I’m still here!

 

It seems I haven’t posted a blog over here on my author page since the start of March—yikes! I’m sorry about that, but I’m back now. If you follow me on my Facebook page, then you know I’ve been active there.

Part of my absence here on my author blog was all the craziness that accompanied the end of winter and start of spring. My daughter didn’t have any snow days this year, until February! We thought we were past the danger of snow days, so it really threw me off my game. After nearly 2 weeks of snow days or 2 hour delays, it was time to launch my third novel, Shattered Angel. As you can imagine, that took up quite a bit of my time. Then it was Spring Break. We didn’t go anywhere, but that time was dedicated to my daughter.

Another part of the absence was that I needed a mental break after completing Shattered Angel. If you’ve already read it, then you probably can understand this. I was so emotionally connected to Angel and her story, that it just drained all the energy right out of me. I needed some downtime to recharge.

The final part of the absence was due to not knowing what to blog about. I had mostly been blogging about my fitness, but I spun that off into its own blog (The ‘No F-Bomb Zone). I don’t seem to have any difficulty coming up with topics for that blog since it’s a journey filled with many ups and downs that several people can relate to. I also blog about once a month over on Across the Board with other writers, and again that is a bit easier since it’s mostly related to my writing process. I don’t want to rehash all the same topics here on my author blog, so I’ve struggled with finding the right topics to write about.

However, I’ve vowed to change that starting now! I will get back to blogging here at least once a month. I wanted to start with telling you what it is I do when I’m not writing.

 

Time with Family

As mentioned above, Spring Break was last month and my days were consumed by time with my daughter. Since we didn’t take a trip, I tried to find fun things to do with her locally. One of those was going to the canvas place so we could paint! It’s really cool—you paint something based off a template or by using one of their ‘master prints’ as a guide. I think we did a pretty good job for first-timers.

     

 

Cleaning and Organizing

Luckily spring is the perfect time to do a little cleaning around the house. I cleaned out and organized closets, packed away some of my daughters outgrown clothes and toys, and (finally) copied in the stack of my daughter’s art work from the past two school years. Here’s one of my favorites:

 

I also organized some of the drawers in my desk. Of course I can’t do things the easy way, so I had to make custom caddies to hold all my stuff. I love the end result, but I’m really curious as to why I have so many Sharpies… I mean, I only need one to sign books!

 

Projects, Projects and more Projects!

Yes, projects. We seem to love projects in our house. We have page after page of projects that need to be done (luckily most of them are now crossed out since they’ve been completed). Some are fun—such as making a bracelet that my daughter wanted, photo backgrounds for my husband’s computer, and scented pouches for my stinky boxing gloves. Others are larger and it’s more difficult to find the motivation to complete them.

One of those large projects hanging over my head was finishing the window treatments for the master bathroom. The curtains I had purchased needed altered. I had to shorten them, and then I took one of the panels and split it into two. We then needed to engineer rods since I only wanted them to hang at the end of the windows (they are not meant to be functional) and you can’t buy rods that short. It was a challenge, but with two engineers (and one bossy cat) on the job it got done! Now we just need to replace the blinds (which are on order)!

     

 

So that’s a glimpse of what I’ve been up to the past few months. Now I’m ready to get back to writing. And so it begins…

 

Chapter 1

I stare at her eyes, framed by the small mirror, and try to remember the way I used to feel when she looked at me.

 

You’ll just have to wait for the rest of it! Of course that first line may change a few times between now and the time to publish, but it’s in the ballpark.

In the mean time, you can read Shattered Angel 🙂

~Carrie