In A Bookish, Quilty Mood

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'...

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 ...

I came across the above Old Testament passage last night and was struck at how complete was the prophet's admonishments. Those widowed, orphaned, foreigners, and the needy are all mentioned, as well as a warning not to engage in evil schemes. I made a Bluesky post earlier, passing along these sentiments. I have sent these verses of Scripture to Mike Johnson, John Thune, and others. When coupled with Christ's words from Matthew 11:28, 29, and 30, how can anyone who claims God as their King justify cruelties to those most vulnerable?   If you are so compelled, pass along these verses to GOP politicians, as most claim to believe in God. As their sister in Christ, I too will share these words. 

Amid a government shutdown due in part to health insurance costs, ironic could be one way to describe the timely release of my novel Home and Far Away . Allegorical could also be used for this fourth installment of The Enran Chronicles . Romance and sci fi and women's fiction, with a little time travel to frame how Sooz, Dardram, and Chelak arrived on Earth is also applicable. But mostly this is a love story, strongly aligned to current times even if it's set in 1971, as well as being written two-plus years ago. The fourth novel in this series details a trio's arrival on Earth and how they fit in, especially with the Lund family. Richard is a widower and father to five-year-old Gilly, who takes an immediate liking to their guests. Richard is wary, then slowly accepting, a man used to adjusting to unsettling situations. What he finds most jarring is that despite being black, Suze Noth is fearless. That she's also a doctor stymies, as well as how their mutual attraction ...