Happy Friday, everyone. One four more left this year. Can you believe it?
After taking a break for the Thanksgiving holiday, it’s been a busy week as I’m wrapping up the edits of my short story collection, scheduled for release in January.
Story Empire had another full week.
Harmony Kent began the week with a summation of her series, How to Use Prologues. If you missed any of the posts, she has the link to each one in the post.
On Wednesday, D. L. Finn’s topic was What Every Writer Should Know. She gives some sage advice, so I know you won’t want to miss it.
Interested in bringing humor into your stories? Then make sure to check out John Howell’s post today. Click this link to read.
This fall has been one of the most beautiful ones Texas has had in years. On Sunday, my husband and I took a drive in the country. The colors of the trees were amazing. I snapped a few photos. Most were taken from inside the car, so please overlook the glare from the windows.
The photo on the right is the oak tree in my front yard. Beautiful (until we have to rake the leaves).
That’s it for now. I’ll return next week with a new Mystery Monday post.
Hey, readers. I haven’t written a WIP Wednesday post in a while, mainly because there was little to share. This week, I’m happy to report I’ve made progress.
Twelve of the thirteen short stories for my upcoming collection are written. All would have been done, but I didn’t like how I’d done the thirteenth story, so I all but scrapped what I’d written and started over. The words are flowing much better now.
Three stories have been edited and critiqued, and I’m working on the other ones now. As much as I wanted to publish this year, I’ve decided to wait until January. I didn’t want to rush through the edits. Not to mention there’s a lot of work to do in addition to writing and editing. Blog tour posts, promotional materials, and formatting just to name a few.
The book cover is done, and I’ll have a title and cover reveal post in a few weeks. Yes, it finally has another title other than A Book of Shorts. In the meantime, here’s a sneak peek:
In other writing news, I’m ready to begin the second book of my Legends of Madeira series. It’s been a long time in coming, but I would like to release Blood Red Dawn sometime in the first half of 2023. I’m also planning books three and four, and I might have an additional short story.
As many of you know, music often inspires my stories. While I already had the idea for Blood Red Dawn, the song “Some Velvet Morning” inspired the name of a character. I changed the spelling from Phaedra (as it is in the song) to Faydra, but she will be one of my historical characters.
Connor Hughes and Abbey Lane, minor characters in Cold Dark Night will take the lead in the upcoming novel. Somehow I think this song fits them. A character from House of Sorrow was named Lee Hazleton. I got that idea from the name of the singer/songwriter of “Some Velvet Morning.”
That wraps it up for now. In the meantime, I hope enjoy the video and the song.
Hey, Readers. Last Friday I promised an “I’m Retired” post. It’s a good thing I looked back because I almost postponed this until next week.
I also shared a photo of my new “office” which is really a writing nook. Years ago, I envisioned a separate room with a fancy desk. It would have large windows overlooking a green lawn with woods beyond where wildlife would often visit.
Instead, I have a small writing table that suits me just fine. There are windows where I can look out. My husband’s hobby (one of them) is feeding birds (I swear we may go broke buying feeders and bird seed). We have a variety, including titmice, chickadees, cardinals, nuthatches, indigo buntings, sparrows, and more. We even saw a painted bunting a few times.
Unfortunately, we have to deal with raccoons and squirrels. Don’t get me started on the pesky squirrels (pretty sure hubs has a squirrel feeder as well), but raccoons are opportunists. Using a live trap, he’s trapped and relocated four of them to a nearby wildlife preserve. John stopped doing that when a mama and her four babies were at one of our feeders. He couldn’t stand the thought of accidentally separating a family. So yes, I’m able to see wildlife from my windows.
But back to my retirement. The first couple of weeks has gone fast. I still feel like I’m on vacation. Last week was extremely busy. We ordered a new sofa, had it delivered, and the old one hauled away. For the first time in months, I went to the grocery store with John. He likes to shop (and cook) so most of the time, I’ll leave that up to him.
I shared a photo of my writing nook last week, so today I want to share a few things that are on the desk and wall.
The image on the left is, of course, my desk. It’s comfy and cozy, so that’s what matters. Last winter, when I decided to retire, I treated myself to a brand new Dell all-in-one desktop. Everything’s wireless and there’s only one cord for the electrical plug. We’ve come a long way from all those separate cords for printers, keyboards, speakers, and the mouse. And let’s not forget the phone line for dial-up internet. (Thank goodness those days are behind us.)
The second image was a gift from a coworker. She knows how much I love to read and of course my cats. She couldn’t have found anything that looked more like my Tucker.
The third image was a parting gift from my coworkers at the hospital. Several of them signed the mat and expressed their well wishes. The place I worked was once a World War II Army training base. At one time, German prisoners of war were kept there. The foreground is a photo of the Camp Fannin Veteran’s Memorial. That’s pretty special in itself because my father-in-law was discharged through Camp Fannin.
After the war, the U. S. Government deeded 600 acres and the old hospital building to the State of Texas. The hospital served as a tuberculosis sanitarium for years. In 1977, it became part of the University of Texas system.
A couple of other items on the desk are a small piece of pottery just to the right of the monitor. It was a gift from one of the doctors I used to work with. It sat by my work computer for years, so it’s only appropriate that it sits by my home computer now. The other is a coaster from another coworker (close-up image on the right). It’s raku pottery and came from Chama, New Mexico.
This brings me back to writing. My Legends of Maderia series is set in northern New Mexico. Although my plans to write and publish the second novel this year didn’t transpire, I plan to start writing it next month. The photo on my computer screen will be used in the book cover for Blood Red Dawn. The picture wasn’t taken in New Mexico but at Fort Griffin, Texas. However, it was just what I needed for the ruins of my fictional Fort McKittrick.
That’s it for now. More about writing including my short-story collection and Blood Red Dawn next week.
Hey, Readers. Happy September. I’m back from my blogging break and already into the second day of retirement. More about that next week, but today is the first of something new.
Most of you know I’m a contributor at Story Empire. Along with fellow authors, Mae Clair, Staci Troilo, C. S. Boyack, Harmony Kent, Gwen Plano, John Howell, D. L. Finn, Jan Sikes, D. Wallace Peach, and Beem Weeks, we share tips and ideas about things related to writing and marketing fiction.
Each Friday, I’ll share links to the posts. Comments here will be closed, but if you haven’t already, I hope you’ll take the time to visit Story Empire.
That wraps it up for this week. Hope everyone has a great weekend. Monday is Labor Day in the US, so I won’t have a Mystery Monday post. I’ll have a special guest on Wednesday and you won’t want to miss that.
In the meantime, here’s a photo taken from my front porch yesterday morning.
Four weeks from today, I’ll be retired. For several months, I’ve teased my co-workers that I’m going to sit on my front porch that first morning, take a photo of the sunrise, and text them with the message, “This is what I’m doing today.
With my luck, it will probably be pouring down rain, but that’s okay because we desperately need it. We’re in a severe drought right now, somewhat reminiscent of the summer of 2011.
Not quite as bad, but still cause for concern.
Anyway, back to retirement. I began planning this around mid-December. One of my co-workers, who had planned for years, is retiring the same day. When I returned from a week’s vacation in early January, we had something like thirty-three weeks until the big day, and now it’s down to four.
I’ve come to one conclusion. Retiring, or planning for retirement, is hard work. I’ve already turned over most of my job duties to others, so the work days seem long. One thing I can say about my job is that it never got boring. There was always plenty to do and new challenges every day. (When I interviewed, I said I wanted a challenging job. I got my wish.)
Still, there are days when I come home mentally exhausted. Maybe it’s because I’m trying to finish the last of my collection of short stories. Yes, I’m behind, and yes, I still plan to publish them this year. It’s looking like an October release date. I have a title and a cover, but more on that later.
I continue plugging along on my stories and plodding along on my remaining work days. I’m looking forward to not having to wake up to an alarm clock, although I’ll need to train my four-legged alarm clock not to wake me at 5:00.
I want to get back on a more regular blog schedule (something besides book reviews). I already have some plans in the works, but I’m not rushing anything. At first, I want to enjoy scenes like this:
Both views are from my front porch. Obviously not taken this year because everything was green.
One of the short stories in my collection had the working title The House on Baker Street. The name, but not the story, was inspired by this song written and recorded by the late Gerry Rafferty. I’ll leave you with a video.
Joan Hall 
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