Hello, Everyone!
I hope you are all having a wonderful fall! The children are back in school, the lazy days of summer are over, and everyone is back on schedule. At least, we’re supposed to be. With Thanksgiving and Christmas around the corner, these schedules will feel a few bumps with shopping and baking and visiting.
I know I’ve fallen off my schedule a bit with my writing. I had hoped to finish the fifth book in the Crystal Creek series by the end of the year, but, alas, it wasn’t meant to be. Now I’m planning on a late winter – early spring release. Some books are a little more needy than others. Sigh! My cover designer is working on the cover now, so by January, I should have a cover reveal I can share with all of you. That should motivate me to finish the book! I’ll place the cover in front of my computer so I can remember that Charisse and Trent want their story told.
Winter has finally come to Colorado. It has been such a lovely fall with the leaves turning flaming colors of orange and red and yellow. On the weekend, my husband and I like to walk along a canal near our home. It’s about the only quality time we can spend with each other. I still have a day job. He isn’t ready to retire and teaches piano privately in the evening. When the weekend comes, we take a walk and enjoy a beautiful countryside, and share our thoughts about what is happening in the world, in our neighborhood and in our home, which we’re remodeling. The canal is lined with cottonwoods, pear trees that bear fruit, Canadian cherry trees, ash trees, and a multitude of other species I haven’t identified yet. I hope to someday. I’d love to have these beautiful trees growing in our yard. With the mild weather, these trees have had time to show their fall colors. Our walk is filled with a myriad of beauty. The fields surrounding the canal are gold. The trees have held their leaves. The rose blooms have turned to rosehips and gently sway in the breeze. I don’t remember such a colorful fall. I’ll hold this in my memory for years to come.
Last week, a snowstorm covered all the fall colors. This brings a different beauty with white, fluffy snow mounds, icicles hanging from tree limbs and lacy frost collecting in the corners of the windows. In front of our house, we have a planter filled with purple and white petunias. We were still watering them. I couldn’t bear to see them perish from lack of water. Now they are sad and drooping from the shock of the cold. We hadn’t planted petunias of these colors before, so already we’re planning our spring planting, and plan to add purple and white petunias to the planter again. Something to look forward to.
Among other things to look forward to is Thanksgiving. This is a family time for us. Most of my family still live in Colorado so I’ll see nieces and nephews I haven’t seen since last Thanksgiving. My sisters and I are close so I hear the news of what their children have been doing during the past year.
This coming year will bring lots of activity – two weddings and two babies. I love to crochet. If my husband and I don’t have plans for Friday night, I’ll crochet while watching a movie on my laptop. I hadn’t crocheted since my mother passed away in 2011. My father was still living and I wanted to spend as much time with him as I could. I’d forgotten that I liked to crochet. Last winter as I was cleaning out a storage closet, I found my crochet bag with a partially finished baby afghan. I don’t crochet anything except baby afghans. I finished the afghan. If you want to see it, look through my Facebook photos. I posted a picture of it on my personal page. Shortly after finishing that afghan, I finished another one. I’m almost finished with my third. With the upcoming weddings, the babies will soon follow. I want to make sure each baby receives an afghan so I make sure I have a supply.
I hope you have my new release the Crystal Creek box set. It’s ebook only. I hope you love it and will add it to your Christmas list for your friends and family members. This set contains the first three books of the Crystal Creek series. I’m so happy to have enough books that I can compile them into one set. This is an exciting accomplishment for me.
Have a fabulous week, Everyone, and a wonderful and blessed Thanksgiving holiday!
Love,
Laura
