Guest Blogger: Mark Teppo's Guilty Pleasure

(image from Flickr user Saxifrage)

The Guilty Pleasure

I've got two kids, age 5 and 3 (named Contrary Boy and Existential Girl), and my summer vacation has been a week with them. All day long. They are darling, really, and I wouldn't trade them for a case of whiskey, but they tend to . . . well . . . be distracting. Writing becomes the thing I do in fifteen minute chunks when they're fascinated by a shiny object, which complicates the whole process of keeping the plot of a novel in your head. As well as finishing a scene.

(Existential Girl just came up to me in tears and said, "Can you push me on the swing when you're done playing with your Blackberry?" Busted by a three-year old.)

Where was I? Oh, yes. Guilty reading pleasures. For me, it's sneaking a book off to the bathroom. The kids have learned--finally--that potty time is private time, and I can usually sneak a good ten minutes of reading in without an interruption. Some day I'll hide a netbook or something in there and write my next book during bathroom time.