Happy 2025!

I know, I know…you almost forgot I worked here. I have the usual excuses, all tied up with string, sitting under a cat somewhere. Last year was a doozy of a year, filled with all manner of distractions, procrastinations, and other sundry explosions of my life.

I’ve spent the last couple of days thinking about what my writing goals are for this year. One is to make my usual chart of what all I wrote last year, but that isn’t done yet because the transcribing isn’t done. So no numbers today. Maybe tomorrow. After I’ve written, of course.

I’m on the schedule with an editor for September, so my big goal is to finish the latest draft of my big epic fantasy novel and polish it up. This is the novel y’all have heard me refer to as Caro’s Quest in the past. I still need a better name for it, but that will come. 🙂

Smaller goals include finding homes for my poetry and short stories, finishing putting together my first poetry anthology, finishing my research on the best time to release it, and then publishing that anthology. I’m aiming for sending off at least one poem and one short story a week. We’ll see if that’s a manageable goal as time goes on and reassess after the first quarter is over.

I’m no longer on the board for the East Texas Writing Guild, nor my UU church board. Those were positive decisions for me, based on me needing more time to write. I’m continuing on as a moderator for the Open Door Writing Group at the Tyler Public Library for the foreseeable future, which means writing and giving a presentation for a monthly lesson about writing.

That’s about it, y’all. It’s my first day back at the writing desk. I’m planning on starting off all my weekdays from here on out at my writing desk, working on stories or poetry for the first half of every day before moving on to social media, lesson writing, and marketing in the afternoons.

Yay 2025! I hope this year will be so much better than the last. 🙂

Today’s Speaking Engagement at the Open Door Writing Group

I spoke today at the Open Door Writing Group – Day Group (at the Tyler Public Library) on “Elements of Crime Writing”. Despite some technological conundrums early on, I got my slide show up and running and the lesson ran smoothly. Several writers piped in with good bonus information, which I always love to hear…and add to my notes for later presentations. I’m always improving on my lessons, y’all.

You should definitely come visit this group sometime! More information here: opendoorwritinggroup.com

A New Year of Life and New Adventures

This month’s word count was even worse – only 5,562 words overall, nearly all of it journaling projects I was working on as homework from therapy. My Wednesday writing group started an offshoot nighttime group this month and I’m one half of the team leading it. So far we haven’t had quite the turnout we hoped for. So many people said they needed an evening group, but far fewer are showing up. ODWG also started work on an idea for an anthology, which should be fun. I prepared and taught one lesson on “How to Write For an Anthology” and one on “Character Reactions” for both the day and the night group. I wrote a few things about frogs for the anthology.

In real life, I got strep throat on top of all my other illnesses. My city was in the path of totality for the solar eclipse, so I got to enjoy that from my front yard. I lost electricity due to another storm for a couple of days. A tree fell in my kids’ yard, taking out nearly all of the patio furniture. My kids beloved band director unexpectedly resigned midyear and we have no idea what’s going on with that. My youngest kid bought another car, this time from his brother’s ex-girfriend, and sold us his old one.  It was also my birthday month, so I went out with the kids on my birthday, took my husband to the airport for a work trip, then had lunch and a fun afternoon with my BFF in DFW that day, then had a dinner with other friends later in the week.