When I say I could watch a man paint a bathroom, it’s a high compliment. Liam Neeson is one of those actors. When Rob Roy came out I wanted to change my name to Mary MacGregor just so I pretend he was talking to me when he said, “You are so fine to me, Mary MacGregor.”

For some reason, this has become my phrase for any man I would be willing to watch do anything. I’m not sure why. I developed sometime in the last two years. Mostly it applied to actors, but then it spread in meaning to any man I think of as fascinating. And it really is a lot more than me wanting to watch a good-looking man painting a small room, preferably shirtless. Watching the play of his muscles as he moves around in that small space and the focus of his concentration as he works around all the many, many details of a bathroom. Reaching for those difficult corners over the tub. Getting all sweaty…

Oh sorry. There’s more than that. Really. Painting a bathroom requires a lot of planning, patience and focus. More guests are going to see your bathroom than are going to see your kitchen and you are going to be seeing it frequently. Since it’s a small room, there’s a whole different set of rules and for a bed room or living room. You can paint a bed room dark, dramatic colors but if you do that in a bathroom, let’s just say that I’ve been in bathrooms that felt like caves and induced panic attacks. When I say I’d like to see a man paint a bathroom, I want to see what colors he’d choose.

I’d also like to see his attention to details. Seriously. Look around a bathroom sometime. It’s nothing but detail work. Most of the rooms in a house you’ve got some trim at the ceiling, the floor and around the windows. In the bathroom, you’ve got all that plus plumbing to work around. Details. How can you not love a man who pays attention to details?

And the laser beam focus needed to get those details right? Sexy. Tres, tres sexy.

Plus, you’ve got a hot, sweaty man working in a tiny little room.

Who would you like to see paint a bathroom?

I’ve been watching Stargate Universe and felt the world needed more shirtless Lou Diamond Phillips. Enjoy!

This past Monday I had my thyroid removed. In the words of my surgeon it was huge. I’m not sure if that’s a clinical term or not. I’d never had surgery of any kind before (unless you count having my wisdom teeth removed) so the night in the hospital was an adventure. So in light of education, here is what I learned.

Don’t get angry when somebody feels the need to wake you up every hour and a half to two hours. I swear, every time I got settled in to sleep somebody needed my blood or a monitor was going off or they had to check my blood pressure or I had to pee.

Navigating an IV pole is an art. I got pretty good at it. Is it really necessary for those things to have 6 legs?

You will pay anything for entertainment when you are stuck in a bed.

There’s no need to be embarrassed when you throw up. When they first brought me up to my room, I came to saying that I felt sick. The nurse asked me if I needed something for nausea and I puked on the bed. I feel bad, but seriously, how embarrassed can I be? I passed out again immediately after I finished throwing up. I don’t even know who I threw up on. (Whoever you are, I’m sorry.)

If something starts pinging, beeping or chirping in the middle of the night, call the nurse. It’s not going to shut off on its own and no one is going to notice it.

That adhesive they use for the bandages is impossible to get off. A nurse gave me an oil based pad that sorta worked, but not completely. I found a sensor pad on my back yesterday, two days after the operation and some of that adhesive ended up stuck on the tub. It’s everywhere.

If they give you an ice pack, take it home with you. I didn’t bring mine home and now I’m stuck improvising with freezer bags, a tea towel and scarf. Good thing I’m home alone.

So today I was a gym teacher. The phone rang at 7:40 this morning. It was a sub assignment, but all they told me was Itinerant Gym Teacher, middle school. Either I felt brave or I hadn’t completely woken up yet, but I took the assignment. Then I called to find out where I would be teaching. And then I called to tell the school there was no way I was going to make it there by 7:50.

MIddle schoolers have a certain charm. They are definitely a beast of their own. Since I was a sub, they had to test me. That never goes far. The tricky thing about that age is, they won’t back down when you’re in their face. You have to offer them the options and walk away. They have to sass a bit, but in general, they give in. The alternative is much more embarrassing because I don’t lose.

The other great thing about middle schoolers is that they haven’t heard all the shtick yet. Manipulating them doesn’t take much. I had a pair of kids, boy and girl, pestering each other. After repeated warnings to cut it out, I very tactfully (and loudly) said, “Ain’t love grand?” The kids who heard me laughed and took up the cause (as planned.) Didn’t have any more trouble with those two.

However it was a very full day. I took a bunch of work with me and didn’t have the energy to do anything more than read the rock bio I had with me. Now I’m sitting here watching Jericho. Not a stitch of the work I wanted to get done even started.

Tomorrow is another day. More important, tomorrow is a Saturday.

Not dedication. I’ve got that too. But for the moment I’m thinking about dedications, the things you put inside the cover of a book. I’m a big dedications junkie. I love them whether they’re in a book, an album or a movie, I’m looking for the dedications. They give me a better sense of who the creator(s) is/are than all the interviews, blogs and about pages out together. So naturally when it comes time to dedicate my own books, there’s a certain amount of pressure. Fortunately, for The Rock Star’s Respite, it was a no brainer in three parts.

To my husband. The story is set in West Virginia, a place I would have known little or nothing about except that it’s between me and Disney World if not for my husband. My husband is into hillbilly music and a lot of that wound up in Rock Star right up to the name of Cass’ campground, In The Pines.

To my brother. My big brother started quizzing me on music when I was 6. I was the only kid in first grade who knew about Blue Oyster Cult. For my seventh birthday he bought me my very first record, Hotel California by the Eagles. He encouraged my interest in music so much that when other girls were going gaga over actors, I could pick out a bass player from twenty feet.

To Def Leppard for the Slang album. I love Slang. It may be Def Leppard’s least popular release, but it’s been my favorite since the moment I heard it. While I was writing Rock Star, I played it over and over again. Something about the tonal quality really lent itself to letting me work on that book. I would put it on repeat and let it go for hours. I also played it when I edited the book. Then I started playing it when I worked on the next book in that series. I’d gotten to the point where I could sing along and compose sentences in my head.

That’s when things got really weird. I started hallucinating the music. One day I searched my house trying to find the source of the music I could hear until I realized I was hearing the intro to “Truth?” Like Pavlov’s dog, now when I hear any of those songs I feel like I should be writing.

So if you want an authentic experience with The Rock Star’s Retreat, pop in Def Leppard’s Slang album and put it on repeat.

And then you will know what a lot more about me.

The Rock Star’s Retreat by Belle McClain

Cassandra Geoffrey runs In The Pines Campground six months of the year and spends the other six alone on the West Virginia mountain. She isn’t completely happy with situation, but she loves her wacky, close knit hometown and the man of her dreams doesn’t seem to be appearing.

Until he does.

Jason Callisto is the lead guitarist from Touchstone. Two years ago, his supermodel girlfriend dumped him in People Magazine – in a side bar. Since then he’s been impossible to live with. So much so that his manager exiles him the West Virginia before he breaks up the band on the eve of the Grammys.

Cass sees Jason as the adventure of a lifetime. Jason sees Cass as an ego boost.

Can they accept the risk to reach for more?

Warning: Contains two consenting adults alone in a cabin on the side of a mountain, a few wacky townspeople and a plot twist that took the writer by surprise.

Read an excerpt here

You can buy it here

Sometimes, because I’m weird, I consider what has to happen for a person to read. Think about it, squiggles on paper that we have decided as a group mean certain sounds. We have further decided that those sounds mean a particular thing when coded together. Rearrange that same group and you get a different meaning. In English that translates to 26 letters that make 30+ sounds to make thousands of words.

Thinking about it too much usually causes me to lose the ability to read for a little while. This is what happens when I have too much time on my hands and too much caffeine in my blood.

I finished Satellite of Love last night. Whew. Yesterday was a big day for word count because the whole story just snapped together and all I really had to do was hang on for dear life. I did over 5K over the course of the day though not much else got accomplished.

Unfortunately, I am left the with sinking suspicion that the end is out of order. That the big final conflict is in the wrong place. I’m pretty sure I can just move things around and alter the details, but I’m going to head into another project because it’s been whispering at the back of my mind for weeks and really wants to be written.

Any moment now I expect the first round of edits (you know, the soul crushing round) for Trio to arrive. Unlike Rock Star, I didn’t write that one entirely for my own entertainment and decide to try and get it published later so one hopes I went off on few tangents that will have to be fixed.

Next!

I have reached a point in my work in progress where I can no longer see if the her objectives, his objectives and all the stuff that’s gone into forming their thoughts have coalesced into a gel in my brain. I can no longer tell if it’s working at all. In fact, I suspect that it isn’t. Her motivation isn’t strong enough. He’s just being dense in not seeing what the problem is. Too many secondary characters have their fingers in the pot. The whole thing is unraveling right here.

And this is where writing becomes an act of faith.

Despite my sneaking suspicion that what I am doing it not working, I’m going to forge ahead and finish. In a couple of weeks, I’ll return to the project and think “OMG! It all worked exactly like I wanted it too. It’s perfect!”

Really. It’ll happen. It’s happened before. It can happen again.

Right?