Author: Becky

Hump Day

I’ve got two of the manuscripts fully revised and printed! Started reading the third this evening.


Pixie would like you to know that she’s serious about her approval of the arts. She has a dad, uncles and aunts, and friends who are creatives and work in the arts. If she were a writer or an actor (and we don’t know that she’s not an actor, really), I suspect she wouldn’t cross current picket lines. Not even for a carrot, because if I recall correctly, her dad doesn’t let her eat carrots. Maybe something to do with an incident many years ago.

I’m in the creative arts, and I’m writing about people who are in the creative and performing arts. And I struggle with what I’m currently writing because when I’m down, the jerk voice in my brain says, Some critics would say these stories center privileged white people who have liberal guilt. And there’s another voice inside to defend what I’m writing: You’re attempting to create a diverse world of decent people through the stories of their lives. I’m doing it because it’s what I love with zero expectation of what an audience for it would look like or think like or even if one exists.

Creatives are easily dismissed with the assertion that what they do isn’t “important.” I think of all the people I know who are creative, some who don’t even call themselves that, and the happiness and inspiration they give others, which is immeasurable. So I really appreciated this statement from Brooke Ishibashi dropped by fellow writer Jeffrey Ricker on his socials yesterday.

Even if someone is not involved in the commerce of creativity, imagine how much money people who, for example, sew/knit/crochet/needlepoint, craft, scrapbook, jewelry make, or build and carve things contribute to the economy with their purchasing power.

That’s my middle-of-the week perspective.

Tiny Tuesday!


It’s work to love, but the small print is tough. I have post-surgery prescriptions for both my bifocals and my computer glasses, and you’d think after several months of vision misery, I’d have raced to get my new pairs of glasses. But you’d reckon without the heat, the other demands on my time, and my currently-limited driving.

I’ve reread the first book in the saga, made edits, and it’s ready to print. Today I start my reread of the second book. I’ve learned I need to pick my glasses from my (top to bottom) older bifocals, computer, and last year’s bifocals, because what may seem to work is not always the best choice, and even when I pick the best choice, my eyes easily tire, and moving on to a different pair helps. I plan to take a day’s break between each manuscript I read.

The novels themselves are a pleasure to revisit, however. Looking forward to the day they’ll be ready to release to 1. no fanfare 2. a world that barely reads 3. no way to classify as a genre to find an audience 4. no publisher/industry oversight 5. the potential distaste from anyone who liked what I’ve written before 6. the people who do read but don’t read ebooks 7. this is a list that can go on and on and on and it’s not unique to me. Writing is not a best choice for the faint of heart or the glory seeker or the person who just wants to be a storyteller telling stories about people who are all storytellers in their individual ways.

Saturday chill


Yesterday was a challenging day, and it’s just so freaking hot here, like everywhere, that when I finally settled in last night, I decided to open up my ebook of Carolyn Haines’s latest Sarah Booth Delaney mystery set on the Mississippi Delta, Tell-Tale Bones. I just kept reading and reading and finished to realize it was around three am. Oops!

Still woke up a bit early, so I decided to make it a gentle kind of work day in front of the fan with lots of water nearby.


For one thing, after that big writing sanctuary reorg and cleanup a couple of weeks back, I put my day planner, for which I use Patti Smith’s book as a reflection point, above my eye level. Thus I was something like eighteen days behind in making entries. But there were lots of things I wanted to make note of during those days (like, for example, the birth of our grand-niece!), so I applied myself to getting everything up to date.

On a whim, I pulled the 300 Things To Make Me Happy book off the shelf, too, and flipped through it until I came to this page and answered the questions.

Recently, when I was organizing some craft bins, I found a bunch of 30-year-old iron-on transfers that I’m sure are way past their usable date. Instead of tossing them, I decided to save them as coloring pages.

I colored this one today and kinda love him.

Now I’m ready to read and make small changes to the first book in the Neverending Saga. I hope this is a fast process for all first five books. Then I’ll be ready to input my edits to the sixth and move on to writing number seven!

Hope you’re all having a comfortable Saturday, whatever the weather’s doing where you are. Please stay hydrated!

Three of three


This is the last of the fantastic quilts that Lynne completed for me. The T-shirt quilt includes family history, history with Lynne and me, history with Tom and me, places I’ve been, jobs I’ve had, musicians I love, my university (and Tom’s), organizations with whom we’e volunteered–I’m over the moon about it (ha, just realized that’s an inside joke).


The backing fabric is stars. When Lynne was putting this together in her quilting workshop, people seemed puzzled by that, and she said, “She will understand. Stars are our thing.” They are indeed, and she didn’t realize it at the time, but I’d just written stars into an emotional conversation between two of my characters. Serendipity.

Since Lynne’s room is the red truck room, it seemed like a good place for the quilt. I used the University of Alabama bedspread from my sister, and then put the quilt on top.

IMPORTANT DISCLAIMER BEFORE I POST MORE PHOTOS: If you are a person inclined to buy me gifts, Houndstooth Hall has now reached saturation point with red truck stuff and tins. That means if something comes in, something has to go out. Please don’t force that choice on me. I love all the things Tom and I have found together or have come to us as gifts. That’s why they’re here. I want them to remain.


Another look at the quilt. I think we got those quilted shams after the Harvey flood when Tom, the dogs, and I lived in the back room (office) while the rest of the house was under renovation. It was Christmas time, and we went with red on our bedding because it made a few discomforts a little more festive. Several people said we’d drive each other crazy. We didn’t. We took each day as it came, appreciated the work crew who was helping us put our home back together, and had no idea we were getting good training for quarantine life a few years later.

A few details.

We had tins stacked on top of the bookcases in that room. We found some reclaimed wood shelving online so we could better display them.

Some of the small tins are in a display case we bought so they could be a little closer to eye level.

The Buc-ee’s mints tin gets a little lost.


That wall with red truck art.


It’s a little sharky in there, too. (Those two Jaws tins are Lynne’s.)

Your room’s ready for your next visit with Minute, Lynne! Thank you for making it so full of color and memories and fun.

Hump Day


One of my two readers has finished reading the manuscript and given it a thumbs-up. The other reader is about a third of the way through and everything’s been positive so far. I’ve reread it and caught some errors and a few other things I want to change, but the substance and story of it remain the same.

Meanwhile, I’m about to go back to the first book of the six to start another reread of them all. There are details I know now that need to be added. At one point, a different reader once said, when discussing an early manuscript, that I knew everything that was going to happen. It’s true that I wrote a version of these books more than once in the past, but they are so different now, in both characters and plot, that I’ve actually had very little idea all along what would happen. I might have thought I knew, but I didn’t. I’m glad of that, because it’s kept me engaged to be surprised.

There was one event that I clung to for so long because it was just the way I wanted it and the way it had always been. But because of the changes to characters, it was wrong to let it stay. It took me almost three years to come to that decision, but as writing advice often suggests, “Kill your darlings.” It was right for me to change it, and it opened up a new-to-me solution that I think will provide fresh insight into a character’s choices.

Wisdom for today from Adam J. Kurtz.

Tiny Tuesday!

Sorry to be late on this.

I was finishing a new painting that would work to represent the manuscript I just completed. Although it’s the sixth book, and I have six Spirograph paintings, I wanted one that looked more autumnal, since most of this takes place in the fall and early winter of 1974. It’s a book in which a lot of plot lines from the previous three books wrap up. As you might guess from the items, some of my characters could be experiencing a new baby, others a wedding, and you never know when a golden egg could show up.

On to the seventh book of the Neverending Saga, and may it be less challenging to write than the sixth. In truth, the sixth was also fun to write because it asked a lot of me.