Today’s weekly photo post shows off the brilliant color of the birds of paradise just beyond our pool. This photo was taken around 5pm and our property is tucked down over the hill from where the sun sets, so the lighting is all indirect and muted. Even in the low light, these flowers shine with…
Today’s weekly photo post is of one of our two almond trees which has begun to blossom. The crows tend to get all the nuts before we even have an inkling that they might be ready. Apparently, almond trees are a lot of work to harvest and require quite a bit of pampering so that…
Spring has sprung here in sunny SoCal. Today’s post for my weekly photo is just one of the many flowers that has decided that the combination of scattered showers and warm weather we’ve been having mean it’s time to poke their heads up and get their bloom on! I was good this week and didn’t…
My pick for the weekly photo this week is one of our very silly golden retriever puppy, Olivia. She’s almost a year old and she loves exploring things, like the crevices in the couch where the kids drop all sorts of tasty treasures. She’ll get her whole head down in the cushions and our son…
Today’s weekly photo is of one of two Silk Floss Trees (Chorisia speciosa) on our property. This tree is holding on to its blooms as long as it possibly can, despite the lows in the 20s and frost several mornings in a row last week. I haven’t been able to get an interesting picture of…
This week for our How I Write series, my accountability group asked, “How do you develop your characters? Do you have a favourite kind/archetype?” We covered part of the idea of character development before and my general method is in the post, Building Characters where I likened it to my daughter’s cosplay outfits. I skimmed…
This week for our How I Write series, my accountability group asked, “Could you be best friends with any of the heroines you’ve written. Is she/Are they someone you would hang out with? Why or why not?” I don’t know about BFFs, but my heroines are definitely the kind of people I’d hang out with….
This week for our How I Write series, my accountability group asked, “Dialogue, narrative, exposition, or description? What are your favorite parts of writing and why? Your least favorite and why? What do you do to make your least favorite parts more attractive or easier?” Deceptively Easy Parts of Writing When I am able to…
This week for our How I Write series, my accountability group asked, “What advice do you think your younger self would give to you now? What advice would you give to your older self/future self?” Then In college, I first had the idea that I too could write a romance novel. It’s still firmly…
This week for our How I Write series, my accountability group was asked about teaching moments: “What have you recently learned from a REAL LIFE event/happening that you can apply to your writing/writing career?” Have you ever felt like the universe is trying to tell you something? It’s been shouting at me lately. When the…