Okay, so I promised that I’d do a post of the reno work when it was done, so here we go. Most of the pics are pretty self-explanatory, but to recap: We had our dining room stripped and painted, the living room and hall/foyer/stairwell painted, and  the kitchen stripped and painted.  The cabinets were reworked by removing some and adding others to make the space more open and user friendly. The biggest thing was taking out the bulkhead cabinets over the peninsula, which completely opened up the space. We had new countertops installed as well as a new stove and microwave. We had all new hardwood flooring put in the…

A big welcome to author Martha Reynolds, whom I discovered on the Amazon Free Bestseller List a few months ago. Her book CHOCOLATE FOR BREAKFAST just delighted me and I wrote to tell her how much I enjoyed it. I’m so thrilled she’s written a sequel and very pleased and excited to have her here today. Martha  ended an accomplished career as a fraud investigator and began writing full time in 2011. Her debut novel, CHOCOLATE FOR BREAKFAST, was selected as the 2012 Book of the Year in Women’s Fiction by the readers of  Turning the Pages Books. CHOCOLATE FONDUE is the sequel to CHOCOLATE FOR BREAKFAST, and both books…

Last week, I gave you a snippet of my novel, Rule Number One, which was published last year. Here’s another quick eight for you from that book. Hope it intrigues you enough to go here and buy it, or here if your e-reader of choice is a Nook. FYI, Rule Number One is also available in print from both Amazon and Barnes & Noble for those of you who still read by turning pages. Setting up the scene, we’re still in the very beginning of the book, where Jack has shown up at Katy’s and she’s mistaken him for her hired escort…he hasn’t actually figured it out yet… “We’re dating?”…

It’s been a busy week and it’s only going to get busier as we head out to spend a week with Grandboy and Son and DIL. Can’t wait to get my Nanny hands on that sweet baby! He’s growing up so fast, I can hardly stand it. I’ve been offering snippets from my two WIPs for last nine weeks, so for week 10, I thought I’d do something different and give you 8 sentences from my published novel Rule Number One, which is available at Amazon and Barnes&Noble both as an e-book or in print. The book blurb is “Decorator and home stager Katy Ruth Gilligan has sworn off men.…

I’m deep into rewrites/revision on The Music Is You, so I’m sticking with another snippet from  Like Fine Wine this week. The revision work is hard, but satisfying when I reread what I’ve done and realize how far I’ve come in the past three years. My writing is maturing and I’m learning so much. In spite of how arduous it is to cut and cut and cut, and then rewrite and rewrite, I know that my stories are getting better with each pass, and that I’ll be proud to put them out there for everyone to read. So, to set the scene: Last week, we saw Will and Julie post-kiss…

The first two weeks of 8-Sentence Sunday, I gave you snippets from my completed novel, Like Fine Wine—the story of Julie Miles, a widow who’s come to Chicago to try to regroup after losing her husband of over thirty years. Just for fun, I’m returning to that story this week. After all, I need to keep you intrigued with two different novels that are both releasing this year. Here we go… In the last snippet, Will Brody, the hot guy across the hall, stopped by to check on Julie. He’s attractive and kind and funny, and Julie can’t seem to help responding to him. She’s shocked to realize that her…

My pal Skye Hughes  nominated me for the Liebster Blog Award. Thanks, Skye! The Liebster Award requires the following (which I snagged directly from Skye’s post): You must tell 11 things about yourself Answer the questions your nominator gives you. Create 11 questions for the bloggers you nominate. Choose blogs with fewer than 200 followers and link them to your post. If you’re nominated, please leave a comment on this post with the URL of  your Liebster Award post. In the interest of keeping this blog post down to novella size, I’m going to say that answering the 11 questions below covers the first rule, which is to tell 11…

  Another snippet from The Music Is You, my current WIP. Carrie has confronted her old friend and former teacher, demanding to know how Maestro Liam Reilly has shown up in Frankfort, Michigan. Eliot confesses he invited him, telling her she needs to face him and deal with their issues. Carrie spends a sleepless night wondering how she’s going to cope with Liam’ s sudden reappearance in her life after all these years, but the next morning… Barefoot, she ran down the steps from the loft. Eliot had a lot of nerve showing up this early. Surely he knew she didn’t get any sleep last night. She threw open the…

Last week, I posted a first scene snippet from my current work in progress/revision, The Music Is You. Carrie Halligan’s worst fears are realized when her former lover, symphony conductor Liam Reilly, suddenly appears in the small Michigan town where she’s raising her son as a single mom. Liam’s surprised to see her too, and in this later scene, he’s in his hotel room, trying to wrap his mind around the events in the bar earlier.  Here’s another snippet from that book, this time from Liam’s POV. What he’d recognized was the way she played—leaning into the piano, her slender fingers dancing lightly across the keyboard, emotion caressing each and every…

I’m stepping away from Like Fine Wine for a week to give you a tiny taste of another book  I’m doing revision work on, The Music Is You. I think I might go back and forth between them for a few weeks because LFW’s main character, Julianne Miles was a secondary character in Music, which is her best friend Carrie’s story. Carrie Halligan is a single mom, raising a teenaged son on the shores of Lake Michigan in a small town near Traverse City. Her world gets turned upside down when her son’s father, sexy symphony conductor Liam Reilly, suddenly appears on the scene after almost sixteen years. Carrie once…