Musings
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Christmas Day Snippet: The Repeat the Sounding Joy Edition (Redux)
I love to sing. I can’t sing. I mean I have a truly terrible voice, but I love to sing. Especially at Christmas. So Pandora’s Christmas Classics starts playing at our house before Thanksgiving and NPR gets switched to the Christmas station on the car radio as soon as B105.7 becomes all Christmas music all the time. I’ve played James Taylor’s holiday CD so many times I’m surprised it isn’t worn through and at least four times a week, I hunt for the Eagles version of “Please Come Home for Christmas” and Allison Krause and Yo-Yo Ma’s gorgeous rendition of “The Wexford Carol” on YouTube and play it while I’m…
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Sunday Snippet: The December Mourning to Joy Edition
Yesterday was the 11-year anniversary of my sister, Kate’s, death. On December 19, 2014, cancer stole Kate from me. It’s always a hard day, but this year felt harder … weepier than usual. Not sure why. Maybe because the state of the world has left my emotions raw and simmering close to the edge since last Christmas. I’m exhausted with worry and fear and cringing at whatever’s next. But Kate’s was a quiet, peaceful passing. She had dealt with health issues for some time, but by the time we discovered what was happening, the cancer had spread and her body had no more fight in it. Three months after the…
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Sunday Snippet: The December memos Edition
It’s time for another edition of the Memos, which is your sign that Nan is coming up short on Snippet topics this week. I do find doing the memos fun, though. Hope you do too. Onward… Dear Readers Who Stopped by My Book Signings This Month, Sure loved seeing you and I do so appreciate you coming out to buy books and visit with me! It’s always fun to share reading news with you! Thanks for buying my books as holiday gifts–what fun I had packaging them up for you! Always Happy to be Meeting Readers and Signing Books, Nan ~*~*~*~ Dear Weather, It’s about two weeks ’til Christmas, and…
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Sunday Snippet: The Closing Up the Lake Edition
It’s quiet here at the lake this weekend. There is a sort of abandoned feeling in the air here in our little lake community. Most folks have already closed up their cottages for the season; a few (like us) hang on a bit longer. But this is our weekend to close up, winterize the cottage, and leave the lake for another year. Fall is definitely on the way out. The cottonwoods and maples and walnut trees have pretty much dropped all their leaves. (Mostly on our deck, roof, and driveway) On our way up to the lake yesterday, the soybean fields and cornfields were harvested and empty. Winter wheat will…
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Sunday Snippet: The Writing a Book Is Hard Edition
Writing a book is hard. A few days ago, as Liz and I had our usual morning g-Chat she said, okay, she typed, those words. Simple as the words are, the idea is huge because of the truth of it. In these days of indie publishing, where anyone can put a book up on Amazon, those words need to be said. To repeat: Writing a book is hard. I’m not going to rant about the folks who put up the books that haven’t seen an editor, the books that are full of misspellings and bad punctuation and lousy story structure. The folks who read a book, think well, I can…
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Authors on the Road Day 4
Liz takes over the blog today to share Day 4 of our writing retreat… After our obligatory hair appointment today, sporting curls on Nan and my usual flat-iron look on me, we went to lunch at Vinny Vanucchi’s in downtown Galena. We had excellent service and excellent food and opted not to have one of the most decadent looking desserts I’ve ever forced myself to turn down. Only minutes later, we were in a candy shop and never mind what we were doing there. What happens in Galena stays in Galena. Then we went on the history part of the day, enjoying a long and enlightening tour of the beautiful…
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Sunday Snippet: The Autumn at the Lake Edition
Autumn is my favorite time of the year, even though I’m often restless and sad in the fall. It’s an ending in so many ways, and yet there is that feeling of joyful beginning that comes with Thanksgiving and the start of the holiday season, even when the world is suddenly a scarier and more uncertain place. Fall is sweatshirts and jeans and corduroy jackets and yoga pants and maybe even scarves now and then, but not yet heavy winter coats and gloves and hats. It’s walks in the neighborhood that leave you feeling smugly exercised, but not particularly sweaty. It’s trips to the orchard for apples and cider and…
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Sunday Snippet: The Reflections on Aging Edition
I turned 72 on Friday. 72. It is a number I never expected to see because when my mom died suddenly of a massive heart attack at the tender age of 60, I became convinced that I would follow in her footsteps. After all, I’m a lot like my mom in other ways. When I passed 60 … and continued on for another almost ten years, I was always kind of surprised that the next birthday happened. Surprised and oh, so very grateful. In December of 2022 when I was diagnosed with heart failure with reduced ejection fraction (HFrEF) at the age of 69, I was pretty sure that I…
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Sunday Snippet: The Imprinting Edition (A Peek into the Writerly Mind)
So many authors I know often talk about how much they love to write and how it seems as though every situation–good or bad–gets filtered through their inner writer. That’s so true. I’m wondering right now if it is a bad thing that even when I am in the midst of chaos and crisis, sickness and grief the writer is still creating–inventing scenes, conversations, and scenarios. I’ve thought it about it a lot as we’ve been in such crisis in our country, and I’ve been trying to decide if it’s something to feel guilty about or not. I think it’s not. It’s never a bad thing when our gift kicks…
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Sunday Snippet: The Canal Boat Edition
Husband and I are on a new kick–canal boats and narrow boating. No, we’re not doing it (although I’ve added it to my bucket list!), but we’re totally hooked on watching shows about canals and narrow boats on Prime. We started with Great Canal Journeys, which we found while wandering around on Prime one night. Two episodes and we were enthralled. Timothy West and Prunella Scales were darling together. To watch two people in their late seventies and eighties, married 60 years, travel the canals of Great Britain together is just delightful. (If you’re an All Creatures Great and Small on PBS fan, you’ll recognize Samuel West when he shows up…