If something, that in the past you were doing because it gave you joy, no longer gives you joy, you can stop doing that something.

If something, that in the past you were doing because it earned you much needed cash, no longer earns you much needed cash, you can stop doing that something also.

You don’t have to read an entire book series. You don’t have to spend your entire working life at the same job. You don’t have to finish a movie. You don’t have to eat the whole cake. (Yes, I heard that gasp. – grins) You don’t have to continue a side hustle. You don’t have to separate lights and darks while doing the laundry this week.

If it no longer serves you (makes you happy or earns you an income or…), you can stop. You have that ability.

Stopping that action will also free up your time and energy for something else. Which is an awesome gift to yourself!

We often talk about discovering intelligent life.

But what is intelligence?

Is someone who can memorize 1,000 facts more intelligent than someone who can take apart an engine and figure out how it works? Is a species that creates art while destroying their home more intelligent than a species that focuses on obtaining food while remaining in balance with the world around them? Is someone who can do complex math more intelligent than someone who easily learns languages?

What do YOUR characters believe intelligence is? And, by their own definition, are THEY intelligent?

I have completed the first draft of the 9th installment of the Super Secret Project. Woot! I am also now almost halfway done the second draft. Yep, it is flying. (smiles)

Have a wonderful week, my friends. (big hugs) This is Halloween month for many of us. Wear something orange or black or both. (grins) Read a paranormal romance with a hunky wolf shifter or monster hero or heroine. Let the spiders have their cobwebs. Celebrate this spooky month!

Cyborg Sizzle Escape Omnibus

Half Man. Half Machine. All Theirs.
* * *
While these cyborg warriors battle to escape their cruel manufacturers, they find the human females they are destined to love for all eternity.
This omnibus includes the first seven stories in the Cyborg Sizzle series: Releasing Rage, Breathing Vapor, Being Green, Crash And Burn, Defying Death, Chasing Mayhem and Jumping Barrel.
All of these Cyborg Romances are set in a dark, gritty, often violent universe.

Releasing Rage

Rage, the Humanoid Alliance’s most primitive cyborg, has two goals–kill all of the humans on his battle station and escape to the Homeland. The warrior has seen the darkness in others and in himself. He believes that’s all he’s been programmed to experience.
Until he meets Joan.

Breathing Vapor

Vapor is the most advanced cyborg the Humanoid Alliance has ever developed. He’s a finely honed weapon, a warrior without parallel, half man and half machine. No lock can contain him. No being can stop him. Whatever he wants, he takes.
He wants Mira Breazeal, the Designer’s daughter.

Being Green

Green, a cyborg warrior, cares for one being—his plant Windy. When Windy becomes sick, he’ll do anything to heal her, even venture across the universe to visit a worlds-renowned plant doctor.
He doesn’t expect to find love.

Crash And Burn

Crash was manufactured to be one of the best warriors in the universe. The cyborg has spent many human lifespans fighting the enemy. But, unlike his battle-loving brethren, he doesn’t enjoy killing. When he escapes the Humanoid Alliance, he vows to never end another life.
Then he meets Safyre, an infuriating human female, and he considers breaking his vow.

Defying Death

Cyborgs don’t show emotion. Death learned that lesson early in his long lifespan. To survive, he hides his fierce passions behind a stoic wall. He calls no warrior friend. He never admits to caring for any being.
Even the human female he’s destined to love.

Chasing Mayhem

Mayhem has spent his lengthy lifespan obeying the Humanoid Alliance’s rules. Finally free from their cruel control, the cyborg warrior plans to cause chaos. He infiltrates a remote settlement, provokes the savage locals until they want him dead, and allows himself to be captured by the sexiest little Retriever he has ever laid his mechanically-enhanced eyes on.

Jumping Barrel

Barrel requires an Expert for the Tau Cetian orphans. He’s looking for a female who is willing to commit to a lifespan-long role, who is comfortable with moving off planet, and who, preferably, has the ability to speak the offsprings’ first language.
His female, however, is looking for a hero.

Buy Now:
Amazon US:
https://www.amazon.com/Cyborg-Sizzle-Escape-Omnibus-Continuum-ebook/dp/B081VFHF1S

Amazon UK:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Cyborg-Sizzle-Escape-Omnibus-Continuum-ebook/dp/B081VFHF1S

Amazon AUS:
https://www.amazon.com.au/Cyborg-Sizzle-Escape-Omnibus-Continuum-ebook/dp/B081VFHF1S

Amazon Canada:
https://www.amazon.ca/Cyborg-Sizzle-Escape-Omnibus-Continuum-ebook/dp/B081VFHF1S

Apple Books:
https://books.apple.com/us/book/cyborg-sizzle-escape-omnibus/id1488934271

Kobo:
https://www.kobo.com/us/en/ebook/cyborg-sizzle-escape-omnibus

Smashwords:
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/992060

We have a tradition in our neighborhood.

If we have a large item for garbage pick up and it might, just might be, of use to someone else (like the scrap metal collectors), we put it out at the curb the day before pick up, often with a sign stating why it is being trashed.

And 8 out of 10 times, someone else CAN use it.

If it doesn’t hurt you in any way, give others a chance. Leave that already-read romance novel in the Little Free Library. Put out that potted plant you no longer want on the curb with a sign saying ‘Free to a good home.’ Let the traveler rushing to make their connecting flight exit the plane before you.

Give them a chance. Put that good energy out into the world.

(smiles)

If you’re trekking along a path (this could be a career path or a life path or an actual physical path)

and you realize the path isn’t for you,

maybe it leads to a place you no longer want to go or it is too rough or it’s too long or something else,

stop and turn around!

Backtracking is ALWAYS an option.

Sometimes we discover awesome things (about the world or ourselves) when we backtrack.

Heck, I backtrack in writing all the time. I’ll delete entire chapters and take my characters in another direction.

Life is an adventure. And adventure is NEVER a straight line OR all forward movement. It winds. It loops back. It backtracks.

You can do this too!

(grins)

Death does view himself as a bringer of death. He was manufactured to kill and that is all he believes he can do.

Until he meets a curvaceous human medic. She is intent on healing everyone around her…including Death himself.

Defying Death

He’ll risk it all for one moment of happiness.

Cyborgs don’t show emotion. Death learned that lesson early in his long lifespan. To survive, he hides his fierce passions behind a stoic wall. He calls no warrior friend. He never admits to caring for any being.

Even the human female he’s destined to love.

Tifara is Death’s obsession, his sole opportunity for happiness, to express the all-consuming passion burning brightly inside him. He’ll do anything to obtain the curvaceous medic: defy a direct order, abduct Tifara from her battle station, and wage war on his fellow cyborgs.

To earn her love, he’ll have to risk much, much more.

Buy Now:

Amazon US:
http://www.amazon.com/Defying-Death-Cyborg-Sizzle-Book-ebook/dp/B01D6OUQS2/

Amazon UK:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Defying-Death-Cyborg-Sizzle-Book-ebook/dp/B01D6OUQS2/

Amazon AUS:
https://www.amazon.com.au/Defying-Death-Cyborg-Sizzle-Book-ebook/dp/B01D6OUQS2/

Amazon Canada:

https://www.amazon.ca/Defying-Death-Cyborg-Sizzle-Book-ebook/dp/B01D6OUQS2/

Apple Books:
https://books.apple.com/us/book/defying-death/id1095072277

Kobo:
https://store.kobobooks.com/en-us/ebook/defying-death-2

The first year the Dear Wonderful Hubby and I had our backyard garden, it looked a bit…bare. It was mostly tomato plants and marigolds and nothing was planted between those tomato plants.

The second year, we had the tomato plants and the marigolds but we also added raspberries a perennial and some perennial flowers and a few more annual vegetables.

The third year, the raspberries and the perennial flowers returned. We didn’t have to plant them. So instead, we planted some more perennials, along with the tomatoes, marigolds, and other annuals.

The fourth year, those perennials came back also. So we added more perennials.

Years later, our garden is quite full. We have a base of perennials that come back whether we’re out in the garden or not. And we also have some plants that self seed. (We need to manage that a bit better which I will talk about in another post.)

Gardens build. They become fuller every year.

If this is your first year gardening, don’t get discouraged. Your garden will likely be fuller next year!

The Dear Wonderful Hubby and I are privileged, over the years, to have obtained too much stuff.

We have decided to declutter, giving our excess to charities or loved ones, sharing our bounty.

This is a BIG job.

But it doesn’t feel that way.

Because we’re decluttering 3 items every day. That’s our easy-to-meet quota.

Life isn’t all or nothing.

We don’t have to write a novel in a day or plant a garden in an afternoon or do all the laundry all at once.

We can write 200 words a day, plant a couple seeds, throw one load in the washing machine.

Do a little bit and watch those little bits add up.

(smiles)

If life is at all possible in a place, there will be a creature or plant or microbe or other being living there.

Moss grows on rocks in the middle of the rapids. A house spider lives in an otherwise sterile office. Microbes live their tiny lives on space stations. Heck, there are microbes on our faces right now (in our skin microbiome).

Our characters are never truly alone. And there’s always activity happening around them.

I continue to craft the first draft of the 9th installment of the Super Secret Project. I had to rewrite a bit of it. That happens. So I went ‘backwards.’

(smiles)

Some days or weeks or years, we do that – go backwards or, at least, we feel like it. And that’s okay. Life isn’t linear. We go forward. We go backward. We pause in place.

Have a wonderful week, my friends. (big hugs) If there’s some task you feel you’ve gone backwards in, accept that. Relish the place you’re currently at. This isn’t a race. Or a chess board. We’re allowed to move in any direction we need to move.

Cyborg Sizzle Escape Omnibus

Half Man. Half Machine. All Theirs.
* * *
While these cyborg warriors battle to escape their cruel manufacturers, they find the human females they are destined to love for all eternity.
This omnibus includes the first seven stories in the Cyborg Sizzle series: Releasing Rage, Breathing Vapor, Being Green, Crash And Burn, Defying Death, Chasing Mayhem and Jumping Barrel.
All of these Cyborg Romances are set in a dark, gritty, often violent universe.

Releasing Rage

Rage, the Humanoid Alliance’s most primitive cyborg, has two goals–kill all of the humans on his battle station and escape to the Homeland. The warrior has seen the darkness in others and in himself. He believes that’s all he’s been programmed to experience.
Until he meets Joan.

Breathing Vapor

Vapor is the most advanced cyborg the Humanoid Alliance has ever developed. He’s a finely honed weapon, a warrior without parallel, half man and half machine. No lock can contain him. No being can stop him. Whatever he wants, he takes.
He wants Mira Breazeal, the Designer’s daughter.

Being Green

Green, a cyborg warrior, cares for one being—his plant Windy. When Windy becomes sick, he’ll do anything to heal her, even venture across the universe to visit a worlds-renowned plant doctor.
He doesn’t expect to find love.

Crash And Burn

Crash was manufactured to be one of the best warriors in the universe. The cyborg has spent many human lifespans fighting the enemy. But, unlike his battle-loving brethren, he doesn’t enjoy killing. When he escapes the Humanoid Alliance, he vows to never end another life.
Then he meets Safyre, an infuriating human female, and he considers breaking his vow.

Defying Death

Cyborgs don’t show emotion. Death learned that lesson early in his long lifespan. To survive, he hides his fierce passions behind a stoic wall. He calls no warrior friend. He never admits to caring for any being.
Even the human female he’s destined to love.

Chasing Mayhem

Mayhem has spent his lengthy lifespan obeying the Humanoid Alliance’s rules. Finally free from their cruel control, the cyborg warrior plans to cause chaos. He infiltrates a remote settlement, provokes the savage locals until they want him dead, and allows himself to be captured by the sexiest little Retriever he has ever laid his mechanically-enhanced eyes on.

Jumping Barrel

Barrel requires an Expert for the Tau Cetian orphans. He’s looking for a female who is willing to commit to a lifespan-long role, who is comfortable with moving off planet, and who, preferably, has the ability to speak the offsprings’ first language.
His female, however, is looking for a hero.

Buy Now:
Amazon US:
https://www.amazon.com/Cyborg-Sizzle-Escape-Omnibus-Continuum-ebook/dp/B081VFHF1S

Amazon UK:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Cyborg-Sizzle-Escape-Omnibus-Continuum-ebook/dp/B081VFHF1S

Amazon AUS:
https://www.amazon.com.au/Cyborg-Sizzle-Escape-Omnibus-Continuum-ebook/dp/B081VFHF1S

Amazon Canada:
https://www.amazon.ca/Cyborg-Sizzle-Escape-Omnibus-Continuum-ebook/dp/B081VFHF1S

Apple Books:
https://books.apple.com/us/book/cyborg-sizzle-escape-omnibus/id1488934271

Kobo:
https://www.kobo.com/us/en/ebook/cyborg-sizzle-escape-omnibus

Smashwords:
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/992060