My life has changed. I’m now a duck commander as well as an author.

Last week in a rainstorm on Highway 20, I nearly ran over a tiny critter on the road. I didn’t even know it was a tiny critter. I thought it was a dirt clod. Until it jumped up and ran away from my tire.

Two itty bitty critters racing back and forth as cars whizzed by and rain poured down. I really didn’t want to stop. I wasn’t going to stop. I kept driving and watched one of the little critters nearly die in my rear view mirror. So I pulled off the road, and in pouring rain, ran back down the highway, and rescued two baby ducks. Running on the wet road in my cowboy boots, I slipped and pulled my hamstring, but I still caught the ducks after waving a Toyota Camry away that nearly ran one over. The woman driver looked at me out there in the rain, holding a baby duck, like I’d lost my mind.

I was pretty proud of myself.

Until I couldn’t find the mother anywhere. There was no mama duck in the walnut orchard beside the road.

I know… what was I thinking bringing baby ducks home? Like five boys isn’t enough. Like starting our fruit harvest isn’t enough. Like writing a new novel, the second book in the California Rising series isn’t enough.

Please, shoot me now.

Lewis and Clark (the boys named the ducks), live in a plastic bin right beside my writing chair in our living room under a borrowed heat lamp. The heat lamp I got from a very sweet lady who works at the high school. Luke had participated in senior skip day. When the school called to ask if he had a doctor’s excuse, I said, “Uh, no, I thought he was at school today.”

A few hours later I drove to the high school to see what Luke needed to do to make up for ditching school. On my way, I picked up the ducks. Fortunately, I had a shoe box in my car. After telling the lady in the school office I was all wet from running down the drenched highway rescuing baby ducks in the rain, I went back to the car and got the ducks and showed them to her. “I have a heat lamp,” she said, and a new friendship was born. She’s the nicest person and she also let me use her chick feeder and water dish for the ducks. And Luke did Saturday school the next day so everybody’s good. He came home after school on Saturday afternoon and said, “Whose ducks are those?”

“They’re my ducks,” I told him. “They’re helping me write my next book.”

Lewis and Clark chirp like crazy when they’re not sleeping, unless someone holds them. Just like babies, they love to be held. Honesty, I don’t know if I’ve ever had a cuter pet, except they poop all the time. Last night, Luke’s girlfriend came over. Immediately the ducks pooped on her. “She doesn’t mind,” said Luke. “She’s in 4-H.”

Well, thank goodness for 4-H. I grew up doing 4-H. Perhaps this is what has prepared me for becoming a duck commander.

When I do laundry, the ducks swim around in the laundry room sink. I fold clothes and they splash and fluff and eat little fruit flies that now love our kitchen and laundry room because our fruit is back. “They’re diver ducks,” G2 said in excitement when we first watched the tiny ducks plunge beneath the surface and swim like little darts underwater across the sink. I have to tell you, these ducks make me smile. They add to my workload, but really, they make me smile all the time.

Every day I’m tempted to get rid of these little duckies. Just like every day I’m tempted to give up on my second book, the one that’s barely written. Why on earth I chose the first book in a series to publish on Amazon escapes me. Clearly, I didn’t think this through.

I have several other stand alone novels I could have put on Amazon. It never really dawned on me I’d be knee deep in researching and writing my next California novel just two weeks after publishing: Until the Day Breaks. I really didn’t think people would want to read the next book in the series. I’m so glad numerous people enjoyed the first book and now want to find out what happens to Roman’s red-haired sister, Maria, and Dominic the ship captain in Far Side of the Sea.

But it’s not written yet. I’m on page 93 as of today.

I know! What was I thinking?!

So I’ve been writing like crazy in between mothering Lewis and Clark and my boys.

Sometimes we take a break, and head out to the grass to play. This involves locking the labs up and watching for the cats. Lewis and Clark really think they’re something, but what they really are is one little bite of bird fluff.

This is how I feel as a novelist. Like an itty bitty duck flapping my itty bitty wings thinking I’m something for about five minutes and then spending the rest of my writing time agonizing over not having what it takes to create a good story.

Please pray I can produce another decent story. One that is historically accurate and interesting. My characters are on a sailing ship right now in the middle of a raging sea in 1846. They’ve just left Varpardiso, Chile headed for Cape Horn. I have to get them back to Boston and then return them to Calfornia by 1849 in time for the gold rush. And of course we need a memorable love affair, don’t we?

What was I thinking?

p.s. once the ducks are big enough, we’d love to release them back into the wild, or give them to a good duck home. We do not have a pond on our farm and our labs and barn cats kill birds. If you live near us and have a duck pond and would like two delightful adolescent ducks in the coming weeks, please message me.