-
#FOTD: Apple blossoms from my Flagstaff garden
The gorgeous pink dogwood blooms in Cee’s Flower of the Day today reminded me of this photo, which I took in the early days of the pandemic, when I was still living in Flagstaff. Part of my stay-sane-during-pandemic strategy was to spend as much time outside as I could, so I’d take breaks between Zoom meetings to walk the garden and take pictures. It was a bit surreal, watching the garden come back to life as the world shut down.
-
Beginning of an as-yet-unnamed Christmas horror story (#WeWriWa #2)
Good morning, and welcome to my second post for the Weekend Writing Warriors blog hop (see all my Weekend Writing Warriors posts here). Right now I’m revising the first draft of a Christmas horror story I hope to submit to the Deathlehem anthology–if I can get it done quickly enough. I’m horribly slow at revising. Here are the first 10 sentences: Lully, lullah, thou little tiny child.Billy Foraker lifted the little boy off his lap, gave him a half-hearted, “Ho, ho, ho,” and rubbed his temples.Bye bye, lully, lullay.Ugh, that song again. He’d heard some version of it at least six times since his shift started at Stockton Galleria Mall.…
-
Bisbee noir and a bit of non-news (Weekend Coffee Share #7)
Happy Friday, and welcome to the weekend coffee share, hosted by Natalie the Explorer! I’m frantically trying to finish a short story to submit to my favorite Christmas horror anthology series, Deathlehem, so this week’s post will be short. I submitted last year and got rejected, so I’m trying again this year with a new–and scarier–story. Hubster and I spent part of last weekend in Bisbee, a copper mining town about an hour and a half from Tucson. It’s a fascinating place–and more than a little bit creepy after dark. We nicknamed it Stair Land, because it’s built into a hillside and has staircases everywhere–including some that seem to go…
-
Anniversary, nominated for an award, new Facebook page, other odds and ends (Weekend Coffee Share #6)
Good morning and happy Friday! Welcome to the Weekend Coffee Share, hosted by Natalie the Explorer! Come on in, pull up a seat, and join me. It’s starting to feel like fall here in Tucson. We’re still having triple-digit temps (it’s Arizona), but the nights are cooler, and this morning we even have clouds. The featured image on this post was taken a few days ago outside my building at work. Everything is still so green and pretty from the monsoon rains. 30 years! How is that even possible? Today’s chat will be a quick roundup of odds and ends, because I’m leaving soon for a weekend trip to Bisbee,…
-
Tumacácori National Historical Park (Weekend Coffee Share #5)
Happy Saturday morning! Welcome to the Weekend Coffee Share! Grab your drink of choice, pull up a chair, and let’s talk. It looks like monsoon season is over here in Tucson. It’s supposed to be sunny and 103F today and triple-digits all week. But I promise I won’t spend this post complaining about the heat like I did last week. It’s hot in Arizona. We know. Instead, let’s pay a visit to a small but fascinating national park site less than an hour south of Tucson: Tumacácori National Historical Park, which includes the ruins of three missions from the Spanish colonial era. The site also does a good job of…
-
Snippet from “Collateral Damage” (WeWriWa #1)
Welcome to my first post for Weekend Writing Warriors! Yes, I’m joining yet another blog hop. If this keeps up, I’m going to have to find a support group for people addicted to blog hops. Anyhoo, I’m especially excited about WeWriWa, because it involves sharing snippets of writing, published or unpublished, and since my search for an agent is about as successful as New Coke (if you’re under 40, ask your parents), these posts might be the only time anyone outside my critique group gets to read my work. For my first post, here are the first 10 sentences of my postapocalyptic short story, “Collateral Damage.” This story won first…
-
Saying goodbye to summer (Weekend Coffee Share #4)
Good morning, and welcome to the Weekend Coffee Share! It’s Saturday morning here in Tucson, the start of Labor Day weekend. It’s sunny and humid, and the wet pavement by my front door tells me it rained last night. The air is cool (well, cool for Tucson) and fresh, so before it gets unbearably hot and sticky, let’s plop on the porch with a morning beverage (got my Diet Coke right here) and look back on summer. But it’s still summer, you say? Well, yeah, the equinox is over two weeks away, and it’ll feel like summer here in the Sonoran Desert till November. But to me, Labor Day weekend…
-
Define your own success in 6 easy steps (#IWSG)
Today we’re going to talk about success. I’m not going to define it for you, and I’m not going to tell you how to get it. I suck as a self-help guru. Instead, I’m going to suggest a way of thinking about success that doesn’t get much traction in our rise-and-grind culture. But first: This post is part of the Insecure Writers Support Group monthly blog hop. On the first Wednesday of each month, I and my fellow insecure writers post something related to writing, and then we visit the blogs of our fellow members and read and comment on their IWSG posts. This month’s optional question is, How do you…
Suspense | Horror | Romance
