A Time For Everything

...into the future...

...or...

Life Returns to Normal

The road trip is in the rear view mirror.

My friend's visit came to an end.

Life returned to normal.

And now I have things I want to accomplish.

My desire to finish books has returned. It didn't come back in a rush because you long-time followers know that I wasn't sure it would come back at all or that I even cared if it did. But it has. The feeling have been simmering for a while and broke into a boil more recently, but being excited about my books and about writing and telling stories feels good.

My first project is a re-vamp of the first series, including new covers and some Amazon A+ Content graphics, for which I got an amazing deal from my cover artist.

The books were originally written in some weird second person, present tense which is prevalent in fan fiction but *not* in commercial fiction.

Why I did that, I have no idea, but I've been meaning to edit all those books into proper third person, past tense for years, but doing that until recently has been a tedious chore. The advent of AI platforms means I can make AI do the hard work. I still have to edit and tweak what it gets wrong (dialogue), but that's a much easier and less time-consuming endeavor.

I also want to finish book seven, which has been sitting un-done and un-touched for too many years, so I've been re-reading and percolating those heroes and that story, as well as brainstorm a plot and character ideas for books Eight and Nine. :0) I'm ambitious, aren't I?

* * * * *

Just a quick shout-out to my friend's visit because I haven't done that yet...

My friend Angela is a fellow writer and a fellow hockey fan, and we agreed that it would be fun to attend a hockey game together and, long story short, we made it happen.

She flew into Dallas to see her team play my team in my team's barn. Now, her team isn't so good right now and we both knew the chances of the Stars beating the Coyotes were high--which they did--but it was more about the experience. Surprisingly, she wasn't the only Coyotes fan in the crowd. We spotted a handful of them.

And we had fun, both visiting in general and watching hockey. Well, I enjoyed it. I shouldn't speak for her. ;0) She also got to meet a shared online friend that she'd never met before, so that was cool for her as well.

Here we are, post game:

* * * * *

So Q2 starts today, and I've been ruminating on what specific goals I want to work towards and accomplish over the course of the next three months. I also needed to update my Vision Board to keep those tasks / goals front and center.

So here are the things I'm working toward this quarter: a new cross stitch pattern for the online store; planting a Chinese wisteria in the bird feeder bed to a) provide shade for the birds / bird feeder and b) provide food for bees; read two non-fiction books (about money probably); get my eating habits back on track; and lose at least 5 pounds. I also want to finalize the converted text of the first two books I mentioned above.

* * * * *

I've also spent some time out in the yard -- HELLO SPRING -- cleaning out the squirrel buffet area of the yard. I churned up the old mulch and pulled the weeds. The weeds I tossed, but I relocated the funky mulch and dirt to a large low spot in my lawn (see that dark patch in the upper right edge of the image).

I also took down and tossed that white bench hanging off the tree at the top of the image. It was falling apart. I like it a lot, though, so I looked for another and happened to find them on sale at Hobby Lobby where I just so happened to have a gift card. I bought two since it was basically a two-for-one deal.

I'll buy some fresh mulch in a week or two, I'm thinking red this year for a pop of color, and fill in all the spaces around the rocks and fill up the bordered space to help my tree retain any moisture come the heat of summer.

* * * * *

And some good news--the Brown Eyed Girl and her soul mate *and* Sonshine are coming to visit. Sadly, not at the same time, but I'm not complaining. The Brown Eyed Girl will be in town over Mother's Day, and Sonshine will visit for my birthday. So YAY!

And that's about all I have to say for now.

Take care and see you in a couple of weeks.