My ninth book: RHINESTONE COWGIRL is now available... WOOT!
From Siren Bookstrand Publishing

Genre: Contemporary, Western Romance
ISBN: 1-61034-590-8
Length: Novel
Price: $4.99
Publication Date: August 16, 2011 (in e format; print due Dec '11)

Cover art by Jinger Heaston

Poppy Dumphy is Beverly Hills born and bred with everything money can buy except a connection with her father… after his death she learns why. She leaves her posh life, travels halfway across the country to expose a long-kept secret.

Labels: book news, Denise Belinda McDonald, new book, release day, Rhinestone Cowgirl

School starts in a little over a week... can you hear me cheering now. I am so terribly happy (more so than I should be). I have been buying supplies for weeks. I must admit, I love school supplies so that's no hardship on my part—just ask the other girls here. The kids, in the mean time, are driving me nuts! They are on each other's nerves like crazy. Unfortunately, it's too hot here to shove them out the door and make them play——last week it got up to 108° on Monday, 110° Tues. thru Thurs., and back down to 108° of Friday. We're breaking heat records left and right and left again. Which of course, is not outside-kid conducive. Though frying an egg on the driveway was fun, for all of 10 secs—then it was just too dern hot!


Still, lots to do. There are several stages getting the kids ready for school. Every year (and I mean every single year, every single school... such a huge pain) we have to schlep out to the school and prove we *still* live where we say we do. I hate that the most. It seems to be the biggest waste of time. But as I have no choice, I do it. This year they're putting all the forms we have to fill out online. That is a godsend. With four boys time six to 8 pages of repetitive crap every dang year, it will save time. Once it's in it's in and I only have to tweak the changes.


Soon we should be getting schedules. For all but the youngest this is a huge deal. (the youngest is only in fourth grade so you get what you get—and now that one of the least favored teachers has retired, he's not worried at all). The other three are worried about their classes and teachers and one was going to drop athletics then thought better of it. Another wanted in athletics (and signed up for it) is now also fretting being in it—but he's also in honors band so who knows how that will play out.


We have already been buying clothes here and there, too. They are a little put out I won't let them wear it 'til school starts. But such is life.


All this back-to-school drama is so *much* drama. And considering it's all boys... I can only imagine what girls would do to me.

We just got back from a family vacation to Galveston. To say my kids were underwhelmed is and understatement (well, the 9yo had a blast, he jumps head-first into everything, but I digress). They did not enjoy the beach, it smelled. The water was too salty… it went on and on. At first, I got a little annoyed, but while they didn’t seem to enjoy the locale, they didn’t fight—which is rare. They all played together and a couple of times I’d catch them just sitting together and talking.

It got me to thinking back to my family vacations. The last one I remember was when I was twelve—it was a lo-ong trip that encompassed many states (7 for sure that I recall). What I remember most though, was when we went to Dodge City. At the time I was mad. I didn’t want to be there. It was hot being there the end of June. It was a dusty old town, with dusty old stuff. And our guide dressed up in period cowboy garb made me roll my eyes a time or three. I was working my way into the teen years running with my fists clenched. Just for giggles, picture a girl in the wild west wearing parachute pants, with a bandana tied at the thigh and a florescent blue tank top.

Now, as a grown woman and a mom, I think back on that trip rather fondly. I can remember many of the things we saw at Boot Hill. Even the guide makes me smile rocking his Sam Elliot mustache—I wish my mom had a pic of him, but alas it’s lost. The one thing that always stuck out over the years were the tombstones. Even at twelve, I whipped up tales as to what killed this cowboy or that (usually it was over the love of a women…). I guess I always had the writer’s bent years before I had the writer’s bent. My only regret was that I didn’t get into it more, that I didn’t understand, or care, about the history I was seeing. I’d like to go back, I think it would be so cool to *really* get lost in past.

Nowadays, when I write about my cowboys, I can think back on walking down Front Street and shift to what the wild west was like. And I can then fast forward to what that same town (whatever town fiction or real I pick) is like now. How it changed around the people. How the people changed around it. And how all that plays into the lives of my characters (I do tend to equate everything to writing one way or another—I may have mentioned that before ). That one vacation, the one that I was angry about being on, the one that I dragged my feet at every tourist attraction and historical site, became a way for me to connect to my stories so many years later. I can only hope that when my boys grow up into men, they will think back on our trip to Galveston and remember it fondly and if one or two end up becoming writers, they can use that for inspiration.

So tell me, did you take any family vacations that at the time seemed like it was the worst thing ever (especially in those oh-so-lovely teenage years) and later you wish you’d been less-grumpy? Was there a vacation that you used your mental filing cabinet later in life to fill in for something?