If you are a regular on this blog, you may have noticed that I haven’t been posting as many blog posts as I sometimes do.
Part of that has been due to a lot of stress in my life, but part of the reason for me writing fewer blog posts is that I am working on a new book series.
This series will be a cozy mystery series called Gladwyn Grant Mysteries.
The first book in the series is called Gladwyn Grant Gets Her Footing.
I’ll tell you more about Gladwyn in the coming weeks. I have not yet decided if I will share this story as a serial on the blog or not. I’ll let you know in the future if that is going to happen.
I hope to release the first three books in the series about 4 months apart starting in either May or June. These books will be shorter than my previous books. They will be clean, but not strictly Christian fiction.
A Biblical fiction story I am also working on will, of course, be Christian Fiction.
And if I didn’t have enough going on, I am also writing a book that will come out in August of 2024 and is entitled Cassie. It will also be in the Christian Fiction genre.
I am very excited for Cassie since it will be part of a multi-author project called The Apron Strings Book Series and it will follow twelve women and a recipe book that connects them all. Each book will focus on a different woman from a different era from 1920 to 2020.
My decade is the 1990s and my character, whose stage name is Cassie Starr, is a popstar who has hit her 30s and isn’t as popular as she once was. With no jobs coming her way and her record label dropping her, she heads up at the behest of her sister to help their mom with the family farm-to-table restaurant. While there Cassie will find out her mom’s health is not as good as she thought it was, that her feelings toward her father aren’t as resolved as she thought, and that the owner of the local vegetable farm that supplies her mom’s business with food isn’t as annoying as she once thought.
I have not forgotten that I still have a fifth book I have promised and want to write to close out The Spencer Valley Chronicles and I will get there at some point. The final book will be the story of Alex Stone and his relationship with his father, as well as his continuing relationship with Molly Tanner. It doesn’t have a title yet.
So that is my writing update for now. I’m sure it will change in regards to timing and titles, etc. as the months go on.
I’m sitting on my couch under my grandmother’s blanket.
Grandma passed away in 2003 (in the hospital, not under the blanket, incidentally) and the blanket has been at her house where my parents now live.
One day recently I went to visit my parents and my dad had a stack of blankets for me to go through.
“We’re running out of room. Take some of these.”
He then gestured to three empty Walmart boxes and told me to fill them.
One of the first blankets I reached for was the tan-brown knitted blanket that I remember my grandmother laying under for naps and when she fell asleep on the couch watching the 11 o’clock news. My paternal grandmother weighed about 100 pounds and was probably about 5 foot 1 inches tall. She’d pull her tiny form into a ball in the curved corner of the couch and drape the blanket around her. It would entirely cover her and it’s not a big blanket.
The couch was tan as well and it was a three- or four-piece sectional. The piece she sat in was curved and it’s not a shape I often see in couches these days.
If you looked too fast, you might miss her. That’s how well hidden she’d be under that blanket.
I know there were many times I almost didn’t see her when I was checking where she was.
One night, though I can’t remember why, I stayed alone at that house. I believe it was before Grandma died, but my parents were already living there. I curled up in the corner of that couch with all the outside lights on in case someone tried to break in and fell asleep there. Later I wondered how she’d ever been able to fall asleep in that spot, all curled up tight. It was not very comfortable.
The day Grandma died Dad called me from the hospital.
“You said you wanted me to call when she passed,” he said. “So, I am.”
I’d been over in her room earlier in the day.
“I love you Grandma,” I told her as I leaned over her while she slipped in and out of sleep.
“I know,” she said.
She didn’t often say “I love you” back but she may have that day. I truly can’t remember.
I just remember her saying, “I’m so tired, Lisa. So tired.”
She was two weeks shy of turning 94.
“I know, Grandma,” I told her. “Just rest. You can rest now.”
Grandma lived across the hill from us. A drive down a dirt road, a bridge over a small stream, then up another dirt road would bring us to her house – the house Dad and his sisters grew up in.
When I was a teenager I often called Grandma to tell her my mom was sending some food over to her for dinner. She’d often hang up without saying goodbye.
The conversations went like this:
“Grandma, Dad’s bringing over some chicken and potatoes Mom made.”
“Okay. Sounds good.”
“She also made some applesauce.”
“Okay. Yep. Mmhmm.”
I’d open my mouth to say something else but the click had already sounded in my ear. She was done with the conversation and hung up.
Often before she hung up I’d throw in a “I love you” and she’d say, “Yup. Mhmm. Okay then.”
And the click would sound.
One time, though, she said, “Yup. Mhmm. Okay then. Love you too.”
And then the click.
I was flying high for the rest of the night.
I rushed into the kitchen and told my mom, “Grandma said I love you back!”
It was the best feeling in the world – to actually hear those words.
She showed her love in other ways, though.
In small ways.
In the way she asked how I was or wanted to hear the stories I’d been covering at the newspaper.
In the way she gave me a quilt she’d made years ago for my college graduation.
In the way she didn’t talk a lot about her life but answered questions about it when I asked.
In the way we shared black jellybeans together, even though she said licorice was bad for her blood pressure.
In the way she tipped her head back and laughed at me that day I took her photograph while she sat on the ground next to the ditch behind her house.
In the way she let it slip that one time how she really felt and told me she loved me too.
And even in the hurt I held on to for years – a question about what had happened to me. I used to be so skinny, she said. I don’t think she asked it to be mean, though. She was truly worried. She wondered what had happened that was causing me to suddenly gain weight. It wouldn’t be until several years after she died that I learned my thyroid was dying and leaving the weight on me.
Even though I wasn’t still skinny, my mom always told me she knew Grandma still loved me. I have a good feeling she is right.
The blanket isn’t super soft.
I don’t know if I’d cover myself with it if it wasn’t full of memories of a love that was quiet when the world was loud.
I could use some quiet in the loud right now. Couldn’t you?
So, when I pull that blanket across my lap and up around my shoulders I will think of the action as if I am crawling into a stillness my soul needs.
A stillness that only a quiet love can bring.
A stillness that brings quiet when the world is loud.
It’s time for our Sunday morning chat. On Sundays, I ramble about what’s been going on, what I and the rest of the family have been reading and watching, and what I’ve been writing, and some weeks I share what I am listening to.
What’s Been Occurring
There is still a lot going on in our family with – well, everything.
There are new diagnoses, surgeries planned, family members very ill, deaths of family friends. To say this year has been a beast for us so far is an understatement. I’d list all that has been going on here, but I don’t want to depress everyone more than I have to. So instead I will point you to yesterday’s post where I talked about some fun things we did this past week and where I shared some photos of my youngest running in the yard with her best friend, Zooma the Wonderdog.
I’ll even share a couple photos here:
Sometimes you have to choose joy and look for it a little harder than other times.
What I/we’ve been Reading
Most of this week I’ve been reading The Cat Who Dropped a Bombshell by Lilian Jackson Braun.
That’s it. It’s just been relaxing and I haven’t had time to juggle two books. With all the family stuff going on, homeschooling, working on a new book and just being unable to really think much or too fast.
Later in the week, though, I started listening to The Fellowship of the Ring by J.R.R. Tolkien on Audible. The Boy and I are reading that together for English.
This week I hope to finish The Cat Who book and continue a Longmire book I started.
At night Little Miss and I are reading Paddington books again. Early in the week, she read a few pages of one to me.
During the week we are reading fiction books based on The Imagination Station from Adventures in Odyssey, which is a Focus on the Family creation.
The Boy is reading The Fellowship of the Ring.
The Husband is reading …oops. Forgot to ask him before he went to bed and he’s going to be gone today so I’ll catch up with what he is reading later in the week or next week.
What We watched/are Watching
This week we watched a couple episodes of Grantchester and an episode of Foyle’s War. I started to rewatch Death Comes to Pemberly, which is a story that extends the story of Lizzie Bennet and Mr. Darcy from Pride and Prejudice. It is a reimagining, I guess you would say. There is a murder on the Darcy estate involving the dastardly Mr. Wickham. It is a four-part mini-series.
I also half-watched an episode of All Creatures Great and Small that was a bit emotional and too much for me. I will probably rewatch it and the next episode later this week.
What I’m Writing
I’ve been working on a cozy mystery that I’ll share a bit about later. I was able to write a couple thousand words on it this week, which was a nice distraction from life right now.
I need to listen to more music because it helps to calm my nerves.
Matthew West has a new album out and this is one of the new songs:
I also need to listen to this song a lot this week:
Now it’s your turn. What have you been doing, watching, reading, listening to or writing? Let me know in the comments or leave a blog post link if you also write a weekly update like this.
I mentioned Sunday in my Sunday Bookends post that I had visited a local library that was having a sale, as well as a local flea market-style store that had a large selection of used books.
I thought today I’d share a few of the books I picked up, even though I did mention a few already.
I’m going to toss in there a couple I also picked up last week at a library near us that has a bookshop in the back of their building.
I had to use photos I downloaded online for a couple of these photos because I loaned the books to my mom before I took photographs of them. Mom reads a lot faster than me so I always pass copies of books on to her first.
Her Mother’s Legacy by Francine Rivers
I haven’t read a book by Francine in years, mainly because the topics are usually quite heavy and I often look for books with lighter topics.
Fire By Night and Candle in the Darkness by Lynn Austin
I have yet to read a book by Lynn Austin but people who read Christian Fiction absolutely love her so I figured it was time I tried. She writes historical fiction. These are the first two books in the Refiner’s Fire series.
A Case of Bad Taste and A Case of Crooked Letters by Lori Copeland.
Lori is a new to me author and while I thought her books were cozy mysteries, I needed to take a break from the one book because within the first three pages, two husbands had already been killed off and one of them was fairly young and died from a blood clot, which has been happening to a lot of people lately so that made me uneasy. Of course, this book was written years ago so it has nothing to do with the recent rashes of blood clot deaths, but it still felt a little too close for comfort after someone I know who is in their 30s had a stroke last week. I do plan to pick the book back up again, however, because, despite that dark issue, the book does seem like it will have hope and some humor as well.
Home to Holly Springs, Come Rain Or Come Shine, and To Be Where You Are by Jan Karon
These books looked new and I was excited to add them to my collection.
To Be Where You Are is the last book in the series. Home to Holly Springs is book ten but I believe it was originally part of a planned separate series about Father Tim. It is one of the darker and tougher books of the series, but, in my opinion, one of Jan’s best.
Books from the Walt Longmire Series: A Cold Dish, Death Without Company, Kindness Goes Unpunished, As the Crow Flies, Another Man’s Moccasins, Hell is Empty, A Serpent’s Tooth by Craig Johnson
I’m on book seven of the series, Hell is Empty. We own all of the books on Kindle, but I want to start collecting the books in physical form as well.
Murder at the Vicarageby Agatha Christie (A Miss Marple Mystery)
The Husband picked this one out for me and I’m excited to read it because I’ve never read any of Christie’s books about Miss Marple but she’s one of my favorite Christie characters.
The Cat Who Dropped a Bombshell and The Cat Who Blew The Whistle by Lillian Jackson Braun
I picked these two up at the bookshop in the back of the library in the town near us (well, 40 minutes near us). The Cat Who Dropped a Bombshell is a later book in the series and the later books aren’t as good, but I’m on chapter 4 and it’s a lot better than some of the other later books I’ve tried to read.
Sean of the South: Whistling Dixie by Sean Dietrich.
He’s a new to me author and this book looks like a collection of short stories or short thoughts. I follow him on Instagram, and he seems like a downhome author that I will like. I have a couple of his books in my Kindle as well.
Treasure Island by Robert Lewis Stevenson
The last book by Robert Lewis Stevenson that The Boy and I tried to read we failed at, but I’m willing to try again. The Husband said this one is better than Kidnapped.
I picked up a stack of books for Little Miss as well, but I’ll write about them in a separate blog post.
Have you read any of the books mentioned above? What did you think of them?
I started it as a fun endeavor to help take my mind off some lost friendships and my loneliness. I was lonely before those lost friendships because they really weren’t good friendships at all, but I didn’t realize how bad they were until they were gone.
A few times during this fiction writing journey, I got wrapped up and sad about not making money from my books. Silly, I know, since they are really stories I wrote for my blog readers more than they are books.
As the journey has continued, I have slipped in and out of those feelings, but have had more moments of simple gratitude – not for making money from selling my books because I’ve barely made any of that, but for the friendships and connections I’ve made through writing, either with the books or the blog.
The connections I’ve made through my blog and my books have meant so much more than money.
Those connections have literally been a lifesaver. I’m not exaggerating when I say that.
The encouraging messages, the offers of prayers, and even beautiful songs sent to me privately have sustained me through some very dark days, most recently, but also over the last three years.
Just a couple of weeks ago a follower/reader and now friend sent me this video that was such an important reminder to me. It literally left me in refreshing, needed tears.
The people I have met online came to me in a time when I had lost “real life” (as the saying goes) friendships and felt so lonely and alone.
I used to take the online connections for granted. These were only people I knew online, not really “knew-knew”. But behind that computer they are real people, like me, some of them also lonely or in dark places, and we are making connections, in many cases, on a heart level, not just a superficial virtual level.
I can’t imagine what I would do without all of your wonderful people who read my blog and my books and send me encouraging messages and are just there when I really need someone to be there.
You are appreciated much more than you could ever imagine.
Hello! I was going to share a writing update today here but then realized, I have a new place for those kind of updates and wanted to share that instead. I have set up a Substack/Newsletter where I will be sharing about my writing journey and other tidbits once or twice a month.
If you want to know what’s been happening with my writing, what is coming up with future books, etc., you can check out this month’s newsletter HERE at this address… https://lisarhoweler.substack.com/
If you subscribe, you will get the updates in your inbox when I post.
I will still be posting my regular ramblings about life here on the blog whenever the mood strikes me, though I do have regular features on Saturday ( A Chat and A cup of Tea) and Sunday (Sunday Bookends).
And I’m sure there will be times I’ll update you about my writing here as well.
I’ve read comments online from people who don’t like it when an older parent reminds them that the years go so fast. They don’t like what they feel is a passive-aggressive way of saying that they are a bad parent, that they aren’t slowing down enough and enjoying it.
I, however, often see the comment for what it really is – a feeling of melancholy from the other parent that those early years went by so fast for them they feel like they missed a lot of their children’s childhood.
If I ever say to you that the years go by so fast, I’m offering it to you as a reminder to slow down, soak it up, enjoy the simple things and stop worrying about the dumb little things – mainly what other parents think of you and your parenting. I say these things because so often I have failed at doing them myself.
The childhoods of your children really do go fast. Those early years that are so exhausting and mentally draining, in retrospect, are actually very short, which is a good and a bad thing. It’s good because that time will be short. It’s bad because you’re going to learn so much during that time but you won’t know it until it is over.
Never in your life again will another human being love you or need you as much as that little person loves you and needs you right now.
Never in your life again will you be able to see the world through the eyes of an innocent child and fall in love with being alive again.
I was looking through photos this week from several years ago and, yes, it did hit me how fast the years go by. I was glad I could look back and see that there were days I slowed down and enjoyed it and recorded it. There were many days I soaked it up. I let my kids be kids. I decided I didn’t care what others thought of me. I didn’t care if people driving by our house raised their eyebrows at my kids standing knee-deep in mud they’d made with our hose.
I can look back and know my kids made memories and had real childhoods of exploration. I can look back and know that I was not a perfect mother, but I was a mother who did her best to let my kids be kids. I was, and am, a mother who recognizes it really does go by so fast and that the only way to hold on to it all is to record the memories in writing or visually.
I want to have good memories to record.
They won’t always be good, but I’ll do my best to make sure that a larger portion of them are good.
Reminding parents of younger children that time flies by doesn’t have to be foreboding or scolding.
It can also be encouraging and one of the most loving things you can ever say to another parent.
It’s time for our Sunday morning chat. On Sundays, I ramble about what’s been going on, what I and the rest of the family have been reading and watching, what I’ve been writing, and some weeks I share what I am listening to.
What I/we’ve been Reading
This week I am moving back and forth between Love and The Silver Lining by Tammy L. Gray and Anne’s House of Dreams by L.M. Montgomery. They are definitely two different styles of writing with one being contemporary fiction and the other classic literature.
I found Anne of Windy Poplars between my bed and wall yesterday morning after losing it for two weeks. I was so excited to find it and took it with me when I took Little Miss to gymnastics. Later in the day I sat down and looked in my bag for it and it was gone. All I can figure out is that I left it at the gymnastics studio. So aggravating. I really wanted to finish that one.
The Anne books are a little drawn out and rambly, but I still like them. They are a total distraction from real life. I like to read books in a series in order if I can so it irks me that I can’t read Windy Poplars before Anne’s House of Dreams. It’s definitely a “first world problem,” of course.
I abandoned The Jane Austen Society. First, I haven’t read Jane Austen, so I was bored with all the characters gushing over her like she’s the only author who has ever existed. It’s similar to how I feel about many of the “bookstagrammers” on Instagram who act like she’s the only author in existence.
The other issue I had with the book was it was taking for. It took forever to get to the point and the characters weren’t really very likable at all to me. Once a “gd” got dropped, I was out. I had a feeling the swearing would only pick up and while I am not completely opposed to swearing, it just felt totally out of place in a book about Jane Austen.
Love and the Silver Lining is a romance of sorts but it has a lot more to the plot than the romance so I am enjoying it. I still don’t know if I buy the whole idea that two adults of the opposite sex can just be friends, but, hey, we’ll go with it for the sake of the book since it is well-written.
Once again, like Tammy’s first book in this series, Love and A Little White Lie, I can’t stand the one character. Here he is again in this book, and I still want to smack him for being a bit of a whiner. Ha. I think that Tammy wrote him this way on purpose, of course. He’s going through some growing pains, so it makes a lot of sense that he’s the way he is.
After I finish Tammy’s book, I’ll be jumping into something a bit darker, if my mood allows for it. I’ll probably get back into the next Longmire book or Midwinter Murder: Fireside Tales from the Queen of Mystery by Agatha Christie.
Little Miss and I read Paddington at night every night this week. During the day we are re-reading Children of the Longhouse by Joseph Bruchac. Next week, though, I hope to start The Cabin Faced West by Jean Fritz.
What’s Been Occurring
I shared in yesterday’s post that we had some snow last week.
You can catch up with what’s been going on in our world in that post. Spoiler: it’s not a lot.
Yesterday, Little Miss had a friend over and they climbed up on the hill in our neighbor’s yard and made a snowman. Little Miss’s little friend actually did most of the rolling and I was very impressed with the way she shoved that huge ball of snow up the hill with little effort.
They used frozen blueberries for the eyes and mouth, which attracted the deer later in the day, much to the girls’ delight. The temperature got up to almost 50 degrees yesterday, so the snow was melting fairly fast. The sun was out too, which was nice to see since it seems like we’ve had way more cloudy days than sunny days this winter, which is, obviously, normal.
I didn’t have a chance to get a photo of the snowman because I was inside the house cooking some fried chicken that Little Miss had asked me to cook for her. I’d made the same recipe earlier in the week by simply sprinkling season salt in a bag of almond flour, putting the chicken in and shaking it up, then frying it in canola oil. Little Miss was so thrilled with the chicken she asked for it again this weekend.
After the girls came in, I began looking for Scout, our younger cat, thinking I had let her out again. I went out back and called for her several times and even braved the dark between the house and garage, to go and see if I locked her in there. I prayed that a bear wouldn’t eat me since Little Miss and I were alone last night (The Husband was at an assignment for a freelance job and The Boy was spending the night at a friend’s.)
Lately, she’s been sneaking upstairs and curling up on top of Little Miss’s dresser and I started to wonder if that might be where she was, so finally, I went and looked and that was where she was the entire four hours I looked. I didn’t look the entire four hours, actually. I looked and called for her off and on during that time.
What We watched/are Watching
The Husband and I finished Brokenwood Mysteries, which was a bit sad. We are hopeful there will be a ninth season at some point. From what I read online, a ninth series is being planned. One of the actresses let that slip on her Instagram.
We also watched a couple episodes of Miss Scarlet and The Duke, the new Night Court, and The Rockford Files.
Little Miss and I watched a lot of Mary Berry, including Mary Berry’s Favorites. Little Miss says Mary is her favorite cook beside her own grandmother.
“Oh, and you,” she added.
Hmmm….well, thank you, kid. Honestly, though,, I’d love to taste Mary’s food and I think I’d choose her as my favorite behind my mom as well.
We are always fascinated with Mary’s kitchen hacks. Last night I was fascinated by how she used a melon baller to take the seeds out of a cucumber. I told Little Miss to watch and she said, “I’ve seen people do that.”
I said, “I’ve never seen anyone do that.”
She scoffed, stood up to head to the bathroom, looked over her shoulder, and said in a light tone, “Hmmm, where have you been?”
What I’m Writing
I planned to add some words to Fully Alive, my Biblical fiction story, last week but never got around to it. Honestly, I got too wrapped up with making reels and marketing material for the release of Shores of Mercy this week.
This coming week I hope to actually write, including a few blog posts I started last week, but haven’t finished.
What I’m Listening To
This past week I listened to some Mercy Me and Matthew West.
Now it’s your turn. What have you been doing, watching, reading, listening to or writing? Let me know in the comments or leave a blog post link if you also write a weekly update like this.
Excuse the mess. We’ve been busy this week doing crafts, homeschooling, and being outside in the cold.
What have you been busy doing this week?
This week I don’t have anything too exciting or new to drink, but I am glad to have some local honey to put in my organic peppermint tea. I ran out of honey early in the week and added sugar as a sweetener which was completely awful. I haven’t put plain sugar in anything in years, other than a cup of tea a few months ago when I was, again, out of honey.
I never realized how sickly sweet it was. It was so sweet that it actually made me feel sick to my stomach. I cut back on sugar over a decade ago and I won’t lie and say I never eat sugar, but I don’t put sugar in tea or on cereal any longer. It’s just too much to me. If I sweeten things it is with honey or maple syrup or molasses. I think I shared one week that I like to add maple syrup to my hot cocoa, which is only plain cocoa powder mixed in hot milk. I don’t use the cocoa mixes with sugar added because it’s simply too sweet for me.
Don’t worry — I’m not a sugarless snob. I still have candy bars and some cookies or cake, although very rarely on the cake and cookies. I simply don’t have the cravings for sweet food as much as I once did. I do, however, still crave chocolate, so I’m not sugar-free.
Winter remembered it was supposed to be – uh – wintering this past week and dumped a few inches of snow on us over a couple of days.
Little Miss and Zooma the Wonder Dog were super excited because they love the snow. I don’t really love the snow but I went out with them and took some photographs and shivered. After the first little snow, both Little Miss and Scout ended up a tree, but they were both short trees so both of them could climb out easily.
Eventually, we went back inside and I started a fire in our woodstove and The Boy made us homemade French fries while we finished our school lessons. It was really a nice, relaxing day
We had another storm on Wednesday and Little Miss and Zooma the Wonder Dog enjoyed their time in the snow again.
Since we are low on heating oil and have an outstanding bill from the insanely high oil prices, we are trying to run the woodstove more often and I’ve been surprised by how well it is heating the house. It did heat the house well before but we never let it run past our bedtime until this week. Now it heats the house all night as well, which means we can reduce our oil usage and turn down the electric heat.
I was very stressed when I realized how low we were on heating oil. It seems like we’ve been getting hit with a lot lately and this seemed like something else. It isn’t easy, especially if we really do run out of heating oil before we can afford another order, but we really are very lucky. We don’t have it as mad as many people. Our house, while old, is in very good shape, with a fairly new roof and siding. We were lucky the woodstove was in the house when we came here and that it keeps us warm on cold winter nights.
We are able to afford food and lately, people have been giving my parents food they can’t use from the food pantry and they’ve been passing that on to us.
We’ve truly been very blessed by God, even when I feel lost and worried about the future.
There are still some appointments coming up for my youngest that have me worried, but I’m doing my best to trust God each step of the way.
Last week Little Miss had some trouble sleeping. She wasn’t sure why, but she simply couldn’t sleep. I was very upset by this because I was tired and worried about her but also about how I’d function the next day. Eventually, after about three hours, she did fall asleep but by then I was wired and wide awake and my anxiety was high. I prayed and suddenly I felt a strange calm settle over me. I felt almost happy. I closed my eyes and prayed for a couple people, thought about some ideas for a future story and eventually drifted off and jerked awake fifteen minutes later. Then eventually I drifted off altogether and managed a few hours.
As I was drifting off I thought about how sometimes God doesn’t calm the storm raging around us, but, instead, he calms the storm within is.
I need that calm right now, certainly, with all that’s been going on. Only God can calm the storm within us and it’s something I need to remember as much as I can.
It was good to have that reminder pop into my head that night, or morning, and I don’t think it came from my own mind alone.
Have you had any reminders you needed lately?
And what are you drinking today to help get you through your day? I certainly hope it’s some nice tea or cocoa.
