When the going gets tough, the tough run away from home.  That's what I do, anyway, when a book deadline is closing in on me and life's distractions are getting in the way.  Who needs clean clothes, a clean house, or food anyway?

Seriously, there has been a lot going on in my life the past few months.  Most of you know about my best friend's son who was hit by a drunk driver (and he is doing much better!), and then, of course, there were the holidays.  Well, I never missed a deadline the entire time I was a newspaper reporter, so I have no plans to miss a book deadline.  So, I needed to GO AWAY FOR A FEW DAYS!

My bestest writer friend, Carol, saved the day when she snagged us a house on Tiki Island near Galveston, Texas.  Actually, I think we have her husband, Ronnie, to thank for this...and ultimately the owners of the house - Taylor and Michelle.  Did I mention that our stay in this tropical paradise was FREE? 

It rained 90% of the time we were there with winds gusting up to almost 40 mph.  Felt like a hurricane was coming in!  But, it was the perfect writing weather!  If it had been nice weather, we might have been tempted to actually leave, join the living, take a shower, put on makeup, get out of our sweatpants, etc...  But, instead...I broke my ALL-TIME writing record.  Yesterday, I wrote 8300 words, putting me at a total of 21,000 for our long weekend.  Contractually, I'm only required to have 75,000 words, but for the life of me, I can't seem to squeeze a story into that word count, and all my books run closer to 85,000 or 90,000 words. 

Here are a few pics from our trip.  There are no pics of me.  You hear about those scary-type pics of people showing up all over the Internet.  My appearance over the weekend would have scared folks, for sure.  However, I thought my friend, Carol, looked real cute curled up with her blankie writing...LOL. 

	The living room in our tropical paradise.
	Kitchen - where we consumed cheese dip, candy, and tons of Diet Coke. Energy Food!
	View from the upper deck.
	Carol will likely want to kill me for posting this pic of her and her blankie, but it's just so cute.  She knocked out TONS of word count as well.

HUGE THANKS TO TAYLOR AND MICHELLE FOR SHARING YOUR WONDERFUL HOME WITH US!

Have a great week everyone!

Blessings, Beth