April Pulling Back The Curtain On Winter IWSG

IWSG

What more can we ask of April than the beauty we are beginning to see? We have pink trees, white trees, yellow daffodils, purple/white/yellow crocus's, and new green is shading everything. Lovely. Now children can play outside with gleeful abandon and teachers can get a much needed boost from watching and listening to their laughter, well at least most of the time. Another year is beginning with Covid, yet, if everyone will behave, we might actually have more of a "normal" life either by summer or (please) at least by fall. I feel hope again. Since I had my second vaccine (Pfizer) a mantel of fear has lifted from my burdened shoulders. Seriously. I don't really care if someone doesn't "believe" in Covid or the necessity of the vaccine or masks. What I care about is the burden on me is gone. I cried when my parents were vaccinated and I realized I had been SO worried about them dying from Covid. Yes, I know their time will come, as will mine, but at least not yet, not from this. I don't have much to convey on the writing front at the moment. Next month I will!

Please visit our wonderful co-hosts this month and thank them!

PK Hrezo, Pat Garcia, SE White, Lisa Buie Collard, Diane Burton!

IWSG optional monthly question is: 

Are you a risk taker when writing? Do you try something radical, different in style/POV/etc. or add controversial topics to your work?

I see this as two questions and both I would answer yes. I feel I risk whenever I put something in a book someone might read and ask themselves, "Did that happen to this author? Is this a "memoir moment?" and so feel I am a risk taker. I imagine Oprah (yes, dream big, right?!), posing the question, "What made you write about this? Has it happened to you personally?"

The second part of the question is risking to a point but perhaps not as much as someone else might. I have a novel in mind that I have not written yet because for me it would be huge to put it out for other people to read. So I will wait and see what happens. In my novels I've written about abuse, murder, greed, love, killing sadness, lies that break families apart, all things that can be considered risky depending on how you deal with them.

Happy Easter! Happy spring! Enjoy today, it's the only one you have right NOW!

IWSG March In With Sunshine!

 

Though we have had some wind, March has not come in with a "roar" as it does sometimes. We are so lucky right now that we have SUN for the next 7 or 8 days! After so many cloudy/snowy/rainy days, the relief is as deep as my need for Vit D (which I do take in supplement form but sun is so much more fun).

IWSG is what keeps me writing on the internet these days, as I am in revision mode on a WIP. 

Our Twitter Handle is @theIWSG and hashtag is #IWSG

Please go visit our wonderful co-hosts this month and thank them for helping out.

                                    Sarah - The Faux Fountain Pen, Jacqui Murray, Chemist Ken, 

Victoria Marie Lees, Natalie Aguirre, JQ Rose!

I wanted to share a recent epiphany with you. For years I have fought with myself, blamed myself, felt guilty, and generally negative about a certain aspect of writing. This aspect, I felt, meant I wasn't a "real" writer. So, I have kept it to myself and struggled with it. I realized this past Sunday, in a "family meeting" my son asked to have to talk about things together, that I finally had a safe place to discuss this aspect of writing that I have so struggled with. I said the words out loud, over and over and acknowledged them, and gave voice to them, and owned them, and wow, the feeling was overwhelming and positive, like I no longer drowned in the negative, but had found a way to burst the surface and breath clean, life-giving air. Here are the words:

I hate to go and write. I hate to make myself go and write. I hate the thought of having to go and write. I literally HATE that part of writing. 

Once I breathed this into the air a strange uplifting feeling came and I smiled, I laughed (at myself) and realized I had found a small freedom that now allows me to go ahead and hate making myself write, which in turn allows me to do just that. Make myself write, without guilt, without shame or blame.  You see, once I'm here in front of my screen and reading and writing and putting the pieces of the puzzle that is my wip in place, I LOVE writing. I love being here. I love the storytelling.

I am not a "wordsmith." I am not someone who loves everything having to do with writing. And I don't have to be. I just have to be the writer I am. I am a storyteller and that is the kind of writer I love to be. Do you love every aspect of writing, if you write?

Happy Spring Everyone. 

February Comes With A Heart And A Recipe In Honor Of Josephine Wake

February has come in cold and white, which doesn't bother me since I don't have to go out in it too much (picture me saying: COVID). Yesterday I did a snow angel for the first time in years, and today it's disappeared under a new layer of snow.

Like my current work in progress I feel I'm finding layers that were hidden from me before. I wrote the original first version of this wip YEARS ago, and lost it (computer got wiped and I cried like a baby).

So I am going from a previous copy leading up to the original first version and already in the first three chapters my heroine has decided what I wrote before is not correct. She is much more tomboy in this one. I love meeting her this way. This is historical fiction, so I have room to work but also a structure I must follow. I like the challenge. I like my heroine. I like progress is happening.

I feel this novel will be all the better for me having waited to really meet this woman. Have you had that happen? Your character tells you what to do, or tries to work with you instead of making you go it alone?

Yeah, it's great, isn't it? Have a wonderful February.

In honor of our dear friend Jo, 

here is a recipe for quick and easy 

Pimento Cheese 

 my mother Sue Miller gave me.

Ingredients: 2 bags shredded sharp cheddar cheese, 1/2 a block of cream cheese, warm/room temperature, 1 jar (12 oz) pimentos (roasted red peppers), mayo to taste (I like about 1 tablespoon. If you like yours a bit spicy, add your favorite hot sauce or some diced chili peppers.

What to do: Cut up pimentos into small pieces. Mix everything together. You'll see why you want everything room temperature when you do. You can eat right away or let sit over night to marry the flavors.

February 3 question for IWSG - Blogging is often more than just sharing stories. It’s often the start of special friendships and relationships. Have you made any friends through the blogosphere?

Yes I have and I am so very grateful. I have been a part of a group for almost seven years now that I found from the IWSG/ABC Blogging Challenge (in April) and through all our ups and downs, we are still going. We've lost a few along the way, Jo is one of them, but we still hold them in our hearts. 

Our Twitter handle is @TheIWSG and hashtag is #IWSG

The awesome co-hosts for the February 3 posting of the IWSG are 

Louise - Fundy Blue , Jennifer Lane, Mary Aalgaard, Patsy Collins at Womagwriter,

and Nancy Gideon! Please go visit them and thank them for co-hosting today!

PS

I hate the changes blogger has made to posting here. I can't figure anything out that before was so easy to do. So pardon my unprofessional looking blog posts for now. I am still working out the roaches. Yes, these aren't just bugs to me, but roaches. Yuck.

baby image from: https://babygooroo.com/articles/decoding-your-babys-cry

January 2021, Jo Wake, IWSG, Rain, Whew!

 

 

On February 6 (the next IWSG posting), we would like all who want to participate to share a recipe that brings warm memories of friendship and love in honor of our blogger friend Josephine “Jo” Wake who passed away December 16, 2020. She was a dear friend, full of spunk and she wrote a blog:

JO WAKE about FOOD, Life and a Scent of Chocolate. 

I had the honor of meeting her and her husband Matt in 2019 and it was a great joy.  We spent three days with them in Canada. I miss her already.

The link to the Linky link is here...              HONORING JO WAKE RECIPE LIST

The awesome co-hosts for the January 6th posting of the IWSG are

 Ronel Janse van Vuuren , J Lenni Dorner, Gwen Gardner Sandra Cox, 

and Louise - Fundy Blue! 

Please go and visit their blogs and thank them for all their hard work! Also, visit the IWSG website and sign up, if you'd like. We are a great bunch of folks who do our best to help support others like us... meaning Insecure and yet Happy to write, even when we're not! There is a question every month to answer if you'd like. This month I'm not as I already have sooo much to write about.

So, in this "new" version of blogger, I can't seem to fix when this posted, so it's two days early. But oh well. That much longer to read it I guess. I also wanted to post about my newest work that is no longer in progress, but done, finished, out, and not just in ebook form. The new soft cover is ready for your buying/reading pleasure. I do hope you enjoy it/get something from it. For me the road has been long slogging my way through doubts, physically making myself write especially when I felt I was over being a writer, and some long talks with myself. These characters, these folks in this novel wouldn't leave me alone. Nor would my family, especially my husband and my mother. So I thank them, and all those who supported me, pushed me gently, and read it for me and gave me feedback. This book has finally blossomed into the life it was meant to live. 

                                     AVAILABLE ON AMAZON NOW IN SOFT COVER

The past is not an easy force to be reckoned with. 

 

For Annalyn and Jack heartache is unexpected. After a whirlwind romance and marriage, a shattering secret tears them apart. Desperate to escape, each embark upon separate journeys to try and heal, to rebuild faith in life with new loves. But moving forward, they discover that rebuilding their futures depends upon coming to terms with their past. Will facing the truth allow them to find, and accept, the love and healing they each so desperately need, or will the secret continue to break lives—and hearts—apart?

AVAILABLE ON AMAZON NOW IN SOFT COVER

Rain Has Finally Come

Rain has finally come to the dry desert of my writing life. I can't believe with all that happened in 2020, that this is the year Rain chose to come to fruition. A blessing. An accomplishment I thought I might never see. I almost gave up. Family decided otherwise and gently prodded me to finish. Family stood behind me. I stood up to my indecision, to my fear, yes, fear, to finish this story. I feel so insecure about this novel, but I needed to give light to the vision in my mind that first sparked as long ago as the late 1990s. Yes, it took that long for it to all come together.

Often we don't talk as much as we should about family hurts or secrets. Sometimes we don't share our fears with those who love us most, because we fear not being understood, because society tells us not to talk about "Things Like That."

We, I think, during this year have learned that talking about "Things Like That" can be helpful, can help us heal, can help us deal with new or ancient pain. Pain doesn't stay silent if we don't "talk" about it. It speaks in our brains and buries itself deep, changing and sometimes warping who we are. 

I hope that in reading Rain you are inspired to love yourself for who you are and to not judge others too harshly. Compassion and Empathy are two vastly underrated emotions/actions we as humans do actually excel with, especially when we listen.

The past is not an easy force to be reckoned with. 

 

For Annalyn and Jack heartache is unexpected. After a whirlwind romance and marriage, a shattering secret tears them apart. Desperate to escape, each embark upon separate journeys to try and heal, to rebuild faith in life with new loves. But moving forward, they discover that rebuilding their futures depends upon coming to terms with their past. Will facing the truth allow them to find, and accept, the love and healing they each so desperately need, or will the secret continue to break lives—and hearts—apart?

Rain is available on Kindle right now (in time for Christmas!). It will be available in paperback by New Years.

http://bit.ly/BUYNOWLBC

Please, if you read it and like it, leave a review/comment for me on Amazon and/or Goodreads.

Thank you, and HAPPY HOLIDAYS!!!!