Author Journey: December 15, 2023 - Lots of Happenings!

 Welcome to the scenic route! I'm happy you joined me today. There's news! 

Author Journey: Breaking for Rest and Recharging

I really haven't done much writing or editing this month. While I have good intentions to do so, it seems life has been unexpectedly busy and surprising. While December is always a busy month, what with family and friends gathering for celebrations, I've had other things going on, too. More on that in the next section...

Since this will be the last author journey post of the year, I should probably recap the things I was able to get done. 

• New covers for the Children of Y'Dahnndrya series have been started, with the new cover for Ripples being updated. 
• Surge edits are in the final stages with it being in the virtual hands of an online writing group. 
• One more read-through and gentle edit of Over Land & Under Stone has been completed. 
• The Tale of Outh'n Durr novella was published, introducing a couple of the characters in Surge and in preparation for that book's publication. 

All in all, it wasn't a bad year. What goals did you meet in 2023? 

Writer's Life: It's Official! I'm a Grandmother!

Yep. You read that correctly. Yesterday, my son and his wife joined the ranks of the awesome parents who choose to adopt older children in need of a loving home and parents. I think it would be hard to adopt a baby, but adopting a child who's faced some serious hardships in life already has got to be a daunting task. I'm just so happy God ordained this addition to our family, as she fits in with us really well and is easy to love. 

I've been fighting some kind of upper respiratory something or other over the past couple of weeks. I think I'm finally coming to the end of it, but I'm pretty tired. Your prayers to God on my behalf would be much appreciated. 

I'm still not quite ready for Christmas. There are still a couple of gifts to buy, including a couple things for Spartacus. He's such a goober and a total sweetheart, though he is now actively looking for ways to get to the fish. ...sigh...

I'm so happy to finally have another Spartacus video to share with you. Normally, I'd say watching a cat grooming itself is practically therapeutic. However, this particular session was just so peculiar and so very cattish. Wouldn't you agree? 

Just Keep Writing: Friday Fascicles

If this is your first time participating in this kind of writing exercise, you're in for a treat. If you've done this with me before, just keep scrolling for the prompt.

Rules:

1. You can use any/all of the words and/or the photo in the prompt below to create a unique written work. Fiction or nonfiction, poetry or prose, even lyrics are acceptable.  
2. Please keep the material you write clean (i.e. nothing R-rated or worse) if you wish to share the link to your work here, as well as if you link back to my site. I strive to keep my site free of such things. My readers know and expect this. I respect your right to write whatever you feel you need to write. And you're free to use my prompts. But if your material is graphic, I'd rather not view it, and most of my readers will not wish to. 
3. Have fun! This type of exercise is perfect for growing in the writing craft, or for helping through a rough patch in your current WIP. If you're looking to push your author limits and you normally write in nonfiction prose, try a whimsical collection of lyrics. If you normally write poems about real life events, try your hand at a fanfic. Give yourself some room to explore.

Don't forget to leave a link to your creation (unless you're writing graphic material) so my readers and I can check out your work. I'd appreciate a link back to this post to help me reach more readers, but it's not required. 

What do you think? This could be quite the challenge. 

Thank you so much for visiting today. I hope you enjoyed the post and found it uplifting and useful. Let me know what you thought in the comments. 

As I mentioned before, I'm going to keep the posts fairly simple to close out the year. The word prompts will stay, as well as the book reviews, but I won't have a whole lot of time to spend on my blog in the coming holiday weeks. 

I hope you'll visit again and bring a few of your creative friends and avid reader friends along. 

Until next time,
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