As requested in last week’s Open Door Writing Group lesson, today I’ll be leading a discussion and talking about poetry! Come on out, it’ll be fun! 🙂 We meet from 1-3pm in the Makerspace on the third floor at the Tyler Public Library – 201 S. College Ave, Tyler, Texas.
Hey y’all – I know I told you that I was speaking at tonight’s ETWG meeting, but I have the plague, so I cannot be there, doctor’s orders. ☹️ Will try to reschedule for when I’m well.
| Title | Author | Date Started | Date Finished | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| About Grace | Doerr, Anthony * | Aug 24, 2024 | Dec 30, 2024 | Read for Book Club – after having read Cloud Cuckoo Land, I was expecting an epic novel and this was quite intimate. |
| All Stitched Up: The Complete Guide to Finishing Stitches for Hand-Knitters | Crowfoot, Jane | not set | Jan 09, 2025 | Need to buy a copy of this – so helpful. |
| Big Mouth and Ugly Girl | Oates, Joyce Carol | Aug 19, 2024 | Jul 27, 2024 | Read for Book Club – enh. It’s not my genre. I kept worrying for the protagonists. |
| Bookshops & Bonedust (Legends & Lattes, #0) | Baldree, Travis * | Nov 06, 2024 | Oct 19, 2024 | Loved this book! Read it out of order and it still worked for me. 🙂 |
| Boy of Chaotic Making (Whimbrel House, #3) | Holmberg, Charlie N. * | Jun 03, 2024 | Jan 15, 2024 | Love this series so much! Cozy Fantasy! |
| The BreakBeat Poets: New American Poetry in the Age of Hip-Hop | Coval, Kevin | not set | Jan 09, 2025 | Best book I read all year. I highly recommend it to anyone interested in the English language or poetry. |
| Could You Survive Midsomer?: Can you avoid a bizarre death in England’s most dangerous county? | Brew, Simon | May 30, 2024 | Jul 27, 2024 | Choose Your Own Adventure book for adults. 🙂 Went through it many, many times. |
| Dear Kimberly…Love, Makayla: The Unraveling of My Evangelical Faith Into the Unknown | McCuistion, Kayla Jo | Jan 16, 2024 | Jul 27, 2024 | One of my band mom friends wrote this. Very thoughtful. I stopped an started a bunch because it’s hard to see a friend going through a hard time. |
| Design Your Own Crochet Projects: Magic Formulas for Creating Custom Scarves, Cowls, Hats, Socks, Mittens & Gloves | Delaney, Sara | Jan 09, 2024 | Feb 28, 2025 | I’ve checked this out twice now, so I should really just buy it already. |
| Earth, Air, Fire & Water: More Techniques of Natural Magic | Cunningham, Scott | Dec 28, 2024 | Dec 30, 2024 | Trying to get ideas for this novel I’m writing |
| Geek Knits: Over 30 Projects for Fantasy Fanatics, Science Fiction Fiends, and Knitting Nerds | Dark, Joan of * | not set | Jan 09, 2024 | So many cute ideas. |
| Hooked: When Addiction Hits Home | Shantz-Hilkes, Chloe | Apr 11, 2024 | Apr 29, 2024 | This helped me understand people in my life so much better than I did before. If you hear me talk about “the yellow book”, this is that one. |
| How to be the best Maid of Honor ever: You’re Welcome Series | Brooks, Makayla | Jan 05, 2024 | Jan 05, 2024 | One of my band mom friends wrote this. I love supporting my fellow writers. This one is more of a pamphlet length than an actual book. |
| How to Make a Living as a Writer: Publish books, articles and blogs (Writing Boot Camp Book 1) | Roshay, Amber * | Jan 09, 2024 | ? | I read this off and on throughout the year |
| In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts: Close Encounters with Addiction | Maté, Gabor | May 04, 2024 | Dec 30, 2024 | This is NOT light reading. It took me all year to get through because I had to stop and recover so often. |
| Knits for Nerds: 30 Projects: Science Fiction, Comic Books, Fantasy | Carr, Toni | Jan 09, 2024 | Jan 09, 2024 | Loved |
| Knitting Plus: Mastering Fit, Plus-Size Style, 15 Projects | Shroyer, Lisa | Jan 09, 2024 | Jan 09, 2024 | Want my own copy, but haven’t found one yet. |
| The Knitting Way: A Guide To Spiritual Self-Discovery | Skolnik, Linda T. | Feb 12, 2024 | Jan 09, 2025 | Loved this enough to buy my own copy. |
| The Last of the Moon Girls | Davis, Barbara * | Jul 27, 2024 | Jul 26, 2024 | Read for Book Club – it was all right. Would read other books by the author. |
| Lessons in Chemistry | Garmus, Bonnie * | Apr 19, 2024 | Apr 06, 2024 | Read for Book Club – Delightful and cannot wait for the movie |
| The Library of the Dead (Edinburgh Nights, #1) | Huchu, T.L. | Oct 19, 2024 | Oct 19, 2024 | Loved it so much I read it in one sitting. |
| Literary Knits: 30 Patterns Inspired by Favorite Books | Lohr, Nikol | Jan 09, 2024 | Jan 09, 2024 | So many cute things |
| Living with a Functioning Alcoholic: A Woman`s Survival Guide | Neill, Neill | Feb 2024 | Feb 2024 | My copy of this was NOT yellow. It was good, just not the “yellow book” I talk about. |
| Madly, Deeply: The Diaries of Alan Rickman | Rickman, Alan | Feb 2024 | Oct 21, 2024 | Audio book – took ages to get through, but thoroughly loved it. |
| Magic Bites (Kate Daniels, #1) | Andrews, Ilona * | July 2024 | July 2024 | Re-read so I could read the next one |
| Magic Burns (Kate Daniels, #2) | Andrews, Ilona * | July 2024 | July 2024 | Good! |
| Midsomer Murders Location Guide: Discover the Villages, Pubs and Churches Behind the Hit TV Series | Hopkinson, Frank | Jun 02, 2024 | Dec 30, 2024 | This book was obviously a coffeetable book that should not have been turned into an e-book. It was pretty, though. I just couldn’t read it on my Kindle. |
| Modern Crochet: Crochet Accessories and Projects for Your Home | Mills, Molla | Jan 09, 2025 | Jan 09, 2025 | Lots of cute ideas here. |
| Modern Mending | Lewis-Fitzgerald, Erin * | Oct 20, 2024 | Dec 04, 2024 | Got through ILL. |
| Needleplay | Wilson, Erica | Jan 09, 2025 | Jan 09, 2025 | I own this book now. |
| Nine Liars (Truly Devious, #5) | Johnson, Maureen * | Jan 09, 2025 | Jan 09, 2025 | This series is so very good. |
| Not Your Mama’s Stitching: The Cool and Creative Way to Stitch It To ‘Em | Shoup, Kate * | Feb 27, 2024 | Feb 27, 2024 | Cute stuff in here. Would be good for a beginner. |
| Packing for Mars: The Curious Science of Life in the Void | Roach, Mary | Sep 30, 2024 | Dec 30, 2024 | Read for Book Club and found it fascinating. Would read anything by this author now. |
| Real Men Don’t Eat Quiche | Feirstein, Bruce | Jun 30, 2024 | Jun 30, 2024 | Ree bought this for the LOL’s |
| Shadow and Bone (The Shadow and Bone Trilogy, #1) | Bardugo, Leigh * | Jan 02, 2024 | Jan 8, 2024 | Was watching the show and thought, I might like this better as a book and it turned out I liked both. |
| Shakespeare: The Man Who Pays the Rent | Dench, Judi | Oct 19,2024 | Dec 22, 2024 | So good. So funny. I love Judi Dench even more now and that should not have been possible. |
| Siege and Storm (The Shadow and Bone Trilogy, #2) | Bardugo, Leigh * | Jan 09, 2024 | Jan 29, 2024 | Good! |
| Sweet Shawlettes: 25 Irresistible Patterns for Knitting Cowls, Capelets, and More | Moss, Jean | not set | Jan 09, 2025 | Many cute patterns. |
| The Thin Man | Hammett, Dashiell | Feb 19, 2024 | Feb 24, 2024 | Read for Book Club |
| The Weaver and the Witch Queen | Gornichec, Genevieve * | Jan 08, 2024 | Jan 09, 2024 | I had deja vu the entire time I read this and kept wondering if I’d dreamt it or seen it as a movie, but neither thing appears to be true, so it must just be that the writing was insanely good and I really felt like I was THERE. |
| The Wizard of Oz (Oz, #1) | Baum, L. Frank | Dec 02, 2024 | Dec 02, 2024 | Re-reading this after watching the movie version of the Wicked musical, which is a version of the book, which is a retelling of the movie version of of this book. |
After I copied and pasted all that out of Good Reads, I realized that at least a couple of books were inexplicably missing, so I’m going to add them below:
Books I started, but did not finish (mostly because I used them for research for my novels or my lessons – this is not a complete list, but based off what I can remember and see from my seat here at the computer):
I will be speaking at the Open Door Writing Group – Night Group today at the UU Fellowship (1629 Old Omen Road in Tyler) at 6pm on the topic of “Humorous Writing”. Come on over and join us!
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
I will be speaking at the Authors: Embracing Resilience in Writing Journey on September 6, 2024 on the topic of “My 2024 Resilience Journey”. Come on over and join us!
I’ve spent most of the last week running around trying to keep my and my kids houses from falling down around our ears due to storm damages. A tree fell through the roof at the kids house, so they’ve moved back home this week. The power’s been out and then even once it came back, we had no internet for days and days. It’s been really nuts, so I haven’t managed to finish transcribing from May yet. There’s no telling how many words I got, though I’m going to hazard a guess that I almost matched February’s numbers (around 17,000) because I was really going hard on my short story work. I’ll do an extra update next week about that. (Update: I couldn’t find everything in order to transcribe it all, so I didn’t hit my goal. I was somewhere around 7,000 when I ran out of things to transcribe.)
One of the other writing related things going on behind the scenes is time spent putting together an anthology for the Open Door Writing Group. I can’t remember if I mentioned this before. We’re having members of our group (both online and offline) write short works of non-fiction, fiction, or poetry on the theme of frogs. It started off as a fun little writing prompt, but it really took off. The in person writers were entranced by all of our frog stories and really wanted a wider audience for them. Since I have the most behind-the-scenes knowledge of how to start an anthology, I’ve been doing quite a lot of the legwork for the project. We’ve opened up the possibility of having writers also contribute to putting the anthology together and handling stuff as well. It’s been fun so far. I hope all the hard work pays off. We’re anticipating a mid-November launch date.
In other real life stuff, we had Mother’s Day, which we celebrated early at a sort of local renaissance festival (2 hours away), and then actual mother’s day I just sort of spent hanging out. We finally got our roof replaced from the hail storm in February. Then we had all the graduations and parties to attend and finished up the month with my husband’s favorite annual family BBQ (which we host here at my house).
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.
I didn’t write much this month, nor did I teach any lessons for anything. I ended the year with a word count of 1456 for December. I wrote one poem and some short journal entries. The only big writing related thing that happened was being voted in as the secretary for our local area writers guild for next year. Next week, once I’ve compiled all the information, I’ll do my annual Writing Year In Review.
Real life had various holiday parties, Christmas with the extended family, etc. I went on a reading spree towards the end of the month and finished all of those partially read books that I’d left languishing earlier in the year. Some of them I had just 10-20 pages left on, some were more like 2/3 of the way left to go. So my December Goodreads list looks funny this year – “What She Left Behind: A Haunting and Heartbreaking Story of 1920s Historical Fiction”, “The Kill Fee” (Poppy Denby Investigates, #2 on audio book), “Aesop’s Fables” (audio), “Understanding Alcoholism as a Brain Disease” (homework for couples therapy), “FICTION FORMULA PLOTTING PRACTICE”, “Thriving with Adult ADHD: Skills to Strengthen Executive Functioning” (homework for my personal therapy), “The Creative Writing Student’s Handbook”, “A Kiss for Midwinter” by Courtney Milan, and “Clockwork Boys” by T. Kingfisher (audio).
| Title | Author | Started | Finished |
| The Secrets of the Notebook | Haas, Eve | Dec 29, 2022 | Jan 05, 2023 |
| Jinx | Cabot, Meg | Jan 2023 | Jan 02, 2023 |
| My Evil Mother | Atwood, Margaret | Jan 05, 2023 | Jan 05, 2023 |
| Head On (Lock In, #2) | Scalzi, John | Jan 05, 2023 | Jan 08, 2023 |
| A Court of Thorns and Roses (A Court of Thorns and Roses, #1) | Maas, Sarah J. | Jan 08, 2023 | Feb 20, 2023 |
| The Weekend Novelist Rewrites the Novel: A Step-by-Step Guide to Perfecting Your Work | Ray, Robert J. | Jan 08, 2023 | Jan 12, 2023 |
| Cloud Cuckoo Land | Doerr, Anthony | Jan 16, 2023 | Jan 21, 2023 |
| Keeper of Enchanted Rooms (Whimbrel House, #1) | Holmberg, Charlie N. | Jan 27, 2023 | Jan 31, 2023 |
| Super Structure: The Key to Unleashing the Power of Story | Bell, James Scott | Jan 28, 2023 | Mar 06, 2023 |
| The Six: The Lives of the Mitford Sisters | Thompson, Laura | Feb 16, 2023 | Mar 03, 2023 |
| French Braid | Tyler, Anne | Feb 27, 2023 | Feb 28, 2023 |
| This Is Your Brain on Music | Levitin, Daniel J. | Mar 21, 2023 | Mar 27, 2023 |
| Starborne | Katz, Aleph | Mar 25, 2023 | Apr 14, 2023 |
| A Most Malicious Murder | Fletcher, Melanie | Apr 16, 2023 | Apr 18, 2023 |
| The Man in the High Castle | Dick, Philip K. | Apr 25, 2023 | Apr 29, 2023 |
| Followed by Frost | Holmberg, Charlie N. | Apr 30, 2021 | Jun 29, 2024 |
| Out of My Mind | Arkin, Alan | May 18, 2023 | Jun 27, 2023 |
| It Wasn’t Always Easy, but I Sure Had Fun | Grizzard, Lewis | May 19, 2023 | May 27, 2023 |
| FICTION FORMULA PLOTTING PRACTICE | Chester, Deborah | Jun 07, 2022 | Dec 29, 2023 |
| How to Read a Poem | Eagleton, Terry | Jun 22, 2023 | Jun 27, 2023 |
| This Is How You Lose the Time War | El-Mohtar, Amal | Jun 27, 2023 | Jul 2023 |
| What She Left Behind | Wiseman, Ellen Marie | Jun 30, 2023 | Dec 30, 2023 |
| I Thought It Was Just Me: Women Reclaiming Power and Courage in a Culture of Shame | Brown, Brené | Jul 07, 2023 | Jul 27, 2023 |
| Renaissance of Wonder : The Fantasy Worlds of JRR Tolkein, C. S. Lewis, George MacDonald, E. Nesbit, and Others | Lochhead, Marion | Jul 20, 2023 | not set |
| Rotten to the Core (Lady Hardcastle Mystery, #8) | Kinsey, T.E. | Jul 2023 | Jul 05, 2023 |
| A Kiss for Midwinter (Brothers Sinister, #1.5) | Milan, Courtney | Jul 28, 2023 | Dec 27, 2023 |
| An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States (ReVisioning American History, #3) | Dunbar-Ortiz, Roxanne | Aug 19, 2023 | Aug 26, 2023 |
| Heir of Uncertain Magic (Whimbrel House, #2) | Holmberg, Charlie N. | Aug 2023 | Aug 08, 2023 |
| The Creative Writing Student’s Handbook (Creative Writing Matters Guides, #1) | Hartigan, Cathie | Aug 21, 2023 | Dec 28, 2023 |
| The Kaiju Preservation Society | Scalzi, John | Aug 22, 2022 | Mar 2023 |
| Spare | Prince Harry | Aug 28, 2023 | Nov 06, 2023 |
| The Kill Fee (Poppy Denby Investigates, #2) | Smith, Fiona Veitch | Aug 30, 2023 | Dec 30, 2023 |
| The Upanishads (Easwaran’s Classics of Indian Spirituality Book 2) | Easwaran, Eknath | Sep 19, 2020 | not set |
| The Marriage Spell | Morrow, Jayna | Oct 02, 2023 | Oct 02, 2023 |
| Understanding Alcoholism as a Brain Disease | Burlison, Linda | Oct 10, 2023 | Dec 29, 2023 |
| Clockwork Boys (Clocktaur War, #1) | Kingfisher, T. | Oct 20, 2023 | Dec 28, 2023 |
| Witches of Worth | Windrow, Journey | Nov 06, 2023 | Nov 06, 2023 |
| Bullies, Bastards and Bitches: How to Write the Bad Guys of Fiction | Morrell, Jessica Page | Dec 20, 2019 | Dec 23, 2019 |
| Aesop’s Fables | Aesop | Dec 28, 2023 | Dec 29, 2023 |
| What If It’s Us (What If It’s Us, #1) | Albertalli, Becky | Dec 30, 2023 | not set |
| Mr. Popper’s Penguins | Atwater, Richard | Dec 30, 2023 | not set |
| The Sounds of Poetry: A Brief Guide | Pinsky, Robert | Dec 30, 2023 | not set |
| The Write Structure: The Timeless Storytelling Principles Great Writers Use to Craft Stories Readers Love | Practice, The Write | Dec 30, 2023 | not set |
| The Future is Japanese: Science Fiction Futures and Brand New Fantasies from and about Japan | Washington, Masumi | Dec 30, 2023 | not set |
| Welcome Newcomer! | Groups, Al-Anon Family | not set | Dec 29, 2023 |
| The Reluctant Mage (Mage of Boston, #1) | Windrow, Journey | not set | not set |
| A Thief in the Night | Charles, K.J. | not set |
Lisa Holcomb 