Okay, first of all, I should mention that I never knew this in the several months that I've been keeping this blog, but I had a setting turned on that only allowed people who were signed in to comment, and that has now been turned off, so if anyone has something they want to say about my posts, they're welcome to. I'm sorry. I wasn't being snobby or anything, I just never realized that was the default setting.

Right now I'm on the second part of a two-part vacation, and it's going great. I woke up Wednesday at zero-dark-thirty in the morning and went to Miami, OK (pronounced My-Am-Uh, unlike in Florida). Don't get me wrong, I love the city, but the hotel I stayed in was awful. Because--here's the thing! It wasn't a hotel! It was a motel! This brings my times I've stayed in a motel up to a grand total of 2, and I've been miserable both times. Because the thing is, I hate bugs. No, that's not true. I *searches for thesaurus* despise, detest, loathe, bugs. They're awful. And I'm not one of those people who are scared of them, because let's face it, I'm about a hundred billion times bigger than the average bug, but they're just annoying. Very, very, very, very annoying. Especially the ones who feel the need to buzz around my head all day and are too chicken to accept my double-dog-dare to land. So I spent most of that afternoon/night making a tent with my bed covers, where I could write in peace. Which was great, except it was a million frickin degrees in that room. The whole experience taught me a valuable lesson, though. I've kind of been looking forward to living that whole starving-artist lifestyle, and I realized that maybe that isn't the best option for a girl who's spent almost her entire life in the suburbs, raised in a middle-class family. Is that going to stop me? Hell no. I'll move someplace where it's so cold that bugs can't live there, and if that doesn't work, just wear bug spray like it's lotion. :D

But that nightmare did end, and now I'm in Kansas City. Currently I'm at the hotel pool, watching my dad float around. Kansas City is awesome. It's one of my favorite cities. Actually the reason I'm here is to tour UMKC, and I think that unless something happens and I'm granted a full scholarship to my dream college, I'm going there. It's an awesome school.

Another good thing about going on vacation is that I get a lot of writing done. Vacations with my dad and I tend to involve a lot of time with me and my laptop, between driving to wherever we're going (usually a 4-6 hour drive) and me staying in the hotel room for about 96% of the trip. On this trip I got a little more of the Promise Series written, and I'm hoping to get a little more done on the way home. And I also wrote a little bit of a story that will most likely never develop into a full novel, but it's fun to write little scenes of it here and there.

As a final note, I'm having second thoughts on the Black Diamond series. I feel like the whole thing, in addition to being an awesome story, is a little too forced. Another author may be able to pull it off, but with my writing style, I don't know if I can. I'm not giving up on it quite yet, but I'm seriously considering it. If I'm going to write this story, I need to take an entirely different approach to it. Or another thing I could do is just take all of my favorite things from the series and stick them in other novels. I know one sub-plot that the still-unnamed sequel to Desiring Truth has been bugging me and bugging me about borrowing, and if I give it to Truth and Dave then Aqua and Pyro can't have it. It's too awesome for two stories to have it. It's also vital to the Black Diamond series, though, so if I do give that sub-plot to Dave and Truth then the Black Diamond series falls apart. So I'm just going to do some soul-searching for awhile, and keep my invisible blog-readers in suspense. But hey. I'm a writer. Cliff-hangers are what I do best!

**Daqu**