Kat's Blog: L.J. HOLMES...IT'S FEBRUARY AND I'M NOT LETTING HER LEAP

Week Four is here...and guess what? I just realized Mom has to appear FIVE times in February! She thought she was getting off easy, since it's a short month,

but te-he-he...Fate has stepped in and helped me drag L.J. Holmes...my irascible, ditz of a Mom into actually boasting about her talented self.

Last week we left you all with the idea Mom would cough up details about JJ the second most important love of her life. Yep, I'm the first. But then again, Spatz and Mama Bear come after me...So that makes JJ, the FOURTH most important love of her life. OOPS, unless we include all the wonderful new loves in her life since becoming a Muser. Maybe JJ is the 500th most important love in her life?

Well Mom...let's hear it?

I'd rather talk about my love for our kitties or you, my number one most important love.

Nope! You've incorporated both kitties into some of your stories already. Gotta love our Mama.

Mama Bear, my kitty, made it into Santa is a Lady as Angie Brightwell's humorously snooty best bud, and In From The Cold you created Timp (The Imp)

based on Spatz, our impish kitty who spends much of her time

demanding you give her her just due. Isn't she cute?

So the kitties are covered.

We could always talk about my love for pepperoni pizza.

Unless you want me to start sharing your habit of singing, badly off key at the drop of a hat, you'd better start talking. (My poor eardrums.)

You do know paybacks are a _itch, right? I CAN return this favor and skewer you on any one of, or all of my TWELVE blogs.

Ma, your idea of skewering me is telling everyone how much you love my Artica Lights Series. I don't know how many times I slip unsuspectingly into your blogs to find you are gushing over Awni, Queen of Artica and star of Book One and her godly daddy Tichi,

in Frozen. So your threat doesn't have me shaking in my boots. And we already dealt with your threats to send me back where I came from in a previous posting.

Hmmm. Guess that means I need to find new threats, doesn't it?

My Readers, I must apologize for my mother. Procrastination is her avocation.

I'm not letting you wiggle free, Mom, so out with it.

It's so cliché.

Okay, okay, don't sic Mama Bear on me.

To Kat's readers, Kat and I disparaged over Mama Bear. She came to us as this tiny kitty with just a stump, no tail. We didn't think she'd ever grow one.

We watched, day in and day out, this adorable stub, longing to see growth, and then almost overnight, out sprung this gorgeous bushy appendage.

We were awed, so naturally wanted to pet it!

Mama will claw your fingers down to the nubs if you try to touch her elegant butt extension...and remain in a clawing mood long after you have pulled your bloody fingers in to nurse them and give Mama a wide berth.

Well Kat has been sneaking pokes at Mama's tail while we've been talking, so siccing Mama on me if I continue procrastinating is a very real, and painful threat.

So back to my story...

I met JJ shortly after we slid into the middle 1990's. I'd been through all kinds of surgeries, and earned my dual Bachelors Degree in Psychology/Sociology, and was working on my Masters in Special Education.

I'm one of those really "brilliant" people who actually HAS a computer degree...at least I have an AS in Computer Science/Criminology.

That must sound weird, but I'm a sponge when it comes to education, and my college charged me the same for 12 credits as it did for 21 credits per semester, so I thought it would be a good thing to get my money's worth. Hence most of my degrees are DUAL degrees.

Your drifting off topic, Mom. Tell Nudge to take a nap.

Yeah! Like she listens to me...about as well as you do!

Snorting isn't at all attractive.

But appropriate.

Okay Slave Driver...I got a degree in computers, but got it back in the heyday of

Commodore 64's. We had to plug our phone into

the modem coupling to get online. Back then getting online meant doing little more than making a momentary burp, pay AOL $300.00 for the right to burp and then having the modem disconnect.

We both sort of avoided the Internet for a long time after that, and I continued on with my schooling, working three jobs, and raising you and your brother.

But the lure to go back and tame the AOL beast was always there, especially when other companies sprung up to give Steve Case, that greedy, hand rubbing, purse siphoning wizard, competition. (And yes, I DID write a short story about AOL's founder doing exactly what I just described. Like the fire hydrant it is one of those topics Nudge latched onto and wouldn't let go of without having her say.)

AOL changed as competition reared up to claim its customer base...UNLIMITED Internet came into our lives.

Hot dog!

You found the Global Chatrooms and fell head over world in love with it.

Ireland, Scotland, Australia...the world was suddenly at your fingertips and you blossomed.

I was not quite as adventurous. I stayed local...the United States that is, and only ventured into chat rooms for my age group and my general interests.

That's how I met JJ.

I DID say it was cliché didn't I?

Over the next couple of years we got to know each other both on the net and via telephone calls. He was enchanted by my little girl voice, and me?...Well never mind!

If I were a farmer's daughter, this story would be perfection because JJ, is a traveling salesman. Oh not the kind who goes door-to-door selling encyclopedias or vacuum cleaners. JJ's product is far too technologically advanced for that.

He sells computer components...the intricate little things that make computer motherboards and other minute technology, work. A bit younger than me, I still found him a joy to speak with, and yes, wonder about long after we said good night.

Almost two years after we started talking, he had a trip to this area and wanted to finally meet. (He'd been in the area before, but we could never get our schedules to mesh enough to actually meet.)

Our meeting is pretty much documented in my August 2011 release

This Time Forever, with my first really hot cover.

JJ doesn't quite look like the stud Delilah chose for my cover, but in my eyes, better. If you want to know what happened at that first meeting, you'll have to get your hands on This Time Forever.

Your love for ladybugs came about during this time too. Tell us about it!

Are you kidding me? Some things, Daughter of Mine, are private!

You told me!

Yeah. By the time I was with JJ, you were an adult and my best friend, so of course I told you.

Are you going to tell my readers that you haven't become friends with many of them since coming to Muse It Up Publishing?

You really are a rat, Kat! You just wait!

JJ and I only saw each other over the next three years when he could fly into my area. He tried to talk me into moving us out to where he lived, but my health issues required remaining here in New Jersey until hopefully they would be resolved.

Whenever he came in, he'd treat me like a Princess for the three to five days he was here. Being with JJ was like being in a place out of time. We dreamed about the time when distance and time didn't separate us, and filled each available moment with memories to hang onto until his next trip.

Each time we had to say good bye, hurt, but I'd race home and find an e-mail from him waiting that he'd written before boarding his plane.

I felt like a kid who'd found a private candy store that only you, I, and JJ knew about.

It was magical. I've written some of it in a story I call The Search For Heaven that I may never submit.

I'm a bit psychic and so is he. Between the two of us we were getting these powerful zingers from spirit guides and other guardians.

But the most powerful came the night of the ladybugs.

I've always had great respect for ladybugs. I can't explain why. It's probably something buried within me from my grandmother, but I've always known ladybugs can be messenger from a higher intelligence.

JJ and I talked about the assorted zingers we were both receiving. We should have given in to them, but again, my health required staying here.

We hadn't seen each other in over six months when JJ came to my area again. He got us a really lovely room at the Hilton. We did what people in love who haven't seen each other in a long time do, but once we'd finished,

the whole room came alive with ladybugs. They hadn't been there before, but so many of them suddenly were everywhere.

We looked at them and then at each other.

I will always love JJ and what I know we would have shared, but my cancer returned.

It broke him. He could not handle watching me die. It saddens me he did not have more faith in the message of the ladybugs and all the other zingers between us, but I cannot hate him for fearing the pain he believed would come to him watching me die.

He drove me to my knees...I never knew such pain. Physical abuse is painful, but it doesn't touch your spirit...this went right to my soul and made me bleed out.

I had no choice but to lock away the terrible pain of JJ leaving me so I could fight cancer for the second time.

Ladybugs surrounded me during my battle giving me along with you, the comfort needed to move on.

Thank You for all you've done.

My ladybugs never left me. When I dragged myself through the nausea and blistering caused by the cancer treatment,

ladybugs would show up in some of the most unlikely spots giving me the spiritual energy to move on.

I know it probably sounds crazy, but the Bible tells of God speaking from a burning bush. I believe My God sent love and encouragement to me through ladybugs.

It's been a long time since JJ turned from what we shared, (fourteen years,) I did not die. I could hate him for being weak, but I loved him then, and I love him still.

I know we will meet beyond the Veil, and I hold onto that. What we shared was magical, and I am so grateful JJ showed me that side of love.

Before him I knew only of the painful side of the man-woman thing. He gave me a love so powerful time, distance, and even backing away from it, can't diminish what lives on inside me for him.

I love you, Mom.

I love you too, Sweetheart.

I hope you will sub The Search For Heaven some day.

It's not quite my story. I had to make some alterations to give it suspense. In fact I remember you being very angry with me when I wrote it.

You killed her off!

True. I did, but I also brought her back. Miracles happen Sweetie. Just look at you.

I want to ask you more about the story you wrote, The Search For Heaven, but that won't be fair to my readers if you never sub it.

So lets move on. Tell us what you're working on right now?

I already did. I'm working on edits for Echoes From The Past. I just finished book four, and hopefully the last in the Suc-U series...it's the prequel actually to Book One and am about to sub it.

Our second collaboration, One Night Stud, just received a contract and I'm really looking forward to it and to Her Last Day, our first collaboration.

I have a Sci-fi type story about a space kitty called A Quake With Earth in the sub line, and an erotic short called Hidden Glade in the sub line. I'm polishing up a time travel using a Harley motorcycle as the actual time machine called The Wedding Night, and then I have to finish what will be my second full length novel about a reluctant witch and a date with destiny called The Call of Thunder.

Where do you find the time to do all that PLUS maintain twelve blogs and guest like this on other people's blogs?

I don't know. Actually I think I'm rather lazy. I would have made a great absent minded professor, but I think you have to be independently wealthy to do that effectively.

Some people who have read our books are predicting you and I are going to be rich one day from our writing, just as soon as the world catches up with us. I scoffed when they say that...

But if that ever does come to pass, then I can devote myself to really being an absent minded professor type, only in my case, it'll be an absent minded writer type.

The funny thing is, I just rented the first disc of the Ellery Queen TV series.

Jim Hutton plays Ellery Queen, a renowned author of mysteries, who is dumber than dirt in every area but unraveling and/or creating mysteries. I feel a great affiliation to the Ellery Queen character cousins Daniel Nathan and Manford Lepofsky created.

I am good at writing, but haven't got room in my head for the mundane things of life. I DO them because they have to be done, but even when I am out shopping, I have a pad of paper and pen with me. After paying for what I must buy, I will slip into the picnic areas and get lost in the world my head is creating.

So yeah, I would have made a GREAT absent minded professor.

Tell me Kat can't you just picture me creating something like

Flubber?

Yeah Mom, I can.

For my readers, let me offer this. Over the years I have watched my Mom come up with some of the most intriguing and ingenious methods for jury rigging things, and nine times out of ten, they work. If they don't, she doesn't stop until she does find something that will work. I wouldn't be here if she didn't.

Okay, you just proved I'm stubborn. You've said so often enough. Besides for you I'll do everything in my power to move heaven and earth.

And now to lighten things up...let's talk about poetry.

Oh PLEASE! Let's not Mom. You have let the world know, over and over how much you hate writing poetry. Besides I think we've about run out of time.

Mom, thank you for all you shared with us today.

We do have one more posting in February, so it's not over yet.

Who'd have thought I'd have to do FIVE guest appearances in FEBRUARY the shortest month in the whole year! Ah well, I guess I can find enough tootiness in me for one more posting.

You're the greatest.