A Day in the Life of.....
Angela McCallister has always wanted to grow up to be someone who would never grow up, and lucky her, that's exactly what she's done. Nothing says adventurous more than being a 16-yr US Navy Sailor with an imagination wild enough to create stories and characters with a paranormal bite. A mother of five, she's gained plenty of story ideas from her family as well as her military experience.
Angela is very laid-back and happy to try just about anything once, from skydiving, sailing, slacklining, Aikido, and even hang-gliding--as long as she doesn't have to subject anyone to her "singing" or make an appearance in a bikini. Like all authors, she's crazy for books, especially Romance, and will talk about them for days. She's currently stationed at Naval Base Ventura County Point Mugu in California where she can be spoiled with some of the best weather in the country. With such platforms as an aircraft carrier, an amphibious ship, and an Aegis destroyer, and duty stations in Illinois, Washington, Hawaii, and California, her experiences vary widely. She's visited Thailand (a favorite), Bahrain, Dubai, Jebel Ali, Hong Kong, Guam, Canada, Mexico, and Singapore. She's a member of RWA San Diego, From the Heart Romance Writers, and Rose City Romance Writers and especially loves to hear from and meet readers and fellow authors.
A Day in the Life of Angela McCallister
v. 1.0: I have 0600 reveille to get up and ready for work. Have to call-in muster at 0700 and then be at the airfield by 0800 ready to make coffee and try to wake up before noon. Of course by noon, I’m the one who drank over half the pot or else made a second one to total at least half, if not more. From the time I get to work until around 1100, I’ll spend my morning in meetings, in training, getting equipment status updates, answering trouble calls on our air traffic control equipment, heading to some of the outlying equipment sites around the airfield, or wading through a barrage of mostly-useless work emails.
My Area of Responsibility on the airfield. My home base is circled. About half of the base is protected wetlands ;)
I work out of the first hangar & at the base of the tower.
v. 2.0: Physical therapy days. Bleh. That’s all I can say. I’ll call in at 0700 and then head out to Physical Therapy on Port Hueneme where they torture you, and you leave feeling like an 80-year-old in bad need of a walker. After crawling home, I shower, change, get some lunch, and then head off for my afternoon workload. I’m normally at work longer on these days, until 1700 (AKA 5pm).
After lunch, it’s a downhill slide. I’ll work on mostly admin stuff, like maintenance scheduling and records, award packages, evaluations, inventories, inspections, more meetings and meetings to arrange other meetings, etc. And of course, more trouble calls. When air traffic controllers run into equipment trouble, it always takes first priority. And oddly, it always seems to happen at the worst possible time, lol. Like when other techs have taken the duty vehicles to do maintenance at one of the sites.
On a good day, I’ll be out of there around 1500 (AKA 3pm), and then the real work begins *insert evil laugh* From the time I leave work, I’ll find a quiet place to settle and try to catch up with my email and social media. Yeah. It never happens. I get waaaaay too many emails. I’m in about ten Yahoo groups, six FB groups, three RWA chapters, and three local writers’ Meetup groups. I also subscribe to at least eighty bloggers/authors who I get email updates or newsletters from. It takes up a lot of time to read and comment on blogs and then do your part to Tweet or cross-promote and then to do your own blogging and social media posts.
When I’m not on the email or social media, I have financial accounting to do, bills to pay, internet research to conduct, website and profile updates, and a million other little tasks. Needless to say, my car has needed an oil change for about a month. It’s going to have to wait. I try to get some talk time in with my kids, who all live in our house in Washington (we’re long distance while I’m stationed down in SoCal). A call home entails about two to three hours. Yes, that’s right. I have four kids still at home. If I only talked thirty minutes each, that’s two hours. Then add my husband.
By 2100 (AKA 9pm), I’m ready to take a break, but I have to get some writing time in. This means edits, too. I squeeze in as much as I can concentrate on, but having worked non-stop for over twelve hours, I’ll switch over to reading. I’m a confessed bookaholic, and I don’t care. I read until I fall asleep, around 0100, and wake up at 0600 to start the cycle again.
Weekends are my saving grace. I can pack in about 15K to 20K words on a good, uninterrupted weekend where I have no writers’ meeting commitments and no weekend duty that entails working from 0600 until 2300. Those weekends are heavenly, and I might even have time to watch a movie or maybe TV (it’s been three months since I’ve watched TV!)
My schedule varies greatly. I can only really count on the fact that I can’t count on a regular schedule, but this is pretty close to a typical day for me. Now that I’ve actually put this all down to paper, it’s looking more like I have too many pots on the stove, lol. What do you think???
After her ex-husband’s obsession with vampires, Valerie Craig is on a mission to stop transformations. Of all vampires, Kade Rollins is the worst of the worst, but when multiple murders plague Seattle, Val is forced to enlist his aid. Kade’s crude wit and seductive nature attract her like no other, but she can’t ignore his violence toward his human servants, no matter her yearning to forget.
She’s torn when she learns Kade may be behind the murders. Val's worked hard to protect humans from vampires, but the truth surrounding the murders could ignite a bloody battle between their races, one humans are sure to lose. Someone is pulling strings to build a vampire army and spark the war—setting Kade up to kick it off. But if she trusts the vampire prince, she risks her job, her integrity, and her heart if he betrays her as all the men in her life have.
Thank you, Aislynn, for inviting me on as a guest. I should have mentioned how often I get inspiration at work--when the Navy SEALs come to train ;) Quite a view!!!
ReplyDeleteAngela, I'm envious of your view.
ReplyDeleteROFL! It *is* quite a nice view. I suppose I do get inspiration from my work ;)
ReplyDeleteGreat interview and pics.
ReplyDeletemythic021@gmail.com
Thanks for reading and commenting Vanessa! I do wish I could have found my wildlife pics! Driving the perimeter is like going through a safari--all kinds of waterfowl and raptors. Even racoons! A bat in broad daylight on the hangar bay floor--that was just plain weird...
ReplyDelete