UPDATE: The winners are…Pamela Reveal and miki!
*~*~*

This past week has been a bit of a trial. First, I came down with a respiratory infection (cough, stuffy ears) last Wednesday. I did a home COVID test, and then went to the doctor on Friday. No COVID, but I’m on steroids and antibiotics. That was after last Tuesday when I broke a tooth. So, I went to the dentist last Thursday, and had a cleaning, ex-rays, and was scheduled for a crown. *choke* I went in Tuesday of this week for the temporary and am now $1000 poorer. The dang thing keeps popping off. I had several nights where the coughing and the sore jaw kept me sleepless. Wah-wah. I know.

All of that mess put me behind my tidy, productive work schedule, so although I’m feeling better now (not fully purged of the infection or wearing my permanent crown just yet), I’m suffering from having to do tons of pages of edits to catch up. Which means, no time to write, which means as soon as the edits are out the door, I have to power down to get the pages written. January is turning out to be soooo stressful.

And add to all that, and we sprang a leak in the upstairs bathroom two days ago, which dumped water into the downstairs bathroom, and now we have repairs to make there… We fixed that leak, and another popped up yesterday. It never, ever ends. And I committed to going to Hawaii in July?

That’s three or four disasters, right? They’re supposed to come in threes, right? Are we done yet?

Anyway, I wanted to do a little giveaway today. Since I recently mailed all the hand painted bookmarks and postcards I owed to readers already, I thought it was time to give away some more. If you read eBooks, stick them in a recipe book!

For a chance to win one of these, tell me how YOUR January is going so far!

UPDATE: The winner is…bn100!
*~*~*

Happy New Year, Dear Reader! And just like that, 2022 is over and 2023 is here. I don’t know about you, but it feels like January has gone by SUPER quickly, even though it’s only the 10^th of the month so far—but it feels like it was just the 20^th of December, like, yesterday!

One way of slowing time down is writing by hand. I have an avid journal practice; do you like to journal? Whether you do or not, another practice I adore is that of letter writing. I have pen pals all over the world, and love getting “happy mail” in my inbox. And what better time to talk about writing letters than on the eve of “Month of Letters!”

What is Month of Letters, you say?

So glad you asked!

Like National Novel Writing Month, or NaNoWriMoo (nanowrimo.org), Month of Letters is a daily writing challenge – but instead of a story, the challenge is to write letters. Specifically, in the month of February, mail an item every day, and write back to everyone that writes you. It’s that simple! What do you write? The list is practically endless:

• A postcard
• A genuine letter, on paper and everything!
• A picture
• A newspaper, if you get one, or magazine cutting
• Even a fabric swatch!

I’ve mailed bookmarks and handmade coasters (I weave them on my Zoom loom (https://schachtspindle.com/product/zoom-loom-4-x-4/) and they fit perfectly into most card envelopes.  At just 4 inches by 4 inches, they don’t weigh a lot and I usually don’t even need to add extra postage!

I even have a close group of friends who all share “non-bill mail” with each other, and use any excuse to do it:

• January 23^rd is National Handwriting Day
• February 14^th is Valentine’s Day
• March or April have Mother’s Day
• May is my birthday month (May 8^th)
• June is Father’s Day
• July has Independence Day
• August is back to school
• September has Labor Day (and it’s a great opportunity to educate ones’ younger friends and relatives on where the weekend came from)
• October is, of course, Halloween – or Samhain for us Wiccans
• November is American Thanksgiving (October has Canadian Thanksgiving)
• December are the Winter Holidays and New Year’s Eve

So many opportunities to write! Now, you just need to find pals, right?

Look no further than the Month of Letters website, https://lettermo.com/. Registering is free, and once you do, you can make friends and share addresses. Unlike Incowrimo, another letter writing challenge, you have to be logged in to see addresses, and your address isn’t available to the public like it is on Incowrimo.

So, tell me, Dear Reader: What do you like to send or receive in the mail?

A. Catherine Noon
“My own experience has taught me this: if you wait for the perfect moment when all is safe and assured it may never arrive.”
~ Maurice Chevalier
acatherinenoon.com | noonandwilder.com | writerzengarden.com | knoontimeknitting.com

*~*~*

NOTE FROM DELILAH: I love this idea so much, I’ll offer to send one commenter one of my hand-painted postcards as a prize! 

UPDATE: The winner is…Mary Liz Wilson!
*~*~*

Well, National Clean Off Your Desk Day was actually yesterday—the 2nd Monday of January—but it coincided with National Word Nerd Day, so you know which day took precedence with me!

Let’s not worry about being late though. I took a picture!

No, that’s not the BEFORE picture.

I know you minimalists are likely hyperventilating, thinking about trying to work with all that clutter, but it’s organized and decluttered quite a bit from how it was. I have SPACE in the center front of my desk now. I tore apart my desk yesterday and dusted and rearranged, discarded, etc. Yes, I have too many candles and a huge wax warmer in the left corner next to my monitor. More candles in the far right of the picture, tucked behind my notebook stack. I just have the essentials, you know. And truthfully, my desk is more crowded in the winter than the summer because of all the plants I bring in from the patio that line up at the back of my desk. I can’t leave them out in the cold. And doesn’t everyone have jars and coffee cups filled with pens and markers? Maybe four large containers is a bit much, but I like having my tools. And I have a medium-sized bowl to the left of my desk’s working space where I dumped all my Halls and Ricola cough drops, plus prescriptions for the respiratory infection I’m trying to kick, so I thought putting them all in one container was “neater” than the having them lined up around my working space. I’m trying. I only have one water container for painting on my desk, and I trimmed down the number of palettes cluttering up the sides of my working space. So, much better than it was. There were stacks of things. I moved all toys and figurines into the shelves above my monitor. That round tin in the front right of the picture is a single bracelet kit, so I don’t have beads cluttering up everything, everywhere.

And voila! My desk is clean and orderly (according to my particular needs!). A pristine, spartan surface is like a blank page—it offers me no inspiration whatsoever!

So, are you going to take up the challenge and clean your desk or workspace? Are you a minimalist or do you need inspirational clutter all around you? Answer for a chance to win something. I’ll decide what later!

UPDATE: The winner is…Jana!
*~*~*

Here’s the contest: Open a dictionary (they’re online if you don’t have a physical copy!) and find a word you’ve never used before. Your goal is to learn its meaning and then use it sometime today! You can even choose one of the words I have in the puzzle below!

For our purposes (for the contest), share the word you chose, and its meaning, for a chance to win a $5 Amazon gift card!
Enjoy the puzzle, fellow nerds!

BTW, my new word is logophile. It’s someone who loves words and languages! How cool is that?

I’ve said it before, but I pull a tarot card on Sundays as a part of my planning for the week. Just one card to interpret.

For Christmas, my lovely son-in-law had a very special gift he’d been eager to give me. In the weeks leading up to Christmas, he’d say, “I saw it, and I just knew it was perfect for you!” When we opened our Christmas presents, he watched to see me unwrap it. As soon as I did, I wore the biggest smile because he’d totally nailed it. He’d found this box of Next Generation tarot cards, which combine my love of woo-woo with my nerdy love for Star Trek.

So, I’m not sure how useful they’ll be in the future (I think they’ll likely sit in my curio cabinet with me Star Wars figures), but I shuffled them this morning and pulled just one card, and…

I couldn’t believe it! Out of 78 cards—Worf! Swear-to-God, hand-on-my-heart, WORF! I could’ve pulled the three bars of latinum (Star Trek currency), and it’s just a picture of three gold bars, and I don’t know what I would’ve “read” from looking at the card—but I got Worf!

So, as always, I concentrate on the card itself—what the picture tells me. Worf is naturally the card of Strength. Worf is a warrior, through and through, with a strict code of honor that he adheres to. When he loves, whether friend, family, or lover, he goes all in and he’ll always have your back. When he engages in a conflict, he’s not going in with diplomacy in mind, he’s going to kick ass. So, for me, this week, I’m going in to kick ass!

I checked the accompanying book to see what it had to say, and basically, I will overcome all kinds of obstacles with my indomitable will. Check

Which is exactly what I hope for. I began last week roaring in on my New Year’s ambitions. However, by Wednesday, I was sick with a virus—hacking cough, headaches, runny nose. Not COVID! I did a home test, and then the doctor did one on Friday. Now, I’ve got a mountain of pills to take to kick the infection. I’m hoping today is the last day I’m dragging ass, and that I’m going to “Worf it” this week!

Do you love it when something cool like that happens? Some lucky draw of the card or something just falls into place like it’s supposed to?

Open Contests

1. Happy National Science Fiction Day! (Contest) — This one ends soon! Win a $5 Amazon gift card!
2. Breaking Bad Habits (Contest) — Win a hand-painted postcard!
3. 2022 Review: Just reminding you… (Contest) — Win an Amazon gift card!
4. Saturday Puzzle-Contest: What are we celebrating next? — Win an Amazon gift card!

UPDATE: The winner is…Donna Bayar Repsher!
*~*~*

I love gift-giving and our family looks for every opportunity to celebrate holidays with gifts, food, and fun. So, naturally, I’m already turning my attention to the next celebration.

Solve the puzzle, then tell me whether this is a holiday you like to get behind for a chance to win a $5 Amazon gift card!

Middle school. Are there two words in the English language that can bring out cringing more than those two? Well, maybe, “gym class”—especially gym class while in middle school. Seriously, how did I have the guts to wear shorts in middle school? There hasn’t been another time in my life when I felt more judged, more criticized, and more uneasy about myself than those middle school years.

It didn’t help that I was one of the tallest girls in my class and one of the girls who much preferred watching soap operas, reading, and daydreaming while writing little story ideas down in my notebooks. Being a creative kid has come a long way in the last few years, but let me tell you in my small town it was seen as weird. Playing sports was normal, writing and telling people you wanted to be an author when you grew up sounded weird, and I was constantly told it would be impossible. And I felt pushed to conform. To be more like the other kids. Even the music I liked was different. I was still listening to George Michael long after he had stopped putting new music out for a while. So, while the others were listening to what was new and cool, I was listening to my pop star boyfriend and writing down story ideas.

However, my preteen angst has a happy ending as those story ideas ended up into a series about a girl dating her favorite pop star and all the anxious moments that go along with it (The Cecily Taylor Series). But even more importantly is that the angsty, cringey, middle school moments that brought me to my knees also gave me story ideas. I took the characters I created in the sixth grade (Landry) and her cooler friends (Devon, Peyton, Ashanti, and India) and merged them with the real-life mean girl issues and growing pains I dealt with back then to create my first book, True Colors, which became the first book in the Landry’s True Colors Series.

All the embarrassing and difficult moments of middle school with doubting yourself, bullying, mean girls, understanding what frenemies are and how to deal with it, and crushes just all came together to create books that I hope will help readers know they are not alone in going through the same things. I also get a lot of messages from parents, aunts, and grandparents saying the topics bring up healthy discussions that get the readers to speak up about those difficult topics. I know I stayed quiet and retreated into books to help me deal with things.

Funny enough, my dad was a middle school assistant principal who I now realize was sharing his stories with me to help me through things without making it obvious. I should have known the way he brought up school dances and his own vivid memories of having shyness attacks at his own school dances.

I’m currently updating and relaunching the Landry’s True Colors Series and I can’t wait for the next group of readers to discover it. I have reading guides for each chapter and am looking forward to helping more readers feel less alone out there. To date, the Landry’s True Colors Series has won three Readers Favorite awards for best preteen books and the Dayton Book Expo Bestseller Award for children/teens. Landry in Like is also a Literary Classics Gold Medal recipient.

I hope you enjoy reading about Landry as she navigates through middle school. I’m including a photo of me back then with Sun In which gave my normally dark brown hair a lovely burnt umber look. Enjoy!

Find the Series here: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09W9S664B

About the Author

Krysten Lindsay Hager writes about friendship, self-esteem, fitting in, frenemies, crushes, fame, first loves, and values. Her work includes YA contemporary, middle grade fiction, and adult and young adult rom-coms. She received her BA in English and master’s degree in liberal studies from the University of Michigan-Flint.

Krysten’s work has been featured in USA Today, The Flint Journal, the Grand Haven Tribune, the Beavercreek Current, the Bellbrook Times, Springfield News-Sun, Grand Blanc View, Dayton Daily News and on Living Dayton.

Website: https://www.krystenlindsay.com/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/KrystenLindsayHagerAuthor
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/krystenlindsay/
Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.com/krystenlindsay/
Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/stores/Krysten-Lindsay-Hager/author/B00L2JC9P2