In A Bookish, Quilty Mood

Seven of eight chicks on a perch my husband fashioned. Their baby chick perch remains a fave spot too, lol. Nearly a week has passed since we moved the chicks into the coop. Their first few days in a new to them home was steeped in their adjustment to plenteous room, no feed overnight, and us attempting to coax them from said coop to the attached run. They seem to love more space, haven't minded waiting for breakfast (although they cried the first night when we turned off the light, and on subsequent evenings when not under the heat plate when that light was again shut off), and finally braved the strange opening to the outside world that of course is far more exciting than their spacious coop. Getting them back into the coop was a chore, and not for worms or scratch would they head up the ramp. We're still searching for an appropriate treat in which to lure them hither and yon; today I'll try some grated carrot (Update: they couldn't care less about grated carrot, sigh...

A sample from yesterday's work.... Reading through Book Three of The Hawk and being in the writing/revising zone.... Before I begin today's reading, I need to note how comforting it was yesterday to dive into a manuscript well known and steep myself not only in its realm, but the steadying manner of doing something related to writing. And how I didn't realize it would be so cathartic until dwelling there. There is a place I've enjoyed for nearly twenty years, the haunts of authorhood, of piecing prose, of writing. Revisions are a part of it, prepping manuscripts, crafting the first dang draft itself; all those elements are necessary if one chooses (or is chosen, lol) to follow the muse as far as it wishes to take us. Dragging us at times, yes, but only because writers are fearful of being shot down, of not being able to write, of bad reviews, of losing the plot, of whatever dark clouds that mar our vision. This of course can apply to artists spanning a wide range of ta...

When happily not writing, I manage some gardening. Or potting up marigold plants, placing them on the back steps. It's a funny concept, that title. Yet I authentically felt that a day or two ago, like some kind of gift from heaven. Because when I'm not writing, often I'm cross about it. Not in a spoil my day sort of magnitude, but in this niggly I should be accomplishing something related to writing. And no matter how busy I am with other agendas, no matter how happy I am, always (ALWAYS) there is a deficiency if I'm not writing something new or basking in the glow of new work recently completed. If I wanted to analyze that, and I don't necessarily do, but if I CHOSE to analyze it, I'd say that for much of my adult life all I wanted as a personal goal was to write fiction. I didn't get started until I was forty, and for the last nineteen years (GULP), writing has been my.... Okay, first, since I haven't written anything new (and finished it) in well over...

My latest release, Brave the Skies: The Hawk Book Two certainly falls under that heading, as do some errant but fun EPP blocks that might or might not turn into more than shinies. Time will tell. When starting a novel, I allow the characters free rein. We plan to let our chickens free range, but that's months away, lol, yet a similar notion, although if not all the hens survive into winter, that is out of our hands. Birds of prey, as well as foxes and possums, roam our neck of Humboldt County, and while we'll do all we can to keep the flock safe, nature always triumphs. As an author, I have more control, at least of nature. What my cast muscles their ways into is another story. The Hawk began with humble aspirations; I had been writing short stories back in 2013, my goodness, that's a dozen years ago now! Anyway, I'd been penning, or typing, brief tales and wholeheartedly assumed Eric, Lynne, Sam, Renee, Stanford, Laurie and the rest would neatly tie up loose ends in a...

A new book is out, WOO HOO! Brave the Skies: The Hawk Book Two continues the adventures of Eric and Lynne Snyder, an artist and his wife living in the Pacific Northwest. Eric's paintings are gaining new audiences while Lynne's former occupation of a hospital nurse has been jettisoned for the role of artist's model. Yet more is altering for Lynne, as she and Eric find themselves on the cusp of their hearts' desires; despite his time as a hawk, humanity has wound its way into their lives in a most precious way. It's hard to write a synopsis for this tale without invoking spoilers. Yes, Eric alters form, but not in a superhero manner. It's a tragedy for the couple, who have hidden this alarming but irrevocable action until their best friends Renee and Sam Ahern discover what has no logical purpose. The Aherns know a fair bit about calamity; Sam was injured during the Korean War, and the Catholic couple are unable to have children. In Brave the Skies , Sam recounts...

I am not a hard-core sci/fi author. I like to dabble in science fiction certainly, yet the notion of that sort of world-building has always felt beyond me. In Far Away from Home: The Enran Chronicles Book Three , set mostly within an outpost upon a distant planet, I developed a society that despite being written in 2023 feels much like America today, an alternate universe gone horribly awry. That somber premise aside, Far Away from Home is a rollicking adventure, as Noth, a human from present-day Earth, finds himself in the twenty-ninth century millions of miles from where he previously dwelled. Yet Humans reside on Mordan Station on the planet of Enran, and he gains the acquaintance of one in particular. Sooz is a physician; she's also surreptitiously engineering the regeneration of Chelak, a Tyrah citizen who Sooz hopes to keep hidden from the Tyrah authorities, eager to enslave those able of childbearing. Many of Noth's memories from home have been purged from his conscious...