After a hard night of chasing vampires, my day begins just before six when one of my cats goes off with a resounding meow. I have a pair of four-footers: the Demon Lord of Kitty Badness, and the tabby who lives on or under my bed. She wants to cuddle and purr. He wants to bodily drag me to the food cupboard. He wins.

After a brief scuffle between cats, breakfast cereal and email, I walk downtown to put in eight hours plus of intensive paper shuffling at a government ministry. The day is meetings, coffee swilling, and herding spreadsheets. A lot of folks are filling multiple job roles, but somehow we get it all done. They know I'm a writer, and I owe a lot to their tolerance of my disappearing acts around deadline time.

Once the public is duly served, I walk home. I live about thirty-five minutes from my office, and the walk to and from helps leave work at work. After that, I hit the gym. I try to get there at least four times a week. After sitting all day, my brain is oxygen-deprived and I can concentrate much better once I've kick-started my circulation.

When I get home, I'm starving. The Demon Lord takes part of my dinner and drags it captive through the house, oh joy. Around the same time, the person making my book trailer gives me a call to talk soundtrack options. I prove that one can chop cucumbers, talk, chase a cat and play sound bites on the computer at the same time.

After I finally get to eat, I wash dishes, and I write. I try to get in about two hours of writing most days during the week. Usually this means around 800 words day. I'm much better with the slow and steady pace than galloping toward a deadline. On weekends I do more conceptual stuff such as editing or plotting, or the really creative procrastination.

At about ten-thirty, I give up on saving the world one vampire at a time. I answer a few emails, post a tweet or two and then call it a night. Junk TV for an hour, and then bed. Sweet dreams, until the cat goes off again.

--Sharon