so I'm fairly satisfied. After Christmas and a little bit of sleep, I'm thinking that dragon is going to wake up and wreak a big, scaly havoc of whoop-ass on my poor little laptop and I'm looking forward to it. I need to remind myself that the writing always gets a little thin around finals week and not worry about the big, giant 'B'. (Uhm, 'block'.) Truth is, I'm not blocked--I think I'm just a little blue. I've got the post-partum blues for Bitter Moon II, made worse by the fact that I can't bring that baby home when I'm ready to. (We did the exact same thing for the Cave Troll when he was born, btw. And then we DID get him home, set him up in the clean house and just looked at him for an hour. Got very boring. Mate finally turned on the television, and then we could both watch the baby sleep AND watch John Stewart. Much better.) Anyway, I'm pretty happy with Rampant as it's going so far, I just wish it would write itself the way the Jack and Teague stories did, but Rampant is more complex, and I have to deal with that. More characters, more history, more complex plotlines--that's the price of growth in your craft, I guess--I just need to concentrate on doing it right, right?

And hey--speaking of stuff writing itself...

The Smart Bitches were marketing a product that seemed designed exclusively for m/m romance writers... they said they wanted to see the product in somebody's next romance. I didn't have time to write a full fledged shorty, but I did manage to produce this:

One Item Off The List

"Teague?" Jack's voice murmured in the darkness, and Teague stirred irritably against him. He had barely crawled into bed after going out on a job, and Jack had been relieved that he felt comfortable enough to just lay down and sleep instead of that frantic, 'let's-fuck-Jacky-silly' he'd sustained for their first two weeks.

"What?" Teague rolled over and faced Jack in the moonlight, scowling through tired eyes. "I told you about the job. It was long and boring. The vampires ate, Cory cracked jokes, and nobody grabbed my ass. Can we sleep now?"

"I was just..." Jack flipped his hair out of his eyes, wondering who to ask around Green's Hill for a trim, "just, what are we going to do for Christmas?"

Teague blinked. "This couldn't have waited until morning, Princess, or is Santa gonna slide down the fucking chimney early this year?"

"Unless your dick is Santa, I'm not counting on it," Jack snapped back. He propped himself on his elbow and wished Teague went in more for the gentle touchy-feelie thing in the quiet of the night. Unless sex were recently involved, Jack's gruff, wiry, stubborn Irish lover was still getting used to the idea of random displays of affection. "I was just wondering--I know they're not letting us out of the hill unchaperoned until we change and they're sure we're not going to eat anyone in broad daylight, but...you know... Christmas shopping?" Last year Jack had bought Teague a display case for his model cars, but they hadn't been sleeping together last year, and Jack was at a loss.

"Christmas. Shopping?" Teague's head jerked up and his scowling hazel eyes peered at Jack through the darkness with equal parts bemusement and exasperation. "Do you have any idea how tired I am?"

"Not really, asshole, since you just patently lied to me about the job!" Oh yeah--Jack had seen the bruises, but he'd been planning to let it slide. "I was just wondering what we're going to do for Christmas, since we're fucking each other instead of, well, whatever we were doing last year."

"I'll ask someone to take us out tomorrow," Teague mumbled resignedly, turning over on his side and backing up against Jack in a patent invitation for the taller man to spoon. "If nothing else, there's always the internet--we've got bank accounts, you know."

"And the job?" Jack asked, taking that spooning invite anyway.

"I'll tell you tomorrow, Jacky," Teague yawned. "Just don't get me anything...you know..."

"Gay?" Jack supplied dryly. "Because, you know, I had plans of getting you pink underwear with a baseball player on the crotch. You know? Batter-up?"

Teague's knotty shoulders shook hard with a suppressed laugh. "You do that and I'll fucking strangle you with them. Now shut up and get some sleep."

"And the job?" Jack insisted.

"If you promise not to get me pink underwear, I'll tell you about that too." He was exhausted--his shoulders started moving evenly almost immediately after he finished speaking.

And Jack lay in the dark, smiling a little, trying to remember where he'd seen that website. It would be totally worth it.