Interview!

The link is up for my interview with Ali from Ali Talks Live and Ali's Bookshelf! I had a great time as you can tell from the giggles and when we sort of fell apart in a riot of laughter at the end. Technical difficulties forced me to call in from my cell, so the quality isn't all that wonderful, and I had to plug my phone in during the middle of it :s, but all in all I think i went well! Check it out below!

Join us at Ali Talks Live for a Live Author's Chat with your truly! Hope you can come join the fun 7pm Central, 8 Eastern!

It's been a crazy time.  I love being a mom and an author, but I find that a lot of the time I'm not so great at balancing it.  When it comes down to my kids or my books, my kids always come first.  Which means my blog falls down the priority ladder pretty fast.  Right now I've got a lot of hats on at once. I'm in developmental edits for Maelstrom, the first step before I get into six weeks of substansive and proofreading editing. I'm also now a cub scout committee member and am planning my first born's 7th birthday party, complete with a Sonic the Hedgehog race track cake. Apparently I don't know how to do the birthday thing without going way overboard! Anyway, I apologize for the long stretches between posts, but I'm still around and kicking...and the plot bunnies won't leave me alone, so I have more than one idea for what will come next after the Children of Creation series has wrapped.  I've loved writing about Angels, but I'm looking forward to playing with something else for a while. I wish you all the best and I'm going to try really hard to post more often!

Manis and Pedis and Progress, Oh MY!

So I'm sitting here letting my newly pink tootsies dry thinking bout what a bad blogger I am!  Seriously, if any of you are still following I'd be amazed.  I think it really comes down to being a sucky multitasker.  I can write, or I can market/blog/promote, or I can job hunt and deal with my RL, but going all three at once isn't something I'm good at.  Two maybe, but never the three.

Since Maelstrom has been looking at a deadline, it has been my primary focus with any free time I had outside of Mommyhood/real life.  Two weeks ago, right before my son and I fell victim to the flu and were knocked down for five days, I FINISHED the first draft!  Yes, that's right...I got in the first draft five days before the original deadline!  I was super proud of myself...and then eight hours later I was in my bathroom cursing the existence of microscopic bugs with the sole goal in life to make us miserable.  We're all better now (wait...looking around for some wood to knock on) and life is moving along at a steady pace.  In less than two weeks the march through the editing process begins and is expected to keep going until the end of June.  While it is the most difficult part of the process for me, I'm really looking forward to it. :)  Then in AUGUST Maelstrom will be released.  I still can't believe that the last chapter of the series is complete and now I'm playing with other plot bunnies that are multiplying in my noggin.  The one that seems to be the most solid and interesting is a Murder Mystery of which I've already written two chapters.  I'm pretty sure it will end up being my next big project, that is if the people in charge like it and want to run with it. :)  In the meantime I'll be around.  Hope to see you around too!!!

Love,
J.D.

Twas the Night BEFORE the night before Christmas

Twas the night before the night before Christmas

and all through JD Watts' house you could find

 little signs of the holiday just waiting

to come out and bring smiles divine

The dressing bread was all broken

waiting for tomorrow when

veggies and herbs and oysters

would serve to make it heaven.

In her closet were tons of small trinkets

to go in the stocking the next night

for two little angels to find

when they wake from their slumbering night.

Oh JD Watts was excited

for giving was something she loved

and so before the festivities begin

she wanted to make sure you were all hugged!

Have a wonderful Christmas full of love and joy! Savor these moment because they are precious and few and once past can never be recaptured again. Don't stress or get distracted and miss it all in the fervor. Thank you my awesome readers and friends for your words, your time, and your care! Merry Christmas from me and mine!

Love
J.D. Watts

Let's Go to the Hop! (The TWCS Christmas Blog Hop that is)

Welcome to the third day of the TWCS Christmas Author Blog Hop! I’m J.D Watts, author of the Children of Creation Series. So glad you could stop by and check out my blog and I’d love it if you clicked the follow button on the Left right under the ABOUT ME section. If this is your first stop on the Blog Hop, then be sure to read the information below the asterisks to find out how to catch up and gather the clues for your chance to win one of several paperback books or some great TWCS swag! Below that beside the *!* is another note you might want to take time to check out if you’re at all interested in special exclusive content and sneak peeks!

When planning all of this, we decided to all speak of our own traditions. Mine are unoriginal, but it really doesn’t take a lot of pomp and circumstance to make the season worthwhile. Church, my children’s plays, and family gatherings, and decorating the house with my kids more or less encompass what my Christmas week consists of and I am more than content with that. I love it. Thinking about all of these family gathering and traditions that I take part in every year, I found myself pondering my Children of Creation series characters. The way I spaced Convergence and Induction, Christmas sort of disappears in the space between the two books, never being broached or mentioned, so I thought as a special little treat, I might discuss how Ana, Nate, and Dani would have handled that first holiday together in their Rocky Mountain safe house. (Fair warning, there may be spoilers if you haven’t read Convergence or Induction yet.)

While one might think that there would be little Nate, Dani, and Ana could do to celebrate while trapped in the mountains as they were at the end of Convergence, Ana always found ways to recreate Dani’s childhood traditions to try to bring a sense of normalcy into her life even in the worst of situations. The same would be true in this case, and she would also have elves, ahem, sorry, I mean angel conspirators to help her. I am quite positive that Dani would go to sleep the night before Christmas Eve, while Ana was on guard duty, only to wake up to find a tree in the living room ready for them to decorate together with the myriad of supplies Ana had ordered up or requested to be brought from storage. They would work together while sipping on Ana’s famous hot chocolate. There would have undoubtedly been some smuggled in presents and a meal, and even though things at this point still would have been awkward between Nate and Dani, both she and Ana would have made a major effort to make Nate’s first ‘family’ Christmas a happy and memorable one.

Most important of all, however, considering the undercurrent of this story, they would have taken part in some sort of ceremony to celebrate the birth of Jesus. I envision singing songs by candlelight and reading the Christmas story, all typical traditions that were always a part of my own family’s celebrations and that sometimes became wrote with repetition and some seasons lost some of its impact. For this group, however, I believe that act would be so much powerful for them with all they knew and had seen first-hand, and especially for Dani having stood face to face with Jesus at the end of Convergence. Can you imagine how much more meaningful the entire celebration would be for her? I certainly can’t truly wrap my head around it, but I believe it would have been magnificent and humbling, making all of the other traditions we take part in seem so trivial in comparison.

I know that there are many people in the world who don’t celebrate Christmas as I do, or don’t celebrate it at all, but in my mind, Christmas is first and foremost about LOVE. Love for one another, love for the world, and love beyond all understanding. It makes me sad to know that love is sometimes clouded by people who don’t show that love as I feel it was intended. In my mind, Christians are supposed to be striving to be more like Jesus, and that means showing love to the world, even when you might not like what is happening, or feel that it is right. It is my belief that the whole purpose of sending Jesus was about LOVE, love for us, forgiveness for us, and we should be putting that out into the world instead of hate.
I end this post by sending hugs and positive thoughts your way this Christmas Season. Whether you believe in the same things as me or not, I hope you feel LOVED!

********
Dec. 12 Veronica Breville
Dec. 13 Kathryn Gayle
Dec. 14 JD Watts
Dec. 15 Michele Richard
Dec. 16 Jennifer Schmidt
Dec. 17 Sophia Duane
Dec. 19 Sherri Hayes
Dec. 20 Michelle Birbeck
Dec. 21 Lindsey Gray
Dec. 22 C. M. Smith
Dec. 23 E. L. James

TWCS Author Blog Hop - Our authors are sharing holiday traditions Dec. 12 - 23. Each day an author will post on their blog a personal holiday tradition or a holiday tradition of their characters. They will also post the blog hop icon. You will notice in the bottom right hand corner of the icon a holiday/winter object. You will need to write these objects down and keep the list handy. In addition to great giveaways happening each day on the authors' blogs, we will have a grand prize drawing on TWCS's website. To enter the grand prize drawing you will need to have collected all 11 objects.

What is the grand prize? An ebook of Season of Love, your choice of paperback (Connected, Take This Regret, Slave, or Fourteen), TWCS coffee mug, bookmarks (many are signed by the author). TWCS pen and notepad.

Sounds like fun? Then get out a notepad, note that today's item is Candy Canes, then click on the links for Veronica and Kathryn to get caught up and you're ready to join in the fun and have the chance to win some great stuff!

*!* Additional side note…if you haven’t done so already, now is a perfect time to join my fan club on Facebook as I will be releasing an exclusive first peek as a Christmas present to those members months before the rest of the world sees it!

The Most Wonderful Time of the Year (to pull your hair out)

Okay, I'm only half teasing here. I LOVE this time of the year. Christmas is my absolute most favoritest holiday ever! (Yes, I know that's not a real word, but I'm attempting to relay my enthusiasm here so let's just pretend.) I've had my house decorated for weeks, have purchased all of the presents and have them wrapped under the tree, etc, etc,and yet, no matter how organized or prepared I am, there's always more to do. My latest project for the past two days is making Angel's wings for my daughter for the Christmas Pageant at church in two weeks. She doesn't even have a speaking role, but she was so excited that I just had to get my hands on a halo (which had to be fluffy because that was what the kids at the other church she visited recently was going to have)and somehow create a set of Angel's wings for her to wear. I'm actually just grateful that I didn't have to somehow come up with a gown, but they had some in storage from years past. Some poster board, white ribbon, a little hot glue, one wooden heart hidden in my old crafting supplies, and some gold glitter glue later and I am now watching my 'masterpiece' dry. While my mom marvels at my creativity, I find myself looking at it thinking, my sister-in-law the artist probably would have come up with something much better, but it's decent, considering I have the small motor skills God gave a toddler. Oh well, at least when the day comes that my kids need to come up with some kind of creative writing project, I'll be able to really help them knock it out of the park. In the meantime, I hope they're happy with slightly wavering glitter glue lines!

As far as writing, I did get another 2,000 words of Maelstrom done the other night. I'm attending an online Social Media training seminar tonight and hope to get some time between all of the shuttling kids back and forth to school, musical practice, etc to get a little more done. In the same breath though, I'm going to savor these next few weeks with my kids, going on drives to see the Christmas lights, singing Christmas songs before bedtime, and in the midst of the ever mounting obligations and expectations reminding myself and my kids of the real reason for the season.