Tag: novels

Tiny Tuesday!


A small bottle ideal for perfumes and scents. Also purple.


I thought the bottle might pair well with my “Bridgerton” coloring book. Based on the Regency romance book series by Julia Quinn, the fourth season of the TV series returns in 2026.


On this page, the anonymous “Lady Whistledown” is making a surreptitious late-night visit to her printer so all the gossip about London society (and a bit of the royal household) can be consumed by anyone with around five cents to spend. (They were free at first, and once the populace was hooked, she began to charge for her sheets.) This coloring page was a big help to me yesterday.

Regarding the rest of today’s post: I don’t think today is necessarily the best place to share this information, but it’s uppermost on my mind and is impacting what I feel like sharing here and how this kind of thing can dominate my thoughts and my days. For example, I can color, because it’s soothing. I can manage my household and my health because I have to. But I can’t write. Writing fiction demands that I tap into a full range of feelings, many of them including conflict.

I can’t watch anything (movies, television) that will have too much emotional impact.

I don’t easily handle small frustrations (yet I STILL feel grateful for all the things that go well and the wonderful parts of my life, because I’ve hardwired myself to do so).

I’m doing what I can to proceed with Christmas (still don’t have a holiday photo for our Christmas cards/letters this year, and still haven’t mailed out the packages I’m running out of time to send).

I need the normalcy of updating here. I need the structure it provides. I’d rather not be thinking about yesterday’s event or letting it affect me, but these tragedies always do and likely always will. I won’t rant. I’ll just provide a graphic and talk about my website. (After a cut, so if a coloring page and a photo of a bottle is what you can handle today, I completely get it. For me personally, the amount of news and social media exposure I’ve cut out since November is necessary for my emotional and mental health.)

Continue reading “Tiny Tuesday!”

Christmasy stuff, etc.

Before I write another word of this post: I FINISHED CHAPTER freaking 16 15 (I somehow skipped a number, so all these times I’ve called it 16, I was wrong) in book seven of the Neverending Saga. It’s a Christmas miracle.

Meanwhile, this holiday-themed book was only released in 2023, so I don’t think I’ve colored out of it before. I really like its drawings, but yesterday, I was confused about some ornaments.

I texted Lynne, hoping for clues to the questions, What the heck are these; how do I color them?


She texted back: Pine cone or artichoke or pomegranate or all had a baby. Deferring to that botanical wisdom, here is my finished page.

And a couple of close-ups so you can see most are shiny in some way.

Also, this happened today.

Just like every year: Mrs. Claus has to mend Santa’s hat. Santa is painting another yellow skateboard. One of those elves looks like he’s taking a knife to a small child.* The wee reindeer keep watch. The tree has been decorated. Toys a’plenty are ready for Santa’s bag.

This is my yearly reminder that I was lucky enough to know Liz, who helped me love Christmas again many decades ago and painted and gave me Mr. and Mrs. Santa Claus and some of their workshop accessories. Lynne has a matching set (in different colors) painted by their mother. One day, Lynne’s set will be given to her granddaughter, and my set will be given to Lynne’s grandson. This is one tradition I hope will continue long after I’m gone.

Even before Santa’s Workshop opened for business this season, Tom’s Workshop was busy repairing several broken ornaments that I found when I unpacked decoration bins in late November. News flash! TOM IS SANTA’S HELPER. Did anyone ever doubt it?

*ETA: If you doubted me. Tom says the elf is whittling a doll. Sure, Tom. That elf chose violence.

Coloring fiction (and history)

Taking a suggestion from Mark for coloring that might include history and England…

C.S. Lewis was a British writer, literary scholar, and Anglican lay theologian. You might know him best because of The Chronicles of Narnia, which begins with the first novel, The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. When the four Pevensie children are evacuated from London during the Blitz*, they live with a professor in his house in the countryside. There, they discover a wardrobe that’s a portal to a magical land named Narnia.


The coloring pages I did below, of the wardrobe, can be found on the copyright page and last page of this lovely coloring book.

I didn’t read the Narnia series as a child. I was introduced to it by my college roommate Debbie, who I think gave me a paperback set for a birthday or Christmas. I then told Lynne about the series because both of us read fantasy as teens and young adults, specifically The Lord of the Rings novels (J.R.R. Tolkien) and The Sword of Shannara trilogy (Terry Brooks).


Years later, when I worked at a bookstore, badly damaged books were often marked 50% off, and that’s how I was able to afford my hardcover collection on my meager salary. While they may not be the prettiest, they came to me gently loved and remain loved.

Debbie’s recommendation also began my fascination with lions thanks to Narnia’s Aslan. Aslan is the reason my father did this for me in pen and ink:

And Lynne’s sister Liz did this ceramic piece for me:

And Debby gave me this canvas print by artist Leonid Afremov as a recent Christmas gift.

*The whole lion fascination was a detour. Back to British history. Long before I read C.S. Lewis, I’d read books about children who were evacuated to the English countryside as well as to the United States to stay with host families during World War Two. The Blitz is the term for Germany’s bombing raids of cities and towns in England from September 1940 to May 1941. In London during that period, there were 57 consecutive nights of bombing. People wore gas masks and used blackout curtains. They were on food and petrol rations, and volunteers patrolled the streets at night to sound warnings and make sure people got safely inside shelters during air raids. Civilians, including women, drove ambulances, helped rescue people trapped in bombed houses, and tended to wounds as they could. Mark, in a comment you left on Mindful Monday’s post, you pinpointed some of the qualities that explain why I have so much love and admiration for your country and its people.

Because of my interest in that period of history, there’s a backstory for a brother and sister in the Neverending Saga that includes being sent to live with relatives in rural England during the war. Though their parents were killed in a London bombing after the Blitz, just in London alone, 30,000 residents lost their lives during the Blitz.

Sunday Sundries

I will put this Instagram link here and hope very much that it works for you, because this video is not yet on youtube, or at least I couldn’t find it. If you watch “Labs of the Mohicans,” make sure the sound is on, and you might understand what motivated me to make today’s sundries include book, movie, soundtrack. All amazing in unique ways, much like Stella the yellow lab.

You could read the book. I confess, I didn’t read it when it was on the syllabus of one of my favorite classes taught by one of my favorite professors. I have the good memory of being taught it, but many English majors may remember the drawback of taking on extra classes because you love literature. If you multiply four lit classes by the number of books for each class, and add all the reading and requirements of your non-major classes, you have to make choices. I read parts of it, and in atonement, I plan to read it in its entirety now. I’ll see how that goes.

You could watch it. Because, good grief, Daniel Day Lewis. Madeleine Stowe. The rest of an outstanding cast. I plan to watch this again soon (not in lieu of reading the novel!).

You could listen to the soundtrack, some of the music so sweeping and powerful that unrelated movies have used it for their advertising trailers. I already listened to it again on Friday and have kept the CD handy to listen again while I’m writing.

Today’s offering

Off and on since early this morning, I’ve been putting together a post that was intended to be fun with photos and commentary. Then I read an article in which hate, once again, will be affirmed and rejoiced over by those who hate.

Everybody who tells me that NO, THAT WILL NEVER HAPPEN, please stop. It’s been happening, is still happening, and will get worse. You can close your eyes and ears and mind, but you can never gaslight me into believing I don’t see and hear and recognize the cold, hard evidence presented every day.

So I don’t feel like being funny. I will take a moment to recognize that my forever Muse would be eighty were he still alive today. In his honor, I’ll go back to the world sprung from my imagination, where hate will never win.

Mindful Monday

Oxytocin is a natural hormone made in the brain. It’s stored and released into the blood stream by the pituitary gland.

Other suggestions to boost oxytocin include yoga, massage, listening to music, physical intimacy, meditation, and doing something nice for someone.

Tom, Debby, Tim, and I celebrated Thanksgiving yesterday, with photographic proof below. Our oxytocin levels were excellent.

A couple of table views, where the menu was hen, cornbread dressing, mashed potatoes, gravy, black-eyed peas and macaroni and cheese (both from Debby), green beans, asparagus, corn, cranberry sauce, and rolls.

Dessert table, with my cranberry orange bread and Debby’s sweet potato pie.

People!

Lots of leftovers will be eaten. I’m just about to have a slice of cranberry orange bread with my coffee while I start a reread of Book 6 before getting back to the writing of Book 7. One of the issues with a character whose secrets force her to tell lies is a common problem: I, knowing the truth, can’t keep up with her lies.

How to make…

This year I’ve been mostly on my own to start decorating our large tree, and let me tell you… I MISS MY THREE TO SIX ELVES. I used to call myself the Christmas hooker, because all I did was put hooks on ornaments and hand them over to volunteers who’d work for fun, food, and good tunes to hang them on the tree.

There are so many bins of ornaments that I was overwhelmed, so this year, I made the decision to leave a whole lot of them in the bins, and that included most of the beautiful ornaments that have been made for us by children and gifted stitchers and other arts and crafts friends through the decades. THEY ARE STILL HERE AND STILL LOVED. They’ll be hanging and beautiful again on future trees.

On the other hand, I’ll offer a Saturday morning pictorial of How To Create An Ornament That Nobody Will Want*.


Back in July of last year, I had a bunch of 2-inch by 2-inch canvases and painted all of them on the same day, for future use as wanted, with acrylics. I picked one of those for An Ornament That Nobody Will Want. Enjoy!

Step 1. Do an online search for free downloadable mini mandalas, and find a 2015 set from Tiffany Hastie. Be very grateful, download it, and print it on regular paper so you can check the size.

Step 2. Adjust the size (down, in this case) to print on cardstock. Do that and pick your pens.

Step 3. Get to coloring and realize you don’t need those sticking-out circles for what you’re doing. Oh, well.

Step 4. Cut out the mini mandala and pick a canvas.

Step 5. Pick your glue. Be grateful for your friends who have taught you from their experience to organize and label all your craft supplies.

Step 6. When the glue is dry, take your wee canvas outside with your preferred spray finish (in this case, matte), spray it, and leave it outside to dry.

Step 7. Time to call in the muscle, in my case, Tom, to find the right hook and insert it into the wood frame of the canvas.

Step 8. Find and cut the right piece of ribbon from this mess.

Step 8. When the ribbon is on the hook, hang it on the Christmas tree. Festive fun!

*An Ornament That Nobody Will Want is not a bitter name. It is a truth universally acknowledged that crafting is in the pleasure, art is subjective, and experience is a teacher. Also, Becky is not a perfectionist unless she is ruthlessly editing someone’s (including her own) writing. Which she’s about to get back to doing.

tangled up in blue, among other things, and a breakthrough

I’ve colored from this book before, but maybe only for posting on Instagram. I think one of the first pages I ever colored when I picked up the habit again was taken from it. Back then, I colored while I waited outside a building in the medical district where Debby was interviewing to be a hospice volunteer shortly after she moved to Houston with Harley and Stewie (so 2015?).


This new addition looks a bit like Harley–lab-like–and I chose to color him because I could fit the drawing, as hoped, under the one I shared Wednesday. I just had to trim off the top and bottom of the empty space around him. If I had to name him, I don’t know if I’d call him Blue or Tangle. While I was coloring him, Bob Dylan’s song “Tangled Up In Blue” was running through my head. The song was from his album Blood On The Tracks, which along with his album Desire, remained on continuous play when Kathy and I hung out together as undergraduates at Bama. If we were listening to those albums now, I believe we’d still remember all the words.

Forgetting that I’d colored Blue/Tangle and already had a post drafted for him, this morning I looked again at a list of suggestions from Blue Sky Boy. (You know, I do know your first name, but I never use it because I never asked if I could, and I don’t remember if you used it on LJ.) Back on topic, I saw the word “soccer” in his list and perused a few coloring books to see if anyone was playing soccer. Didn’t find anything but I did find a soccer ball in this coloring book. (Fun fact: a soccer ball, or the French version, ballon de soccer, is mentioned in the work in progress in the Neverending Saga.) That page led me to inspiration from the guy below, who joined the soccer ball and a few other things like a yellow umbrella (a reference to “How I Met Your Mother,” because I enjoyed the way the TV show used it through many seasons) and a baseball (also important in the Neverending Saga).


Tom’s grandfather owned a grocery store, and once, when a customer couldn’t pay his bill, he built and gave Grandpa two rocking horses for his first two grandchildren, Tom and his cousin Gina. This one is Tom’s. I love that story and the rocking horse. Here’s the picture I colored today.

As I colored, I finally had a solution to something that’s been holding up the writing of this chapter I’ve been struggling with. Hopefully that means a good writing day tomorrow. For future posts, I have a few more coloring pages lined up, as inspired by suggestions. Thank you for your comments and input.

Tiny Tuesday!


Received this keychain recently from adamjk.com. Since I don’t drive a lot, I think I’ll probably leave it here on my desk for a while as a reassuring reminder. Even when all of it might not feel true. Maybe especially when all of it might not feel true.

I did try to work on the Neverending Saga Monday. But mostly I just made edits. When I got to the page of the chapter where I intended to resume writing, my mind was as blank as the page.

Today is the tomorrow of “tomorrow is another day,” Scarlett.

reading and coloring

Very glad I followed the recommendation of a commenter to an article about Quincy Jones and read this autobiography. I settled with my iPad and read it as an e-book before bed every night, spellbound by the life this man led. He worked with everybody! I learned so much, not just about him, but about music and music history, ranging from classical composers to hip hop.

He had his demons and made mistakes, never quite escaping the damage of a tough childhood, but he remained full of love for his work and the world, along with his family, friends, and fellow artists. You know a man’s special when he had several children by several wives, and he and the kids loved each other unconditionally, and the wives spoke kindly and lovingly of him even when their relationships ended. No telling how many lives he impacted during his 91 years. I finished the book last night. Rest in peace, Mr. Jones.

After I ran errands this morning, I found a good way to make myself feel better about things while I color: play old music I can sing along to. Not the kind of music I normally listen to, but music that takes me back to times when I was really just the daughter of two, and the kid sister of two. For example, Saturday mornings when we cleaned house, my mother would stack albums on the stereo. They’d be her favorites, mixed with some of Debby’s favorites to sing along to, and some of my favorites, too. That’s how today, while I colored, I ended up on YouTube listening and singing along to many songs by Andy Williams, the Righteous Brothers, Tom Jones, Patsy Cline, and Hank Williams Sr.

I’d forgotten how singing is a great mood lifter. That’s true even though I’m not much of a singer (Debby is and Mother was). Luckily, nobody’s hearing me but the dogs; Tom’s been in and out of the house a lot so far today.

This is the book I was coloring from. I’ll share those I’ve finished as part of my Sunday Sundries post tomorrow. I did my first from this book in 2020, and I haven’t removed any of them to put in my sketchbook. I’ll explain why in tomorrow’s post. A unicorn’s always worth the wait.

When listening to YouTube today, I made a discovery. My parents had an album of instrumentals that included an English clarinetist, Acker Bilk. For all I know, the entire album was Acker Bilk. My father’s favorite from the album was Bilk’s rendition of “Stranger On The Shore” (England’s biggest selling single of 1962). For the first time, today I heard the lyrics. The words are so sad, maybe because as I listened, one of my characters came to mind, and it broke my heart for her. Then, as I pondered how to work it in as a reference in book seven (the current work in progress), I realized it’s even more heartbreaking for a different character in the series that would follow the Neverending Saga (should I ever actually complete the NS). I’m WAY too hard on my characters, and consequently on myself, sometimes. But as one of her mentors, who may have gotten it from Robert Frost, once told Marika, No writer tears, no reader tears!

Here’s the song with an orchestra and Andy Williams singing the lyrics:

And the instrumental version with Mr. Bilk and his clarinet: