the kids

A little good (writing) news, amidst the usual chaos

As the title says, I need to share some good news about my writing. I spent several weeks reading through the draft of my romance novel, making corrections, filling in gaps, and generally tweaking anywhere that tweaking seemed necessary. I decided I was about ready to contact an editor and cross my fingers that they

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Touching base: writing update, audiobooks, and everyday stuff

Just checking in on my blog/website for a little while this evening — after months of neglect — and found this paragraph on the “About” page: Although the book I published is a poetry collection, I’ve turned my attention to fiction, and have spent much of 2015 working on my first novel — specifically, a

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Journal entry for August 6

One week ago, August 6, was my first time taking part in an event called Do Nothing But Read Day. Sounds right up my alley, right? Of course it is. But sometime during the afternoon, my mood took an extreme downward turn. Later in the evening, after a nap, I tried to capture my thoughts

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“And ransom captive Israel…”

We went to church on Christmas Eve afternoon with Jeff’s mom, and it was a simple, lovely, musical service. There was a band, maybe five musicians, and the service began with everyone standing to sing a few well-known hymns. Then everyone sat down, there was another song or two, and then a woman came to

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A learning experience: Wrap-up of my first Read-a-Thon

My first 24 Hour Read-a-Thon is done, and I’m sorry to say this top part is gonna be a mess because it’s Sunday night and I need to get ready for bed — back to work tomorrow! I did answer the questions for the “End of Event meme” already (below), so hopefully the bottom part

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A blah blah blog post

So I have a little bit of “home alone” time, and so many things that I could do, and a few that I probably should do, like walk on the treadmill (and that would also mean watching Lost from two nights ago, and it’s supposed to be an amazing episode, but yeah, I don’t think

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Some thoughts on reading, on my son’s birthday

Today is Valentine’s Day, and also my son Kyle’s 10th birthday. Jeff and I have been parents for a whole decade. This is too frightening to contemplate for too long, so I’ll quickly move on from there… But anyway, Kyle had three friends over last evening, and two of them spent the night, and one

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New video of PaPa and Kyle, set to Eva Cassidy

On the morning of Sept. 19, 2008, in the emergency room, my father-in-law lay gravely ill and unresponsive. With Grandma and Stacy, I listened to the doctor explain PaPa’s status and the tests they were doing, what they’d found up to that point. Just before I stepped out of the room, I said to the

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