I have been rescheduled to speak at the March meeting of the East Texas Writer’s Guild on March 10, 2025. They meet from 6:30pm-8:00pm in the Genecov Room of the Tyler Area Chamber of Commerce Building (aka The Blackstone Building) in downtown Tyler. I’ll be speaking on Sounds in Poetry. Hope to see some of you there!
Tag: Speaking
I’ve been asked to lead a a couple of sessions of the Tyler Public Library’s “Try It Tuesday!” programs. On March 11, 2025, I’ll be teaching a beginner calligraphy lesson and on April 8, 2025, I’ll be teaching a beginner crochet lesson. Both sessions are free to the public. They run from 5:30-7:30pm in the 3rd floor Makerspace at the Tyler Public Library. Hope to see some of y’all there! 🙂


In January 2025, I wrote 9,847 words. Of those words,
- 830 were for this blog (six posts)
- 3121 were journal entries
- 3149 were lessons, scripts, and slides (for one ODWG lesson)
- 2045 were on various social media accounts
- 151 were poetry (one poem)
- and 651 were short stories (three pieces of flash fiction)
I sent off three poems and three short stories for publication, but haven’t heard back from any of them.
I also read parts of these books:
- A Poet’s Guide to Poetry by Mary Kinzie (paperback; non-fiction)
- Call Us What We Carry by Amanda Gorman (hardcover; poetry)
- The Wonder Engine (Clocktaur War #2) by T. Kingfisher (audiobook; fantasy)
- The Green Man: Tales from the Mystic Forest edited by Ellen Datlow (e-book; fiction short stories)
And finished these books:
- The Wonder Boy of Whistle Stop by Fannie Flag (e-book; fiction)
- Just Dying to Glamp by April Nunn Coker (e-book; mystery)
- When She Returned by Lucinda Berry (e-book; thriller)
- Peace is a Practice by Morgan Harper Nichols (e-book; non-fiction).
January is always a tricky month, I think. The first couple weeks are still half-way holidays and then there are a few random at-home days for my school-age kiddo as well. Which means that you don’t get a full month of writing days, but I managed to write at least a little something for 26 out of 31 days in any case. I think that’s pretty good. 🙂
I have been asked to speak at the February meeting of the East Texas Writer’s Guild on February 10, 2025. They meet from 6:30pm-8:00pm in the Genecov Room of the Tyler Area Chamber of Commerce Building (aka The Blackstone Building) in downtown Tyler. Hope to see some of you there!
Today I’m giving a lesson on Sounds in Poetry over at the Tyler Public Library at 1pm in the Makerspace (behind the computer lab on the third floor). But don’t let that scare you away if you’re not a poet. I’m covering poetry, a little bit about songwriting, and how to use lyricism in your prose as well.
Hope to see you there!

I will be speaking at the Open Door Writing Group (at the Tyler Public Library) at 1pm on January 22nd on the topic of “Sounds in Poetry”.
If you think this sounds familiar, it’s because I’ve been talking about doing this lesson for about three years now, but we needed more poets in the audience. We have more poets now! 🙂 YAY!
Come on over and join us!
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. 🙂
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!

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
I will be speaking at the Open Door Writing Group – Night Group at the UU Fellowship of Tyler next Thursday, July 25, 2024 on the topic of “Story Beats and Echoes”. This is an updated version of what I taught at the day group, so come on over and join us!
