When I was a kid, our farm gardens were massive. We had acres of potatoes. My grandmother's "kitchen garden" had to be at least a thousand square feet. Corn, cabbage, cucumbers, tomatoes, green beans, kohlrabi, onions, peppers, and so much more. Rhubarb, horseradish, and dill grew along its borders. We had an apple orchard as well as pear and peach trees.  Now, we have a ten-acre chunk of that 150-acre farm, and our little garden has grown progressively smaller over the decades. This year we have onions, cucumbers, a few sad tomato plants, peppers, and one plant each of yellow squash and zucchini. Those last two are threatening to take over the world alongside the cucumbers. We've given bushels of the things away. People see my husband coming and run. They can't escape. He drives by when folks aren't home and leaves squash on their doorstep.  I've been cooking and eating squash and cukes for lunch and supper every single day. Yes, I'm sick of them. And...

How many times have I sworn I was going to post here more regularly? I've lost count. And yet, here we are, more than two months since I last wrote something for you.  After 16+ books, I still find myself going down the same internal dialogue rabbit hole as I hear newbie, unpublished writers doing. I don't have anything interesting to say. What could I possibly write that anyone would want to read? My life is BORING. For over ten years, I've had a new release coming out at least once a year, so there's been something to share. Cover releases, pre-order links, behind the scenes of a coming-soon novel. I recently realized, this is the longest I've gone without a new book since I started this journey. And I'm not happy about it.  In my defense, my publisher has TWO of my manuscripts and is sitting on them. Meanwhile, I'm writing every day, so it's not like I've retired.  In case you're wondering about my previous post, yes, I finished the synopsis a...

"The only constant in life is change." - Heraclitus I like to think I'm pretty flexible regarding detours and changes in life. An event gets canceled? Oh well. An appointment has to be rescheduled? Fine.  But I'm facing a BIG change within the next few days, and I confess, I'm anxious. At the end of this week, my husband will retire. We've been together for a long time. A long long time. He's gone through various employers and work schedules, but for the last decade, he's worked at the same place, steady daylight shift, Monday through Friday. He leaves at the same time every morning and is home at (mostly) the same time every afternoon. It's been easy for me to set my writing schedule around his work schedule. Kensi and I have the house to ourselves all day. We enjoy the quiet. That's about to end. Okay, Hubby and I have had a few times where we've been at home together 24/7. When he had surgery for a torn rotator cuff, he was off for SIX M...

In writing and in life, patience is not only a virtue, it's a survival necessity. Being doggedly stubborn also helps. Almost twenty years ago, when we last had the roof on our log cabin replaced, I wanted GREEN. Preferably green steel. But the menfolk in my family solidly refused and I ended up with brown shingles.  Blah. I'm not usually a nag, but ever since, every time I see a green roof on a log home, I point it out to my husband in the most obnoxious manner possible. Believe me, he got the point.  Three years ago, we installed new entry and storm doors. I insisted on green for the storm doors. So they'd match the green steel roof I would one day have. Two years ago, we had a garage built next to our house. It was my husband's dream, and I let him pick all the details...except for the color. And yes, the roof was green steel so it would match the green steel roof I would one day have on the house as well. This spring, we had a horrendous hailstorm. It put huge divots...

The 7th Zoe Chambers mystery is due to my editor February 6. Less than two weeks to pull this mess of a story together into something publishable. So of course, there are distractions going on in my life. Some potentially good and exciting. And then there's my husband's car.  It went into convulsions when he started it to come home from work yesterday. He phoned me at 3:00 saying he was waiting for a tow truck and could I pick him up at his mother's house (walking distance from the garage and 25 minutes from here). Answer: YES. But, he told me, wait until he called back, which he would do once they were on the road. By 5:15, I'd heard nothing and wondered if I'd misunderstood. I phoned him back--and let's just say he didn't sound happy. Still waiting for the tow. 7:15. Still nothing. Apparently, AAA (whom we LOVE, by the way) had taken down his phone number wrong. No call-back, no tow. Then they went to the wrong town. Obviously, they couldn't locate h...

After years of hiding my furniture under afghans, quilts, and throws, it's time. Out with the old and in with the new. Except I don't want the new to look old within two days, which is exactly what might happen. This is the old. Skye started the shredding years ago. Then Kensi came to live with us and joined in the fun. I tried deterrents. Nothing worked. I tried slip covers. There's a reason they call them SLIP covers. They slip all over the place. What's uglier? Clawed furniture or bunched and twisted cock-eyed slip covers? It's a toss-up. Lately I just threw blankets over everything. Why buy new when Kensi's just going to use it as another scratching post? (She has three of the real things and uses them all, so redirection isn't the trick.) Because the old chair has lost so much stuffing and has gotten so saggy, it's no longer comfortable. Hubby would rather lie on the wood floor than lounge in his recliner. So I went shopping. I haven...

One of the things I hope to improve upon in this new year is decluttering. With the demands of deadlines, not to mention the great excuse “I don’t have time to clean. I have to write,” my house has become a series of what I affectionately call “hog holes.” Comfy, but messy. A little TOO lived in. So I’m tackling one hog hole at a time. No, I will not be showing you the before photos. They might result in a film crew from some hoarding reality show appearing on my front porch. However, here is my first tidied corner of my house. Books and DVDs all neat and orderly. Small cabinet’s top cleared of “stuff.” On to the next corner…which sad to say now contains some of the junk I cleared from THIS corner. Sigh. In other homefront news, Skye has developed a new quirk. She no longer wants her food in the kitchen. She now prefers to eat it in the bathtub! If I set the bowl down elsewhere, she snubs it, goes to the bathroom door and looks at me until I follow her. Then ...

Happy Halloween. We get zilch in the way of trick-or-treaters around here. In fact, the only time we EVER had trick-or-treaters was when my cousin lived next door and her kids were little. Often, though, I’ve purchased candy JUST IN CASE. Which means I have to eat it all myself. Darn. But not this year. Lately, writing time battles with treadmill time, and the writing time is winning. So no bag of miniature Reese’s Cups for me. Instead of focusing on Halloween, I’m thinking of this as Nanowrimo Eve. Originally, I’d planned to spend it getting a jump-start on my page count. And since I’m doing my own revision version of Nano, and since I’m making up my own rules for it, starting early would not be deemed cheating. However, I’ve decided NOT to cheat anyway. Instead, I intend to spend the day cleaning house. Boy, do I know how to have fun or what? Seriously, the house needs it. I’ve been letting things pile up (literally) for months now while using the revisions excuse. “I have ...

I think I’ve been spending too much time holed up in my cave with my computer. This morning I learned that the power company was going to maneuver one of its massive trucks into our yard, around behind our old barn, and back into the yard on the other side (all to avoid potentially crushing our leech bed—thank you West Penn) so they could work on the electric pole just across the property line. In order to successfully pull this off, Hubby had to take down a small section of fence and remove one fence post. The fence was no problem. We haven’t owned any livestock in over a decade. Hurricane Ivan took out the bulk of our fence back in 2004. This was just a little piece that had survived and served no good purpose except to hold up the poison ivy vines. Note to self: add calamine lotion and Benadryl to the grocery list. The massive truck arrived. Hubby made them use it to pull the fence post. Or, to be more accurate, to snap it off at its rotted base. Meanwhile, having been coope...

I’ve lived my entire life on property that at one time belonged to my grandfather. My folks built a house on one corner of Grandpap’s farm. When I married, we built our house on another ten-acre chunk of it. These two lots are the only ones that remain in the family. Over the years, I’ve mourned as the rest of acreage was sold off to others. But some things didn’t change. The neighboring farm remained in the same family it had since long before I was born. Mr. C kept a large herd of beef cattle on several hundred acres. As I sit in my office at my computer, I look out my window to a view of his hillside. Pasture, some woods, and those beef cattle. Amazing how you take something for granted when it’s been there for decades. Mr. C is one of those guys you just assume will go on forever. He never changes. Except he is. He’s getting older, like the rest of us. His hips are bad, so his jaunts around his property are done on tractor instead of on foot. Still, he loves his herd of cattle. Or ...

My “stuff” is ganging up on my wallet. I was going to say appliances or electronics , but it’s more than just that. First my trusty black-and-white laserjet printer’s drum went bad. I use the thing just about every day and have run a small forest’s worth of paper through it, so it was no surprise. But when I learned what a drum costs? Yeouch! For an additional $10 I could buy a whole new printer…same thing as I had, only newer and slightly upgraded. No brainer. I came home with a new printer. A week later, my more-than-five-year-old color all-in-one inkjet died. I tried printer CPR. Nothing. She flat-lined on me. I had used and abused that poor old thing. I bought it when my dad was going into long-term nursing care and we were dealing with legal and financial issues that required lots and lots of copies. I’m shocked it survived that first year. So I ordered a new all-in-one online, and the guy in the big brown truck delivered it to my door. It’s faster and easier to use than the old ...

Today is the first day of deer hunting season here in Pennsylvania. For many, it’s a national holiday. Maybe even a religious holiday. Not for me. I don’t hunt. I cry when a dog or a cat or a horse (or Bambi) dies in a movie. The only way I’ll go to a movie where an animal dies if I’m tricked into it. We own a DVD of Dances With Wolves . I only watch it to a certain point, and then I have to leave the room. I own The Horse Whisperer on DVD, too. But I start it halfway through. Which is fine because Robert Redford doesn’t show up until then anyway. I can’t watch fictional animals die, so there is no way on earth I could go out and shoot a real one. But around here, I’m the odd-man-out. I grew up in a family of hunters. And I married into a family of mega-hunters. Hubby celebrates this day with his uncle and cousins at the family hunting camp. I’m happy for him. I stay home with the cats. Two small felines and I take up the entire queen-sized bed all night and love it. During the day, i...

I announced three weeks ago that I was retreating into my cave—for TWO weeks—to work on revisions to two manuscripts. Since things always take longer than I expect, I finally finished those revisions today. It’s an awesome feeling to click “send” with two requested manuscripts attached to the email. Awesome…and terrifying. Now I wait. I don’t expect to be twiddling my thumbs, though. During those three weeks, my house has deteriorated into a sanctuary for dust bunnies. Newspapers have piled up at the front door. I’ve had to clear off the kitchen table just to make room to eat. It’s time to declutter and do a little cleaning. Plus I have a couple of magazine articles that are due. Okay, OVER due. I also had almost 300 emails to catch up on. But I’ve already thinned those down a bit. If I owe you a reply, you’d better email me again. I’m afraid I had an itchy delete-button finger today.

There is a general assumption that if you work from home, you have plenty of spare time. If you are one of those who makes such assumptions, let me just say…STOP IT. Here is a sampling of what’s on my agenda for this week. Today: Post reminders about Thursday’s Pennwriters meeting to the area Yahoo group (done). Post critiques to online critique group (done). Write a blog post (in progress). Laundry (in progress). Read the latest class from an online workshop I’m taking. Return phone call to my new Avon District Sales Manager. Call the dentist office to make appointments for me and Mom. Start work on an article for Sisters in Crime. Work on a proposed article for Pennsylvania Magazine . Work on Chapter Two of new manuscript. Help Hubby with job search online. Tuesday: Anything that didn’t get done yesterday. Get blood work done. More laundry. Inventory, invoice, and package Avon delivery (This will take almost half the day). Read chapters for two critique partners. Get to work on long-...

It's my day to blog at Working Stiffs and July's theme is summer. Most of the other Stiffs have been sharing vacation exploits and photos, but other than our journeys to Confluence, we aren't taking a vacation this year. So instead, I've offered a photographic tour of my rural world .

We spend so much time waiting for things to get better so we can then be happy that we often miss the precious “now” moments. For instance, things will be better when my husband finds a job. And I land a book deal. I’ll be happier when my elbow heals and my allergies clear up. There’s always something. Today is the summer solstice. So since I complain so much about winter, I have to stop and embrace today. The sky is blue. Everything else is that lovely rich green of late spring/early summer. We have more hours of daylight today than any other day. A mockingbird serenades me outside my office window as a gentle breeze ruffle my lace curtains. Money’s a little tight…so what? Right now I have some time to work on my new manuscript. Right now, my mom is doing well. Right now we have food in the refrigerator and the bills are all paid. Right now my biggest health complaint is a sore elbow. Right now my hubby and I are still best friends in spite of a few trials and tribulations. Right now ...

I've posted before and after photos of my office remodel and reorganization over at Working Stiffs . I'm not sure it qualifies as a true remodel since all we did was lay down new floor. But it feels new and fresh to me. A lot of the reorganization can't be seen, as it happened within the closets and drawers. I'm still not sure where everything is (it used to be in that pile of papers, but now where did it go???), but I'll get used to it. Now, it's time to get back to work.

In case you’re wondering, I survived the weekend. Barely. It took all blessed day Saturday to pack up all my “stuff” from my office and to find places to put it in the rest of the house. Boxes filled the living room. Assorted items edged the periphery of the bedroom. And still does. I left some things for Sunday simply because I didn’t want to block the side door. Somewhere in the back of my overactive brain, I kept hearing a nagging voice saying, “What if there’s a fire.” So I saved that space. Until yesterday. I’d disconnected the computer, but left it in the office until the last minute. Sunday morning, the computer, the cabinet drawers, and any office furniture that was light enough to move out or that was on wheels, headed out into what little space remained elsewhere in the house. The bed was covered as were most of the couch and all the chairs. My office may be the smallest room in the house (except for the bathroom), but inch-for-inch, it contained the most stuff. It didn’t tak...

One can only hide in one’s cave, living in denial, for so long. It’s time. I’m being rousted from my quiet, extremely cluttered office in order to replace the last bit of carpeting in our house with the new wood flooring. I’ve been dreading this. Oh, don’t get me wrong. I love my new floor in the rest of the house and I know I’ll love it in here, too. But it’s the process. My office/cave is small, yet it contains some of the biggest furniture in the entire house. Namely my computer desk, a set of bookshelves, and two sets of cabinets, courtesy of IKEA. There’s also a table that’s supposed to be my writing desk, although I can never find space on it. I started de-cluttering it yesterday and still don’t have enough clear surface to so much as write a check. There’s a small metal file cabinet and a stand that hold sentimental knickknacks and photographs, too. And there are a LOT of books. How to write books. Writing market books. Crime writers’ reference books. Grammar and style books. Bo...

I thought I was looking forward to Indian Summer. Those last few days of sunshine and warm temperatures before we plunge into those cold, gray, wet, and snowy days of late fall and winter. But I was not alone. Lady bugs (or Asian beetles or whatever the heck they are) were also anticipating the burst of sunshine to make their last ditch search for a winter home. Thousands of lady bugs. Hundreds of thousands. Gazillions of lad bugs. Apparently, they especially like log houses for all the nooks and crannies in which they can hide. The swarm began Tuesday afternoon. The bugs looked like snow flurries outside, except they weren’t white and they didn’t simply fall down. They buzzed up, down and sideways. They started ticking against the windows of my office, which face south and receive all that sunshine. Then they started finding their way through the window frames, through cracks and gaps that I can’t see. Obviously, my house is not airtight. Note to self: MUST CAULK BEFORE WINTER. At fir...