It’s Three A.M. (I Must Be Working)

by

Willa Okati

Sing it, Rob Thomas.

A few weeks ago, I started my day the same way I always do. Stumble out of bed, make coffee while attempting to interpret the notes I scribbled down before falling asleep the night before (depending on how drowsy I was it’ll look either like a drunken chicken dance or an LSD spiderweb). Take coffee outside to the section of sidewalk I call my porch and drink deep of the nectar of life until I feel semi-human. Repeat as necessary.

But that’s when it happened. A next-door neighbor swaggered (he’s got a decent strut) to his door and jangled the keys. “What are you doing up so late?” he teased.

I blinked at him and said, “Early. Not late. Early. This is when I get up.”

“At three in the morning?” he asked, looking at me as if I’d grown a second head and he was too polite—just—to ask me if I’d lost my mind.

He wouldn’t be the first one. My sleeping habits have always been on the weird side. More so when I developed a fondness for writing in the quiet early morning hours. The hands on the alarm clock keep creeping backward, assisted every now and then by insomnia, but I’ve come to the decision that I’m A-OK with that. There’s just something about the solitude that makes my muse purr like a cat in a mouse factory. It’s liberating. There is every reason in the world to work in my PJ’s. I can drink an entire pot of coffee if I want, or imagine how my characters would MST3K the morning news, and just groove along with the sun as it rises.

Plus, it’s pretty darn cool to be finished with your day’s word count by eight a.m.

Now, it’s not all sunshine and Dark Roast K-Cups. I get a lot of weird looks, and the necessary “early to bed” part of the equation can suck garden hose sometimes. I never see TV programs as they originally air. I think it’s worth it, but learning to appreciate your own individuality can take years as a work in progress. Finding someone who’ll give a thumbs up to your wackier ways is a freakin’ miracle. I think that’s why I often love writing characters who access and celebrate their inner quirkiness. They may not always be happy with themselves, but they have the potential to get there.

And that’s where Cade came from. He’s a rapscallion, and knows it. The kind of guy who would have had a healthy fantasy life involving Captain Jack Sparrow and didn’t care who found out. In fact, he’d tell people about it. In detail. His brothers Robbie and Nathaniel despair of him as much as they cherish his fierce loyalty to their family, and making sure the men they end up with will treat them right. He’s learned that he’s no good at faking it until he makes it—whatever “it” might happen to be. He is who he is.

So is Dennis, the man who’s meant to be his mate. Dennis has spent a long, long time asserting his independence and individuality—but for all that, he’s mostly just met men who see his visual impairment first and the person he is, second. Not Cade. Cade’s over the river and through the walls like a hurricane, and the man is what he cares about. It’s enough to surprise Dennis into taking a shot at him.

And that’s the beginning of falling in love.

Granted, there’s that soulmark thing to help them along too. As it were. And as they are.

Blurb for As We Are, book four in the Soulmarked series:

Can the rebels with a cause change their ways, or will they miss their chance?

Wild, rebellious, and rakish, Cade’s been a bad boy since the day he was born. Don’t get him wrong—he’s as aware of his faults as he is his virtues, and he thinks he’d be better off without a mate of his own. He’d be a hell of a handful to keep up with.

Then a chance encounter brings Cade into Dennis’ path. Blind since birth, Dennis prides himself on being plainspoken and knowing how to have a good time. He isn’t looking for a soulmate either, but after meeting Cade he’s tempted to change his mind.

Can the rebels with a cause change their ways, or will they miss their chance?

Like the sound of As We Are? Buy it here: Totally Bound

About Willa Okati:

Willa Okati can most often be found muttering to herself over a keyboard, plugged into her iPod and breaking between paragraphs to play air drums. In her spare time (the odd ten minutes or so per day she’s not writing) she’s teaching herself to play the pennywhistle.

Willa has forty-plus separate tattoos and yearns for a full body suit of ink. She walks around in a haze of story ideas, dreaming of tales yet to be told. She drinks an alarming amount of coffee for someone generally perceived to be mellow.