Musings
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Sunday Snippet: The Pre-Thanksgiving Edition
Giving thanks every day on Facebook this month has improved my outlook. That is bigger than it sounds, mes amies, because my outlook has pretty much sucked for quite some time. However, I went to the grocery store this morning…yes, on the Saturday before Thanksgiving, and what a lovely experience it was! Folks wore masks, were polite and easygoing. The store shelves were fully stocked, nobody seemed to be hoarding anything, the produce department had gorgeous fresh veggies and fruit. I bought pears and lettuce. I even found vegan queso cheese for Husband–a real victory if it tastes decent. All in all, the trip to Kroger gave me hope for…
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Author Spotlight: Liz Flaherty Has a New Book and a Holiday Giveaway!
Congratulations, Roseann McGrath Brooks, you are Liz’s winner! She’ll be in touch! “Some of the joys in being a septuagenarian are unexpected. Google is one—how else did you think I knew how to spell septuagenarian? Dressing however you want is another. It’s especially fun to wear what a blonde twenty-something on Facebook assures you is completely wrong for you.” – Liz Flaherty, Window Over the Desk Getting romance novels published is hard for me these days—not so much because I’m the age I am, I guess, or because I look the age I am, but because I sound the age I am. The editors I’ve worked with in past years…
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Sunday Snippet: The End of the Season Edition
I’m better. The muscle relaxers helped me get through a couple of days and now I’m off all the chemistry and just depending on good stretches and paying attention to how I’m sitting when I work. Hopefully, I won’t have to deal with that pain again. It’s the weekend we close up the lake cottage, which is always bittersweet, but we are ready to stay at home in the city for the cold winter months. By about mid-March, we’ll be longing for the lake again. Funny how that happens, but I think that the cycle of lake life runs like that. Not hot and cold, but rather, our inner selves…
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Sunday Snippet: The I Hurt Edition
Yeah, I hurt, and I hate it! I did something squirrelly to my neck and shoulder last week, and ice and ibuprofen weren’t cutting it. So when I wen in for my annual checkup on Thursday, I mentioned the pain to my doc. She felt around (yikes!), found the offending muscles, recommended some exercises to help stretch out the pain and wrote me a scrip for a muscle relaxant. Said to give it two weeks and if it’s not gone by then to check in with her again. So…muscle relaxants. Um…the dose is two before bed, however, Doc said that since I’ve never had muscle relaxants before, I should start…
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Sunday Snippet: The Questioning Edition
Time passes so quickly that Sunday comes along before I realize it’s been a week since my last missive here. A few months ago, I bought a little book called A Year of Journal Prompts. I’m bugged by the fact that I feel I need that little book, but I confess I’m really glad to have it. The author must have been feeling my empty-brain pain when she put it together. She has 30 or more prompts for each month of the year and Octobers are mostly about reevaluation–taking a look at where you are, where you’d like to be. Things you are happy about, things you aren’t so pleased about.…
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Sunday Snippet: The Time to Start a New Book Edition
And so it is. I didn’t take the break I intended to take before I dove into the new novel and I think maybe I should have. Between editing gigs and life stuff, I could’ve used a few days of doing absolutely nothing. Reading, watching mindless television, long walks around the ‘hood, some fall yard cleanup–that kind of nothing. Instead, I panicked about deadlines and began Jasmine Weaver’s story, which has been rattling around in my head since before I wrote Becker’s story. Chapter 1 of Jazz’s story is with my critique partner now and I’ve brainstormed endlessly with Liz and my friend Kelly and Husband… but she’s still in…
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Sunday Snippet: The Rosemary’s Birthday Edition
No, I’m not playing with classic horror movie titles here, it is actually my mother-in-law Rosemary’s birthday. Well, her birthday week. Tomorrow, she turns 96. And she is still rockin’. At 96, she still lives in the little house she raised her two sons in–67 years in the same house. Can you even imagine that? People move around so much these days–most folks I know have lived in at least a dozen houses in their lifetimes so far. Even my kids are on home #5 and they haven’t even been married nineteen years yet! Rosemary still drives her car–not far, mind you, but she can get herself to the bank…
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Sunday Snippet: The Autumn Is Here Edition
I love fall–I always have, and not just because my birthday is in the fall, but also because it’s a lovely time of year. Not an ending, but a beginning of cooler weather, sweatshirts and jeans and warm beverages and apples and pie and snuggling on the sofa in front of a fire. We cut back some of the stuff in the front garden today–the one under my office window. It’s still got green and flowers in it, but not so much color as plants go dormant for a long winter’s nap. Husband loves the purple verbena and the colorful cosmos that are still hanging on, so we’ll leave those…
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Sunday Snippet: The Whew, I Did It Edition
Wow. It’s been quite a week. Mostly because I finally wrote THE END on Book 3 in the Lange Brothers series. Becker’s book, The Fireman’s Christmas Wish, is in the hands of my fabulous editor, Sinclair Sawney, and I confess that I’m really nervous about this one. There’s a lot of me in grumpy Becker Lange and a lot of what I wish I could be in sweet and charming Harley Cole. Before this book, I’d never thought about how much of myself goes into my books, even though friends who know me and read my novels often say, “Oh, that line or that situation or that moment of humor…
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Sunday Snippet: The Pretty Pictures Edition
Yeah, I’m still under that deadline–getting closer, but not quite there–and September 15 looms large. So no words today, wise or otherwise. Instead here are some pretty pictures of our gardens as they drift into fall. Enjoy! But first, a quick bit of Tule Publishing business–we’re celebrating our 8th birthday with a 50% off sale on all e-books (including mine!), so hop on over to the Tule Shop and get happy! Stay well, stay safe, wear your mask, and most of all, mes amies, stay grateful!