From across the room he turned his back, a coldness settling into him, his mind racing, desperate to repair the damage he had just done with one gray-eyed glance. He didn’t want any more smitten admirers. Why had he interfered? She might have cleaned up the mess herself if he hadn’t stepped from his office. Now she only stared greedily from the dirty floor where she had tumbled, golf balls rolling everywhere, and waited for him to come forward to help her up.

The tiny pro shop was being remodeled; no one but staff and construction workers should have been inside. The pale green paint on the walls was damp, not all of the tiles were even set, and someone had made a mistake trying to restock the shelves while all this was going on. But at the Creighton Resort in Central Texas, money most certainly talked, as its manager Ellison had finally learned, and the well-groomed woman on the floor in the blue knit dress was obviously money.

Yes, the staff was decidedly cowed, he saw; and they were standing way too near the newly painted walls for his comfort. Irritated at the lot of them, Ellison turned on the woman, irrationally considering just how far to push this wealthy Texas housewife to appease his mood. His gray eyes turned dangerously dark.

Copyright 2010. To be continued… www.amazon.com/The-Cowboys-Baby-ebook/dp/B003UYUVZC.  

Except for the first three chapters, The Cowboy’s Baby was written entirely during the one-hundred-word-a day- challenge of my local RWA® group. One hundred words is about a paragraph, guys. I made it into an hour-a-day challenge for myself, but there were times I only managed the hundred words. I finished the rough draft in the spring of 2009 and wrote eight short stories just to stay in this writing challenge while I let my novel sit and age. But I dropped out of it when I got to the revising stage and then the  copyediting and proofreading.

You don’t need a formal writing group in order to set goals for yourself. See what I did with just an hour a day. And even a hundred or so words a day adds up to 36,500 words a year. If you double the amount you do a day you’ve got the rough draft of a novel in less than a year. It’s not easy, but it’s not impossible either.

Note–the photo of the Luling, Texas chicken is by Roxanne Rix.  What I’ve read this week–Ice Station Zebra by Alistair MacLean, still available through Amazon.com and others, and Life With No Breaks by Nick Spalding  www.amazon.com/Life-No-Breaks-Second-ebook/dp/B003ICWJ4C .

Now listening to Old Gray Mule Sound Like Somethin’ Fell Off The House. Go to www.oldgraymule.wordpress.com/