Tag: reading-is-hot

Your turn!

You don’t have to put it in the comments, though it would be fun if you did. But this writing prompt is for you. One thing that is written into the Neverending Saga has to do with elderly people and what they bring to the lives of the characters. I can’t imagine my own life without the seniors I’ve known and how they graced, entertained, enhanced, and touched my life. The best of them were also a little unpredictable and still very young inside.

Do with this what you will, you and Mr. Stanley.

This whole thing started for me this morning when I shot this photo while thinking of one of my characters. Maybe the photo can also be part of your completing this prompt. CREATE!

Tiny Tuesday!

Who gave me this stack of books ornament? I have guesses, but since I can’t ferret out an account of it on my blog (I feel sure there is one), I’m uncertain.

How many books do you count in the stack? Seven? Eight? Depends on whether you see the bottom as one book or two skinny books. I can’t put my hand on this ornament–I cropped this shot out of an old photo–so I’m not sure.

All this uncertainty makes me think of the Neverending Saga.

I’ve been working on the fifth book for what feels like a decade. It’s because I’d already written something that’s in it early last year, and it became Book Interrupted while I undertook a major reorganization of everything that preceded it. (I like how I’m rambling on about this as if anyone cares about process or really even these books, except two people who might read this and say I CARE; WRITE!)

I felt so close to the end of this book. It was getting overlong, and I knew I’d probably delete or tighten up some stuff. I had a rough idea what I thought were two to three important chapters that would bring it to a close. And then…

Two characters were all, NOPE. THIS is the end of this book. You learned that we are good closers when you rewrote the first book. Stop here and figure out a way to present those other chapters in BOOK SIX.

Nooooo. I knew exactly how I wanted the sixth book to begin, and this will mess up The Plan. My facial expression looks a lot like the one on the sun ornament in this photo.

Apparently, they are the boss of me. I’m doing a reread and then letting it go to the two people mentioned above without the chapters that I thought were the ending.

This means there’ll be some coloring in my future while I ponder the next book. It also means that I, once again, despair of ever ever ever ever getting out of 1974.

Could be worse. After all, 2020 feels like it’s lasted a decade, too, but in a deplorably non-fiction way.

Button Sunday

May is “Get Caught Reading Month,” and while June doesn’t begin until Wednesday, I’m pretty sure I won’t finish the 500-page book I’m reading by then (I’m not quite halfway through it).

Though I didn’t get a lot of reading done in May (I made progress writing the Neverending Saga!), here are the writers who kept me company through the month.


Small-town magic happens to three “accidental” visitors in these Three Left Turns to Nowhere novellas, one each from ‘Nathan Burgoine, J. Marshall Freeman, and Jeffrey Ricker.


The Devil’s Bones is the twenty-first novel in Carolyn Haines’s Sarah Booth Delaney Mysteries. There is no shortage of suspects as deaths and mishaps pile up during a girlfriends’ weekend in Lucedale, Mississippi.


A short novella (No. 21.5) from the Sarah Booth Delaney Mysteries includes a found child, a mystery from the past, and a bit of magic.


A Garland of Bones, set just before Christmas in Columbus, Mississippi, tells the story of Sarah Booth Delaney, with her lover and their friends, mired deep in the vindictive acts of a group of cheating couples and social climbers.


Independent Bones presents a group of murders connected to domestic violence and toxic masculinity, while the favorite humans and animals of Sarah Booth’s world provide insights, friendship, and romance.


I read the fourth book in Carolyn Haines’s Pluto’s Snitch Series, A Visitation of Angels. Pluto’s Snitch is a detective agency formed just after World War I, but there’s a twist–the two partners, Raissa and Reginald, investigate crimes involving the paranormal, including hauntings, possession, and the occult. This latest offering has some badass, or maybe just bad, angels, and an evil man who holds a town in his grip.

That catches me up on the many Haines novels I’d downloaded during the part of the pandemic when I wasn’t reading. Good thing there’s another Sarah Booth Delaney mystery coming out in June, because I want more!

Finally, sending birthday wishes to one of the extraordinary people from my past. I doubt you’ll ever see this, but if good thoughts bring happiness, you’ll have a happy birthday.

Tiny Tuesday!

I was purging some things from a footlocker and consolidating some things from my parents to put in there, when I found these tiny gifts tucked inside. I’d long wondered where they were! They’re beautiful, beaded bookmarks made by Tom’s mother for each of us, and I photographed them next to some novels you may remember.


This book turned twenty in October of last year. HOW IS THAT TRUE?


Meanwhile, this denim-clad dude turns twenty in January of next year. My gosh, TJB would be paying some steep tuition to put both Daniel and Adam through college.

As for April reading, I sure didn’t meet the number I read in March. I spent a lot of time working on the fifth book in the Neverending Saga, plus we spent more time with friends in April than in previous months, so I’m not mad.

Here’s the April book report.

One of the few books I read in 2020 was Barbara Neely’s Blanche on the Lam, the first in a series of four that I bought and downloaded as ebooks. Though I hadn’t previously heard of her, when Neely died in March 2020, many writers and booksellers whose accounts I follow on social media mentioned her and piqued my interest in her work. I enjoyed that first book, but like so many others in the TBR pile, the series fell victim to my pandemic non-reading issue.

I decided to make the rest of the Blanche books part of my April reading. Blanche White is a middle-aged, dark-skinned Black woman who juggles her job as a domestic worker with raising her late sister’s children, maintaining a network of friends, being wary of but not hopeless about romance, and doing a bit of amateur sleuthing. The books are somewhat light on the mysteries but rich in commentary about social and political issues such as violence against women, racism, class boundaries, and sexism.

   

I love Donna Leon’s Commissario Guido Brunetti series’ characters and their relationships. I feel like Venice is another character. I’m always happy to visit it all again in her mysteries. She never disappoints.

I think I have two more to read in Leon’s series; I’m trying to make them last a bit longer.

I read the tenth (most recent, from 2019) in Alan Bradley’s Flavia de Luce series. Flavia is always a delight, and the new private investigation firm opened by her ‘tween self with her father’s loyal friend and servant Arthur Dogger will hopefully keep this series going, though Bradley has made no promises.

I also read some nonfiction.


Published in 2017, reading it post-2020 election was a bit surreal. A mix of memoir and optimism about our potential as a nation and as citizens.

Time to complete something?

Today is a Full Moon, which had me thinking how full moons are a time of completion, and that reminded me of this book. I first posted it back in March of last year and shared one of the writing prompts. I’m personally invested in what I’m writing now, and I get “prompts” from so many sources–a few I can recall off hand are a perfume bottle, a song (lots of these), an ornament, a recipe, a scrap of fabric, an old car–but I remember well what it’s like to feel blank and frustrated when I want to write.

Even if you don’t write, if your stories are in your mind and not put to paper, maybe you feel like indulging your imagination. Here’s the beginning of a story from the book:

For the past six months, this had been his block. The acoustics were perfect, the foot traffic not too heavy or light, and there was plenty of room on the sidewalk for Jonas and his…

Your next word hopefully gives you an image that fires up your curiosity to figure out who Jonas is and what he’s doing. Things you might consider are imagery (what do you see? hear? smell? taste? touch?), motive, and conflict. Imagine it, write it, dream it–and by the way, I hear dreams on this full pink moon may be important.


Photo by Christophe Lehenaff/Getty Images

Boss(es)

It’s been a somewhat somber week, so days without a “theme” are tougher for me to choose anything to post.


Tom gave me this for my birthday last month. I wasn’t able to listen to any of the podcasts of conversations between Bruce Springsteen and Barack Obama, so I’m hoping that when I have time to delve into this, I’ll get to learn some of the things they talked about.

I’ve never hero-worshipped. I’ve always known the people I admire have flaws, and I’ve never expected perfection. They’re human. Through the decades, my instincts have been validated by people’s actions and their character–in both directions, but I choose to amplify men, not monsters.

Almost Nothing But Trouble!

Trouble Cat Mysteries No. 1

Back in March of 2020, before I knew I’d be laid off, and when I was still in the habit of reading fiction, an opportunity presented itself for a great sale of a mystery cat cozy series launched by Carolyn Haines. The first book, Familiar Trouble written by Haines, invested me in this cat turned sleuth. The twist was that except for occasional revisits, each of the books in the series would be penned by different authors. As a big fan of Haines’s Sarah Booth Delaney mystery series, I trust her recommendations and bought and downloaded all the Trouble novels then available.

Then… the pandemic happened and brought with it my inability to focus on reading fiction. Since I’ve been trying to remedy that in 2022, I opened my Kindle library and dove into a world of Trouble. I am not a bit sorry, as I’ve enjoyed all of Trouble’s adventures and getting to know lots of characters in different locales, being introduced to new writers, and enjoying some human romance along the way.

Considering world events and national events–including things that should have been bigger news but which have come to seem routine instead of the cultural shocks they are–for me, March became about reading for the pleasure of escape–no research and all non-fiction.

Following is  what my birthday-month reading list was–the Trouble Cat Mysteries in order:

The last one, Year-Round Trouble, I read in paperback rather than as an ebook like the rest of the Trouble mysteries (thanks to Dean James for making that possible).

In non-black cat reads, I read the exquisite 17th Inspector Gamache 2021 offering from Louise Penny:

I also caught up on Miranda James’s Cat In The Stacks Mystery series:

Received the below as gifts from Tim during the pandemic and now have read them.

I ordered the most recent two in the Plum series and will read those in April.

Just for fun, while I was waiting for the 27 and 28 Stephanie Plums, I reread these three Lizzy and Diesel books on my Nook. I wish there were more in this series, and I’m always happy when Diesel and other characters from the series show up in the Plum books:

That’s a total of twenty-eight! I know that won’t happen again, because I have a lot of nonfiction still to read, and that’s much slower for me than fiction. But I do feel like I’ve made up for lost time and am back in a novel-reading mindset. I’m glad, because I’m four books behind in the series of another favorite writer.

I watched very little television, listened to only one podcast, and slowed down on my own work in progress. I need to hit that writing hard so I can finish the fifth book and get to the sixth one!

Tarot Etc. Thursday No. 11

It’s a shock to me, too, that I don’t have any of the various Celtic tarot decks that are available in the world. I am in tune with what *I* was always told were the Irish roots and branches of my family tree, though my sister denies that we are Irish (she has her DNA test that shouts “Scottish!” but I ignore that).


My mother-in-law has the most Irish of birth names (first, middle, and last), so her pedigree is solid. She gave me this wonderful book many years ago with the enclosed note: Thought of you when I saw this. I have one, too. Good for picking up occasionally–for a quick “pick-me-up!”

I always say I lucked out in the parents-in-law department. I’ve photographed the book on a beautiful scarf that was given to me by another generous woman of Irish descent (her note includes, It is a [hand] painting of the Tree of Life on 100% silk. I added some of the bracelets I’ll be wearing today, including this one with the Tree of Life.

For your bit of magic today, here are the pages about the Tree of Life from Lyn Webster Wilde’s Celtic Inspirations: Essential Meditations and Texts.

Happy St. Patrick’s Day to you all–and I hope you get a chance to make friends (not war) with a tree. Peace.

Mysteries, etc.

In my effort to read more fiction this year, one of my goals has been to catch up on the series of my favorite mystery writers. My mystery bookshelves can be deceiving.

On those shelves, I might have one or two books by a writer, but I have just under 300 ebooks, and the largest percentage of those are books from mystery series by prolific writers like Louise Penny, Donna Leon, Carolyn Haines, Alan Bradley, and Martin Walker. Also, there are some mystery series on my LGBT shelves (and some of those authors also have works included in my ebooks), and the full collection of Janet Evanovich’s Stephanie Plum books are in a different room, plus she has other series I have in ebooks.

All of this means I don’t know what’s missing from the pandemic years, and I’m currently compiling a list by author of all their works, and whether I have them in hardcover, trade paperback, paperback, or ebooks, and if they’re in ebooks, whether they’re on my Kindle app, Kobo app, or Nook.

Just so you know what I’m doing with my non-writing time. This is why I don’t watch much TV and see so few movies these days. Though on the TV topic, Tom and I have watched almost the entire first season of “Ghosts” as our dinner entertainment, and while I thought it would just be a fun diversion, it’s actually a show we both really like, humorous and often touching. Glad to hear it’ll have a second season.