Valerean

To read my new short story Ternion , the first in a series I'm writing, click here .

I have one more novel to finish before the end of the year, so I'm unplugging for a few days. See you once I wrap that up.

Although this was our very first Christmas alone as empty nesters, we decided not to spend it moping around the house. Instead we went to the beach. There wasn't a cloud in the sky, and the temperature hovered around 72F with a light breeze blowing. Perfect weather. My guy and I both grew up by the beach; he was an avid surfer, too. I just love the beach. I would rather go to the beach than any other place on the planet, including Paris. This guy was one of the few birds willing to pose for me. We brought our lunch with us, and had it while sitting on a bench by the boardwalk so we could watch the waves and the people. We weren't the only non-traditionalists; families were everywhere building sandcastles with their kids. I know most of them were tourists staying at local hotels, but it was nice to see that. We walked about two miles down the beach (I wish my legs were this long) before we headed back home. Beautiful day; beautiful way to spend my least f...

Merry Christmas from Valerean. Image Credit: Hitcom from Pixabay

To read my new short story Peace , click here . Image credit: Pixabay

While shuffling through my photo files I came across this shot of Katherine, in braids, marching in our little town's Christmas parade back in 2011. She would perform in the town parade every year (including when she was in middle school) and make faces at me while she marched past. Still cracks me up.

I decided during the holidays to take the pressure off myself and have fun with some cutter quilt pieces. These two both appealed to me, but it was the piece on the left that ended up on my work table. The stitching on the piece is very nice, but the patchwork was threadbare in quite a few places, and shredding in one corner. The first step in preserving the piece was to mend it. For the shredded corner I layered a sturdy but airy lace over the patch to cover the damage but allow the color of the original patchwork to show through; this is a pretty common repair technique for old crazy quilts. Finished repairs. For some of the other threadbare patches I appliqued some metallic lace fabric over the damage. Tulle also works well in this type of repair. After I sewed the piece to the front of a plain canvas tote and covered the edges with some vintage gray lace I added a spray of ruffled lace and a vintage brooch over a split in one patchwork seam, which held it togeth...

As Omicron is now surging we are maintaining our personal lockdown. No celebrations, no guests for dinner, just my guy and me for the holidays. We still wear our masks and social distance; never once stopped doing that. My handmade masks, which had been working fine for almost two years, are starting to pop some seams now, and the elastic is wearing, so I have to make some new ones. If anyone needs more, do let me know. The pandemic hasn't changed my life all that much. I take certain precautions that I didn't before Covid, like masking and staying away from everyone in public, and we stopped dining in at restaurants (not counting a couple of times over the summer when we felt our vaccinations made it an acceptable risk, and still wore our masks inside anyway.) My biggest problem is my guy, who buys into a lot of the conspiracy crap he hears on talk radio. The other day I got a little dizzy while we were shopping at the market, and he told me to take my mask off becau...

Bernina's holiday video this year is making me actually like Christmas. Stop it.

Since October 8th I've been writing a new short story every week as part of a (hopefully) year-long writing challenge for myself. So far they're all pretty much romances, with a few SF thrown in. I don't think I've missed a week so far. The most difficult part of the challenge is finding the time to actually write the stories. It was probably not a great idea to start this project during the holidays, when I have the least amount of spare time, with the puppies and my full-time writing job just adding to the time crunch. I do a lot of the writing at night right before I go to bed. I never seem to run out of story ideas, but a few of them want to be novels, so I have to step on their glittery ambitious notions to control the length. Paths and The Return definitely still want to be longer, and may eventually become so if I ever find the time to work on them again. I'm enjoying the project, but I'm also a little frustrated by the time constraints. I wa...

When you use vintage cutter quilt pieces for a project it's sometimes best to mend any threadbare spots before you sew them. This makes the piece stronger and also helps prevent more damage. Whenver possible I try to use lace to do this rather than cover it with new fabic. For this patch I used an airy lace that will allow some of the color of the original patchwork to show through, which is a pretty effect. It's basically sewing the lace down on top of the threadbare area. You can use flat lace cut to fit the entire area, or layer ribbon-width lace like I do here. Most of this piece is intact, so I only have to do this in a few spots.

I finally got to see all twelve episodes of the apocalyptic SF k-drama Happiness , and it is definitely the best Korean TV series I've watched this year. The story kicks off in the past, when the two lead actors are high school students. This may be the coolest opening scene I've ever watched to set up a story. Yoon Sae Bom (Han Hyo-Joo) wants to get out of class, but the students are in lockdown because injured baseball player Jung Yi Hyun (Park Hyung-Sik) is sitting on the edge of the roof and everyone thinks he's going to jump. Sae Bom sneaks up to deal with the situation by first talking to Yi Hyun, and then finally pushing him off the roof when even he leasts expects it (he falls safely onto a big inflated cushion below.) I didn't realize why Sae Bom did this at first, but then it made sense when she's taken away in handcuffs: Yi Hyun can't get into any trouble because she pushed him. At this point Yi Hyun also falls for Sae Bom, and asks her to...

To read my new short story Ringer , click here . Image credit: Eltonfsilva from Pixabay

Finished embroidering and binding my cutter quilt scrap desk journal cover. It's a little skewed due to my complete inability to cut anything straight, but I don't care. It's just for me. Must make a few more. I love cobbling together and stitching on these old quilt pieces.

My blood sugar is on the rise again, and I've gained a couple pounds I didn't need, so I'm cutting myself down to two meals a day, with one being a salad like this one at lunch or dinner. Dieting is never fun, but during the holidays while everyone is stuffing themselves with treats? Really hard. To add more exercise to my regime I'm taking the dogs for two walks a day now as well. My knee hasn't let me use the bike yet, but I'm hoping with some weight loss and the walking I can get it back into daily bike shape.

I picked up some Art Gallery Fabric scraps and bolt ends on sale as a reward for finishing my latest work novel. It's cheaper than buying yardage, and I'm able to recycle new fabric that might have otherwise been discarded. I also bought this koi furoshiki, which hasn't arrived yet, and thought, why not combine them? I always give myself a day off after finishing a book, so I spent it cutting the AGF scraps and ends into 2-1/2" strips. I then sewed seven strips together to make five of these strip pieces. After that I cut the five strip pieces into 14" blocks. I don't have quite enough to make a full quilt top, but it's a good start.

Author Anne Rice passed away on Saturday at the age of 80. Among the many other things she did during her lifetime she inspired me as a writer in countless ways. We shared a love of history, writing very long stories, and completely ignoring the herd, I think. She challenged me on so many levels I've probably been more influenced by her than any other author I've read, too. I dedicated to her the first novel in my Darkyn series, which made me a name. I also credit her for giving me the courage to write my steampunk books, the first of which started out as a NaNoWriMo project (and which despite critical acclaim never really sold as well as the publisher expected and ended my NY career, but ce la vie .) I never had the chance to meet her in person, but I did walk past her house once. Okay, I stood outside her house and stared at it for a long time on a walking tour of New Orleans twenty years ago. I also wrote to her once to tell her how much her work meant to me. ...

As a mini side project I started working on making a cover for my next desk journal out of these cutter quilt pieces. Book covers are a good way to use vintage textiles that are too old and fragile to withstand frequent laundering. I also washed the top patchwork of the hidden quilt to see if any of it was still usable. It was already shredded a bit, and very dirty, but the piece emerged from its bath looking and smelling a lot cleaner.

My new favorite picture of my guy and our girl. Happy 72nd birthday, baby.

To read my new short story The Return , click here . Image credit: Imaartist from Pixabay

Using my new split-session process I finished another novel for work this week. I have one more to write that I would like to get done before Christmas, and since I have already written a couple of chapters of that one I may even do it. But if I can't I'll finish it before the end of the year for sure, which will make three books I've written, or 180K, in slightly under three months. I feel like Super Writer. :)

My guy turns 72 on Saturday, and I'll be making him his new favorite dinner (sausage pasta skillet) and a German chocolate cake. I also invested in some birthday gifts this year, and this gardening kit was one Maria recommended. This is a really nice gardening set, too. Everything looks sturdy and the tote will be nice for him to use to carry things out to our gardens. Shutterfly sent another free wall calendar offer, so I made him one with pics from his trip to Montana. For this I just had to pay shipping. Total cost: around $25.00 for both gifts.

After wrestling with writing this year for six months (and mostly losing) I made two big changes to my process. At first I wasn't sure it would do anything to help me, but I kept at it. For the last eight weeks I've written at least 2.4K every day without fail, so I thought I'd look at what I changed, and why I think it worked. The biggest change came out of necessity in dealing with the puppies: not working for eight to ten hours straight. My guy and I started taking shifts with the dogs, who needed to be watched at all times and house-trained when they were little. To accomodate this I split my writing sessions into first thing the morning for 3-4 hours, and then after dinner for 4-5 hours. The effect on my work was immediate: I wrote more, and I wrote faster. I started setting goals for myself to see if I could reach them, and I did every day. I wrote 60K in October, and that novel is the best one I've written in a few years. I repeated that in Novembe...

Since I have nothing to post for today, enjoy some of my kid's artwork. She drew a lot of these chibis when she was a teen; this one was my favorite. A red chibi. One she drew on commission for me, based on another author's character. Everything she creates has a little touch of humor to it, like this sculpted paperweight. She won an award for this self-portrait, which was also published in an art book. The littlest dragon. Ah, I miss her.