Sara Jane Stone | Writing With Children: A Day in Sara Jane’s Life

In early 2013, I posted a timeline on my website that offered a peek at my daily life as a romance author. This somewhat outdated look at a writer’s life (we still finger paint and play trains a lot) is still posted on www.sarajanestone.com/bio/ if you’d like a peek. Since I first posted that timeline, I’ve been busy writing and wrangling my preschoolers. And it wasn’t until recently that I thought about updating it. Today I thought I’d share the 2015 version of Writing With Children :)

6:00 am

Sara Jane wakes to the sound of her three-and-half-year-old daughter climbing into her bed. Her daughter has brought with her one bunny blanket, a pink blanket handmade by grandma, and four large stuffed animals. Sara Jane closes her eyes while her daughter arranges her things and tries to determine the source of the awful smell. Most likely her daughter’s bunny blanket that goes everywhere with her. She should probably add laundry— including the bunny—to her to-do list. She mentally pencils the chore in below Finish Chapter 7 of Work-In-Progress.

6:15 am

After lying down for five minutes, her daughter declares it is time to get up for the day. She wakes her five-year-old brother and they proceed to argue about who is going to have breakfast first. Or at least Sara Jane thinks that is what the argument is about. Sara Jane hasn’t had coffee yet. But she does her best to serve their breakfast at the same time.

8:30 am

Sara Jane drops both children at preschool and races home to her computer. Armed with coffee, she checks email and Facebook.

9:00 am

Sara Jane tears herself away from yet another post about cats doing funny things and opens her work-in-progress.

11:00 am

Facebook lures her away from writing. She posts a teaser from an upcoming release and realizes she should add a picture of an insanely attractive man. She searches the Internet for images of models who look like Navy SEALs.

2:45 pm

Sara Jane realizes she will be late to pick up the kids if she doesn’t leave right this minute. On her way out the door, she glances at the laundry she forgot to start. But she wrote a delicious naughty scene featuring a Navy SEAL, so she doesn’t feel too badly about postponing the laundry again.

3:30 pm

The children arrive home and proceed to take out every toy they own and distribute them throughout the apartment. Her daughter steals her notebook and covers the pages with large circles making Sara Jane’s notes for the black moment in her work-in-progress look like a complicated puzzle.

5:00 pm

The perfect dialogue for the next scene in her work-in-progress runs through her head as she cooks dinner. Sara Jane abandons the mac and cheese for a few minutes to write it down while simultaneously answering her five-year old son’s questions about dinosaurs. (Her editor will later leave a confused note beside this scene wondering why the hero asked the heroine what period the Triceratops lived in.)

8:00 pm

After multiple requests for “one very, very, very last story” the children are in bed. Sara Jane briefly considers doing the dishes and cooking dinner before her husband arrives home from work. Instead, she returns to her computer. She writes until her husband offers her a beer and asks if she would like to order take-out.*

*This part of Sara Jane’s day has not changed since 2013, although the children’s stories are getting longer and tend to feature princesses or dinosaurs. And she still has the best husband in the world. Mr. Stone rarely comments on the dirty dishes or forgotten laundry. When he does, Sara Jane simply mentions the super sexy scene she wrote earlier in the day and he forgets all about clean socks :)

About Sara Jane Stone

After several years on the other side of the publishing industry, Sara Jane Stone bid goodbye to her career in sales to pursue her dream—writing romance novels. Armed with a firm belief that dreams do come true, Sara Jane sat down at her keyboard to write fun, sexy stories like the ones she loved to read.

Sara Jane currently resides in Brooklyn, New York with her very supportive real–life hero, two lively young children, and a lazy Burmese cat.

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About TO TEMPT A SEAL

The first book in the sexy new Sin City SEALs series by Sara Jane Stone!

He can resist everything...except her.

For the first time in her life, art therapist Lucia Lewis is ready to live. And the masquerade ball in Las Vegas is just the place to find a ridiculously hot guy to complete her wicked to-do list. The only rule? Her elegant Venetian mask- which conceals the scars that have always held her back from the life she deserves-stays on.

Navy SEAL Cade Daniels heads to Vegas on a mission to keep his best friend's little sister out of trouble. Except the woman he's sent to find is all heat and flame...and perfectly capable of handling herself. And him. But the moment Lucia's mask slips, the need to heal her, body and soul, is complete and absolute temptation.

But revealing himself could cost him the one thing he isn't willing to risk...his heart.