Category: The Past Comes Back to Haunt Me

Everywhere But Home, My Own Personal Weirdness, My Writing, The Past Comes Back to Haunt Me, Uncategorized, What I Love, Writing

Playing catch-up

How is it already September? The summer went by so quickly and I’ve spent so much of it rushed off my feet with all the background, real-life stuff that is hard to cover in a blog post.

Here’s an update on my word counts from the last few months:

June: 8,880

July: 12,807

August: 22,434

Look at how I’ve improved! I’ve triple-checked that last one, but it is correct.

June’s improvement mainly came from writing more short stories. I stayed pretty busy with all the behind the scenes stuff from the other house, getting my eldest ready to go spend a month in China, teaching at both the ODWG writing groups, etc.

July’s word count bump came from not only more writing days in front of the computer on short story work, but also in the category I call “Lessons”, which I write for my local area writing groups. I was trying to get ahead for the busier times of the year when I’d have less time to prepare a lesson. It’s wild to me that I had any kind of improvement at all, really, because my spouse and I spent two weeks flat out with Covid.

August’s giant improvement came in the form of a road trip with my husband. For our anniversary last month, he surprised me with a trip to a little town in the middle of nowhere, which had a fantastic vibe, lots of fun things to tour, and quirky town oddities. Well, that tied in to the long-neglected Lake House Mystery in my brain. So I pulled out that old manuscript, updated a few bits here and there, and then started adding some fun stuff that popped into my head during the trip. After six days of adding little bits here, there, and everywhere, I had an extra 16,000-ish words added, all easy-peasy, which was amazing because that literally doubled the size of this manuscript.

I’m not done there, though. This mystery needs about 30,000 more words before it’ll be done. I’m wanting to finish that this month, while the mood is still is the air, so to speak. Crossing my fingers and hoping real hard.

-L

Crafts, health, Lifelong learning, My Own Personal Weirdness, My Writing, Organizing, The Past Comes Back to Haunt Me, Uncategorized, Writing

Sick of being sick

This month, word count was down again, at 8,833 words, nearly all lessons for ODWG again. Spring Break always throws things off, especially when friends and family have the other week off for their spring break.

I also tried to design a new closet for my writing/craft studio, which would have gone better if my closet had enough studs in the wall. But mostly I started the month sick, did a bunch of stuff with other people, then ended the month sicker than I started (flu, bronchitis, sinus infection, walking pneumonia). We decided not to do Easter with family because I was just so sick.

All I managed to do really was work on a crocheted blanket for a friend’s kid/kid’s friend that is very special to our family and is very sick herself right now.

Around the House, Books, Everywhere But Home, health, Lifelong learning, My Own Personal Weirdness, poetry, Speaking, The Past Comes Back to Haunt Me, What I Love, Writing

A totally wild month

This month, I managed 17,967, but 2/3 of it was lessons for the ODWG. I also tried to train a new membership chair for one of my local writing groups.

I wrote one really long poem about teeth. No, really. It started off about teeth and then it got weird. I also wrote a poem about grief that involved Pokemon. You know you want to read that one. (There were several other poems this month as well, but those were my favorites).

I also was the featured speaker of the month for my local writers guild. I spoke on “How to Get Back on Track After Life’s Disasters.”

In real life, I had to figure out how to do my local church’s annual certification because our board president’s life exploded that week. I attended the first of hopefully many delightful meetings of a local yarn group. I loom-knitted one sock and then tried to figure out how to regular knit it’s partner after my sock loom broke. I started a crocheted snowflake blanket.

I also spoke at two other groups, using the “How to Get Back on Track…” lesson as a starting point. Which was only funny because disasters kept making it so I almost didn’t get to speak at either group (first an epic hail storm and then a mass internet outage).

I also read The Thin Man by Dashiell Hammet.

Everywhere But Home, health, Lifelong learning, My Own Personal Weirdness, Speaking, The Past Comes Back to Haunt Me, What I Love, Writing

Upcoming Speaking Engagement at the Open Door Writing Group on February 28, 2024


I will be speaking at the Open Door Writing Group at the Tyler Public Library at 1pm on February 28, 2024 on the topic of “How to Get Back on Track after Life’s Little Disasters”. Come on over and join us! (I will try to promise a hail-free experience, unlike what happened last time I gave this lesson – hahaha)

Around the House, Books, Crafts, Everywhere But Home, Family Time, Lifelong learning, My Writing, Organizing, poetry, The Past Comes Back to Haunt Me, What I Love, Writing

January stats

This month, I eked out 8,749 words, but a lot of it was poetry, so when I think about it that way, that’s a LOT.

I prepared and presented two lessons at ODWG. I also worked some more on the Lake House Mystery and made a whole new system for tracking my poetry and short story submissions.

I also rearranged my entire writing studio again because it turned out that one of my bookshelves could not stand up without the support of the two on either side and books were everywhere.

In real life, one of my kids had an MRI for migraines and also sliced open his foot badly, all in one month. My dad visited for a long while. I started crocheting the Pineapple Peacock shawl, took it apart and restarted it twice more, then finally gave up. Knitted a scarf for my spouse instead.

We had a polar vortex hit and had several “ice days” I started reading “Barbara and Susan Talk About Empty Nests” once a week as a kind of devotional for therapy homework. I also read “Shadow and Bone” and “Lessons in Chemistry”.

Around the House, Everywhere But Home, health, The Past Comes Back to Haunt Me, Writing

All the Appointments!

It’s Doctor Appointment Season! Since I have a billion and one health issues, I see a lot of specialists. One year I decided it would just be easier if I saw them all in February – who knows why at this point? Since they usually are 6 months or a year apart, I end up seeing at least one doctor every week through February and into March. So far I’ve seen the neurologist (my brain is apparently fine, even if it doesn’t feel like it), the ENT (my sinuses are still gross), and the rheumatologist (oh so much wrong with me). The rheumatologist referred me to the orthopedist (is that a word?), and I see him on Monday.

In between all that, I’ve been:

  • dog-sitting,
  • teaching lessons at Open Door Writing Group (who had a fantastic turnout this month!),
  • writing ALL THE VILLAIN SCENES for Caro’s Quest,
  • critiqued an entire paranormal romance novel for a friend (I’m so excited for that one to come out!),
  • drove my youngest to work and back about 30,000 times,
  • chaperoned a winter guard contest,

The awesome mascot statue at the winter guard contest

  • attended my kid’s pre-UIL concert
  • figured out that I’m way ahead on my word count compared to last year (thanks Sprint Club!),
  • painted the hallway bathroom, then painted the backs of the built-in bookcases the same color because I loved it so much,
  • got a fun haircut
  • started repotting plants and tidying up my yard for the spring,
  • and spent far too much time troubleshooting iPad woes.

That’s it for the end of February and early March.

What have y’all been up to? Let me know in the comments below. 🙂

Around the House, Computers and Internet, Everywhere But Home, Friend Time, My Writing, Organizing, The Past Comes Back to Haunt Me, Writing

September catch-up post

It’s been a hot minute since I last posted. I’m torn between telling you all the things that went on in the background that kept me busier than usual or just sticking to the writing related things. What do y’all want more of? Comment below and let me know.

Week 1: Outside of mopping up all the cat pee in the universe, I worked on making my own mystery beat sheet that covers the kinds of mysteries that I like, which are cozy, no sex, a little romance, and a quirky town, with a smidge of magical goings-ons. I’m sure somewhere out there is a specific genre label for them, but my brain said “no, let’s make up our own beat sheet” so we did. (me and my brain = we sometimes. I don’t make up the rules. I just follow them.)

I had all my kids home one day, which was wacky, and I got to drive my friends foreign exchange student around, as well. I also had a wacky project that involved making clean copies of all the lessons taught at the library writing group, which no one asked for, but I couldn’t get out of my head until I was done. Want copies of them? I will send them to you. Just comment below and let me know where to send them.

The spouse and I started watching The History of Imagineering, which was fascinating and a little bit frightening all at once. I’d not given a lot of thought to any of that behind-the-scenes stuff at Disney. But also, my heart beat was going super fast for no reason at all on and off all week, so that accounts for the frightening, I think.

Week 2: The cheap, magical 2012 MacBook arrived and I played with that all week. I had to rework my writing schedule because I spent too much time on that, but I just love setting up a new laptop, don’t you? So many options to change and things to try out. It’s just fun.

I also tried out the new coffee shop/wine bar that’s opened up close to my house. Besides the friend I was meeting, I ran into two others from different parts of my life while there. It’s always trippy when that happens. My writing peeps don’t generally know my art peeps who don’t generally know my PTA peeps. The chai latte was fabulous, but my sandwich was not quite what I wanted. Next time I’ll try the breakfast sandwich because the other Lisa H said it was fantastic. 🙂 Also, I went to a genealogy conference over the weekend and they encouraged me to look into the fact that the other Lisa H’s family (who has a last name that coincides with one of my family names) has ties to Wisconsin as well, and maybe some of my Wisconsin birthfamily relatives are related to her Wisconsin relatives. Stay tuned to find out.

Week 3: My spouse’s birthday, which he likes to ignore. Writer’s Guild stuff, Open Door stuff, genealogy stuff, getting new phones – which took three hours in store – and setting up an old printer in my studio and figuring out how to make a TikTok video rounded out my technology craziness for the week. I also worked on setting up my Lisa Holcomb Literature business stuff so that I can do business as that and have a bank account that’s separate from family finances, etc.

Week 4: I rearranged my studio again because I just was unhappy with little things. I attended far too many meetings for things, helped one of my kids dye his hair a weird red color, tried out the new fall themed Blizzards at DQ, and freaked out over the fact that Scrivener has secretly not been able to make updates and wasn’t giving me an error message about it, so I have no backups for any of my projects. After many hours of looking things up and changing settings and figuring out why all my drives kept saying they were full, I finally figured it out and got back-ups started, but that took additional hours to do that I would have been happier to have written during.

Last Week: Sent off some submissions of poetry, a recipe, and a short story to different venues. Also wrote my President’s Corner column, an article about Preptober, and a poem for the ETWG newsletter. Went through all the writing lessons I’ve taught so I can make a list of what I can offer other groups, should the occasion warrant it, also made a spreadsheet of all my other time commitments so I can see where I’m losing so much time (answer: I say “yes” far too often to tiny things that sound like they’d take five minutes that end up eating an hour or more of my day).

I’ve also been meeting with another fantasy writer and doing brainstorming sessions, making How To files for the next ETWG President, and trying to not go crazy driving my kids all the places they need to be. Wheeeeee!

Essays, My Writing, poetry, Short Stories, The Past Comes Back to Haunt Me, What I Love

Two books for sale, one to go!

I honestly wasn’t expecting all the pieces I sold last year to come out all in the same week. They originally had publication dates that gave me a few weeks of breathing room in between each one, but one came out later and another one sooner and BAM, here they all are. So thank you for being patient with all my posts being about these books for sale. And thank you for supporting me and my writing for so long. Y’all are the best!

Now on to the books. One came out earlier last week and one came out today and the last one will be out tomorrow, but I was just too excited to wait. Here are links for the first two, along with a little description of what to expect from my piece in each book:

https://amzn.to/36qEyjY

This book has my poem “Last Family Vacation” on page 116, which is a peek into the heart of a mom with a kid in his senior year of high school. 🙂

https://amzn.to/3OvLLAF

This book has my essay “Revealing Rainbows” on page 74, which is a more in depth personal look at encouraging not just my sons to be themselves, but all the other boys they know as well.

Books, My Writing, Pre-Orders, The Past Comes Back to Haunt Me, What I Love, Writing

Next Chapters Unleashed available now for pre-order

https://books2read.com/nextchapters

I am so excited to announce that my first published short story is available as of today as a pre-order. You can click the link above to order from any of those fine establishments right now. Seeing the book here was really nice and pretty and I clicked each one of those links to see the book in each of the stores, because I’m extra like that.

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/60422120-next-chapters-unleashed

This is the image that made me cry. I have been shelving books I read into Goodreads for 15 years now. Read a book, shelve it. Read a book, shelve it. All this time I’ve been scribbling away all these little stories of my own in the background, but I was too scared to do anything with them. Last year I decided that I wasn’t going to hide my words any more. And now one of my stories is there on Goodreads. Goodreads! I’m crying again, y’all. It is a wonderful feeling.

Family Time, My Own Personal Weirdness, Speaking, The Past Comes Back to Haunt Me, What I Love, Writing

Today’s Speaking Engagement at TPLWC – Cancelled

I’m sorry, guys. I’m just not in the right headspace to teach anyone anything today. I asked the other leaders to post something, so someone should be there at the group doing just that today.