Talk About Irregular . . .

It's been nearly a YEAR since my last blog post. Which, I'm afraid, means it's been that long since I've created a newsletter. Sigh.

Do I have news? Only the same thing I've been saying since publishing the second edition of SPIRIT; the next book is coming soon.

Boring. It's not that I'm not writing. I am. Daily. I'm just distracted because I've taken on another project. (Well, two, actually.) I started writing the next book in the series, outlining, doing research, and fleshing out my characters. It's just so fun that I couldn't stop. That aside, I've been compiling a collection of letters that my mom wrote beginning in the mid-70s and ending a decade later. The Friar Lane Newsletter, she called them when my two oldest siblings joined the Navy, and she decided it was more efficient to write one letter instead of two. It was more efficient still when the next two oldest siblings left for college. (I know what you're thinking, and you're right. I have a big family.) I wasn't included in these letters until I went to Sweden as a foreign exchange student as a high school senior, then went to college. My youngest sibling never got them because she stuck around and knew everything that was going on.

What I love the most about this collection is the family history. A lot happened in those ten or so years, and to read how my mom was processing all the comings and goings, i.e., deaths, marriages, births, and all the changes of address for six children while working full-time, I realized that this was not 'our' story, but hers. Like a memoir written in newsletters.

With the help of Atticus (a platform for book design) and Ingram Spark (a printing company), I am going to bind it all together and distribute them to my mom and siblings for Christmas. That's the plan, which means that INSIGHT, while I am working on it, might not be out in 2026 like I'd hoped. But be patient. It's nearly there.

Note: The Friar Lane Newsletter is a personal story and will not be published.

Here is the cover photo. That's me in the black vest. I was 15.