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Another necessary excerpt

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Gratuitous chicken photo as Owl drinks from a tub in the garden while Cami gazes to the left. This is from Nothing More Complicated: The Hawk Book Four . Stanford Taylor inwardly debates the need for his soul while his longtime housekeeper Agatha Morris proffers the Alka-Seltzer amid 1963's Christmas preparations..... Enjoy!   As families prepared for the holidays, Stanford took stock of his role as an art dealer. He hadn’t blatantly told Eric he would no longer represent him, but Laurie had made Stanford’s feelings clear to both Snyders. Initially Stanford wasn’t sure how he felt about Laurie’s declaration, but it had eased Stanford’s mind, which was still burdened by all Laurie had learned on Thanksgiving. Stanford hadn’t seen Seth since that day, too busy preparing for Eric’s paintings to be shipped to London. The exhibit in New York would close on Sunday, just in time for Christmas. Then the canvases would head for Britain, and after that Stanford wasn’t sure what would happ...
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When what makes us who we are no longer applies

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Crystal Manning fabrics (with a Speckled center) from a few years (or more) ago. This will be appliqued onto a light pink t-shirt, once of these days. Gotta fix a cup of Metamucil, then I'll be back to expound upon this ominous title. Okay, so getting used to life without gluten, dairy products, and red meat and NO CHEATING on those edicts has been...fine. Kinda like using Draft2Digital is FINE . It is what it is, and you get what you get and you don't pitch a fit. My eldest granddaughter used to say that when she was little, but now at ten years old, I don't hear it from her much anymore, LOL. I don't mind the Metamucil, although it will be a cold day in hell before my husband drinks it, as it figured heavily in the lives of his elderly parents. It wasn't anything my parents used, and it still tastes like watered down Tang, no big deal. I feel good, have lost six pounds, and my knees don't hurt, so if dairy was aggravating those joints, it's a trade-off wor...
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In the (kinda) warm California sun

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A chicken post. Because I can't ponder the current state of my nation. (Heads-up: I do ponder it, so if you don't want to read that, stop after the third photo.) We've had some AMAZINGLY beautiful late autumn days recently; sun and slight heat and sun and.... Did I mention it was sunny? The chicken's run is wholly in the shade now due to the towering treeline. But the garden, only a few feet away, gets sun for much of the day! And the chickens seem smart enough to know that sunshine is healing. And yesterday, I sat in the run with them. All eight hens (it's still weird to acknowledge they are finally HENS) having the time of their chicken lives! My husband was there too, lopping dead blackberry branches off the vines that cling to the aged fence. The chickens poked around, scratched in the dirt, managed some dustbathing, as well as sunbathing. They chased each other around when one found a tasty treat, but mostly they pecked at the grass, truly happy in this home aw...
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Lucy Boston Quilt of Grace

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I'd forgotten I had titled this project a quilt of grace. Stitching on it doesn't bother my right shoulder, and it has been an ABSOLUTE PLEASURE to construct, especially when I remove a safety pin. Every one that goes makes me feel, 'Yup, I'm that much closer to being done.' Not that I want to hurry the process, only it's a big friggin' quilt and there's HEAPS left to stitch, and well.... I've had grace on my mind recently, and this quilt on my lap the last several evenings. The previous two I have been SUPER SNIFFLY, so today my husband moved the sofa, then I dusted the windows, then he dusted above them, then he hoovered the living room. The afternoon was sunny and pleasant, so we left open the windows, hoping to air out the space. I just closed them, and have returned to complete this post. Which was originally going to be about Nadia Chicken jumping the run door, cheeky gal! But instead I thought about this quilt, the only cloth item that lives o...
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So. Many. Blessings.

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Making some hand-quilting progress on this Lucy Boston quilt. My life, really. My faith. And, well, read on.... I don't want to negate the suffering currently happening not only here in America, but planet-wide. Yet, YET! There is much for which to be grateful. Like my faith. Which I don't discuss too deeply, but maybe I should, so this post can be better understood. Or I could direct you to this page on my blog, which talks about it. Yeah, that's what I'll do. Because for some people faith in God isn't a comfortable subject, especially right now due to how falsely faith in God is portrayed by many in my nation's government. I have no problem saying that because refusing to authorize affordable health care and releasing monies for SNAP benefits is NOT loving one's neighbor. Yet blessings abound, and I would be just as remiss if I didn't denote the goodness of this world. That I'm alive is a miracle. That I can write novels is a marvel. That I mainta...
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Review of Draft2Digital's publication process

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A beloved, decades-old recipe for meatballs. Other side of the card is below. Yes, here it is! Really. Um, really. Really!!! Lol. I've had this post on my list to write since I published Straight to the Heart: The Hawk Book Three in September. Yet I waited because I was planning to release Home and Far Away: The Enran Chronicles Book Four relatively soon. Which turned into the end of October, but in our crazy world, what's a few weeks? Hopefully if you have the ability to vote, you have exercised that right. (I'd put while you still can but that sounds dramatic, defeatist, and well, yeah.) Anyways, those plugs out of the way, here is what I think of Draft2Digital's self-publishing routine. It was fine. Really? That's all? I look around, but I don't see Future or Past Me. Past Me is checking the pork meatballs in spaghetti sauce, as I made meatballs but not with beef, trying to keep red meat out of my diverticulosis diet, you know. Future Me is.... She'...
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Splitting the synopsis difference

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Gratuitous chicken photos grace this post. All eight hens enjoyed a field trip yesterday to the garden! (Yes hens, as they are eighteen and a half weeks old, woo hoo!) A few posts ago I wrote an inadvertent and certainly impromptu synopsis for Home and Far Away . It was so cathartic and, well, thrilling to write all that, but the big question was would I employ any of that off the cuff random prose to promote a novel. Well, I used some of it. Hence today's title. Nadia Chicken likes investigating on her own. She's a Barnevelder, and one of my faves. Here's the post.  (Again, as I linked to it right off the bat, lol.) And below is what I actually sent off with the manuscript, all retailers using it. Well, Smashwords proffers a short synopsis first, then you can click for the long version.   Liberating Chelak from reproductive slavery, Sooz and Dardram find themselves in 1971 California on the front yard of widower Richard Lund and his five-year-old daughter Gilly. The ...
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