In somebody's immortal words: Oops, I did it again. Somehow Thursday came around before I realized it and I hadn't written an email for this week and well-- here we are again, catching up on Friday morning instead.

You might remember that I was on my way to Texas to see yet another solar eclipse-- or maybe I was in Texas? Did I remember to send an email last week? Yes. Yes I did, because Mountain Man's Need had just released and I was super excited about that one!

Of course, Amazon added it to the erotica category, which severely reduces a book's ability to be discovered by new readers. So now I'm trying to explain the difference between contemporary romance and erotica to them-- but they let the computer bots do a lot of the thinking over there so it might be a losing battle for Terra and Hawk.

Which breaks my heart-- they really are one of my favorite couples ever.

Well-- I did make it to Texas (Amistad National Recreation Area, specifically) for the eclipse and I'll tell you that story below.

First, I thought maybe showing you the cover for Raine and April's upcoming book might help you forgive me for forgetting to send out emails on Thursday-- again.

So here it is:

The Hart family books have already been giving me fits-- I've had a hard time settling on the titles, I had a hard time settling on cover models, I had a hard time with the typography colors; but over all, I don't hate looking at this cover.

Like really don't hate looking at it. Maybe I was looking at it too much and that's why I forgot what day it was?

Raine and April are on the calendar for a May 8 release date. I took a little time off after Hark and Terra for the eclipse trip and so I could move my brain out of the Diaz family and onto the Harts.

The Harts are a whole different family vibe, y'all. Get ready!

~Rocklyn

Yes! I did get to see it!

If you paid any attention to the news around the recent total solar eclipse that crossed Mexico, the US, and even bits of Canada, you probably know that most of the path was obliterated by heavy cloud cover!

I spent a week in a west Texas campground cursing the 90+ degree temperatures (Anything over 70 is uncivilized, anything over 85 is unlivable!) through cloudless skies, while assuring my friend from California that it was totally worth the 22 hour each way drive she was going to have to make to join up with me.

She arrived at 11 p.m. the night before, kept me company for about an hour and then crashed. Of course-- I was awakened at some ungodly hour of the morning by a sweet whisper at my camper window, asking me what I wanted from Starbucks. #cityfriendsarethebest

Since moving into the hobo house camper trailer and turning my life into an endless roadtrip, I go on very few Starbucks runs. And the nearest one wasn't exactly close-- not super far away, but not close.

Once she returned, we spent the day bonding with my campground neighbors over the event we were all there to see and our collective concerns that we wouldn't end up seeing much of it.

Cameras came out, tripods were set up. It looked like a Nat Geo photo shoot in progress in the dry, sticker-filled Texas campground field.

The clouds managed to part periodically just long enough that we could get shots of the eclipse at multiple phases but the real question was-- would they part for the totality?

Barely. Above is one of my own photos right at full totality-- I'm pretty excited about it even though it's slightly blurry.

For one thing, I got to see another eclipse! For another, I got to photograph the eclipse (I didn't take photos of the total eclipse in 2017.) One more thing-- I was working so fast to remove the filter from the lens to capture this moment, I bumped the lens and knocked the zoom just enough to mess the focus up. (We do this stuff in full manual settings-- old school.)

The next eclipse over the lower 48 is 20 years away, but I hear there's one over Spain in 2026. I've started saving already.

Of course, in the interest of keeping the email a little shorter-- I didn't include the part where I was welcomed to Texas immediately upon crossing the bored with an over-enthusiastic hug from a Texas welcome center parking lot. Ouch. That was on April 1st and yes, I did spend the day telling everyone I got into a bar fight! (I tripped over my shoelaces. Doh!)

And on my drive back to New Mexico? The on-board computer that calculates how many more miles I can drive till I run out of gas lied and I had to be rescued on the side of the road by a Pecos country sheriff's deputy with a gas can.

#lifeisanadventure #atleastihaveagoodstorytotell

Really, can you blame me for not realizing it was Thursday already?