Tag: novels

Sunday Sundries

Today I hope to conclude the bookmarks discussion prompted by Mark L. It’s a shame he’s unable to see these posts at present due to various technical issues. I miss his comments and look forward to interacting with him again soon, both here and on his online journal.

These are the rest of the bookmarks I found inside books on the living room shelves. The first batch includes books I shelved unread (I don’t actually keep a TBR pile because I wouldn’t know where to stack it). I put bookmarks in them as little flags to help me find them when I’m looking for something to read. These are on my music shelves.

Joe Nick Patoski’s Willie Nelson: An Epic Life. I very much look forward to reading this when I’m ready for another biography. (I think the most recent three I read are on loan to Lynne: one each on Stevie Ray Vaughan, John Mellencamp, and Bruce Springsteen.) Willie’s bookmark advertises the animal rescue group Scout’s Honor Rescue. This was the organization to whom Lynne turned over two dogs she found tied to a fire hydrant on her way home from work one night. The poodle mix, Curly, was adopted immediately. When she took the chihuahua, Paco, to an adoption event, she realized she couldn’t let him go and adopted him herself. He was part of her family for years before crossing the Rainbow Bridge. I adored that little guy.

More Scouts Honor memories: Tim fostered many dogs for the group (Tom and I fostered less than a handful). Pixie was Tim’s first foster fail and became Rex’s “little sister.” Later, someone reached out to Lindsey about a stray dog living in a parking garage and being cared for by several people. The property owner was going to call a kill shelter to pick her up. Scout’s Honor agreed to take her into their adoption program if Lindsey could catch her, and Tim agreed to foster her. That dog was Penny, who became Tim’s second foster fail and Rex’s second little sister. All three lived great lives with Tim, bringing much joy to friends from The Compound, Doll House, Houndstooth Hall, RubinSmo Manor, Fox Den, Fairy Cottage, and Green Acres/Half Acre Wood. Rex, Pixie, and Penny are reunited with one another and all their dog and cat buddies at the Rainbow Bridge.


That’s a bookmark for the Timothy James Beck novel I’m Your Man in George Plasketes’s biography Warren Zevon: Desperado of Los Angeles. It’s not his only  bio waiting for me, and I suspect these were moved to the pile after I read Crystal Zevon’s I’ll Sleep When I’m Dead: The Dirty Life and Times of Warren Zevon.

 

 

The other bio is Nothing’s Bad Luck: The Lives of Warren Zevon by C.M. Kushins. The bookmark inside the Kushins book is from Garden District Bookshop in New Orleans. I didn’t buy the book there, but I’ve purchased others from them during various Saints and Sinners festivals, and anything New Orleans-related seems like a good bookmark for the untamed spirit of Zevon.

Somewhat related to New Orleans (if you read long enough, you’ll get the connection)…

I initially became aware of writer Mark Doty thanks to my friend James, who gave me one of Mark’s memoirs and invited me to attend  a Mark Doty reading and booksigning with him back in the mid-nineties.

I continued to go to appearances Mark made in Houston. From one of those, there are two bookmarks in this copy of My Alexandria: Poems By Mark Doty. One is from Brazos Bookstore, which is almost certainly where I went to hear him read from the book in 1998 and had him sign it afterward.

 

 

 

The second bookmark is from Twelve Voices: University of Houston Creative Writing Program & Imprint, Inc. Doty was the John and Rebecca Moores Professor in the graduate program at The University of Houston Creative Writing Program for ten years.

Above are more books from his appearances. All are signed, and some are inscribed with specific messages based on our conversations.

Once, I admitted to Mark that a few years earlier (before he was part of their faculty), I’d applied to U of H’s MFA program in Creative Writing. I felt driven to do so by my late friend Steve’s plea that I create fiction from my experiences with the HIV/AIDS community and not let my friends’ stories be forgotten. I’d tried, with very little success, to do that, and wondered if a writing program might help me find my voice.

I knew what a longshot it was. From their own site, the program advises, Admission to our creative writing program is extremely competitive, with up to 20 new students across the two genres selected each year from the hundreds of applications received from around the world. I’d long been out of the academic world, and I had no outstanding writing samples to submit with my application. I was disappointed, but not surprised, not to be accepted into the program.

From then on, my inscriptions from Mark in his books always included encouragement and best wishes for my writing. And then, in a most unexpected way, I did find a voice for telling those stories when I began doing a fun writing exercise with my friends Timothy, Timmy, and Jim. I could recognize the spirit, humor, and sadness of the friends I lost and their larger community in what I was writing with them. When we had a draft of a first novel that grew out of that exercise, I began sending it out and got dozens of rejections. I shared that information with Mark at a signing in 1999 for his memoir Firebird, telling him I was happy to be writing but sad that the writing wasn’t finding a home. This is what he wrote when he signed his book that night.


Mark Doty. For Becky, who will be persistent–9/99 Houston.

Because of that, I decided not to give up on behalf of the entire TJB team. Timothy and I both read a first novel by another writer and agreed that his tone and subject were similar to what we were writing. It seemed worth reaching out to that author’s agent, who submitted the manuscript to Kensington, and all that writing and submitting ultimately turned into the five Timothy James Beck novels. Persistence can definitely pay off. Thank you, Mark Doty.

I’ve also had the pleasure of interacting with Mark at Saints and Sinners literary festivals in New Orleans. At one of those, I went to a panel where he had his attendees do a writing exercise by giving us a prompt. What I wrote gave me a scene I hoped to use in a Becky Cochrane contemporary romance novel if the publisher wanted a third, but my editor wasn’t enthusiastic about my third Coventry idea (I believe it was titled A Coventry Homecoming). Last year, I modified what I wrote during Mark’s panel and included it in the sixth novel of the Neverending Saga. Hold on to your scribblings, writers, you never know when you may find a place for them. And published or unpublished, NEVER STOP WRITING. (I have to remind myself of this constantly.)


I know with certainty that I’ve read this Louise Penny book, although it has a bookmark in it. I think that little angel was probably another bookmark that belonged to my mother and remained tucked inside the novel even after I finished reading it. Louise Penny is among my favorite authors and I’m up-to-date on all her novels. Except…

Recently, Tom and I were talking about the novel Bill Clinton cowrote with author James Patterson. I bought it, read it, liked it. (They wrote a second, but I don’t have it. Yet.) Tom asked me if I’d ever read the novel Hillary Clinton cowrote in 2021 with Louise Penny. And I said, “I’m pretty sure I got it from Murder By The Book, but I haven’t read it yet.”

 

Sure enough, there it was on the bookshelf with its “flag,” a bookmark from Detering Book Gallery, a fantastic bookstore, now closed, that was managed by our friend Steve V. No bibliophile who experienced Detering could ever forget what a joy it was. This political thriller would be a strong contender for my next read except that every.single.day, I’m heartsick because of politics.

The Clinton/Penny book is on what I guess could be called my executive branch shelf, where I spotted another book with a bookmark.

Both books were published in 2005, and I don’t remember if I read President Carter’s, but I definitely know I purchased, read, and relished all of Harley Jane Kozak’s Wollie Shelley mysteries after I got them from Murder By The Book.


Sadly, I just missed a booksigning at Murder By The book with my friend Dean James, writing as Miranda James, for his latest Cat In The Stacks Mystery, Requiem For A Mouse. You can bet I’ll be getting it from MBTB soon and adding it to his shelf, where here, you might spot a couple of bookmarks. I must have been reading the Southern Ladies Mystery Dead with the Wind at Mister Car Wash, judging by the bookmark. On the shelf in the background, another Murder By The Book bookmark is tucked among those Cat In The Stacks paperbacks.

I believe this concludes three Sundays of Bookmark Inventory. Thanks for following along. Sometimes, this site contains the only writing I can find the heart or energy to do. These three posts gave me a chance to express my deep regard for other writers and their work, my commitment to my own writing, and my gratitude for readers, including those of you who read here. Writing can feel like hollering into the void sometimes, so thank you for when you comment here or email or text me to let me know you’re still out there reading me.

Tonight, we’ll start seeing the impact of Beryl on our side of Houston. Possible street flooding, trees down, power outages. We’re preparing as best we can. I’ll update when I’m able. Everyone stay safe.

Saturday Storm

Back in the pre-pandemic days, when I still had a job and also went to lots of appointments or took Debby to hers, I spent a lot of time in my car or waiting rooms coloring. These small coloring books (about 5×7 inches) were often in the magazine stands in checkout lines at the grocery store, so I’d grab one to keep in the car. I haven’t used them in quite a while. The cover of the one with the ice cream cone had a glass of water spilled on it, which is why it’s missing.

Yesterday, I was thinking before I wrote, and I began glancing through these. A few of the coloring pages made me feel nostalgic for things from my childhood, like Uncle Gerald’s weeping willow tree and ice cream cones (I rarely eat ice cream these days). So I chose these two to color. (I took the ice cream cone from inside the coloring book; the cover’s still on it.)

Back in my younger days, when at Baskin Robbins, I’d get a scoop of Jamoca Almond Fudge and a scoop of Mint Chocolate Chip on a double cone. On my coloring page cone, top to bottom, I imagined the flavors as: blueberry, cherry, orange sherbet, chocolate, orange popsicle with red sprinkles, bubblegum, strawberry, lime, banana popsicle, grape popsicle, mint chocolate chip, raspberry, and chocolate fudge ice cream–sort of like frozen Skittles in a cone. Today’s the first birthday of our grandniece. We were just texted a photo of her eating a giant ice cream cone that looked as wild as this one (and lots messier!).

We’ve had a storm today, with thunder and a couple of power flickers. Right now, the dogs have calmed down as the thunder has let up, and so far, the power’s still on. I’m not even sure this is related to Tropical Storm Beryl, as we should be getting the brunt of that in our area on Monday. This could be outer bands, I suppose? [ETA: Today’s was a different system. Beryl’s outer bands begin arriving tomorrow around noon.]

Coastal friends, stay safe, dry, and air conditioned. I’ll go back to writing as long as the electricity still holds.

Tiny Tuesday!


In April of 2020, I posted about this idea I found: The Coping Skills Toolbox. I shared the above photo of the box I put together to help me with quarantine anxiety (not only was the world gripped by a pandemic with no preventative medication and few effective treatments for some populations, including my own, but I was laid off from my job of six years due to the pandemic).

Looking back at that post reminds me that I’ve been forthright on this site for at least the last four years about how anxiety has been a lifelong struggle for me. I was prescribed medication for it when I was eighteen that I never used. In 2022, I was prescribed medication on an as-needed basis, which I used very little of. I will occasionally take medication to help me sleep.

Medications are rarely my first option. What I have to take for my physical health, I take. But I’ll always try to manage anxiety in other ways. This is not in any way a judgment about people who manage their physical and emotional health through medication. For a variety of reasons, it’s simply not my first choice.

I still have that “toolbox.” I’ve long-since rewatched the comfort movies and reread the comfort novels that were in it, so they’re no longer in there. It still holds my Magnetic Poetry Journal that I sometimes put poems in, along with the magnetic board I can use to arrange words. It still holds a small coloring book and two tins of coloring pencils. The toys–Superman, Batman, and the tiny plastic cars–are still in there. The bottle of bubbles is not.

After looking at the book I often use as ideas for my Tiny Tuesday posts (shown above, on the right), I decided to add to the box again because of two things I found listed in the book.


This morning, I added my Magnetic Poetry Haiku Kit and a movie. I don’t know if Sliding Doors is a classic at twenty-six years old, but it’s a comfort movie for me. I watched it earlier, and it inspired the haiku I created which is now written in the journal, too. As you can see from my photo below, all the words I wanted weren’t available to me, so I added them to the photo. The haiku goes with the theme of the chapter I’ll be writing when I can get my brain directed that way again.


There is a quote from the movie that’s one of my favorites, when one of the characters says, “I’m a novelist. I’m never going to finish the book.”

Hope you’re all having a good Tuesday and being kind to yourselves.

Saturday is for chilling

I haven’t had the greatest week thanks to my old companions insomnia and headaches, but it also hasn’t been a bad week. I stopped berating myself for all the things I couldn’t do and opted for a little more passive entertainment than usual. I used Netflix for the first time in quite a while and watched a movie I’d wanted to see, Good Grief, which was sad and funny and treated me to a lot of Paris scenes. I always appreciate tucking that ambiance away for when I write the France/French parts of the Neverending Saga.

I also watched a good documentary on Canadian record producer, film composer, music executive David Foster. I was reminded of something I want to do in the chapter I’ve been trying to work on for over a month. I DO work on it, and then I delete. Write. Delete. Repeat. Hopefully, I’ll be back to writing without deleting it all soon.

Since Tom and I had finished watching the final season of “The Crown” (it was so, so sad), we decided to start the new season of “Bridgerton.” I was right back in that world immediately, so I got out the Bridgerton coloring book I bought back in 2021. I think I may have previously colored only one page from it, but this was a good week to do more. Coloring is my go-to when I need to zone out or feel better.

By tonight, we were down to three episodes, so we went for it and binge-watched them. I think this may be my favorite story arc of all the seasons (this was the third regular season, and there was additionally “Queen Charlotte: A Bridgerton Story,” which I also really enjoyed). I look forward to more seasons.


Although the pages from this book were inspired by the first season, they still capture the Bridgerton vibe. The one above I chose as an homage to Penelope, who this season shunned the “citrus” fashions her mother had always imposed on her. I colored her in more subtle colors than she wore in earlier seasons.

I also chose to color a room with a piano in honor of Francesca’s storyline this season.

Mindful Monday

Leap, 2006, acrylic on canvas

It was back in May of 2019 when I made the decision to start rewriting a novel I’d last written in the late 1980s/early to mid 1990s. It had a single title (it was the first of a series of three novels) and was nearly 600 pages long (that is way too many pages). My plan was to edit it down to an actual publishable length.

I randomly split the stack of manuscript pages, read a few, and immediately decided that was a bad idea. The writing was nothing like the style or voice my writing had evolved into by the time my other novels were published in the 2000s. My distaste for what I read wasn’t only because of a difference between the style compared to the style of the published books. I just didn’t like what I read.

But those characters had been resurfacing in my consciousness for a while. I can see proof in a lot of my posts in the months prior to that decision to rewrite–the way the most random topics would lead me back to remembering those people and their stories. As I finally said here in 2019, I wanted to know how the decades of changes in me would impact how I would change them. In order not to be influenced by the past version, I packed the manuscript away unread and began my novel in an entirely different way. I never looked back.

As I’ve admitted repeatedly, I didn’t edit that old book down to publishable size. I stopped imposing rules on it. Rules are for publishing houses and their marketing and publicity. I’m not seeking that. I’m writing… because I have to. Even if it’s for the two readers I have. [I’ve tried other readers. That hasn’t worked out well for me so far. I have to rise above the insecurity and doubt other people’s reactions or even indifference cause me so that I can keep writing. This isn’t easy. Writers crave readers.]

Once again, the book was getting TOO LONG. I split the new manuscript into three books. I’m now on the seventh. In each new novel, refreshers are needed relating to plot and characters, but I try to do those in a variety of ways that aren’t tedious for a reader.

Recently, I reached a point when I questioned why the plot unfolded as it did for these people in the old version. I know what motivates them now, but things are a lot different. So what motivated them back then?

A few days ago, I pulled this out again.

I read it first page to last. It was startling how different things are between that old version and the one I’m writing now. I can barely recognize these people. In the decades in which I first conceived them, I was either a teenager smitten by music and musicians, or I watched a lot of daytime TV, plus prime time TV offered dramas like “Dallas,” “Dynasty,” and “Falcon Crest.” Many bestselling novels of those decades were from Jacqueline Susann, Sidney Sheldon, Judith Krantz, Jackie Collins, Harold Robbins, and Danielle Steel, among others. That genre was referred to as glitz, and I suppose because I was writing about people with money, ambition, and fame, I thought I had to write something similar to that style.

I think that old novel fails not because I was writing outside my life experience, but because I was writing outside what I regard as my authentic storytelling voice. So what the heck ever, whether I have two readers or twenty or none, I hope I’m doing all the things listed on the above quote from Mary Lou Cook. I love these people and their flaws, mistakes, virtues, depth, humor. I break a few rules with them. I’m fine with that.

I write for my characters. I write for me. (We are not the same.)

Sunday Sundries

I introduced the sundries topic last week and asked for suggestions on content for it. Today’s theme, suggested by Mark L, required a bit of foraging and was fun. As a child, Mark began a bookmark collection; he still uses bookmarks from that collection as an adult. Having grown up in a house full of readers, bookmarks were definitely part of my environment, both for pleasure reads and textbooks.

Though I read a lot of ebooks now, and they open to the page I’m on each time I pull one up on my iPad or phone, I still have a need for bookmarks because I continue to read and reread physical books. Here are photos of some I found (they don’t include Tom’s, who always has a physical book with a bookmark in it on the bookcase closest to his reading chair).

First up, let’s hear it for the booksellers!

This shares a bit of the bookmark evolution at my favorite Houston bookstore, Murder By The Book. I have many because I shop there a lot, and have also attended many booksignings and even had a couple of my own signings there. There are six (oops, plus one) shown here, but there are more throughout the house. Brazos is another Houston bookstore that’s a favorite. A lot of my literary choices and books about music and music figures come from Brazos, and next week in two weeks, it may figure into a story about an author I plan to share. The Independent Bookstore Day bookmark may have also come from a local bookstore visit. On my links to the right, there’s one to the Independent Bookstore Finder throughout the U.S. Whenever possible, I order through my local booksellers, but I also order from independent booksellers who host booksignings and publicity for authors I admire and read.

That Crossroads bookmark evokes so many memories. There were two LGBTQ+ bookstores in Houston, since closed, Lobo and Crossroads (I believe both stores are mentioned in The Deal, and my late friend Steve R worked at Lobo for a while). TJB and Cochrane/Lambert had signings at both, and Crossroads was my favorite place to go people watch, work on writing, and buy books. I met many people who became friends through Crossroads (including John, who I followed from there to two different Borders locations to Murder By The Book), and when Tim first moved here, he worked there! I miss Crossroads so much.

Then–speaking of the tenacity of independent booksellers who doggedly keep going in a hard market–yet another, older Murder By The Book bookmark slipped in. The Bookshelf was a used bookstore in Huntsville, Alabama where I used to shop. It’s “temporarily closed” since sometime in 2023. I hope they make it. Then there’s Borders, a chain since closed, but it was a vital place that hosted booksignings for us. When people complain that chains drove indies out of the market, I think they provided far more good than people appreciated. I still enjoy going to Barnes & Noble, where I can get a lot more personalized information than online algorithms offer.

Finally, a few neat connections.

I’m not sure about the cherub bookmark, whether it was a gift to me or belonged to my mother. But I’m sure that’s a Greg Herren bookmark from his Bold Strokes book Lake Thirteen. Also, back in the days of Live Journal, at least as far back as 2005, I think, other writers/authors and I agreed we needed to use the reading-is-hot tag on our blogs and websites. I still use it. A lot of readers helped us by sending photos of themselves reading in beds, bathtubs, etc. It was a fun time. I don’t remember where the bookmark came from and imagine it was probably not connected to that effort, but it certainly illustrated the theme. The bookmark on the far right was from the late Linda Raven Moore, who maintained several sites, including Markeroni, to which contributors documented with words and photos their visits to historical and local locations that had markers explaining their significance. I very much miss Linda, as I’m sure many do. On LiveJournal, she was whytraven.

These are some that belonged to and were used by my mother.

They live in a metal box where I have many small mementos belonging to her. The one on the far right is imprinted with the word JOY. I have a vague memory about the one made with yarn, but I’m not sure of its accuracy.

I’ve shared these on here before. They’re bookmarks made for Tom and me by his mother with beautiful beads. I’ve used them several times in thick, heavy books.

Finally, here are some I designed (and had printed by a company I’m not sure still exists; it’s in the old ‘hood) to give away at readings and to people who sent us novels to be signed.

Notice there isn’t one for the fifth book, When You Don’t See Me. I can only speculate that for me, some of the serious themes and painful events in the characters’ lives didn’t lend the novel to a whimsical bookmark.

There are also serious themes in Three Fortunes In One Cookie; that didn’t stop me then.

Regarding the websites listed on these two bookmarks–Tim no longer has an active website (which I miss very much), and I finally shut down cochranelambert.com this year since it had been inactive for so long (and websites aren’t cheap).

ETA: Later, I went to open one of my display cabinets, and found these three bookmarks with beautiful original art that were gifts from Geri. I don’t use them because I want the art to remain intact, and that’s fine. Even utilitarian items can be appreciated for their aesthetic value.

Thanks, Mark, this was a good journey, and as always, I found other things along the way that merit a little more storytelling. In fact, there are enough of those to require a Part Two on the Bookmarks sundries topic. Hope to see everyone next week when I share them. AND PLEASE give me more topics (I do have several thanks to visitors to this site, two who left comments, and others from people who tell me via other channels). As always, thank you for visiting and engaging.

Hump Day


Since I mentioned author Donna Leon in Monday’s post, I decided to poke around and see which novels in her series I hadn’t yet read. There are two, and I’d forgotten I downloaded one of them quite a while back (and I immediately added the other). I’ve been kind of low-energy this week, so though I’ve done some writing, I also began reading Give unto Others (number 31 in Leon’s Commissario Brunetti series).

Along the way, I was struck by this excerpt and copied it, redacting information that might constitute spoilers.

These words from Leon so perfectly summed up a character in the Neverending Saga whose actions in the past (before my narrative begins), and years later in the first book of my series, negatively impact people’s lives for decades.

I can think of only three characters I’ve ever written who are irredeemable. Do I think people like them exist? Yes. Everyone is capable of redeeming themselves; some never make that choice. Unlike in life, where you often read about the irredeemable in the headlines, when you’re a writer, you get to mete out a satisfying justice for those characters.

There were a few things from the overall series that I missed from Give unto Others, but those made sense in context of the time it was set. As soon as I finished it, I started reading number 32, So Shall You Reap. Just as with the Martin Walker books, I learn so much about culture and history from the many details authors deftly weave into their plots. Some of those things I missed from the previous book were back, to my delight.

I believe the next novel in the series comes out in July. The next Martin Walker novel in the Bruno series is due out in September. These are things I can look forward to while I write my way through the summer and fall forecast of heatwaves and hurricanes, and I also have a couple of other favorite series/authors with books just out or on the way.

Mindful Monday

I’d saved that a while back, but over the last few days, it really hit home for me as I read the three Martin Walker ebooks that had been waiting on my iPad for a while. I’ve already posted about the other two; this was the third I finished Saturday night:

There’s another in the series coming out in the fall. I’m really looking forward to it.

In the last two novels, Walker scattered a lot of global topics among the mysteries, the denizens of St. Denis, and the food (always the food!). I found these new storylines riveting (and not cumbersome): election interference, countries on the edge of war, the manipulation of public opinion via social media and disinformation, global politics, the rise of tech billionaires, the historical and cultural significance of migration from centuries past. There are many cozy things about the Bruno books, but the books themselves are not cozies. They fall into the same smart writing as Donna Leon and Louise Penny, two others among my favorite writers (with series set in Venice and Quebec, respectively), in which family, friends, and fellowship are always part of the theme but aren’t the full stories of their characters’ lives.

In Walker’s series, Bruno himself seems to be changing, but in all the ways that matter, he’s still the good human he’s always been.

Wikipedia background on Martin Walker: Born in Scotland…Martin Walker was educated at Harrow County School for Boys and Balliol College, Oxford. He lives in the Périgord/Dordogne in Southern France with his wife with whom he has two daughters.

Walker was on the staff of The Guardian from around 1971, working in a variety of positions, including bureau chief in Moscow and the United States, European editor, and assistant editor. Walker resigned in 1999 after 28 years with the newspaper.

Walker joined United Press International (UPI) in 2000. While at UPI he was also an international correspondent. He is now editor-in-chief emeritus of UPI. He also holds a variety of other positions, including senior scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, D.C.; senior fellow of the World Policy Institute at The New School in New York; member of the board of directors of the Global Panel Foundation (Berlin, Copenhagen, Prague, Sydney and Toronto). He is also a contributing editor of the Los Angeles Times’s Opinion section and of Europe magazine. Walker also is a regular commentator on CNN, Inside Washington, and NPR.

Tiny Tuesday!

Because of something I wrote recently in the Neverending Saga, I repurposed another of the illustrations from my old 1981 calendar, coloring a kitten and a tiny chick hatching. Putting the page in my “coloring book” reminded me of an exchange in comments between Mark and me in which I talked about how Tom is always helping me figure out how to make ideas reality or find solutions for problems or projects I take to him.

It began with this oversized sketchbook I bought once at Ross. I don’t know why, because I don’t sketch. I’m not sure how artists use sketchbooks, but I assume after sketching, they tear out pages and do something with them (for example, I have a nephew who’s an artist, and sometimes he sketches when he’s in a restaurant or coffeehouse, and then gives the sketches to his servers, which I think is very cool).

Since I like to fill empty sketchbooks with my coloring pages, and many of my coloring books are oversized, I decided to use the large sketchbook for that purpose. I wanted it to have a more personalized cover, so I collaged it. The collage is full of things that reference memories, friendships, interests, and my fiction. Since the front cover of the sketchbook was of very thin card stock, I glued a sturdier sheet of cardboard on the inside front cover so the collage wouldn’t weigh it down and damage it.

I began to fill it up in 2022 and 2023 with the coloring I did. I used only the front pages, and when I came to the end of those in May of this year, I didn’t want to stop using the book. I still felt very attached to my collaged front cover. I decided to start at the end of the sketchbook and put new coloring pages on the back sides of every page until I got back to the beginning of the book. This is the last page in the book that I did when I was coloring up a storm–I mean, literally coloring pages during daylight hours when the storm knocked out our power for six days.

Here’s an example of how using the backs now provides two completed pages to view at once.


However, that flimsy front cover began tearing at the holes on the spiral binding. When I’d reinforced the cover in 2022, I hadn’t considered how the unreinforced holes would bear the increasing weight of the sketchbook.


So while the power was out, I showed Tom the problem, and as always, he devised a solution. He removed the front cover, cut another strip of the cardboard, glued it on the edge leaving extra space to punch holes, and put the front cover back on the spiral binding. I think this will hold until I finish filling the book. Maybe by then, I’ll have enough images to collage the front of another sketchbook–and when I do, I’ll pick one with a sturdier front cover.