In A Bookish, Quilty Mood

Just a little wordy fun from yesterday....   Our seven-year-old grandson has been visiting and amid that blessing I squeezed in a quick trip to see the granddaughters and their mum and dad. Needless to say not much authorial work has occurred lately but I have played countless games of Sorry, Crazy 8's, Go Fish and just yesterday a turn at Scrabble. Not played for points, I taught my grandson the basic aspects, although his grandpa is a much better Scrabble enthusiast. For now my descendant's appetite is whetted to make more words, and he wants to count those points, hehehe, so our next endeavor will be fascinating. Last week I taught my eldest grandgirl how to sew. She asked about making her own flower hexie, and sure enough when given some basted paper pieces, a needle, thread and instruction, she sewed all six hexagons to the center hexie, even attaching two petals together. While I gain much joy in finishing a novel, an even better thrill emerges when teaching a beloved som...

Finding these so ravaged made me heartsick. I'm hopeful they'll bounce back by the end of the month. I spent much of the morning with the second book of my series; having double spaced it, I confirmed all the chapter numbers were correct, then read through several of those chapters, finding a few typos; one can never be careful enough as honesty mistakes slips through or the on table instead of on the table . Those made me grimace as well as smile, better to find them now than after it's released. In one instance I swapped out experienced for endured only because later in the sentence I used during and didn't like the sound of endured and during so close together. Maybe that seems a bit picky, but to me good writing means a smooth flow of words without overt redundancy. I can't make it perfect, but I'd like to achieve something darn close. Perfect writing isn't possible because like all art, a novel's quality is subjective, to a point of course....

Four and a half inch squares basted for some stitch-in-the-ditch fun! Gripped in the throes of allergies, I am opting out of pottering in the garden. Instead I'm formatting my WIP for release, although referring to it as the work-in-progress seems a little lame. Right now I'm kinda middling, so forgive me for any lapses in grammar or judgement. But back to what's going on; so I'm formatting, which means making a title page, inserting page breaks between chapters, writing up Liner Notes which end all my books, then making sure all the t's are crossed and i's dotted. I am also working on a quilt that has been hogging the design wall for MONTHS. That it has been there that long testifies to how the garden as well as the writing usurps my attention. But right now being outside makes me sneezy as all get-out and I'm not sleeping great and.... And it's time for something different. This quilt isn't anything monumental; it's going to be for the car, whi...

Glorious Sweet Williams (and a bonus ladybird to boot!) Yesterday I finished the final read-through of The Possibility of What If , the first novel in my series entitled That Which Can Be Remembered . There's plenty to do before I release that initial part of the series and today I didn't manage anything related to writing. There were errands to run, groceries to purchase, laundry to wash.... Being a writer takes a fair amount of my time, but not all of it. Yet as I came inside this evening, having given my pumpkins one last inspection of the day, a sight stopped me, demanding my camera. A ladybird was perched on one of the few Sweet Williams not munched, bringing my attention to how my latest story came to be.... Some of my novels were instantaneous, but this series began in fits and starts two years ago this month. I can't recall how the characters wormed their ways into my brain, but trying to write during a pandemic was difficult, and ultimately I gave up before summer...

Baby coleus I started from seed and over which I am greatly pleased! I'm watching the French Open final between Rafael Nadal and Caspar Ruud. A tennis fan since Boris Becker won his first Wimbledon, I have a fondness for Grand Slam events, especially when one of the finalists is newly thirty-six years old and coming back from injury. Nadal took initial set, has just broken Ruud's serve to bring this second set back to even. A long morning sits in front of me as I savor amazingly played points, typing here and there, muting commercials then peering back at the TV as history is made. Yet within the enormity of worldwide sport, there is the intimacy of right now. It rained much of yesterday, but all my potted plants are in the ground along with five hills of various pumpkins. Three woeful spider plants and a pot of four nasturtiums got me outside before the storm hit, and I didn't even water them after getting them planted, aware the rain would take that task for me. Right now...

For days I've been trying to write a post-vacation entry. Part of my hesitance has been trying to clear the backlog of things to do ; laundry and gardening have taken precedence, a little housecleaning, some editing and sewing which have been necessary for my mental well-being. Because much of my silence here is related to how relevant is this blog to what is happening in America concerning mass shootings. It seemed inappropriate to start a post about writing fiction when again people have been murdered. What does it matter how hopeful are my novels when guns are so easily accessible and politicians so unwilling to enact the proper safeguards regarding that accessibility. I grew up on a ranch, my dad hunted deer. Some of those deer heads adorned our living room walls and I never gave that aspect of life a second thought. When I was sixteen my dad's girlfriend took her life with a gun. I don't know what kind, a handgun I assume, but the deer heads remained although my father...