He’s the best man I’ve ever known. He came from very humble beginnings, joined the Air Force to make a better life for himself, and sent money back to his parents to provide for them, even after he married my mother. He loved my mother, gave her a good life, and built the house I live in now with his own hands. We lost him in 2019, and we miss him. And if I tend to write heroes who are quiet and stoic and brave, well, I had a great role model.
It’s his birthday today, and I’ll be thinking about him.
I’m posting the puzzle-contest early because tomorrow’s a special day for our family.
It’s the first day of November! Can you believe it’s already here? I can’t. This year flew by. I can’t say I’m sorry 2024 is drawing to a close. I’m ready for what’s next. I also look forward to the holiday season. I have some of my Christmas list covered already, but I have to pull out everything I have stuffed in closets to see what’s left to acquire. My daughter has a shelf in the pantry already filling up with things for the Thanksgiving meal. We decorate for Christmas early because my dd loves-loves-loves decorating and likes to see it for longer than a month, so she’s been gathering new things to add—another tree, good Lord! I love to watch her and the girls with boxes filling the living room as they hang ornaments and set up little houses with lights. It’s nuts how much “stuff” we have.
So, I’m happy it’s November. There’s so much to look forward to—Thanksgiving, the start of Advent, Krampus Day, St. Nicklaus Day (we love setting out our shoes!), Christmas, New Years! Our family loves any excuse for a celebration. This season is our favorite!
How about you? Solve the puzzle, then share what you’re looking forward to during this holiday season for a chance to win a $5 Amazon gift card!Â
A Reminder!
Looking for a sexy read, featuring a lonely, taciturn lord of the manor?Â
I wrote zero words! Zero! I didn’t even revise anything I’ve written, although I have a book coming out soon that needs it!
I completed 3 editing projects for other authors in October.
Still, with so little productivity, I feel like I climbed mountains.
Health-related:
I underwent my third round of chemo and noted how I felt during the days after so I could try to figure out how to work around the chemo schedule. The fatigue continues to be the worst part. My 4th round, which was to start on the 28th, was canceled due to my extremely low platelet count. The chemo-induced anemia is kicking my butt. The aches only last a few days. My white blood count takes a beating, too, but the shots they give me after chemo bring it up quickly. They are going to adjust one of the medicines they give me to try to address the platelet issue.
I’m maintaining my 20 pounds weight loss.
I’m losing muscle tone. I know I need to add some sort of exercise to my schedule on days when I can get around, but I’ve just been so tired I tend to sleep a lot.
I had a CT scan with contrast yesterday. The “shadow” they previously saw on my spine is gone. The nodule on my liver is gone. They see reduction in the thickness of my omentum and the sizes of the tumors in my ovaries and uterus. I won’t know any numbers until next Monday. But progress! 🙂
Happiness-related:Â
The family has been wonderful, doing takeout and watching movies nearly weekly, so we have family “events” to share.
I didn’t paint a thing this month. No drive at all. It’s like the writing—anything that requires imagination takes too much energy.
To complete Ignition, the fourth book in the Delta Fire series during November’s NaNoWriMo.
To complete 4 editing projects in November!
To write at least 1/4 of Built Like Mack during NaNoWriMo.
My writing goals may be pie-in-the-sky goals, given I have two bouts of chemo sceduled for the month, but I have to shoot for something.
For health related, I plan:
To go through two more rounds of chemo, which when I look at my calendar seems overwhelming, but I’ll get through it.
To continue to watch what I eat and hope I can manage to drop a few more pounds.
To up my physical activities so that I don’t lose any more muscle. Maybe I’ll give myself stairstep goals or walk the driveway to the gate and back goals—on days when I’m not sick as a dog.
For happiness-related, I plan:Â
To fiddle in my art room!
Attend the local art guild’s Potluck Dinner.
To spend time with the family—movies, meals, and flea market adventures! I’m not overly ambitious.
Enjoy Thanksgiving and Christmas decorating with the family!
Contest
Comment on anything you’ve read in this post. Tell me what you’re doing to make yourself happier and healthier, or tell me what you plan to read in November…
Like I said, comment on anything for a chance to win a $5 Amazon gift card!
Come up with the correct question to this Jeopardy answer: In 1928, she was appointed chairwoman by Herbert Hoover to head a committee charged with fact finding on the issue of Negro housing. Correct question: Who is Nannie Helen Burroughs? Nannie Helen Burroughs lived when the Republican party was still the Grand Old Party of Lincoln and when being a Black republican wasn’t an oxymoron.
Nannie was born on May 2, 1879, in Orange, Virginia, to freeborn parents. Their enslaved father used his carpentry skills to buy his freedom. Nannie’s father was a minister and her mother a cook. They instilled in her the core value of uplifting the race in everything she did. It’s no surprise that she chose, “We specialize in the wholly impossible” for the motto of the school she would establish.
Active in her denomination, Nannie served as bookkeeper and secretary of the Foreign Mission Board of the National Baptist Convention. In 1900, her speech, “How the Sisters Are Hindered From Helping,” led to the founding of the Women’s Convention in 1900. She served as president until 1913 and continued working with them until 1947.
While studying at Eckstein-Norton University in Louisville, Kentucky, she created a club for women which provided bookkeeping, sewing, cooking, and typing classes in the evening. Societal opposition to educating women beyond being homemakers only inflamed Nannie’s activism. In 1909 at age twenty-six, she opened the National Training School for Women and Girls in Washington D.C. The school provided classes in shoe repair, barbering, and gardening in addition to domestic science and secretarial skills. In 1918, a Seattle magazine article showed the school also offered millinery classes and agricultural training. To graduate, everyone had to take the course Nannie created on the contributions of African Americans to history.
She worked for suffrage with my September 2024 D.D. blogpost subject Mary Church Terrell and advocated for the unionization of domestic workers. Nannie’s work with the National Association of Colored Women led to the founding of the National Association of Wage Earners.
She never married and worked tirelessly on her causes. But don’t picture her as a workaholic activist. In the 1920s, Nannie wrote two popular one-act plays for church groups, which continued to be produced through the decades. Her comedic satire The Slabtown District Convention enjoyed a revival in 2001.
A biography of Nannie was included in the children’s book Women Builders in 1931. The work was illustrated by my D.D. October 2023 and February 2024 post subject, Hallie Q. Brown.
Nannie died in 1961. Three years after her death, her school was renamed for her. Trades Hall, its original building, was designated a national historic landmark in 1991. A prolific writer and editor, the Library of Congress holds 110,000 of her papers in its Manuscript Division.
Once again, the dedication and determination of women like Nannie Helen Burroughs leaves me awestruck. For a chance at a $10 Amazon gift card, share your impression of Nannie and women like her in the comments.
Her Heavenly Phantom
by Michal Scott
Forced into a marriage of convenience neither wants, a mild-mannered banker with an intriguing secret discovers his reluctant bride has a secret, too.
Excerpt from “Her Heavenly Phantom” inside Secret Identities…
The carriage driver’s whoa brought him back to the present. Twelve noon and the sun shone brightly. Too brightly for noon on Good Friday. At that hour the sky had begun to darken and the veil of the temple had ripped in twain as Jesus died for our sins on a cross between two thieves.
Harold stepped to the sidewalk and offered his hand to Emily. She took it without a word then preceded him up the steps to their new home.
“I’ll be late at the bank, preparing for my trip to Philadelphia,” he said. “You weren’t expecting me for dinner, were you?”
“No.” She pulled off her gloves and laid them beside her hat on the hall table. “Will you want something upon your return?”
“Don’t bother. I won’t be hungry.”
“Very well. I’ll leave a note for cook with tomorrow’s menus.” She went up the stairs. Her bustleless walking skirt outlined a shapely rear. She swayed with each step as if in time to some erotic metronome. Harold blenched and concealed his cock’s sudden twitch behind his top hat.
“I’ll make sure to leave a door open,” she said. “So, you’ll know which bedroom is yours.”
That suited him fine. He’d want no witness to him losing himself in the rapture induced by his lady of the balcony.
I have such vivid memories of Halloween night when I lived on military bases as a kid. We carried pillowcases and hit every house in enlisted housing, running from one to the next, and when we finished, our parents would load us up and take us to officer housing (where they had the best candy!), and we’d hit every house there as well. We’d come back with months’ worth of candy and then sit and trade for our favorite kinds.
For me, it was Tootsie Rolls.
I live in a rural area now, so we don’t get Trick or Treaters here, and I do miss the kids showing up at the door to get their treats. Our kids dress up and hit the major parties at the churches and on Main Street. I used to go with them, but I’ll wait at home for them to come back (yes, even the 15-year-old will find a party she can go to). When they come home, they always search their buckets for my favorite candy to share.
I’d love to hear about your memories of Halloween. And for a chance to win a $5 Amazon gift card, tell me your favorite Halloween candy! Enjoy the puzzle!Â
I’ve talked before about our menagerie of indoor animals—cats, dogs, bunnies. When my parents passed and my daughter’s family moved in, we combined two families’ pets. We figured that through natural attrition we’d winnow down the pets.
And then yesterday happens. My daughter drove the two youngest to school and on the way home, she saw something tiny and black wobbling across the road in school traffic and very quickly stopped her car, stopped traffic and scooped up…a very tiny, dirty, scared kitten.
Meet Binx. We thought we’d get her to the vet, give her a good bath, then try to rehome her, but you know how that works. Once she was in our home, all the girls fawned over her, named her, and she’s ours.
She’s our second Halloween cat. Years ago (16 years?), I stood outside in the middle of the night to watch a rare full moon when I felt something furry weaving figure eights around my ankles. Pumpkin is still with us. Old and grumpy, but still healthy. But cats are easy, right?
We’re rejiggering what cats stay where, and Pumpkin is going to join Tessa and me downstairs. Guess I’ll need a new picture…
For a chance to win a $5 Amazon gift card, tell me whether you have pets and if you’ve rescued any yourself!
I was lazy yesterday and didn’t post my Saturday puzzle. So, today’s post includes the puzzle-contest at the end of this message! Be sure to scroll down if you want to play!
Report Card
Last week…
I worked on edits for one author.
I published the Delta Heat books in online stores other than Amazon (went wide!).
I slept—a lot, again. I’m still on the mend from the latest chemo round. (I have a scan coming in early November to see whether my cancer is diminishing.)
This next week…
I’ll be working on edits for possibly three authors this week and will finish it by the weekend. I’ll be busy, busy, busy!
I’ll try working/editing the pages I’ve already written for Ignition and, hopefully, finishing a new chapter.
I’ll be working on revisions of The Demon Lord’s Cloak, which releases November 12th. Have you pre-ordered your copy?Â
I’ll be deciding whether I’ll participate in NaNoWriMo this year. It’s a “write 50,000 words in November” challenge. It is probably/definitely more than I can commit to, but I so want to get back to writing…
Open Contests
Be sure to check out these posts and enter to win the prizes that are still up for grabs!
I am beyond excited for this series to begin! I just finished watching the trailer and thought I’d share it with you!
For a chance to win a $5 Amazon gift card, solve the puzzle then let me know if this show excites your interest! Or let me know what new upcoming series you’re dying to see!
