In A Bookish, Quilty Mood

Over two hundred hearts awaiting their rightful homes within a stitching WIP. Just want to note that despite all my wishing to write something new soon, I just can't commit to it. Too much is going on, both in prepping books for release as well as life, to assume I can pull a completed draft outta my backside. Last night I started stitching my Mr. Carter quilt. Not that evening stitching interferes with morning writing. But I got a little maudlin, almost teary, in sorting the hearts on the sofa by relative colour. The photo above doesn't begin to tell their stories, wondering what the future would hold. I assumed I'd be writing as I cut fabrics, basted shapes, stitched together jewels. Maybe even last night I thought, "Yup, gonna start a new book soon!" At some point this morning, reality kicked in. The reality of, "If I plan to publish two novels by the end of April, where in the world am I supposed to find time to write one?" That's a pretty soberi...

Clockwise from bottom left corner: jewel stars for Alexandria, hexagon blogs for Alexandria, hearts for Mr. Carter quilt. Um, hard to pin down on all aspects of the corporeal plane.... Coming home, whether from a brief holiday or lengthy vacation, means reassessing. And laundry, but that's already underway. While I did the unpacking yesterday, much remains to sort, like all that English paper piecing pictured above, ahem. And books.... Oh my goodness frickin' gracious! I have about as many book notions stirring as EPP projects, oh and don't forget the quilt WIP on the design wall or Kawandi stitching I want to dive into as soon as one single free moment emerges. But, what do I turn to first? This blog, lol. Why? Because I'm waiting to start another load of clothes. And this is singular and easy to complete. And I love blogging, been doing it for nearly twenty years, although not at this site, hehehe. Blogging helps me think. Or I think it does, hah. It certainly helps m...

A star for Alexandria that is now completed and tucked in the hexie tote Sometimes our eyes play tricks. Like when I checked the phone at my bedside and I would have sworn it read 4.50 a.m. Instead it was an hour earlier. But by the time I realized that, twenty-five minutes had past, by which time I was awake. At four fifteen in the morning. Okay! Um, I guess. Lol. Right now I'm visiting my eldest daughter. We're having a lovely time, those grandgirls taller than when I last saw them five weeks ago. I'm so grateful that despite the distance, I can travel to see all of them with relative ease, and while I miss my spouse, such is the life of a long distance grandparent. Even when you wake at 3.50 in the morning. But I've done my daily stretches, read some about Kawandi quilting which I am SUPER EXCITED to try when I get home. That was a marvelous rabbit hole down which to tumble and might possibly answer my unmentioned but authentic issue with using my sewing machine to m...

Upsized, non-diagonal crazy quilt. Uh, sure.... After a book release, some necessary non-writing days are required. So yeah. I haven't done more with the novel-gig than read a few chapters of A Love Story , which actually does need to happen, as I'm planning to publish Book 3 of The Enran Chronicles in March. Have to remind myself of the plot, lol, although losing the plot seems to be America's current theme, however Bishop Mariann Budde is a Christian ROCK STAR, not meaning to belittle her bravery. Sometimes rock stars don't wield guitars or drum sticks you know. Sometimes it's all about the heart. My heart has required non-noveling pastimes, like throwing an obnoxious quilt onto the wall, pictured above. A bunch of smallish cuts I recently acquired hashed/clashed out with solids from my scraps stash, to be embellished with HEARTS! Dangit, why can't anyone in the new administration think with their heart right now? Ahem, Future Me huffs, giving me a slightly u...

Dark starry sky from 5.21 a.m. PST today. The act of publishing a book. Then actually letting it go.... After the first death (or goodbye of whatever sorts), others accumulate. It's the nature of life, which is consoled by new shinies that distract or ease or heal said losses. Maybe that Splitting the Sky is a standalone, rare in my noveling wheelhouse, makes it harder for me to simply walk away. And yes, it's only been one friggin' day, but somehow yesterday felt.... Bereft. Perhaps the new administration added to that sense of WTF, well, of course it did. LOL not LOL, yet that wasn't the only reason I kept feeling like my heart was empty. Well, not empty. Depleted. Askew. Changed. How you feel after one much loved passes. Or something similarly disturbing. Or altering. Or whatever. Whatever dude, what the eff ever. Okay, this is definitely related to yesterday's hoo haa. Did I predict that sense of WTF-ever when I decided to release a book on Inauguration Day, ob...

Ooooohhhh! Always nice to post about a new novel! Splitting the Sky went live this morning, and is available for free on Smashwords . Coming soon to other online retailers, yay! So here's the story: One corrupt leader, six missing astronauts, and an uncharted dimension collide with a damning secret as bereaved families mourn their beloveds. But what if those rocketeers aren't dead? Science fiction meets psychological drama while love triangles bump into political intrigue! Set on Clatham, a planet a whole lot like Earth, those astronauts are entangled not only in their rocky interpersonal relationships, but find themselves inexplicably linked within the pilot's mind after a cataclysmic explosion sends their crew cabin into...The Split! D'Rozen, the pilot, harnesses all within his head, determined not to lose any of them, especially Tarryn, whose husband Lee back on Clatham knows his wife is still alive. That's the synopsis. But let's step back a little to expla...

August 2012 as though I knew one day I'd need a photo aligning to what was then being written. With the release of Splitting the Sky just days away, I'm deeply involved in the final edits. I've been reading each chapter aloud, and one remains. After that I'll reread today's assignment, then tomorrow I'm not doing ANYTHING writing related, LOL! Need a break before I publish this novel on Monday. Why read a novel out loud? In part to better relate authentic dialogue. In part to root out nefarious typos hoping to remain hidden. In part to.... Make sure that this story, originally written in 2012 then unearthed last November, is all I want it to be before it goes live. Ages ago, like around the time StS was written, I read aloud my books before releasing them. I got out of that habit, not sure when, maybe when I was publishing The Hawk on its initial go-round. Anyway, it's been quite enjoyable reading aloud, and not altogether quietly. I do lower my voice aro...

Trinidad Head from Saturday, 11 January 2025. It was blowy and cold, but nice to observe from inside the car. "I don't see how anybody can predetermine how their movie is going to turn out, or why anybody would want to, because it's a creative thing that is changing every day, and you're changing every day while you work on it. You start to make a movie, and when you finish it you'll be a different person." - Barbara Loden I read this quote earlier today and obviously it struck a chord. Not that I'm planning to make a movie soon (or ever). Only that I'm hoping to start writing soon (or ever again). And the first (long) line proffered me a whole lotta freedom. I have notions how the story will end, snippets of ideas for the middle, but no clear path for how to get from Chapter 3 (because I'm keeping Chapters 1 & 2 that I wrote last year) to say, Chapter Question Mark. I don't even know how lengthy of a story this will be. Not The Hawk l...

Hearts sewn with my left hand to assuage my achy right shoulder. These hearts took nearly twice as long to sew, but sometimes the best things don't happen overnight. What's so frightening about peace, love, and understanding? My first novel featured a white woman with a biracial sibling. My second, and first indie publication, concerned a bisexual author, his long-time liberal Catholic girlfriend, and the AIDS epidemic. My focus has always been on inclusiveness amid varied genres ranging from literary fiction to fantasy, women's fiction to sci-fi. Sense a theme? It's all about peace, love, and understanding. Today's title hit me yesterday morning, but other than ranting how different Jimmy Carter is from the incoming president, I didn't have much plotted for this entry, which I didn't want to turn into some raging blah blah blah that has already been done to death. Yet I want to mention how hearts matter more than male appendages, and while yes I'm a wom...

While the Carter family absorbs the loss of their patriarch, I watched Jimmy Carter's funeral with a sense of peace. Joy. Recollection to simpler times before all this modern technology when it seemed that strength of character and honesty mattered. Perhaps I'm blinded, wearing rose-coloured glasses tinted by the vibrant pink sun pictured above. Regardless, I needed a throng of eulogies to lift my mood and dangit I received that in full yesterday morning. It's funny what can herald a breakthrough in one's emotional state, their creative endeavors, or physical well-being. I needed a presidential state funeral, okay! What I NEEDED was the reminder that goodness matters, selflessness is imperative, decency isn't superfluous. Good lessons all round. But what about that bright pink sun? That scrap of Kaffe Fassett material had been slated to go into the block below. Yet when I tried fitting it in, its massive PINKNESS overwhelmed the rest of the hexagons, so to the offic...

Yours truly from summer of 2001. I still have the shirt and canvas bag behind the purse. If I write about calamities, am I hoping to ward them off within my personal life? I'm in a wonky headspace right now. This post was going to be about the sentence above, but I don't feel like analyzing that. I'm.... Meh. Sometimes one just feels meh. A dear friend became a grandmother again this morning, a little girl entering this world that at the time of her conception didn't seem as crappy as it now feels. I'm trying to keep that stiff upper lip, but all my years of living in the UK feel like a dream as this year begins, as so many unknowns linger. I feel like when my mom died in 2018, lost and bewildered with a major case of WHAT THE MUCK! I didn't write for a couple of years, trying to sort out my brain and heart. Therapy helped, time's passage did too, making quilts up the friggin' wazoo because the whole noveling gig was mired in grieving. Maybe that's w...