Every item that has appeared on Lady Violet’s and Lord Julian’s covers is sitting upstairs in my guest bedroom, and that accumulation of clutter, genuine antiques, and flotsam is driving me nuts. In a similar vein, I’ve lost around 85 pounds, thanks to the GLP-1 agonist mounjaro and thus I have about two and half wardrobes that no longer fit  but still take up space in my closets and drawers.

The end of the year finds me in the mood to purge and prune, to free up space in my house and my life. I am no Martha Stewart–far from it. I have tended to view my house as a roofed campsite. In the past year, though, I’ve also fitted the place out with a heat pump, replaced the well pump and tank, replaced the whole electric panel, and upgraded the inside heating back up system.

I experimented with pollinator strips in the yard (one out three came through), planted four different kinds of fruit trees, and started a berry patch.

It’s as if, having revised my outward physical appearance, I am now more susceptible to the urge to get after my environment. It might also be that losing weight means I have more energy for basic domestic projects, though I am not now and never have been any sort of buzz saw. My dear mama had more energy in her eighties than I had in my forties, and her ghost still has me beat by a 2200-step mile.

My Christmas present to myself will be big bags of clothing taken to the Goodwill drop off, and a serious culling of the cover object inventory. For starters. I want my closets, drawers, and guest bedroom back. I want simplicity and efficiency in my domestic spaces, so I’m not hunting through a dozen pairs of black yoga pants (I am not exaggerating) to find the one pair that does fit and has recently been through the wash.

My wish for myself is that debriding my house of unneeded stuff will create mental space as well. The New Year is almost here, and I would like to spend it writing terrific happily ever afters and whodunits, not hunting for clean yoga pants or wondering who might like to have a genuine, slightly worn Victorian traveling desk, or a brown top hat, or a big old chess board…

What is your holiday gift to YOU this year?

PS: The web store has a few stocking stuffers on offer: The audiobook version (just in!) of A Rogue in Winter, and the ebook versions of The Holiday Duet, and What A Lady Needs for Christmas are each priced at $.99. I also figured out how to wangle the back end so that you can download the Rogue in Winter audio files even if you don’t have the Bookfunnel app. Tell Pietr and Joy I said hi!

And PPS: The blog will be on hiatus until early January, when I will be back, with–I hope–ARC files for A Gentleman of Sinister Schemes.

Teddy–AKA Mr. Terrffic

When I student-teach a riding lesson, a very experienced instructor is in the arena at all times, sometimes at my elbow, sometimes simply observing. When the lesson is over, we debrief. What went wrong, what went right, next steps for this student, open questions… It’s old-fashioned mentored learning, and I like that (mostly).

I finished up a lesson where a good time was had by all, but my almighty lesson objective–walk/halt/walk transitions, or some other utterly dazzling equestrian feat–hadn’t really gotten across to one of the students. “What else should I do? What should I do differently?” Because my endless flow of brilliant instruction hadn’t worked, my imagery had fallen flat, my pantomiming the correct aids was useless when the student was watching where her horse was going (always a good idea) rather than watching me…

The senior instructor thought for a minute, then said, “Let them fail.” She did not mean, let the student become in any way unsafe, nor was she advocating a downer lesson. I wasn’t sure what she meant, really, other than maybe–???–allow some trial and error? I have much to learn. MUCH.

Another week rolls around, and a student who normally rides as part of a group ended up having the lesson all to herself. She’s an utterly delightful child–sweet, bubbly, giggly–and she’s been taking lesson for a while. In groups, she tends to be a follower, and almost never asks questions.

I thought the exercise was simple: Stop the horse in the exact middle of the arena. The center of the arena is like the break room for the horses. It’s where they get to stand around while stirrups are adjusted, girths are checked, and where the dismounts often take place. But on this occasion, the 25-year-old pony decided that he would just keep moseying along toward the (securely latched) gate. He wasn’t rude about it, he simply kept shuffling in the direction of his version of the promised land.

I’d already told my student to shorten her reins, to make her reins shorter, to move her hands down to the yellow section of the reins so she had a better feel of the horse’s mouth. She smiled and laughed and told the horse to stop and asked him to stop and told him he was supposed to stop.

Toddle, mosey, shuffle.

Teddy was a pony on a slow-mo mission. The horse leader very wisely did not intervene, and when I would have put a hand on the reins to stop the wee beast, I instead wondered aloud how anybody could get a horse to stop with such looooong reins?

As Teddy made it darned near to the end of the arena (nice try, Tedster), the rider shortened her reins (a not-so-simple business of sliding both hands wide on the reins, then bringing the hands together), and stopped her horse.

Oh, thinks me: Let them fail. From that point on, the rider’s steering was more effective, and she was more focused on communicating with her horse in ways he understood. The lesson for me though, was that to not intervene, to let the horse be the teacher (within the dictates of safety), to trust that the student will eventually puzzle out the solution… that’s hard. That’s… hooboy. I’m not supposed to help, not supposed to fix anything, not going to fix anything by controlling the outcome?

Hard, but in this case, for me to let the student fail was the path to a learning moment for the student, and for me.

Have you experienced any educational failures in life? Have you had to step back and let others fail for the sake of a useful lesson?

PS: I’ll be going on holiday hiatus after next week’s post, and be back in the saddle in early January. I hope to have ARC files for A Gentleman of Sinister Schemes right after the first of the year. Wheeee!

I’m pretty sure that if not for texting, I wouldn’t hear from my thirty-five year old daughter much at all. She loves me, she misses me, she wants to keep in touch, but email and phone just don’t work for her. So I get the occasional cheery text, or short update, and sometimes we even get a little text-conversation going (I refuse to refer to it as a thread).  In an emergency, she will answer the phone if she sees it’s me, but I got word that I was to be a grandma by… text.

I dislike texting intensely. Because it’s phone-tech, it is designed to be intrusive and un-ignorable, but the actual mechanics of communication, letter by letter on a teeny screen and micro-teeny keyboard, are also tedious as heck. (Because predictive text trains AI, mine is turned off, and was even before AI for being intrusive and so frequently wrong). The back and forth of texting is stilted, and particularly in groups, gets out of sequence easily. But Millennials and younger people apparently prefer texting, so I grump along mostly in silence.

The reason many young people give for preferring texting is that they can control their content more precisely than they can with a spoken dialogue. They can choose every word, choose whether to use emojis, choose jargon or abbreviations, and how quickly to reply.They also claim that texting lets them control the timing of their communication so they contact friends when convenient for them. (Presumably not so conveniently for the friend, because to not reply to a seen text is apparently rude.) To phone without first asking by text whether the time suits is also apparently rude.

I find these reasons ridiculous as applied to friendly texts (I can tolerate practical texts along the lines of: Running 5 min late, see you soon.) If you’re going to blow up a friendship over the use of a word here or another word there, it wasn’t much of a friendship. If you think emojis are more precise and nuanced than your tone of voice and facial expressions, you delude yourself. To my mind, all the justifications for texting come down to: Communication is hard, good communication harder and even scary. We’re so afraid of each other, we’d rather tiptoe through texting than do the hard work of communication.

I can cite you study after study proving that constant texting reduces cognitive and linguistic abilities as well as productivity, that the hunched over posture we assume when using a smartphone is bad for our health and mood, that the result of all this “wonderful” connective tech is anxiety, short attention spans, more car accidents, smaller vocabularies, and people who won’t order a pizza unless they can do so by text.

I want to put a sign in my yard that smartphones are the new smoking. We have the data warning us that these devices should be approached and used with extreme caution. An IQ is a terrible thing to waste, and a decent mood just as precious. But if I want to communicate with my daughter…

What aspect of taken-for-granted life right now do you think future generations will look back on and shudder over?

Teddy–AKA Mr. Terrffic

Much to my surprise, I am coming up on the end of my first semester as an aspiring therapeutic riding instructor. I am by no means done with my apprenticeship, but I wasn’t sure I’d make it this far. I’m pausing to reflect and take stock. What have I learned these past few months? Where were my expectations upended, what do I need to focus on going forward to be the best I can at this new undertaking?

My first revelation is that the required lesson plan can be a huge distraction from learning if I allow it to be–and I have. Example: I put together a spiffy little exercise about adjusting the horse’s pace within a gait. Can the rider ask for a faster walk without breaking into the trot? A slower trot without cuing the walk? Very important skill for tuning up communication between horse and rider, ensuring reins are the proper length, and giving the student tools for maintaining safe distances when riding in a group. How wonderfully functioaln this objective is. One might even say elegant, might one not?

The lesson went along safely and the student seemed to enjoy the time in the saddle. The supervising instructor had to gently point out, though, that the student wanted to use the hour to do more independent riding, and thus the rider was without a horse leader for much of the lesson. The plain evidence right before my very eyes was… my rider was having trouble steering.

But there I was blathering away about exhaling to achieve a downward transition, and congratulating myself on keeping the lesson on track time-wise, while Mr. Very Smart Pony (Teddy) was blowing off his rider’s attempts to keep him from the middle of the arena (the universal rest stop location known to all school horses from time immemorial). Steering is kinda right up there with whoa and go in terms of basic abilities, and rather than focus on that gap in the student’s skill set, I remained determined to execute my brilliant lesson plan.

Note to self: Be more nimble Grace–adjust your pace within the teaching gaits--and pay attention to the student rather than to prioritizing the syllabus.

The other lesson I’m taking away from round one (so far) is that joy is central to the learning experience. Compulsory education ignores this truth at its peril, but the extra curriculars know it well. Nobody has to learn to play the tuba. No nine year old is required by state law to schlep out to the horse barn in the pouring down rain to work on the posting trot. Both are difficult undertakings full of set backs, frustrations, and plateaus.

The first goal of all my lessons–after safety, safety, and safety–must be providing a positive experience at the barn. If you want to improve every single measure of success at a struggling school, introduce an instrumental music program. Even the students not involved in the program will have better attendance, better grades, and fewer disciplinary incidents. My theory behind that miracle is that music teachers (art teachers, drama teachers…) know that joy must be on the syllabus, and the world has more tuba virtuosos (and high school graduates generally), and happier school cafeterias because of it.

So in addition to my spiffy, one might even say elegant, lesson plans, I will be bringing my sense of humor, my smiles, my corny jokes, and my love for all things equine to the barn. At Teddy’s suggestion, I also ordered some kazoos.

What teachers do you recall with the most respect and gratitude? What was their superpower?

PS: The audio version of Worth More Than Rubies is now available from the web store!

We finally had a hard frost, and I got to thinking about why that made me happy. What about this time of year, which most people consider dreary and chilly, gives me a predictable sense of well being?

I had to think about that, and my cogitations yielded some possibilities. First, late autumn is when the world goes quiet. The lawnmowers and weed whackers are put away. The jacked up pick-up trucks still go by with their music thumping, but their windows are closed and so, much of the time, are mine. Then too, there’s simply less traffic. More darkness means more staying home, apparently.

Another quality I enjoy about this time of year is that when the sun shines, the daylight is brighter but not hotter. I love big trees and live among them, but once the leaves fall, sunshine comes barreling down from the heavens unimpeded, and my house is actually cheerier for the trees going naked.

Then too, bye-bye bugs! And the hot tea becomes more of a special treat. If we’re having hard frost, climate change hasn’t yet ruined everything. There’s hope!

This season is also when I plant bulbs, and that is my favorite kind of gardening. Toss ’em in, wait a few months. Admire results. No watering or weeding, no waging war against the Japanese beetles or the deer. Just plant, wait, pretty. When I go out to weed the blueberry patch for the umpteenth time (because tenacious weeds came in with the big load of mulch, of course), I’m always a little resentful. All that work for a few cups of berries?! Not so with the bulbs.

I like that we get a procession of holidays, from Veteran’s Day onward through February, and I think that has all kinds of benefits. I no longer commute, but a holiday still means a day when I won’t be bothered by work emails, Zoom meetings, work texts (I despise texting, for the most part), or other interruptions. Holidays can be the best writing days, and I treasure those whenever they come.

So I like this bleak, dreary, chilly time of year quite well. My dad was no fan of cold weather whatsoever, to the point that he retired early to San Diego, and there he did stay until his earthly span was concluded some forty-two years later. Dad, who was rail thin, once told me that he loved getting into a closed-up car that had been sitting in the sun, because only then did he finally feel warm. He was serious.

And I am seriously enthralled with this time of year. I perk up, I nest, I write. I feel calmer and more at peace. I would miss the changing seasons, but I always rejoice when the first frost hits.

What is making you rejoice at this otherwise dreary time of year?

I have fallen into a pattern of wasting Saturday mornings, and that feels both good and necessary. My schedule has more structure in recent months, in part because I’m pursuing an equestrian teaching credential, and in part because I’m keeping both a romance series and a mystery series moving forward.

I’m for the most part pleased with my life, grateful for my many privileges, and enjoying my challenges, but… I get overwhelmed. Life intrudes on my plans. Health care makes demands (muttering in the direction of the peridontist’s office), the house must be at least minimally maintained. I over-schedule myself, and then come some gratuitous nights of bad sleep or some pet-upheaval.

A couple days ago, I made myself my usual “banquet” tea to the start the morning: Local honey, heavy cream, and… geez my first cup of the day tasted really weak, and then I realized I’d forgotten to put in the, um, tea bags. Twice this week, I grabbed a tube of toothpaste from beside the sink only to realize a moment later that I’d just squoze moisturizer onto my toothbrush. (The moisturize now resides on a shelf across the bathroom from the sink.)  I buzzed over to Virginia for one of my monthly Fried Pickle summits with friend Graham only to realize I’d gotten the venue, time, and day of the week correct, but the date wrong.

When I start hydroplaning like this, it’s tempting to lecture myself: “Grace, you must focus. Make some lists, my dear. Get organized. Look for efficiencies! Books do not write themselves, the trash will not levitate out the door.”

But Sister Scholastica Grace (who sounds  a lot like the Sisters of Saint Joseph who taught at Our Lady of Victory school) is off the mark on this one. Right now, for whatever reason, I am like the kid who is getting good-enough grades and who generally does her chores without much (loud) complaining. What I need now is to watch cartoons for a few hours. I will get to my weekend chores, I will take out the trash, but to re-connect with myself, and to rest the weary parts of me, I need a Saturday morning where I play a dozen games of Solitaire BEFORE I try to be productive.

I need to collect the last of the dahlias, to let a day go by when I schedule nothing, control nothing, and–be strong, Grace Ann–accomplish nothing. Why is this so hard? Yes, some anxiety and negative emotions might bubble up if I reduce my RPMs, but so will some consolations, silver linings, and new perspectives. I might figure out why the Earl of Dunhaven won’t declare himself to the woman he has long adored.

Or I might let just one day slip through my fingers. I do fear that one slack day will turn into a  hundred, but never before in all my born days has that happened. The probability of banana-peeling my way into an abyss now is not great.

So I will be figuratively watching cartoons this Saturday, wandering around in the yard, dipping into Dick Francis in the afternoon (oh, the decadence), and getting absolutely nothing done.

Does anybody else reply to the inner nuns with this strategy? They mean well, those nuns, but truly, I need time to pick me some yard flowers.

PS: Lord Julian’s holiday mystery, A Gentleman Under the Mistletoe, is now available from the usual suspects and the web store. It’s a little early for Yuletide tales, but never too soon for a fun whodunit!

When I am queen, the US campaign cycle will be shortened to 60 days, period. Our British friends manage to get all contrary and polarized with campaigns conducted in 25 working days (you read that right). They have snarky town halls, divisive memes, public mud-slinging with all the trimmings, and seem mostly content with how their abbreviated campaign window works.

The Brits even require equal coverage of opposing candidates on commercial media without any sign of this resulting in the end of the world (we used to have the same requirement, quaintly referred to as the Fairness Doctrine). If you want to read more about the UK alternatives to spending billions on campaign ads, this article is a little dated, but offers a good summary.

I am weary of politics, anxious about the election, and ashamed of what we’ve allowed our political rhetoric to do to our sense of neighborliness and community. I am not queen of a big enough world to do much about all that, but I am the queen of me.

In that capacity, I have issued a few royal proclamations recently. The first of which says that after listing my five specific gratitudes at the end of the day, I get to listen to three songs. Music is about the best tonic for preserving neuroplasticity, aced out only by the combination of music and dance. Music can elevate mood, reduce blood pressure, reduce heart rate, and boost memory, for starts.  So I’m signing off with the good stuff–Huey Lewis, Dave Brubeck, Creedence, the Pointer Sisters, Vivaldi, Phil Collins, and one of my favorites, Rostropovich conducting the NSO in The Stars and Stripes Forever in Moscow. (Or if guitar is more your thing, this version by acoustic soloist Doug Smith is jaw-dropping.)

I am donating to a charity of my choice (different ones), every day in November. Not a lot, but enough to remind me that I’m not powerless. Compared to a lot of people on this earth, I DO live like a queen. Twenty bucks can buy fifteen pounds of rice, which cooks up to nearly a hundred servings. Thanks to my readers, I have that to donate, and really, much of the benefit of generosity lands on the giver rather than receiver.

I am planting my Holland bulbs. They are the easiest of yard flowers. No weeding, no watering, no fertilizing even (the first couple years). I put in a bag of daffodils and it reminds me, “Spring will arrive, flowers will bloom.” I also like the idea that anybody who drives by my house next March will get to see some cheery blooms, and of course, gardening is good for both physical health and mood.

So I’m doing what I know to do (in addition to binging the books of the late Dick Francis), and I think it’s helping me be less fretful and unsteady. I am not changing the course of the universe, but I am putting aside the doom-scrolling for small actions that have meaning for me and keep me focused on the good and the constructive, of which there is much in this life.

How do you batten down the hatches when the winds of worry threaten to blow your house down?

A writer friend who likes to think in archetypes (Mentor, Jester, Warrior, Orphan…) once told me I have a lot of Destroyer energy. This comment was offered as neither insult nor compliment, but simply as an assessment.

I can see that shoe fitting me. I feel satisfied rather than bereft when the junk crew makes all the cardboard and crap in the summer kitchen disappear. I was (in part) a good fit with foster care law because my perspective was often, “What’s holding this family back? How do we get rid of that obstacle?” A more nurturing mindset applied to the same situation might have asked, “What’s holding this family back? How do we build strengths so they can better manage that obstacle?”

Nah me. Erase the problem, obliterate it, render it null and void. Both approaches can result in greater familial strength, but I was prone to looking for what was blocking the critical path, and making it Go Away.

From a writing perspective, the black moment is the point in the story when the identity a protagonist cherished on page one (successful sculptor, happy spinster, brilliant sleuth) lies in ruins at their exhausted, bruised feet. This plot element is necessary so that an even worthier dream and identity can be born in the final pages of the story, and confirm the reader’s hope that the future will be rosy. A good writer has to have a talent for building and destroying fictional dreams.

But my propensity for firing the figurative photon torpedo has a down side. I am prone to looking for what is wrong, what is in the way of my idea of progress, what is holding back a better reality. I get pig-headed notions and won’t give them up. Sometimes, that junk in the summer kitchen is evidence of a pandemic survived. It needs to sit out there in all its reassuring ugliness for a long time before its job is done.

Sometimes, for example, a rule is in fact, not based on evidence or science or even much common sense (see previous foghorning about SMART goals), but having a rule means we can dispense with further debate about whether to drive on this side of the road or that. But there I am, maundering on about most people being right-handed, and dominant eyes, and back when we drove carriages… While traffic whizzes by relatively safely, despite my logical conclusion that we’ve devised a stupid rule about how we drive.

Photon torpedo in hand, I look for places where destruction might be part of a solution, because I have found a tool I use well–not because destruction of the whole blooming summer kitchen will solve anything.

My challenge is to know when to fire away, and when to view the situation from a different perspective–when to modify my handy definition of a problem, and when to put down my weapons of choice, and let the facts of my story suggest an even worthier possibility, however strange or alarming I might find the idea initially. This perspective-shifting is hard, and other people usually have to help me do it.

Do you tend to fall back on archetypical coping strategies? To rely on go-to tactics that have down sides? Maybe you’ve found people whose default approaches complement yours, or you’ve learned to shift your own perspective before taking action?

I’ve sent out a bunch of ARC files for A Gentleman Under the Mistletoe. I can part with a few more, if you’ll let me know what device you prefer to read on, and drop me a line at [email protected].

I horseback ride once a week on the dear old steeds at the therapeutic riding barn in a lesson set up just for interested volunteers. This is not enough to get me in any kind of riding shape, but it’s enough to keep my equestrian synapses (and courage) from withering completely away.

The other student in the class this week was a guy who has been volunteering with the program for a while, and we’ve ridden together a time or two. I know him to be a former eventer–meaning he competed in dressage, stadium jumping, and cross country jumping over solid obstacles. I dabbled enough in the same discipline to know it’s not for sissies (or for me).

So there’s my barn buddy on Lola, a darling warmblood mare who’s more whoa than go in terms of personality. Ridin’ Buddy had Lola traveling in a nice forward trot circle, and then he asked her for the canter. That mare jumped into the canter and went skipping around like the 17-hand chestnut show girl she used to be. I later learned that my fellow volunteer had not cantered on horseback for twenty years.

Oh, my stars and garters. To get back in the saddle at all is hard, to get back in the saddle when you were that accomplished, after that long… I was cussing, I was so pleased and excited for my fellow student. He was grinning like a kid, and Lola was all full of her gorgeous-mare self too. The moment was special, and I got to be there. I’m filing that one away in my mental jewelry box.

Another moment that goes in the jewelry box is the only time I caught a wave body surfing. I would have been eleven or so, and never before or since have I managed to be in the right place at the right time to feel the ocean lofting me along like a happy porpoise, but I recall the sensation now after more than half a century. Wheeee! is an understatement.

I recall the moment when my name was called at the Maggie Award ceremony in the George Romance Writer’s 2009 conference. I’d submitted The Heir as an unpublished manuscript and 400 people clapped and cheered when the book won. This astounded me, and it was that win that eventually convinced a publisher worn out with Regency debuts to give just one more duke (ducal heir) a chance.

I have been thinking more about my mental jewelry box lately, maybe because we’re heading into the darker, colder, “hermit-er” time of year, maybe because I am so disgusted with news and social media that I’m re-playing my personal highlights reel. Very few of my most special memories are of big, planned events. My wedding day was busy and tense, my daughter’s wedding day was the very day my mom died.

But from time to time, when I’m not expecting it, life has handed me a dose of unforgettable sweetness, and those gifts have kept on giving, when I take the time to focus on them. The friend who sent me two dozen roses when I brought my daughter home from the hospital (“A dozen for you, a dozen for her…). That day my college advisor roared at me for even thinking of becoming a paralegal when he knew I was destined for law school…

Sweet, surprising, and I get to keep them all. Do you have little gems twinkling in your mental jewelry box? I’m sure you do!

I operate best in the “almost too busy” zone, meaning I have writing projects, social activities, barn obligations, domestic chores, and various other tasks all rotating through my day. When I hit the balance right, I feel productive, satisfied, challenged, and fulfilled.

But when life or my own mismanagement result in overload? I get anxious, reactive, and down. Decades ago one of my older brothers told me, “You can survive a blowout going 90 miles an hour, but not if you’re driving with one finger on the wheel.” I’m learning, gradually, how to keep one hand on the wheel, but I have to fight my own impulses when compression phases hit.

My instinct, when I am overwhelmed, is to hide. Solitude solves everything… except it doesn’t. When the week seems overbooked is precisely when I need to keep that fried pickle date with a friend, so I can hear somebody tell me, “Don’t  be too hard on yourself.” (Thanks, Graham, Felicity, et alia.)

Another impulse when I’m slammed is to do everything (or make little rules exhorting myself to do everything). Do one housekeeping project every day, bring the general ledger up to date, walk a thousand steps every hour–it only takes ten minutes after all–and move some money into savings because that will somehow give Lord Julian the big insight to solve the next mystery. Just do enough stuff and surely calm will eventually return?

Erm… No.

Or… take a break, Grace Ann! Play all the solitaire and cribbage you want and pre-reward yourself into getting the never-ending to-do list done once you’ve indulged in a mental box of Girl Scout cookies.

Nope, not that either.

What really seems to help is limiting myself to focusing on one day, or–when my wheels are truly about to come off–one task. What is the most important task? Not the most urgent, not the most enjoyable, not the simplest. What is most important?

Usually, that’s writing one scene. Not only does writing give me breathing room from all my other chores and anxiety triggers, but it also generates revenue. Win-win! And once I’ve written the day’s scene, I’m usually less anxious too. So I do the best I can with one important task, then look around, and ask, “What can you reasonably do today with this pile of straw you want to spin into gold?”

I cannot make a feral cat population healthy and non-reproductive overnight. I can make a spay appointment for the one queen I know I can catch next. I cannot turn an old house into a show place, but I can air the rugs and run a load of socks and undies. I cannot slap down 7000 words a day, but I can outline three scenes ahead of what I’ve written so far.

In other words, when I am tempted to speed up, work faster, and discard time for reflection and self care., that is precisely when I need to slow down, work more strategically, and prioritize breathing room and support. And of course, at the end of every one of these slammed, daunting days, I make time to read a good book, and then–having done the best I could with the day, and having cosseted my heart and mind with a good yarn–I turn out the light and am grateful that tomorrow, I can give it all another shot, starting with: Write one scene.

How do you keep bailing when faced with a relentless spring tide?

PS: ARC files for A Gentleman Under the Mistletoe should go out over the next week. If you want one and don’t have it by Oct. 19 (I will send out to some usual suspects this week), drop me a line at [email protected] letting me know what device you read on. I can’t send files to every person who asks every time, but I’ll get out as many as possible!