It’s a big winner list today since we’re catching up from two weeks of contests. Congratulations to all of our winners, and thank you to everyone for reading!

From Monday’s (July 25th) blog, the winner of a signed copies of Jen’s books, NIGHT MAGIC and SINFUL MAGIC, is comment #38 Elaing8. Congratulations Elaing8!  Please email Jen at Jenapodaca@aol.com with your mailing address.

Any one who commented on Debra webb’s Going to the Chapel post on Tuesday is a winner! Contact Deb at debraewebb@aol.com if you haven’t already for your free book!

Lori’s winner of the candy package is commenter #45, Sarah! Email Lori –info@loriarmstrong.com so she can mail out your delicious gummy fish and worms

Congratulations to the winners from Laura Griffin’s blog Friday. Laura Kay (commenter #14) won a signed copy of UNFORGIVABLE. And Karen (commenter #4) was the first to correctly identify the Scrabble word score for “murder” as being 18 points. Karen won a $15 gift card to Starbucks. Winners, please contact laura@lauragriffin.com with your mailing address and she will send your prize!

The winner of the entire Guardian Angelino trilogy is Lori Van Buren, commenter #7.  Congrats, Lori!  Please email Rocki at roxannestc@cfl.rr.com with your mailing info!

Congrats to Mary Preston, the winner of a book of your choice by Kristan Higgins. Email your address to sophie@sophielittlefield.com, along with the title you’d like (or if you’d like me to choose for you!)

My family, on occasion, can be a wee bit geeky. I’ll be the first to admit it. We tote books everywhere we go. We’ve been known to get up from the dinner table to look up a word. Some of us wear tube socks, and have the tan lines to prove it.

But perhaps the most shining example of our geekiness is that whenever we have family reunions, we become vicious gamers.

No, I’m not talking cool games, such as Angry Birds or Mario Kart or Zombie Gunship. No, we play table games: Scrabble, mahjong, Risk, Monopoly, Yatzee. We get very serious about it, sometimes to the point of people not speaking to one another for a few hours–which doesn’t always go over well with the cook when it’s time to sit down for Thanksgiving dinner. But that’s just the way we are. Super geeky, super competitive, and super serious game-players.

I thought we’d about reached our maximum of un-hipness when we spent most of our last summer vacation together playing Scrabble (which, in case you don’t know, has some fun variations not to be played sober or while there are grandparents around). But then my sister blew that illusion when she called me last December to tell me what she wanted for Christmas. I had drawn her name out of the hat, so it was my turn to get her a gift in our family gift exchange.

“The Settlers of Catan with the seafaring expansion pack.”

“The who?”

“Settlers of Catan. The Seafaring Edition. It’s at the top of my Christmas list.”

So being the cool sister that I am, I hopped online and ordered it for her. Good thing I did, too, because it was in such high demand that many places had it backordered. Anyway, the thing arrived on my doorstep. I took one look at it and decided it wasn’t for me. You know, the package was very medieval-looking and the cards talked about plagues and villages and I knew right away this was one game I would NOT be wasting my Christmas holiday playing.

Wrong.

We played for hours. And hours. We actually became sad when the visit wrapped up and we had to put the game away because it marked the end of our too-short family reunion. Back to the real world.

Which brings me to the real reason we’re such game nuts in our family. It’s because we like each other, and it’s a fun way to spend time together and catch up. Games give us a chance to sit around a table and drink and eat and laugh with people we don’t see very often. And when reality isn’t fun to talk about for whatever reason, we can still be together and focus on the game.

Our next family reunion is this weekend, and I’m so excited. My sister and her family are coming in from overseas, and my parents and other relatives are gathering at my house for a few days. I can’t wait to see everyone. I’ve got my bar stocked, my chocolate-chip cookies baked, and my games all dusted off and ready to go. As we approach our fourteenth day of 100-plus temperatures in Austin, I’m looking forward spending some time indoors instead of roasting in the heat.

Does your family play games? What are they?

Anyone who leaves a comment is entered to win a signed copy of  my latest book, UNFORGIVABLE.

And just in case you doubted what I said about geekiness, I’m playing a game today here on the blog. Whoever wins will get a $15 gift card to Starbucks:

Look at the Scrabble board below and tell me the point value of the word “murder” in Murder She Writes. First person to get it right wins the gift card, anyone who comments at all gets a chance to win the book.

Good luck!

That’s my story, and I’m sticking to it.

I’m not a big game player out there in the big ol interwebs. I was never one to get hooked into all of the role-playing games because I know myself too well: I can [and this will come as a complete shock to you all, I just know]… get a little, how shall we say… competitive about winning. And I knew that, in those role-playing games, it could take a tremendous amount of time to win, and if I didn’t win, then it would take that much more time to build back up to the point where I might win the next time, and before you know it, I’d be one of those cat ladies with sixteen billion cats, living in someone’s basement, yelling at the TV screen while affirming that I had the Power of Glock, for crying out loud, which gave me three Triple Threat Crags of Doom to unleash on that bony vampire’s ass. Or something. I don’t know, it wouldn’t be pretty.

But like anyone, when I need to wait in line for a few minutes, or just need to kill five minutes or so, I’ll have a game on my phone. I’ve purposefully purchased games that are quick and easy to play and fast to finish, so they don’t become a time suck.

Or so I thought.

Then enter Soduku for the phone, with it’s clever little ways of lighting up the tiles you’re looking for, so you don’t inadvertently play one in a square where it’s already been played. It was an innocent thing, really, just futzing with numbers in a square. And then? Then I noticed it, the evilness, the siren call to the other side: there were stats. Stats that told you how many games you had won in a row of a certain level. And worse? There were national stats that you could compare what you had accomplished to everyone else out there in the big ol universe, and how they were doing.

I was playing on the expert level. I had, at that point, won about 70+ games in a row (it’s called a “run”) without losing any (losing = a “broken run”). The highest guy? had over 300 games. THREE HUNDRED. That’s not that far away from 70, I thought. [You see where this is going, don't you?] I started playing a little more often, and I figured out how to keep myself from losing a game, thereby breaking a run… by simply quitting a game once I had three strikes. (Four strikes breaks the run, but there’s no penalty for stopping a game and starting a new one.) Before you know it, I had 200 games, and then 250. The guy though, whoever he is (may he rot in hell) was up to 350, but I was gaining on him faster than he was winning. I could beat him. It wasn’t going to take me long…

300 games, and I was getting to be so freaking fast at winning, I could win the expert level in just 5 or so minutes, as opposed to the original 8 or 9 minutes that I was taking when I started out. [You do not get extra points for doing it faster, though, I learned, which is, frankly, NOT FAIR and WRONG.] Before you know it, I was at 350 (he was at 410) and then I was at 375, and closing, and then? Then it happened. I was distracted — I clicked on a tile when I already had the three strikes instead of ending that game and starting over and I BROKE THE RUN.

You would have thought someone had shot my dog, as upset as I was. I would have kicked you, if you’d been standing there. Yes, you. And your kitten. That’s how annoyed I was.

I think anyone can see why I don’t gamble. Not even one lottery ticket. Because there cannot be just one. Ever.

I was so aggravated that I had wasted all of that time, I deleted the game from my phone to stop myself from starting over, calculating how many games a day I had to win in order to beat this poor anonymous schmoe that had no clue I existed.

For several months, I managed to be game free. Mostly. Oh, there were the occasional dips into a word-find game I had found, but I can only see my own stats, so getting a few more points as a high score is nice, but I can’t seem to get over a certain plateau there, so that isn’t all that enticing to keep trying. I’ve stayed away from so many of the games that people talk about online, because I know just dipping one little toe will start the insanity again (is there an AA type of program for Gamers? there should be.)

Then it happened. We were at RWA and I noticed a certain someone playing Words With Friends on her iPad and I thought, “Hey, that looks like fun,” and we started a game. And I lost, which, frankly, I kinda suck at it, so that’s no surprise. Then we played another and another (and Words automatically allows you to create a re-match when you’ve lost a game) and before I knew what had happened, we were playing two games at a time. (I’ve been losing most of them.) Then my son challenged me (and he keeps beating me, the little snake), and I find myself hovering, waiting for one of them to play and I have won maybe three whole games (maybe), but each time I win, there’s this tiny little part of my brain that wonders if I could win two in a row… and then three… and then…

It’s an illness. You know it’s an illness when you yell at your innocent electronic device that Jedi is so TOO a word and then you put that up on Facebook and a lot of people commiserate, because they had tried to use Jedi, also, and had been denied. Which, frankly, just goes to prove that Words for Friends is EVIL and of the DARK SIDE, and I have been lured, I tell you. LURED.

I’m not even going to tell you my sign-up name because if you challenge me? I will have to play, because maybe, maybe, I could beat you. And then you, and you over there in the corner with your evil smile and 2 billion score on your verbal SATs… yes, I could even become good enough to smoke YOU and your twitchy fingers, and then all of them, over there, on some other continent, I could beat them, TOO, [because SURELY I, a friggin WRITER, know more words in English than someone in, say, BUDAPEST, right? right? tell me I'm right!]… and then become, like, the WORLD CHAMPION and then maybe the CHAMPION OF THE UNIVERSE and RULE FOREVER, my title not to be taken….

I may need to go lie down. The nice men in the white coats have given me something quite lovely to drink.

Meanwhile, what games are your vices? (You must have one! C’mon, fess up.)

I’ve been sleeping in this summer. Staying up late. Living the life of the wastrel.

Not today, though! At 5:30, the alarm went off and I shuffled out of bed to drive Junior to a neighboring town where a very nice (organized, nicely-dressed, cheery) mom was going to drive our children off to camp.

I got home just in time for Junior to call me and ask where her medical forms were. You know, the ones required for camp. The ones the organizers had demanded, at the end of a longish email, one of the dozens they’ve sent in recent months containing all kinds of REALLY CRITICAL information like “don’t forget to bring a basketball!” (this is a music camp).

I was flustered. The camp’s a couple of hours away. I imagined my lovely writing time frittering away if I had to spend the day driving the blasted forms there…and squeezed my eyes shut realllllly tight and said “remember how i asked you to make sure all your paperwork was turned in for camp?” You can imagine how that went over (if you are raising a 16-year-old gorgon child of your own). I drove to the copy shop (we are the last household in america that is not fax-enabled), all the way feeling that terrific guilt/chagrin/irritation combo that’s a parent’s eternal gift-with-purchase – crossed my fingers, wrote a realllly apologetic cover page to the camp bosses, and faxed the forms. And turned my cell phone off, just to make sure that Junior is now their problem, not mine.

Okay, it wasn’t too late to redeem my day, I thought. On the passenger seat of my car was my Smog Check form. (Here in California, we subject our cars to a battery of really expensive and confusing tests every year, involving entire warehouses full of machinery and legions of coverall-wearing technicians, in an effort to help keep the unemployment in line. Y’all got folks out of work in your state? No problem, send ‘em over here, via WyoTech for a quickie how-to, and they can help keep our fleet in tip-top shape.)

I’ll just check this off the to-do list while I’m out, I thought, smiling at the thought that I could be just as efficient as that other, nicer, fancier mom who was even now shuttling a car full of teen harpies southbound.

I *did* have a brief moment of doubt when I realized I was still wearing the 5:30am outfit, which consists of a decade-old pair of sweatpants whose waistband is perfectly stretched to fit just *under* my er, rather generous tummy and the bright green sweatshirt I purchased so I could be a proper Wolf booster at lacrosse games (Go San Ramon! Go Green and Gold!) but which looks pretty ludicrous anywhere else.

Ah well. It’s just the smog guy, right? Oho ho ho, he won’t care what I look like. So, I wait my turn, patiently enough, and then I wait the other guy’s turn who managed to jump in front of me in line. Whatever, I had a book. Eventually the smog guy comes into the waiting room with an eyebrow raised and drawls “so, little darlin’, where do you think you might have left your gas cap?”
“Ha ha,” I gamely chuckle, going along with the joke. I lose my gas cap every few months or so. Just, you know, thinking too much while standing around pumping gas, it could happen to anyone. No matter, there’s an internet outfit who’s got me on their auto-delivery program, all’s fine! Where do I sign, and I’ll be on my way, fine sir!

Not so fast. Turns out I can’t have my paperwork until he inspects my gas cap. Cause the smog…which he’s just certified my car doesn’t produce…could somehow sneak out through the hole. Or something.
Did I mention it costs ninety bucks to have a smog check? I’m despairing at the thought of coming back another day, waiting in another line, writing another check, and I – almost tearfully – cause it’s been that kind of week – ask if there is ANY way we can figure this out, and Mr. Jolly jerks a thumb down the road and says “yep, if you want to walk all the way down to the auto parts store and back, but I can’t wait all day, y’know.”

Which is how I came to be stumble-jogging along in my flip-flops several miles (okay, no, I don’t know for a FACT it was miles, but it was really, really far!) down the busiest street in our town around lunchtime today. Maybe you saw me? I was the one with the ponytail that was half falling out because I used one of Junior’s stretched-out elastics – last night’s makeup under my eyes (don’t tell my eye doctor, he made me *swear* I’d do better after that nasty infection) – holding my sweatpants up with one hand and clutching my paperwork in the other.
But here is why it was all okay.
Back in the waiting room, I’d been reading a Kristan Higgins book. Voila – the real point of this post. There’s a reason that every single person who ever reads Kristan’s work falls in love with it: her heroines are US. They are hapless. Messy. Unlucky. They make bad decisions and are never prepared and snark when they should be understanding and get scared when bravery is called for. They mean well, but they’ve usually got a lot more in the way of intentions than follow-through. Sure, I felt like an idiot arriving at the auto parts shop out of breath and looking like I escaped max-security housewife jail, but – at least in fiction-land – I had *company*. In Kristan’s stories, gals just like you and me have bad days and get disappointed and make fools of themselves (oh, do they ever!) but in the end, everything is somehow all right.
I was also thinking of that Susan Elizabeth Phillips novel that begins with the beaver suit on the side of the road…you know the one.
In my real life version, I drag my figurative beaver-tail behind me through the rest of the day, and there’s no well-muscled ex-con carpenter to fall conveniently in love with me as a reward, but that’s okay. I actually felt just fine as I finally got my DMV paperwork stamped and sent, because Kristan Higgins allows me to feel almost, well, hero(ine)ic about my own ordinariness.

So, anybody else had a less-than-sterling day lately? Do share….I’ll send the winner your very own Higgins novel to help you ward off the bad-day blues.

I’m certain you all know about my younger daughter’s upcoming wedding. The dress was bought last year, the chapel reserved back in January but we didn’t get into the execution phase of all the small details until just recently for reasons mostly related to simply being overwhelmed in general by life. And boy, are we scrambling now! Bride’s maids dresses had to be selected, fitted and
ordered. Shoes had to be picked out for said maids. Dozens of little details (like the way the bride’s dress is bustled–I’m not sure that’s really a verb but you know what I mean). It was an exciting afternoon at the bridal shop. Exciting and emotional. At one point someone was playing Johann Pachelbel’s Canon in D major which is the music selected for the bridal party’s walk down (or up in this case since
it’s outside and there’s a little incline) the aisle. It’s beautiful and elegant and classic and I cried like a baby right there in the middle of the store.

During this same afternoon the bride’s dress was checked for needed adjustments (including those bustle thingies). Of course seeing my baby in that dress was another heart squeezing moment. Many of us were teary-eyed (there was 13 of “us” in all counting parents, aunts, etc). The only painful moment for me (other than the one at the cash register) was when, after the needed alterations were all pinned, the seamstress said, “We have to be very careful now so that none of the pinning is disturbed. Mom, would you like to help the bride out of her dress?” My aching heart sank right to the floor. This is one of the biggest moments in my child’s life (like graduating from nursing school last August) but you need two good hands to carefully remove mounds and layers of silk and lace without disturbing those little pins. The realization that I could not do the job hurt, just as it did last year when I was unable to
attend her graduation. Yet, in that split second of paralyzing agony as I gazed upon my gorgeous daughter in that lovely dress that represents one of the most important steps she will ever take, I decided that I was not about to bested. I blinked back the tears, lifted my chin and said to one of my dearest friends, “I need you to help me.” We crowded into that dressing room and, with no shortage of awkwardness but with pins still intact, we got the job done. The happiness and excitement in my daughter’s eyes lifted my heart with sheer joy. It was a beautiful afternoon and I will cherish those moments for the rest of my life.

Rushing to finalize all these wedding details reminded me of a story I wrote a long time ago. In fact, I wrote several short contemporary romances for Kensington’s Precious Gems line while trying to break into romantic suspense. The books were sold only in Wal-Mart. Eventually the line closed and I was left with one story that was never published, GOING TO THE CHAPEL. By that time I was contracted to write the Colby Agency so I just put the story aside and never looked back. Until a few weeks ago. I smiled many times as I read the story, one of my first works. I did a little polishing and had a lovely cover created by a fabulous designer!  This orphaned story is now available as an e-book on Amazon, BN.com, Smashwords, et al. Today I’m giving a digital copy of this sassy little romance to anyone who comments! What’s your most memorable experience with weddings? I want to hear all the funny, bittersweet, calm or crazy details! After commenting, be sure to email me at debraewebb@aol.com for your free book! Everyone’s a winner!