This Life...
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Sunday Snippet: The Snap Judgments Edition
I was thinking about snap judgments–how we all make them and how we all have them made about us. Here’s what got me started–social media trolls. Bear with me, I promise I’m going to make this connect. At least ten or twelve times a week (sometimes that many in a day!) I get friend requests on Facebook and even more on Instagram from trolls–either random bots or really bored and kinda sleazy guys looking for attention. No, I’m going to be your friend because you “like my smile” or you think I’m “gorgeous” and you “can’t stop thinking about me.” Seriously? You don’t even know me, dude. Being blonde and…
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Sunday Snippet: The I Might Need a Vacation Edition
It’s been a crazy month so far. With the release of THE VALENTINE WAGER on February 1 came a flurry of promotion, blog appearances, giveaways, interviews, and book signings (one canceled due to weather, the other, a great success!). In the midst of all this, I’m still working on editing gigs for clients and doing revisions on the first Weaver Sisters book. My mind is a bit on overload and my brain is…well…tired. I was thinking last night how much I’d love to go to that cabin in the mountains of North Carolina where the Word Wranglers had their retreat last August. How I’d love to rent it for a…
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Sunday Snippet: The First Real Snippet for 2022 Edition
It’s cold here–like really cold. Single digits cold. We went up to check on the lake cottage on Thursday and discovered that the pilot light on the furnace had blown out in the high winds they’d had on Tuesday and Wednesday. It was 23 degrees in the cottage and the antifreeze in the toilets had a skim of ice. Yikes! Husband relit the pilot and then we went to friend Moe’s (she’s a year-rounder) and stayed in her warm house until ours got up to a decent temperature. The cottage is totally winterized, so all is well, and the time away from my computer gave me the opportunity to sit…
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Sunday Snippet: The New Year Edition
It’s 2022. I’m celebrating, but very quietly. It’s almost as if I’m tiptoeing into the new year, holding my breath, not touching anything, and looking around for whatever is going to fall on our collective heads next. I hate that this is what I’ve become–a person who approaches everything with such caution, even a new year. But if the last two years have taught me anything at it, it’s to pay attention, to be careful, to know what’s happening in the world around me. There is a lot happening this year for me–I have three new books releasing in 2022 and I have two book signings that I hope can…
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Sunday Snippet: Holy Cats! It’s December!
Wow. It’s December! How did that happen? Just last week, it was Halloween, right? Somehow, days slip by and the holidays are nigh and I have a book due in about 6 weeks… So, I’m writing in the mornings, working on editing gigs in the afternoon, and trying to get holiday stuff done in the evenings. All in all, breathing is out of the question until after January 15, 2022. That’s not really true…I am taking a breath now and again, and as I look at my December calendar, there isn’t all that much on it. The overwhelm only feels…well…overwhelming. But I can do it. I’ve done it before and…
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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.…