You know those nightmares where you're surrounded by things you don't necessarily like, and as you try to run away, you're running in slo-mo and gaining 0 ground?

I've lived that nightmare. In the form...of kittens. It's not that I don't like the poofy little fluff-balls, I'm just a dog kind of girl.

Backstory: On May 23, our outside (very friendly) cat Ziggy had three kittens. Since their birth, I've been involved in their tiny lil lives, because Ziggy=awesome cat.

The next day, we adopted a kitten to be an indoor boy, because we live in a rural area and mice and bugs are a thing.

Fast forward to June 16th, that's 24 days after the kittens were born, I discovered that poor Ziggy had fallen to a coyote's attack. I checked on the babies, who were fine, but hungry. Naturally, I began the arduous process of bottle-feeding, which is a lot harder than the Youtube tutorials make it out to be.

Four times a day, I wound up dropper-feeding these fluff balls, and wouldn't you know it, eight days later, Ziggy's sister, also an outside cat, named Squiggles, has HER kittens! And there's five of them! All-in-all, we have ten cats. TEN. CATS. My husband tells me I'm well on my way to becoming the Reluctant Cat Lady.

Everyone is doing great, amazingly. Our inside boy is named Toulouse. The three orphan kittens are named Marie (a white fluff ball), Berlioz, (a solid black kitten) and O'Malley, (a tiger-striped boy). They all have the bluest eyes, and they meow/squeak and run/waddle to me, and I kind of love it.)

They're weaning from kitten formula to kitten wet food, and they devour it!

Our dogs, we have an American Bull-Dog (Mister) and a Pittie Princess (Violet), ,have taken to making sure the kittens stay clean with lots of licks, and though the indoor cat, Toulouse, has declared himself dominant, we know who's the boss. Mister has been on the receiving end of tail-attacks as Toulouse grows bigger and cattier, (pun absolutely intended) and Violet is simply putting up with the kitten's mock-attacks until he learns to find a different playmate, too. I have the best dogs in the world.

So because of all of my fluffy distractions, now only have I not been able to write consistently, but I haven't been able to do much marketing, either. (Not that I'm very good at that to begin with...)

Regardless, The Firstborn Daughter is available as both kindle edition AND paperback, as well as free to read with the Kindle Unlimited subscription (which, if you're not taking advantage of that, what are you doing???) The sequel is in progress, I'm 15,000 words in, and on Chapter Ten!

What can I say about it so far? My heart aches for Sam because of Harper.

That's it. That's all I'm going to say about it or I'm just going to copy & paste Chapters 1-10 right here right now!

Back to writing!

~Laurel