( 2020 new year – Depositphotos ) Just a few days now until the new year starts. Are you all ready? It isn’t just a new year, but a whole new decade starts this week, so it seems like a bigger deal than just every other New Year’s Day, doesn’t it? That said, I am still working on my writing goals for the year. I had second thoughts about my list last week, about what I think I can really accomplish in the new year, so I took another look at them and made some adjustments. My

( family at feast – Depositphotos ) In the coming week or two, there will be lots of scenes like the one above all over the country and the world. We used to have large family holidays when I was growing up, with grandparents, sometimes aunts and uncles and cousins, too. Holidays are a lot easier for kids than for the adults, aren’t they? All the kids have to do is wait until the big day, though that seems interminable to a six-year-old, whether it’s a birthday or Christmas.

(Christmas Cookies – Depositphotos) I should have gotten a lot more done this weekend. Except I’m currently trying to fight off some ick. I’ve been chugging tea all day, in hopes of making my throat feel better. It doesn’t. I had hot and sour soup for lunch. It didn’t help. I finally broke down and took some cold meds for the slight fever I had earlier in the afternoon. I had big plans to figure out cookies to bake next weekend, and maybe start on the grocery list. Instead, w

( sticky notes with the word everything – Depositphotos ) Right now I’m looking at my to-do list, which looks about two miles long, and I can’t seem to motivate myself to do anything about it today. What I’d like to do is crawl into bed early tonight. To be fair, I spent most of last night sick, so I’m more tired than usual, but that isn’t everything. We’re about to go into a busy stretch at work, with a weird schedule, and part of me is stressing about that. Plus I’ve looked

My to-do list isn’t quite as bad as the poor woman above, but it feels like it some days. I’m winding down a mini-vacation right now, and I feel like I haven’t accomplished nearly enough for as many days as I’ve been home. To be fair, my time off was over the Thanksgiving weekend, so I spent the day before and the day of in the kitchen for a large chunk of the day, and washing dishes for days. I did wrap up a small project yesterday that I started a couple weeks ago. Today, I

It’s Thanksgiving week here in the U.S. I’ve spent some of the past two days in the kitchen–my final loaf of sage and onion bread is baking in my bread machine right now for the stuffing we’ll eat on Thursday and the house smells so good right now. I almost hate to wait four days to sample the bread. But I will, and I’ll be grateful for it on Thanksgiving. We don’t always think about the good things in our lives, the things we have that others envy because they don’t have the

( 2020 goals – Depositphotos ) I know, I know, it’s only November, but it’s mid-November, and before you know it, it’s going to be January. Plus this is typically the time I start thinking about what I want to accomplish in the new year, usually because I have a goal-setting workshop in December. No goal-setting workshop this year, but it’s still time for me to look at what I did this year and try to figure out what I can realistically do in the new year. So my plan for this

I almost set ‘Comfort and Joy’ as the title of this post, but I don’t want to confuse the seasons for anyone. I’m just thinking about the things that comfort and make us happy today. Now that it’s fall, the soup pot is getting a workout, which makes me happy. Right now, there is leftover potato soup from yesterday’s dinner in the fridge. Today, it’s some of my favorite tea and movie soundtracks while I work on rewrites and laundry, and I am seriously considering one of my fav

( reading book by fireplace – Depositphotos ) It’s November, and it finally feels like fall here. We had a couple nights in a row now with temps around freezing. I was happy to set the clocks back last night, not just for regaining the hour we lost in the spring, but because it wasn’t dark when I got up this morning. I love fall, but I absolutely hate getting up in the dark. I know other people hate that it’s dark earlier in the evening, but I don’t care about that. I find it

( decor with pumpkins – Depositphotos ) I can remember quiet weekends even though we rarely have them. When my boys were in school, I worked retail, so there was no such thing as quiet weekends, because normally, I would be at work. When they were younger, I was home, so weekends were a normal day for me. These days, they’re in their own place, and I have weekends off, though there are errands and chores that don’t get done during the week. So occasionally, I like a weekend w

As we speak, my suitcase is half-packed to head out in a couple of hours for an overdue writing retreat at the beach with one of my writing buddies! The red flag is probably flapping in the wind there, too, right now, but by the time we get there, it should have settled down to a milder breeze, and the rest of the weekend looks amazing. Cool, but gorgeous. I cannot wait! While I finish packing, I have a little story snippet to share with you from Hunting Medusa. =============

Hello, everyone! I am happy to say we have a returning guest this week, with a quick interview and a hot excerpt of her shiny new release, The Viscount’s Pet. Welcome back, Kryssie Fortune! ================ Quick Fire Quiz: Does writing energize or exhaust you? Definitely energize. I get bad tempered if I don’t do something to inch my writing forward every day. Ballpoint or fountain pen? Ball point. I write in a notebook, type up, then read it through before moving on to the

It is a pretty Sunday here–except it doesn’t feel like October begins in two days. I spent a good part of yesterday with a cousin at a wine festival, and it was even hotter yesterday than today. I’d love if Mother Nature got her act together. A few cool, crisp days with puffy white clouds and bright blue skies would be perfect. Instead, we’re looking at another day mid-week with the possibility of setting a new record-high temperature. That’s what I’d like to see out of my wi

As I write this, it will be Official Autumn tomorrow, very early in the morning. While I’m excited about that, I am not excited that it will still feel like summer tomorrow and evidently again next weekend. I’m ready for it to feel like fall, for real, not just for a day or two at a time. We had a few nice days last week. I actually broke out my jeans instead of capri pants a couple of days. Unfortunately, this will be a summer-wear sort of week again. On the other hand, this

( Leaves, book & tea – Depositphotos ) Okay, so the picture above isn’t quite accurate for what the weather is like here today, but I can feel this approaching. It’s been absolutely gorgeous here the past few days, with temps only in the 70s during the day and dipping into the 50s overnight. I’m going to pretend there aren’t to very hot days in this week’s forecast before it gets nice again. I’ll probably miss them anyway, since the next week and a half at the day-job will be

I know, I know. Just because September is here doesn’t mean fall is. But we’re closer, so that’s enough for me today. ( Autumn trees – Depositphotos ) I’m writing today and tomorrow now that the household chores are out of my way, as are the errands, so today is just a quick fly-by post with a short excerpt from my novella for the Common Elements Romance Project, due out late this year. ================ Nate schooled his expression to neutrality before he turned around. Hayde

Today is family dinner day. I think I mentioned earlier in the year that I had instituted that since the boys are both out of the house now–at least once a month, we have dinner together. In theory, it’s easy, right? They’re less than an hour away from us. In reality, there are four of us with a whole lot of interests, friends and jobs. The one day off we all have in common is Sunday, so for the most part, that is the day we typically schedule our family dinner. Sunday dinner

Today was a little break from all of the work crazy for me (though one of my teammates went in to the office today, and I was there yesterday). I went with a friend to the gemstone show we enjoy every year.  That was good and bad. Good, because it is a brief respite from work and chores. Bad, at least this year, because one of our favorite vendors wasn’t there, which was disappointing. It meant we had to work a bit harder to find some of what we wanted. But we also discovered

( To Do – Depositphotos ) I think I may have mentioned how busy we are at the day-job this month–our busiest week of the year is coming up in the next ten days or so, plus we have team members on vacation (I started that last month myself when I went to the conference, and I absolutely feel everyone should use their vacation time!), and our team is short-handed on my side by one person, so we’ve been doing a lot of juggling. And I’m about to toss an unplanned day off into the

I would actually say those two bins are about even, and they both look like the work bin in the cartoon above. My problem this week is a serious lack of motivation. It isn’t because I don’t want to get things done. More like there are too many things that have to get done, and there are a whole lot that are equally important, and I can’t choose where to start. Part of the problem might be that last month was a really good month. It was busy, but good busy. This month has star