Sorry for the long hiatus, everyone!  My life has been a bit chaotic lately.  Where have I been and what have I been up to, you ask?

In a nutshell, I’ve been busy brewing a small human being for the last nine months, and in a few weeks (plus or minus), Baby Girl should finally be gracing us with her presence!  That’s right, ladies and gents: I’m pregnant!  Very, very, very pregnant.

We went from THIS:

January 2014, our first ultrasound. Baby Girl had been brewing for about 6 weeks here!

To THIS:

Early July 2014. Look at the size of that belly! And this photo is from 3 weeks ago!

I’ve been very lucky to have an incredibly supportive husband who has been waiting on me hand and foot since we got the news back in early December.  It’s a good thing, too, because the first five months of pregnancy were pretty hard for me.  I had morning sickness well into my 2nd trimester, and it was the all-day kind.  The kind that eventually landed me in the E.R. and required medication to keep in check.

Luckily that stage of the pregnancy is long gone, and now all I have to deal with is the sore muscles, ache-y back, swollen ankles, fatigue, and the occasional kick to the cervix/ribs/bladder when I’m trying to give a presentation at work.

All kidding aside, though, it’s actually been quite wonderful overall (and I’ll take the occasional kick to the bladder over nausea any day!).

Jamba Juice Mama.

Our friends and family have all been wonderfully supportive as well, and we’ve been lucky to receive a lot of hand-me-downs and baby shower gifts to help prepare our home for the new member of the family.

We’ve got the crib set up, the stroller and car seat assembled and ready to go, a stash of diapers (both reusable and disposable), and enough baby clothes that Baby Girl probably won’t have to wear anything more than once for the first 6 months of her life!

Now it’s just a matter of waiting until she arrives. As nice as it will be to finally be able to sleep on my belly or back, and to walk across the house without getting out of breath, and see my toes again, I’m not in a huge rush yet.  There is still plenty to do to be better prepared before she arrives. My husband is almost finished installing new hardwood (laminate) flooring in our condo, the kitchen could use a good scrubbing, and I could use all the time I can get to prepare my day-job colleagues for my maternity leave.  But I suppose that will always be the case; one can never actually be 100% prepared for a baby.  That’s half the fun: expecting the unexpected!

Ready or not, baby, here you come!

So, thank you for your patience while we finish creating this new life and bringing her into this wonderful world of ours.

And stay tuned for some exciting writing-related news!  Believe it or not, I managed to write a steamy, contemporary romance novella during all of this pregnancy chaos, and it will be hitting e-shelves this autumn as part of the SEDUCTION anthology.  Check back soon for a sneak peek of the cover art and release date!