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A Day in the Life of.....
Julie Particka was told to get serious about her future in Junior High. Several years after getting a bachelor’s degree in chemistry, she realized being serious was over-rated and went back to her first love–writing. Now rather than spending her days in the drudgery of the lab or teaching science to high school students, she disappears into worlds of her own creation where monsters sometimes roam, but true love still conquers all.
She can most often be located in the Detroit area with her favorite minions (the ones who know her as Mom) where she is currently hatching a plot for world domination. It involves cookies for everyone, so she’s pretty sure there’s no way it can fail…except the minions keep eating the cookies.
A Day in the Life
It started just like any other day, rainier than some, but not so dreary as others…
Hi all, I’m Julie Particka, and that little snippet pretty much summarizes a day in my life all on it’s own. Hope you had fun!
Kidding.
Kind of.
One thing I’ve realized since becoming an author is our days kind of blur together. It’s not like on Castle where we’re fighting crime in between poker games with James Patterson and friends. And I’m friends with a couple NYT bestsellers. I don’t think their lives are like Castle either. Maybe it’s the NY thing. Hmmm…
6:45 am
My son (henceforth known as “The Boy”) wakes up. The kid has a freaking internal alarm like nobody’s business. He lets the dogs out and fills their food bowls. (Good kid.)
7:00 am
Dogs are raising hell outside. I blearily open my eyes and yell down to remind him he has to let them in. :/
7:30 am
Alarm goes off and I force my daughter (henceforth known as Mini-Me) out of bed. She’s almost less of a morning person than I am. I dread the day she decides she has to shower before school rather than at night (and do hair and make-up). I’ll have to get up at five in order to make sure she’s to school on time.
8:05 am
Shuffle the kids, who are now fed and dressed, off to school. Mind you, I’m usually not fed or dressed, but I have packed their lunches. (Did I mention I’m not a morning person.)
The next four hours are my dead time. If I’m having a really awake day, I can usually do some editing, but that’s rare. So I tend to do all my social media, emailing, and promo work during the morning hours. Sometimes I go back to bed. Sometimes I even *gasp* go to the gym. But basically the am hours are for the business of being an author rather than the writing itself. (Also, my eating schedule is kind of weird. It’s every 3-4 hours after I get up for the day. So, breakfast and lunch vary.)
Sometime after 12
Editing or writing. Preferably editing. Writers are a weird bunch. Some of us can pull off the whole 9-5 gig and then they’re off duty like any other job. Others do their writing in the wee hours of morning. Me? I prefer to write late at night when the house is dark and quiet. However, the early afternoon is a great time for doing guest blogs and editing. The latter because I’m awake enough to pay attention, but I need my attention to detail more than I need my creativity. (What can I say? My muse belongs to the dark side.) Sometimes I will also run errands in here if necessary.
3:30 pm
The dogs raise hell. I check for hellhounds at the door, but it’s just my kiddos coming home from school. I swap my author hat for my mom hat. Now it’s time for how-was-your-days and homework. The amount of time this takes varies.
5:00-ish pm
Dinner. The Boy’s homework usually isn’t done yet, but my every few hour meal plan demands I eat, so we eat. Usually by now, the need for homework help has ended though, so I put back on my writer hat, keeping mom hat close at hand. Sometimes I can get some more editing done with the kids up, but not always. That means this is usually more business work, and sometimes outlining. Even though they’re too young to help with the romance stuff, sometimes my kids are helpful working me out of holes in other areas of plot.
8:00 pm
Break time. Homework is done and this is my brief window to just hang with my kids. They have ice cream. I cry inside that I’m not having ice cream. And we watch TV. Our go-to shows on the DVR are Once Upon a Time, Agents of SHIELD, Intelligence (though I think this got cancelled), and if we’re out of DVR stuff, we’re also watching old seasons of Big Bang Theory, and Leverage. Eventually I’m going to have to introduce them to new shows.
9:30 pm
The kids go to bed. Luckily, they do this without a lot of headaches now. Which means nine-thirty is also my time to settle in and write. Sometimes I’ll reward myself in that if I get X amount written, I can watch an hour of my TV shows. But that all depends on how hard the book is for me. If I’m struggling, I need the reward, if it’s flowing like water, I don’t bother.
1:00 am
Bedtime. This can vary, sometimes as early as midnight. Sometimes as late as three or four. (Remember that flowing like water thing? Yeah. It has a downside.) I crawl upstairs, get into bed and (if I have it in me to open a book) read a chapter of someone else’s words, and then pass out.
In the game of love…
Dumped by her college boyfriend for her best friend, the last thing Jenna Brandt needs to deal with is working beside her backstabbing-BFF’s hotter-than-hot brother. But when he offers her a chance to get some revenge on her ex, she can hardly say no–even if spending more time with Sutton puts her heart in jeopardy all over again.
Someone’s going to get hurt…
Sutton Bell has had a thing for Jenna since they were in high school, but after one screwed-up night, she didn’t want anything to do with him. Now, with just the summer before he leaves to begin his new career, Sutton’s determined to convince Jenna he’s not the player he used to be. But saving his sister from making an awful mistake may mean losing Jenna for good.
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