Posts By: Marie

A few general goals for 2024

As usual, I have been neglecting my site. I’m sorry for that. 2023 was a busy year, but I also procrastinated too much…and too often…yadda yadda yadda. No serious details in this post, but I read or listened to 122 books in 2023, according to my LibraryThing Year in Review. I tried to crunch a

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What did I do in 2022? Mostly listened to audiobooks

The older I get, the more the days and weeks whiz by and I have almost nothing to show for it. I cannot believe I didn’t post again all year after sharing my initial thoughts about the war in Ukraine and the video from Tracy Chapman. (Coming up on the one-year mark from Putin’s invasion

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Why?

The chorus of the song “Why?” by Tracy Chapman touches on enough serious social issues that I find myself thinking of it on a regular basis, for several years now. Whenever some terrible thing happens that captures one or more news cycles, we never have to wait too long after that for another awful event

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If I could have one superpower … (plus bookcase photos)

Many years ago, probably after a library sale or a buying spree at a used book store, I remember joking to a friend, “I’m buying books now to read in my retirement.” Ha ha ha. Little did I know! (Click each photo to zoom in.) There are probably thousands of quotes and memes that diehard

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Before and after: My DIY pandemic haircut

One of the things I missed in 2020 was being able to get a haircut with some regularity. Checking my calendar, it’s possible I didn’t get any haircuts in 2020, as the last one I see is in November 2019. Throughout my adult life, there have been dozens of times when I didn’t make an

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The month of May: my COVID-19 story

  Posted on Facebook, May 1, 2020: Where to start??? I spent the last part of February and much of March obsessively watching the numbers of positive Covid-19 cases go up, and the number of affected states and counties gradually increasing as well. Once it was clear that community spread had begun, I remember thinking

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I published another book! (though I didn’t write it)

For most of this year, I have allowed myself to get sidetracked from my writing. After my semi-hopeless-sounding post last January (good heavens, 10 months!), I actually did finish the draft of my novel in February, and felt good about what I produced in the first several weeks of the year. And then, I was

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After reading comments from my editors…

At the moment, the manuscript of my first novel has seventeen chapters. I’ve submitted most of it to my editing team, three or four chapters at a time, and most of their feedback has been fantastic, and just the right amount of pointing out confusing things or minor errors, and making good suggestions, without making

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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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Where have I been? What the heck have I been doing?

This is just a quick post to explain what I’ve been doing for the last six to eight months. This is a photo I took of my TV screen a week ago, of The Rachel Maddow Show on MSNBC, and her now-famous wall-size display that lists all the people (by position, not personal name) who

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