UPDATE: The winner is…Elaine Howell!
*~*~*

A note popped up on my phone, telling me how much my time spent on the device has increased. My Twitter time has risen dramatically. No surprise there. I’ve been watching the news out of Ukraine incessantly. It’s hard not to. So many harrowing and uplifting stories. Today’s favorite was the story about a woman in Kyiv who took down a drone by flinging a jar of cucumbers at it from her balcony.

Writing hasn’t been easy or particularly productive, which is worrying since I have a book I have to upload by the 18th. I’ve been doing edits, because it doesn’t take as much brainpower—usually.

I’m still trying to make time for the #100DayProject art challenge, but I’m falling behind. Again, too much time on my phone and spent in front of the TV. I have to manage my “need to know” a little better. I made a bookmark earlier last week and didn’t realize until I was done that, subconsciously, Ukraine was still on my mind…

Another tweet prompted me to do this in response to whether I supported the Ukrainians. My answer ten minutes later…

I’ll keep with the challenge. It makes me experiment a bit. This picture was made using oil pastels, with which I have no experience (obviously!), but it was highly enjoyable giving it a try…

This one is more in line with what I usually do. Just a repeated pattern. No thought. Just paint and doodle. Very relaxing.

So, my question to you for a chance to win my Ukrainian sunflower bookmark is…

How do you find balance while the world is devolving into chaos?

UPDATE: The winner is Jen B!
*~*~*

February

After a very successful January, I had big goals for February. My actual results are a little mixed. I have great excuses. Always do. But here’s what I did accomplish on my goal list…

Work-related:

1. I published my short story from the Cowboys anthology as a single short story release, “Hunk of Burning Love.” It’s currently FREE in Kindle Unlimited, but I also offered it as a FREE direct download as my Valentine’s Day gift to you.
2. I completed 4 editing projects in February, including two long novels!
3. I did NOT write a book—only a few pages, actually—which was my only disappointing progress this month.

Health-related:

1. I continued with Weight Watchers and can proudly say that I’ve lost 18.6 pounds as of today! I’m not pushing to lose fast because I like how I feel. Slow is good!
2. I’ve been paying attention to my step count. It’s not stellar, but the fact that I’m looking at it means something to my brain.

Happiness-related: 

1. I began working on the #100DayProject art challenge! It’s my third year participating, and yes, it’s HARD fitting in play time at my art table but sooooo fulfilling. Here are some samples of what I’ve done so far…

March

Here’s me putting this out in the world…

 

For work-related, I plan:

1. To write and publish the next Texas Vampires novella, No Tender Mercy. (Have you pre-ordered your copy?!) No dilly-dallying. This will be done!
2. To get close to “Done” with my next romantic suspense story.
3. To prepare a new box set of the three Danger Zone books and publish it!
4. To complete 4 editing projects in March!

For health-related, I plan:

1. To continue with Weight Watchers and hope to lose at least 5 pounds. Slow is good!
2. To begin some low-impact aerobics, which will include a video workout for old people (I’m not old, and my joints aren’t effed, but I like the low-impact part!), plus, I’ll add some outdoor activities, like pool maintenance and blowing the patio—counting the things I should already be doing to get ready for pool season. All of them burn calories and build muscle. Guess I should count housework, too. Blech.

For happiness-related, I plan: 

1. To continue working on getting my art room better organized, because I plan…
2. To produce something art-related every day for the #100DayProject art challenge!

Contest

Comment on anything you’ve read in this post. Tell me what you’re doing to make yourself happier and healthier. Tell me what you plan to read… Like I said, comment on anything for a chance to win a $5 Amazon gift card!

Open Contests

Be sure to enter these contests while you still can!

1. January George: The Way Back Home (Contest & Excerpt) — This one ends soon! Win an Amazon gift card!
2. What’s coming soon! 5 Open Contests! New Contest–2 Winners! — Win a FREE book! Two winners!
3. Flashback: Cain’s Law (Contest) — Win a FREE book!
4. Michal Scott: Elizabeth Jennings Graham — The Rosa Parks of the 1850s (Contest) — Win an Amazon gift card!

UPDATE: The winner is…K Campos!
*~*~*

Thanks to Delilah for hosting me again!

When I asked for this date, it was because I had planned to have the last book in my Rafferty Ridge series releasing next week, but life had other plans. So many plans. I have always written. I write in my head as I’m driving (wish I could master dictation but somehow it doesn’t work for me), I write in my head as I’m cooking, showering, watching TV. But finding time to write at an actual computer the last month or so has been HARD. My husband had hernia surgery in January and can’t lift anything over ten pounds and with two young kids, a full-time job in healthcare and so much laundry I could probably fill an 18-wheeler, writing kept getting pushed back. The last two years have felt like a juggling act, just trying to keep all the balls in the air with work, family, kids, school, something to keep myself sane like running or quilting. But it ends up feeling like I’m doing everything at a bare minimum, and that’s hard with writing. You want to put your best work forward and when you have limited time and energy, that’s where writing starts to be pushed to the back burner.

But I’m also working on being kinder to myself, we are all struggling right now and as much as I love to write, it shouldn’t be adding to my stress. The book will be finished at some point, but I am not exactly sure when. And that’s okay. In the meanwhile, the first two books in the series, Where the Light Comes In and The Way Back Home, are both available on Amazon and are really fun, quick reads. And I just might leave you scratching your head wondering how I’m going to redeem Sarah in book three (I’m still working on it).

What are some things that you have struggled with during this pandemic? What are some self-care things you have found that helped? Leave a comment for a chance to win a $5 Amazon card!

The Way Back Home

EXCERPT from The Way Back Home:

“You’re not going to say anything?”

Teo raised his eyes to hers, and they caught her like a fishhook. A glimpse of that old hurt, of a raw vulnerability that almost took her breath away. “You just sustained a head injury, My. It’s not the time.”

“When is the time? Because the minute you can get rid of me, you will, and I’ll never see you again.” She wished she could keep her voice flat, emotionless, but it cracked on the tail end.

He looked away, at the refrigerator that had started humming. “What difference does it make at this point?”

She stared at him. The protective shell she’d built had been ripped off and it hurt as much as the day he’d left. “What difference does it make? Did I really mean that little to you?” Her voice rose, thickening with emotion and anger.

“Mean that little to me?” For the first time she heard anger in his voice, real emotion that broke through that carefully hardened exterior. His posture changed, no longer languid, his body tensed like was readying for battle. “You were the one…” He trailed off, losing steam, and turned, bracing his hands on the counter. The muscles in his back and shoulders sagged under the thermal shirt.

“I was the one what?” Maya asked, uncertainty edged into her tone. The air had been sucked out of the room at his outburst and she couldn’t breathe.

His voice became flat and emotionless again. She couldn’t see his face, but his shoulders sagged. “You need to rest.”

“I was the one what?” she asked again. Her voice betrayed the tension that was making her headache worse. She wanted him to say it. She was the one who’d gotten pregnant. Who had ruined everything. She was the one.

The silence hung between them, the clatter of the fridge, the harsh sound of her breath in the cold air. And her heart squeezed and ached, still pathetically clinging to a shred of hope.

He didn’t move, didn’t turn, but his words had the impact of a sledgehammer. “You were the one that didn’t want me.”

I wanted to get the picture and my wish for you to have a Happy New Year in early, because I won’t be online later tonight! I have things to do…

I’m in love with calendars-planners, with noting, if not chronicling, the passage of time. I’m a planner by nature. I create plans for my life and work which include things like deadlines to turn in books and all the incremental steps to get there. I write down holidays and birthdays. I also place little stickers on my monthly calendar to note full moons, new moons, etc. I have certain rituals to celebrate the change of seasons.

I also have certain rituals to celebrate and prepare for the new year.

Beginning in mid-December, I update all my plans for the next year’s work. I start with a mind map to create a loose visual of my goals. Then I go into my year’s goals and come up with the next quarter’s goals, and further refine the plan down to what I want to complete next week. Not that I follow it religiously. I adjust constantly as life and inspiration change.

I have some superstitious rituals I perform on New Year’s Eve. I’ll share them.

• I place a penny on the ledge above my outside door on New Year’s Eve. Then on New Year’s Day, I’ll take it down and tuck it into my wallet. The penny is for money luck in the new year.
• Nearing midnight, I open the door to the outside then waft burning sage through the rooms to chase any malignant spirit or feelings out of the house.
• Lastly, and this can be the most fun, I prepare a hand spell. It’s a way of “speaking” my dreams into reality.

A hand spell works like this…

Trace your hand on a plain piece of paper then cut it out. Inside that hand, write down your wishes for the new year. At midnight, go outside with a lighter and set the paper on fire while you recite this:

“Inside this hand,
Inside this spell,
Dwell my hopes for the new year…”

Then say your hopes out loud. I think of the spell as a way of putting my wishes out into the world. By saying them aloud, my mind hears them and “sets” the expectations because there is power in the words you hear, even if you are the one doing the speaking. (And there’s an actual, physiological reason this works involving your RAS—but that’s something to talk about another day. 🙂 )

So, that’s how I prepare for entering a new year. Just thought I’d share some of my weirdness with you.

Do you have any rituals? Any foods, any activities that are part of your “rituals”?

UPDATE: The winner is…Jeanine Lesperance!
*~*~*

In January 2020, I lost my mom. After losing my grandmother and father the two previous years, one after the other, my family and I were drained. We inherited their home, and my daughter and her family moved in—and immediately, we had the job of paring down their belongings to make room for my daughter’s family’s possessions. A lot of things that held precious memories went to other family members. My mother was an artist, and most of her paintings flew out the door to relatives who had favorite pieces. Things that hung on the wall for years were gone. It was sad, but we all wanted a memory, something we’d treasure from a woman who was the center of our family made with her own hands and talent.

I inherited all of my mother’s art supplies. And admittedly, and to my daughter’s dismay, I didn’t pare down the treasure trove she left me. She was more into oil paintings, and I keep those paint tubes thinking someday I’ll make the leap and follow her there, but she also enjoyed watercolor painting.

The other day, when I was looking for a piece of paper to begin a new watercolor painting, I picked up an old pad of mom’s paper, and something fell out from between the pages. It’s a painting in neutral sepia tones of my sister, Elle James, and myself as children playing dress-up. I sat with the painting in my hands, smiling. It was “loose” with fun pencil squiggles to portray the flowers on the fabric. I loved it and immediately went in search of a frame. It’s now on my office wall. All I have to do is look to the left at the wall next to me to see her painting. It’s so nice having something of hers right there beside me. I feel like she’s looking over my shoulder.

First, solve the puzzle to see the painting! Next, tell me whether you have a possession from a loved one that brings you closer to them for a chance to win a $5 Amazon gift card!

Do you have lots of supplies, Dear Reader, for things like a craft, (or more than one), a hobby, for kids, or for your home office?

Do you know where everything is?

Loaded question, I know. Some of us might have things totally organized. But I suspect there are a lot more of us who, well, don’t.

It’s that part of us to whom I write.

When I’m not writing, I make stuff. Mostly, the stuff I make involves yarn. Not always, but in the interests of time and staying focused, (i.e. not chasing ALL the squirrels), I’m going to stick with yarn for the purposes of our discussion.

I truly do have a LOT of yarn. I started knitting the year my mother died and found, through knitting, a solace that other things haven’t brought me. But my obsession with yarn didn’t start there. If I look back in my own timeline, I see yarns woven in and out of my tapestry since I was a little girl. My first art, in fact, was embroidery.

I made a unicorn.

What about you? Do you have a particular interest in a type of material? When I was little, I loved stickers – a thing that has matured, I find, with friends who geek out for hours about washi tape and bujo (“bullet journals”).

So here’s where things get interesting. I love to write, I love to make things – particularly with yarn, and my day job is highly organized, (I work in the insurance industry). How are these things related? Well, I could get really philosophical and talk about relationship-driven business and how much I love to teach, and teaching is woven in and out of all three of those pursuits, but that’s not what I’m after today. No, today, I’m all about the organizing.

When I buy yarn, it’s usually in a specific place for a specific reason. I don’t necessarily mean “sweater for husband.” I mean I’m at a writing retreat, say, and we go visit a local yarn shop, (known in our subculture as an “LYS,” or “Local Yarn Shop). I buy a skein or two of high-end fiber, maybe out of the sale bin, (these fibers can be spendy!). I haven’t yet decided what to make, but it will likely be a shawl to commemorate my experience. My “Bryce Canyon Shawl” is one such example – made after a trip to, you guessed it, Bryce Canyon. (If you are a fellow yarnivore, my Ravelry is here.) More often, though, I don’t yet know what it will be, just that I want to connect the yarn to my trip and the people with whom I’m retreating.

Here’s how I do it: I have bins that I numbered. My first bins were actually repurposed cat litter buckets, washed out, and with the labels removed. My more recent ones are plastic shoe boxes from the big box store. (Now I feel compelled to note that some purists feel storing fiber in plastic can degrade it, so it pays to do your research and understand how you are choosing to curate your collection.) I made numbered labels for the bins, and then tracked them in a word table, something like this:

I’ll give myself as much context as I can, without going overboard writing a novel. I stress, the detail matters. “Green yarn for Suzie” is going to be a lot less helpful two years from now than you think it will. And definitely go through your collection from time to time. There are many benefits to this: maybe you and “Suzie” aren’t as close as you once were; maybe you have a new idea for an existing fiber – shop your stash!; maybe you want to use it for a new craft – this happens, as for example when I took up weaving.

There’s no reason you can’t have a well-managed yarn collection, and as my coauthor Rachel Wilder puts it, “it’s hours of pre-paid entertainment.”

Any other ideas? I’d love to hear in the comments.

And stay well, Dear Reader. ~hugs~

I finished writing Defending Evangeline yesterday! Woot! It’s longer than my usual story, and it about killed me!

Today will be a busy one. I have to do a final readthrough before I ship DE off to my sister. The story “lives” in her Brotherhood Protectors–Team Trojan world. As soon as I finish that, I’ll be editing one final story for the Cowboys: A Boys Behaving Badly Anthology, which releases October 12th! Then it’s straight to another author’s story I have to wrap up the edits for by Friday! Yes, a big busy day!!! Oh, the glamorous life of an author-editor!

Tomorrow, I start another book with a VERY SHORT deadline. Yeah, I’ll be typing until my fingers are little stumps—oh, wait! They already are! But enough whining.

Let me know what stories you’re looking forward to reading, not just mine! And be sure to enter the contests I have listed below. They’re still open!

Open Contests

1. Story Cubes — Tell me a story (Contest) — Win an Amazon gift card!
2. Candice LaBria: Falling Hard (Contest & FREE in KU!) — Win a FREE book and get a FREE read!
3. How big a deal is Halloween? (Contest) — Win an Amazon gift card!
4. Have you pre-ordered your copy? Defending Evangeline (Contest + Excerpt) — Win an Amazon gift card!