Here’s to my lack of a Musings post on this first Monday in 2012! A friend in my TwitterWorld sent this to me today and I found myself laughing out loud. This is soooo me today!

I have no excuses for not launching this new year right with a proper Monday Musings. Oh, wait, I *do* have excuses but you don’t really want to hear them.

I had all of these good intentions going into the holidays:

1.  I was going to get ahead of myself on my Monday Musings blog posts instead of scrambling every weekend when I don’t have time to write. My poor husband does occasionally need more company than the dust bunnies who are building a thousand acre ranch — hey, to those little rascals it is 1,000 acres — across our house.

2.  I wanted to launch my new **Author Special** feature on Karen’s Killer Fixin’s, introducing my many author friends and their favorite recipes. Yes, it’s an excuse to fill my recipe book with more goodies, my library with more TBRs, but shhh, we won’t tell them I have ulterior motives besides entertaining you.

3.  I was going to finally get my 2011 RomCon photos up on my website so everyone will see how much fun we had so they’ll come play with me, ahem, us in June for 2012 RomCon. Ya think anyone will notice if I just mix them up with June’s event?

4.  I wanted to finish the last edits and formatting on my contemporary romance, SATIN PLEASURES, get the cover finalized, and publish it by December 31st. Wow, I’m sooo in trouble if that old adage, “Go out of the old year as you mean to go into the new one”, rings true. I must…I must…I must improve my….oh wait, wrong ditty.

5.  I must get back to telling Patrick and Rachel’s story in KILLING SECRETS.  The serial killer in my head is getting impatient and screaming to get out on the page so he can…well, can’t tell you that. I’m keeping his secrets so I don’t end up as one of his victims.

6.  I was going to….

Well, you get the picture…and the lash of the wet noodle is already chafing my knuckles. Ah, the pain of it all!

I’m happy to report I did get one of these items checked off. If you missed it last Friday, check out Karen’s Killer Fixin’s **Author Special** highlighting author, Lizzie T. Leaf, and her wonderful recipe for Spinach Artichoke Dip. Can’t wait to make the dip and share (maybe) with my husband. I also have Lizzie’s book sitting at my elbow TBR asap. It’s one I’m dying to read.  It’s even autographed!

Happily, I’ve already scheduled two more authors to come visit us with recipes so watch for those in the coming weeks. I’ll post them every other week until I run out of authors and recipes…which I hope won’t be anytime soon. If  you’re an author reading this, please give me a private shout at karendocter@yahoo.com and we’ll schedule a visit. I hope you all enjoy the special visits as much as I will.

As for the rest of my To-Do list, I’m just going to plug along until I get caught up. When this blog posts, I’ll have #1 done.  Well, sort of. I’ve got a week to get the next one done, right? Those sneaky semantics! Don’t you just love words?! 🙂

With hard editing/formatting, a swift cover artist, and a little bit of luck, my cute contemporary romance, SATIN PLEASURES, will be published in the next week or two. I hope you’ll check it out when I shout to the world that it’s ready for prime time.

As for #5, I need to hurry and clear the decks because that pesky killer isn’t going to shut up in my head until I wrangle him onto the page. The last thing you all want is for me to end up in the rubber room with those pretty hugging sleeves keeping me safe. I can’t type worth a damn in the silly things.

Happy New Year, my friends!