Christmas Day has past and we’re in that kind of “limbo” time between Christmas and New Year’s. It’s not really a vacation time for most people because businesses go back to their normal schedules come Monday (if they didn’t today) and most people have to go back to work.

Beloved is in academia again, so our lives revolve around the school year even more than they would with just the kids. His work is on hold until after the holiday, like the Boy’s. The Girl doesn’t go back to college until sometime the middle of January, so it seems to me like the rest of the world should be on vacation, too.

I’m working on my new contemporary romance, The Fairy Godmother’s Bridesmaid Dress. I’m pretty sure that title won’t last as I’m planning a series using the same dress, and they can’t all be titled that.

I’m trying to get over my “fear of the blank page.” I kinda worry about starting something new because I’m a little concerned I won’t actually be able to finish.

Even after having two books published, I’m not sure whether I’m a pantser or a plotter. I started writing this book after I had a dream about a bridesmaid dress left in a bathroom and I woke up and wondered what would happen if the dress was somehow magic and when worn, it would lead a woman to her true soul mate.

When I was isolated for the radioactive iodine treatment, I wrote three chapters and the book seemed to sail along smoothly. However, I got farther into it and the bumps showed up. Now I’m going back and reworking some of the motivations and things.

Beloved has finished his book. Yay! And now he’s back to reading Sword & Illusion. Our plan is that I will have it done by my birthday in February.

I’ve been feeling a little down lately because we’re here at the end of 2008 and I don’t really seem that I’m any further along in any of my goals than I was last year at this time. I hope that by getting S&I finished by the time I turn 50 I can get some of my confidence back.

I write clean books.

Neither of the books I’ve published have anything graphic, sexually, in them. One is an inspirational romance and the other is a fantasy. Both are completely wholesome enough for your teenager or your grandmother to read. Even your priest, if he’s interested.

Does that make me weird?

Recently I did a chat on the Catholic Writers’ Guild. I was asked how I, as a devout Catholic, deal with my writer friends who write erotica. Do I see my friendship as an evangelization opportunity.

Well, I don’t. I see my writer friends as my writer friends, not as a potential mission field. I’m not shy about my beliefs, either, however. They all know that I write clean, and I think it shocks them a little that I know words like “erection.” Hello? Married almost 22 years, teach Natural Family Planning, have a kid??

The way I “deal” with the erotica authors is the same way I deal with this historical authors, except I probably won’t buy any of the erotica authors’ books. I have a couple of critique partners who write “a bit” hotter than I do. At least one considers herself an erotica author. She’s the one who’s been helping me the most on my current work in progress.

She asked me, jokingly, a couple of weeks ago, if I’d read her newest work for critiquing purposes. I said, without blinking, that I would. I won’t pay money for it, but I’d be happy to help her out as she’s been helping me.

Today our writers’ group had its annual Christmas lunch/party. One of our members brought a bunch of books to give away. One was a Love Inspired. I knew no one else would want to take it, probably, but I have so many books I’ll probably be reading them on the way to my funeral if I want to get them finished. I wonder if we can take books to heaven??

Anyway, I passed it to someone else and one member, unpublished, but well known for her legendary 40 page foreplay scene, took one look at it and said, “Oh, I can’t take an inspirational!” and passed it back to me.

I don’t feel comfortable writing sex scenes, even much less graphic than erotica. I don’t feel comfortable writing unmarried sex or even married sex scenes. I’m a big “close the bedroom” door writer, but right now I’m feeling like I’m going against the tide.

My latest book is not an inspirational. I have a little more sexual tension than inspirationals allow, but I won’t have my characters go to bed together and I won’t have them even remove clothing, but I think there are some “hotter” spots, if only because of their awareness of one another.

However, because it’s clean, it kinda makes me the odd “man” out among my writing friends, and frankly, I really HATE being seen as the one we have to be careful around because “she writes sweet.” I’m just a normal person, like they are. I’d never consider an erotic author to be “easy” or “a tramp” (to use a nicer word than the one I’m thinking). I don’t want to be considered the straight laced repressed schoolmarm.

I asked my husband if my writing choices make me weird, and in his own loving way he said, “You’re merely a Psychotic Puritanical Prude.”

What do you guys think?