Missing Malice – A Love Letter

/in , , /by

by Sparkle Abbey

Awards Banquet Table

Malice Domestic is the annual convention that celebrates the traditional mystery and frankly it’s one of our favorites.  This year we were unable to attend and we were so bummed. From our very first Malice Domestic and multiple ones since that first one, the mystery community welcomed us. We’re so grateful for the opportunity to meet readers who have become friends. And thankful for all the wisdom shared, advice offered,  and great tips from other mystery authors. Sometimes tips about things we were too new to the business to even know we were going to need to know. We listened, we took notes, and we soaked it all in.

It was necessary but so very difficult to not be there this year. We were sad to miss getting to meet new people, see old friends, and share in the celebrations. To everyone who posted photos on social media, thank-you so much. It was wonderful to get to live a little bit of that Malice magic vicariously.  To all of the Agatha Award nominees and winners that we didn’t get to congratulate in person – congratulations! If you missed the list of Agatha winners you can find it here: Announcing the Agatha Award Winners

And if you have not yet read these books, you should. All of them.

And by the way, registration is open for Malice Domestic 2024. And we’re not missing out again. We hope to see you there!

sparkle and abbeySparkle Abbey is actually two people, Mary Lee Ashford and Anita Carter, who write the national best-selling Pampered Pets cozy mystery series. They are friends as well as neighbors so they often get together and plot ways to commit murder. (But don’t tell the other neighbors.)

They love to hear from readers and can be found on Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest, their favorite social media sites. Also, if you want to make sure you get updates, sign up for their newsletter via the SparkleAbbey.com website

How Intelligent is Artificial Intelligence?

/in , , , /by

By Lois Winston

AI is here to stay, and there is much to worry about. For instance, we’ve all heard about the scams where bad actors contact people and demand ransom for a kidnapped relative. Too many people act out of fear before thinking and wind up losing huge sums of money. Thanks to AI, scammers can now clone the actual voice of the “kidnap victim.”

Writers are worried they’ll become obsolete, that in the future AI will take over publishing. After all, if publishers can use AI to churn out novels, why pay authors? I wondered if authors’ fears are truly founded. So I decided to conduct an experiment. I went on ChatGPT and told it, “Write a manuscript in the style of the Anastasia Pollack Crafting Mysteries by Lois Winston.”

Artificial Intelligence is supposed to be able to analyze text and produce a new work in the style of the author. There are currently eleven Anastasia Pollack Crafting Mysteries and three novellas. First chapters and back cover copy are widely available online, both on e-retailer sites and my own website. It didn’t take AI long to churn out several chapters. Here’s the beginning of a book created by ChatGPT:

Murder and Mayhem in the Crafting World

Chapter One

Anastasia Pollack had been up since dawn, frantically stitching together a wedding dress for her best friend’s daughter. As a professional crafter and owner of the American Woman magazine’s crafting column, Anastasia was used to tight deadlines, but this one felt especially pressing. After all, she couldn’t let her best friend down, and she wanted everything to be perfect for the big day.

In the first sentence, there are glaring errors. I write in first person, not third person. How intelligent is ChatGPT if it couldn’t even discern this? Anastasia is the crafts editor at a women’s magazine. She’s not a “professional crafter,” and she doesn’t “own” a crafting column in a magazine.

It got worse:

Just as she finished the final stitches, her phone rang. It was her mother, who never called before noon.

“Anastasia, darling,” her mother’s voice came through the phone, “I need your help.”

Anastasia sighed, knowing that her mother’s definition of “help” was very different from her own. “What do you need, Mother?”

“It’s your uncle. He’s in trouble again.”

Anastasia’s heart sank. Uncle Ralph was always getting himself into some sort of scrape or another. “What kind of trouble?”

UNCLE Ralph? Ralph is a Shakespeare-quoting African Grey parrot! He makes his appearance on Page 4 of Assault with a Deadly Glue Gun, the first book in the series. ChatGPT scanned enough to know Ralph was a character but wasn’t smart enough to know the difference between a human and a bird.

I won’t bore you further, except to say that ChatGPT also came nowhere close to capturing my voice. I write humorous amateur sleuth mysteries. Anastasia is a Jersey girl with a Jersey girl’s outlook on life. Publisher’s Weekly compared her to Tina Fey’s Liz Lemon from Thirty Rock, and Kirkus Reviews called her, “North Jersey’s more mature answer to Stephanie Plum.” ChatGPT obviously isn’t intelligent enough to understand and duplicate humor beyond the standard Knock-Knock joke.

Not to mention the fact that “mediocre” would be a generous description of the writing ChatGPT produced. I worked for a literary agency for a dozen years. If someone had submitted Murder and Mayhem in the Crafting World, it would have received a swift rejection letter.

However, perhaps I was partly at fault. I had asked the AI to write a manuscript “in the style” of my series. What would happen if I tried again, this time saying, “Create a book in the Anastasia Pollack Crafting Mystery Series by Lois Winston”?

The results were no better:

A Deadly Yarn in the Anastasia Pollack Crafting Mystery Series

Chapter 1

Anastasia Pollack had been expecting a normal day at the office. She was going through the piles of paperwork that had accumulated on her desk when she received a call from her son, Alex.

“Mom, I need you to come to the yarn store. I think something’s wrong.”

Anastasia’s heart skipped a beat. She knew Alex wouldn’t call her unless it was something serious.

“I’m on my way,” she replied, grabbing her coat and keys.

When she arrived at the yarn store, she saw Alex standing outside with a group of people. He ran up to her as soon as he saw her.

“Mom, thank God you’re here,” he said, his eyes wide with worry. “It’s Catherine. She’s dead.”

Anastasia’s heart sank. Catherine was one of her closest friends and employees at the store. She couldn’t believe that she was gone.

As she flipped through the pages, she realized that Catherine had been keeping a diary. The entries were cryptic, but Anastasia could tell that something was bothering her friend.

Once again, ChatGPT had created a third person narrative. Once again, Anastasia is NOT a shop owner. And once again, ChatGPT wasn’t intelligent enough to tell the difference between a human and an animal.

In my series, “Catherine” is not Anastasia’s best friend. Her best friend is Cloris McWerther, the food editor at the magazine where they both work. “Catherine” is Catherine the Great, her mother’s cat.

Catherine the Great doesn’t show up until Chapter Five in Assault with a Deadly Glue Gun, but the AI had scanned enough of the text to find her name. If it were really intelligent, it would have picked up on the fact that she’s a four-legged creature, especially since she’s introduced as “Catherine the Great, my mother’s extremely corpulent white Persian cat.”

All ChatGPT would have had to do is scan any of my books’ Amazon pages where it would have found a large illustration of all three pets in the Pollack household. I’m wondering, if I tried a third experiment, would ChatGPT morph Anastasia’s mother-in-law’s French bulldog into yet another human? I decided not to waste my time.

Post a comment for a chance to win one of several promo codes I’m giving away for a free download of the audiobook version of Decoupage Can Be Deadly, the fourth book in my Anastasia Pollack Crafting Mystery Series.

~*~

USA Today and Amazon bestselling and award-winning author Lois Winston writes mystery, romance, romantic suspense, chick lit, women’s fiction, children’s chapter books, and nonfiction under her own name and her Emma Carlyle pen name. Kirkus Reviews dubbed her critically acclaimed Anastasia Pollack Crafting Mystery series, “North Jersey’s more mature answer to Stephanie Plum.” In addition, Lois is a former literary agent and an award-winning craft and needlework designer who often draws much of her source material for both her characters and plots from her experiences in the crafts industry. Learn more about Lois and her books at her website www.loiswinston.com where you can also sign up for her newsletter and follow her on various social media sites.

Researching Retirement: Starting a New Series

/in , , /by

By Sparkle Abbey  

Spring is here! Trees are blooming, tornadoes are popping up throughout the country, and we’re knee-deep in the first book of our new series. Last month we shared our adventures in researching retirement communities and how we landed on our own fictional 55+ community, Shade Palms. This month we wanted to talk about retirement challenges both fictional and in real life.

You’d think with one of us recently retired, we wouldn’t need to research retirement life. But we didn’t want to rely on just our experiences. We want to write authentic, multifaceted characters that our readers can relate to. While chatting with other retirees and hanging out in Facebook Groups, we quickly realized our real-life retirement challenges were mirroring our fictional characters.

We don’t know about you, but in our thirties and forties, talk about retirement life was typically filled with thoughts of long lunches with friends, bucket-list vacations, and taking up all those hobbies we never had time for. Turns out, it’s not always that simple. Don’t misunderstand us. We are having those long lunches, (Well, one of us is. The other one is still working toward retirement.) and we are taking those vacations (Look out Scotland, here we come!), but somehow all that time we thought would magically appear…well, it just isn’t there.

Establishing a new routine has been tough. Committing to regular exercise, spending more time with family and friends, writing, road trips, home projects, decluttering, and fitting in a new business venture hasn’t been as easy as it seemed. More to come next month about our newest business and how it fits perfectly with our new series!

Anyway, we’ve decided the secret to a successful retirement transition is to create a routine, remember what’s important, and adjust everything! It sounds so simple, but in practice, it’s been a learning experience. Sometimes frustrating, mostly fun, but always a work in progress.

At this point, we have characters at Shady Palms who are recently retired and are struggling to switch off the work mode. We have others who are struggling to find a purpose and are looking for ways to re-invent their life. And of course, our characters want meaningful activity to fill their time. And tracking down killers is certainly one way to fill up their day!

Because what’s life without a little adventure!

If you’d like to keep in touch with us and get updates about the new series, please sign up for our newsletter here: SparkleAbbey.com

sparkle and abbey

Sparkle Abbey is actually two people: Mary Lee Ashford and Anita Carter, who write the national best-selling Pampered Pets cozy mysteries series. They are friends as well as neighbors, so they often get together and plot ways to commit murder. (But don’t tell the other neighbors.)
They love to hear from readers and can be found on Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest, their favorite social media sites. You can also follow them on BookBub to be notified when there are special offers.

Permission Not to Write

/in , , , /by

What do you do when you’re suffering from the literary equivalent of a bad day on the mound? You’re all set to hurl a fast ball that should nip the corner of the strike zone and send the batter swinging at air when you wind up tossing a lob that he hits out of the park. In other words, you’ve got writer’s block.

Some people insist that there’s no such thing as writer’s block. Try telling that to someone who spent the last three hours staring at a blank computer screen. There are many reasons why the words don’t always come, but for me, often it’s because I’m just too tired to write. When I’m tired, my brain shuts down.

And when this happens, I’ve learned to listen to my body. I give myself permission to take a few hours off to rejuvenate. I’ll take a walk. Or watch a movie I’ve been meaning to see. Or curl up with a book by a favorite author or a new one I’ve wanted to read. Whatever I decide to do, I give myself permission not to feel guilty about doing it.

And that’s key.

Most writers can’t afford to quit their day jobs. We juggle our schedules to accommodate work, writing, and family responsibilities. Thus, when we have our writing time, we feel compelled to write and feel guilty when we don’t. We’re wasting that precious writing time. What we forget, though, is that we’re not perpetual motion machines. Writers, like everyone else, need down time. Time to relax. To play. To do nothing but daydream.

I’ve found that when I give myself permission not to write, I’m able to return to my writing with fresh energy and a brain no longer blocked.

I know this is counter to the conventional wisdom which states you should write through the block. Just stick your butt in the chair, place your fingers on the keyboard, and start typing – that bad writing is better than no writing, and you can always go back to fix what needs fixing. To me, that’s just as huge a waste of time as staring for hours at a blinking cursor.

Don’t let the purveyors of conventional wisdom bully you. Listen to your body. If you give yourself permission not to write, you might find that when you next sit down at the computer, you’ll be far happier with the words you produce. It works for me. You have nothing to lose by giving it a try.

What do you do when you hit a wall? Post a comment for a chance to win an audiobook of Revenge of the Crafty Corpse, the third book in my Anastasia Pollack Crafting Mystery Series.

Also, through the end of the month, the Anastasia Pollack Crafting Mysteries, Books 3-4, featuring Revenge of the Crafty Corpse and Decoupage Can Be Deadly, is on sale for only .99 cents. Find buy links here.

 

 

 

~*~

USA Today and Amazon bestselling and award-winning author Lois Winston writes mystery, romance, romantic suspense, chick lit, women’s fiction, children’s chapter books, and nonfiction under her own name and her Emma Carlyle pen name. Kirkus Reviews dubbed her critically acclaimed Anastasia Pollack Crafting Mystery series, “North Jersey’s more mature answer to Stephanie Plum.” In addition, Lois is a former literary agent and an award-winning craft and needlework designer who often draws much of her source material for both her characters and plots from her experiences in the crafts industry. Learn more about Lois and her books at her website www.loiswinston.com where you can also sign up for her newsletter and follow her on various social media sites.

Focus by Debra H. Goldstein

/in , , , , /by
Focus
by Debra H. Goldstein

Photo by Chase Clark on Unsplash

Focus. From a writer’s perspective, the word embraces a simple but necessary concept – concentrating on the task at hand. It sounds easy: pay attention and the idea will be conceived, executed, eventually published, and promoted. But, that’s not how the real world works. Life offers each of us major distractions. How we handle them and retain our focus determines if an individual will be a wannabe or an author. Have you had things or issues disrupt your focus?  How were you able to get back on track with your writing?

 

Judge, author, litigator, wife, step-mom, mother of twins, and civic volunteer, are all words used to describe me. My life and writings are equally diverse. I’m the author of Kensington Press’ Sarah Blair mystery series. Sarah, like me, is a cook of convenience who might be scorched if she gets too close to a kitchen. One Taste Too Many, published in January 2019, was picked as a Woman’s World Book of the Week. The next three books, Two Bites Too Many, Three Treats Too Many, and Four Cuts Too Many were each named as Silver Falchion finalists. The fifth book in the series, Five Belles Too Many, released on June 28, 2022.

I am an active civic volunteer in Birmingham, Alabama and have served on the national boards of Mystery Writers of America and Sisters in Crime, as well as being past president of the Southeast Chapter of Mystery Writers of America and Sister’s in Crime’s largest chapter, The Guppies.

photo of Rosemary Beach Florida Gulf Coast

Research Adventures: Starting a New Series

/in , , /by

by Sparkle Abbey

photo of Rosemary Beach Florida Gulf CoastHow is it that February is already in the books? 2023 is moving right along and we shared last month that we kicked off the new year by beginning to write a new mystery series. We also shared that the new series is not set in California like our Pampered Pets books, but since we both love the beach, we’re hanging onto the beachy theme.

And that’s where this research adventure begins…

After attending the NINC (Novelists, Inc.) conference in St. Pete last September we decided to research some Gulf Coast retirement communities as that is where we planned to set the new series. We’d already had great fun fleshing out characters, coming up with titles, and plotting murders on the drive down. (Side note: From Des Moines, IA to St. Pete Beach, FL is 1,380 miles or about 21 hours. A few more hours if you take time to track down a fabulous lobster food truck in Nashville, but that’s a story for a different day.)

We’d researched several possibilities that based on their online descriptions seemed to match what we had in mind. For the drive back we’d planned to visit our top four or five and check out some details. Now the books will be set in a fictional 55+ community but we’ve found we really need to have a feel for our setting as it plays such a strong role in a story – especially in mysteries.

  • Stop 1 – Too fancy and almost hotel like. Not the right vibe.
  • Stop 2 – More reasonable but surrounded by a residential neighborhood. Not the close-knit community feel we were looking for.
  • Stop 3 – Almost there. Nice community feel, but no people out and about doing things.
  • Stop 4 – Bingo. There it was. A great gated 55+ village with a community center, indoor pool, golf, shuffleboard, walking trails. There were people out walking their pets and a wonderful friendly feel as the walkers waved at us. And there were plenty of places to hide a dead body. A very important detail.

Success! We found our fictional Shady Palms and were able to take some photos, research details, pick up some materials on the floor plans, download the layout of the neighborhoods, learn the flora and fawn, and so much more.  Feeling good that our mission was accomplished we decided to backtrack and have lunch at a Greek restaurant we’d passed a few miles back. What a great choice. (Well, it wasn’t a lobster food truck but it looked promising and also seemed very busy which is always a good sign, right?) It was amazing. We highly recommend Mr. Souvlaki’s. If you ever get the chance to dine there, you are in for a treat. And no matter how full you are, you must finish up with the Loukoumades – fluffy clouds of pastry with honey & cinnamon. They are to die for! Definitely worth a thousand-mile road trip and we’re trying to figure out if we use them in the books if they can be considered a tax write off. All in the name of research, of course.Poster for Heavenly Puffs

At this point, we’re feeling great, though a bit overstuffed. It’s time to head north and so we leave the more scenic itinerary and move to Interstate travel. But first we need to stop for gas so we can get back on schedule and make some time. Our first stop was a Starbucks (big surprise) with a nice gas station nearby. But wait, they are out of gas.

But what’s an adventure without a little conflict?

Oh, did we mention that there was a hurricane by the name of Ian bearing down on the Gulf Coast? No problem, we’ll navigate to the next nearest option. It’s not far. But all the pumps are bagged. You guessed it – out of gas! It took three more stops and finally following a fuel truck back to our first gas station, but we finally got a full tank of gas and we were back on the road. Heading north and praying for everyone in the path of the hurricane.

We are continuing to research and build the story lines as we work on this new series. We’re loving the new characters who continue to evolve and make us laugh. We hope our reader enjoy the fictional Shady Palms and the new stories as much as we’re enjoying writing them!

If you’d like to keep in touch with us and get updates about the new series, please sign up for our newsletter here: SparkleAbbey.com

Sparkle Abbey is actually two people: Mary Lee Ashford and Anita Carter, who write the national best-selling Pampered Pets cozy mysteries series. They are friends as well as neighbors so they often get together and plot ways to commit murder. (But don’t tell the other neighbors.)

The love to hear from readers and can be found on Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest, their favorite social media sites. You can also follow them on BookBub to be notified when there are special offers.  Currently Downton Tabby is a featured deal at 99 cents in all ebook formats.

book cover for Downton TabbyIn Downton Tabby, Caro Lamont, amateur sleuth and well-respected animal therapist to Laguna Beach’s pampered pets, works with office mate and tech wizard, Graham Cash, whose beloved Scottish Fold tabby cat, Toria, is purported to have anger management issues. But when Caro drops by the charming Brit’s Tudor-inspired mansion to return Toria, she finds his business partner dead and Cash missing.

Caro is left with the cuddly cat and a lot of unanswered questions. Is Cash the killer, or has he been kidnapped? What’s up with the angry next door neighbor? And what about Cash’s girlfriend, Heidi, who isn’t sharing everything she knows with homicide detective Judd Malone?

Suddenly there are more secrets and intrigues than there are titles in England. Add in a stranger in a dark SUV stalking Caro, feisty senior sidekick, Betty, hiding in restaurant shrubbery, and wannabe investigative reporter Callum MacAvoy who seems to be constantly underfoot, and you’ve got a cat and mouse mystery of the first order.

Publishing News!

/in /by

Hi all,

I’m so excited to announce that I have signed contracts with two publishers for two new series!! Both will be out in 2024 and I couldn’t be more excited–yippee!!!

I’m a cozy writer to the core so both new series are cozy, of course. One of the series will be with Level Best Books, edited by Shawn Reilly Simmons.

The other is with Crooked Lane Books, edited by Terri Bischoff.

This is a dream come true for me. The last time I published a book was in 2019, and I’ve been working since then to improve my craft and start something fresh.

The three-book series with Level Best Books centers around a social media influencer who draws on the knowledge of her followers to help solve a murder.

My Crooked Lane Books mystery takes place at a B&B in Hudson Valley, where guests like to rosé the day away, until murder kills the vibe.

So there it is, my BIG news!!

I’m excited and nervous all at once.  I’ll keep you updated as time goes on. In the meantime, I’d love to hear from you. Any good news you’d like to share?

Lynn McPherson has had a myriad of jobs, from running a small business to teaching English across the globe. She has travelled the world solo, where her daring spirit has led her to jump out of airplanes, dive with sharks, and learn she would never master a surfboard. Lynn served on the Board of Directors for Crime Writers of Canada from 2018-2021. She is a member of Sisters in Crime and International Thriller Writers.

 

The Value of Group Writing Projects

/in , , , , /by

by Paula Gail Benson

From February 1 until February 18 of this year, the Writers Who Kill blogging partners collaborated on a serial novella titled Broken Hearted Killers. I have to thank Martha Reed and Rosalie Spielman for initiating and organizing this project. When we all gathered for a photo at the 2022 Malice Domestic conference, they suggested the idea and those of us attending agreed we would like to try it. After going through the process, made very manageable by Martha and Rosalie’s diligence, I have to commend it as a great way to improve understanding character development and story structure.

We began with a location, small town Granite Falls, and a group of characters, a book club called Page Turners that met at the local independent bookstore A Likely Story. Two of the characters, Helen and Iris, lived at a nearby elder community. Although life-long friends, Helen and Iris had also been life-long nemeses, with Helen as the more thoughtful and less privileged and Iris as the woman people loved to hate. They walked home from the Page Turners meeting and, the next morning, when Iris was discovered dead, Helen became a prime suspect.

Each participating blogger was assigned a chapter of 500 to 1,000 words, with the last chapter being given latitude to exceed that number to tie up all the loose ends. We didn’t have an outline. The chapter author could take the story wherever he or she wished, then the next writer would pick up the thread and go forward.

With Martha’s help, we kept a list of characters and significant events with notations about when they happened. We also tried to point out inconsistencies and correct them as we progressed so they didn’t become major obstacles to revise.

For me, a short story writer, the value of the process was in seeing how an amateur investigator’s process evolved in a longer work. In addition, I found it important to evaluate the tempo from scene to scene. If several had been devoted to questioning book club members, those following needed to provide some action, suspense, or twists. And, if possible, it was nice to end a chapter with a cliffhanger, to keep readers returning.

What surprised me a bit is how well all our different styles blended together. We all worked hard to make it a seamless product.

I don’t know if this may become an annual project, like our holiday stories in late November and December, but I hope it might. For any groups looking to try their hands at a serial work, I recommend that you give yourselves a few months to put it together and review it in advance of publishing it. Also, designating an editor to give the story a final read and check for consistency is just good quality control practice.

The completed Broken Hearted Killers remains available at Writers Who Kill (from February 1 to February 18, 2023). On Sunday, February 19 and Monday, February 20, Sarah Burr and Debra Goldstein are writing about our mutual experience at Writers Who Kill. Martha Reed also has kindly supplied it to the participants so they could include it in a newsletter or other offer to readers. Please stop by and let us know what you think!

 

Image of book pages

New Loves: Starting a New Series

/in , , , /by

By Sparkle Abbey

Happy February! Hard to believe that it’s February already and you know what that means…  It means winter is not quite over and many parts of the US are feeling that intensely. But it also means Valentine’s Day is right around the corner. We’re thinking you probably already knew that due to the bloom of candy and hearts at the grocery store. And every other store, come to think of it.

But what does that have to do with writing? Well, we kicked off 2023 by beginning to write a new mystery series and as we’ve moved forward with the first book, we’ve realized that starting a new series is a lot like the beginning of a new romance.

A new series involves a lot of firsts:

  • Getting to know your character’s likes and dislikes. Favorite restaurant, favorite movies, what do they do in their downtime.
  • Unraveling their backstory bit by bit. What’s their history? Where are they from?
  • The first time your characters meet each other.
  • The first time they disagree. Their first fight.
  • And of course, because it’s a mystery – the first dead body.

And just like in falling in love, you never forget your first love. So, there are a few things that we’re bringing along to the new series:

  • We loved writing two main characters with different points of view and so there are two protagonists in the new series.
  • Of course, there will be pets, though they aren’t the focus of these stories.
  • We both love a beach so while this series isn’t set in California, the new setting does take place near the sea.
  • And there are some characters that we just couldn’t leave behind, so look for a few cameos in the new series.

We are loving this new series and these new characters, and we’re hoping our readers enjoy the new stories as much as we’re enjoying writing them!

If you’d like to keep in touch with us and get updates about the new series, please sign up for our newsletter here: SparkleAbbey.com

sparkle and abbey

Sparkle Abbey is actually two people: Mary Lee Ashford and Anita Carter, who write the national best-selling Pampered Pets cozy mysteries series. They are friends as well as neighbors so they often get together and plot ways to commit murder. (But don’t tell the other neighbors.)

They love to hear from readers and can be found on Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest, their favorite social media sites. You can also follow them on BookBub to be notified when there are special offers.

 

On Birthdays and Bucket Lists

/in , , /by

By Lois Winston

Have you ever noticed the older we get, the swifter the years go by? I can remember walking home from school and bemoaning the fact that summer vacation was still six weeks away. Six weeks seemed like an eternity to eight-year-old me. Now six weeks often flies by at warp speed.

I bring this up because my birthday month is approaching, and I’m wondering how I ever got this old. Wasn’t it just yesterday that I gave birth to my first son? I remember the day as if it were yesterday. Yet now he’s the father of three, the oldest of whom is in his first year of college.

Who knows where the time goes?

Judy Collins once asked that question in a song. I’m asking it a lot lately. Back in the sixties the Boomer Generation suggested no one should trust anyone over thirty. Now we’re confronted by the derisive insult of “OK, Boomer” by the generations that have followed behind us. To paraphrase a quote from another songwriter of my generation, the times they are a-changin’.

Once upon a time birthdays were something we looked forward to—parties, gifts, cake and ice cream! Yea! So many of those birthdays connoted milestones we looked forward to—Sweet Sixteens, getting a driver’s license, voting, ordering that first legal glass of wine. Wishes were often fulfilled on birthdays, the one other day of the year besides Christmas or Hanukkah when you might receive that new bicycle or pair of skates.

Now at this point in our lives, if we want something, we buy it for ourselves. Most of us have too much stuff already. When we moved nearly two years ago, we got rid of those things we hadn’t used in decades. Why on earth did I keep a soup tureen I received for Christmas more than thirty years ago but never used? Does anyone ever use soup tureens? And I haven’t a clue as to the last time I used the fondue pot we received as a wedding gift. 1980-something? Those items and much more wound up at the donation center. Hopefully, someone will put that soup tureen and fondue pot to good use.

Bucket Lists are now more important than soup tureens and fondue pots. Whittling down the Bucket List had taken priority prior to the pandemic. Now we’re once again thinking about venturing out into the world. I still haven’t gotten to Scandinavia or Great Britain, and I really would love to see the Terra Cotta Warriors in China.

What about you? What’s on your Bucket List?

In celebration of my birthday, I’m giving away several promo codes for a free download of the audiobook version of Death by Killer Mop Doll, the second book in my Anastasia Pollack Crafting Mystery Series. Post a comment for a chance to win.

 

USA Today and Amazon bestselling and award-winning author Lois Winston writes mystery, romance, romantic suspense, chick lit, women’s fiction, children’s chapter books, and nonfiction under her own name and her Emma Carlyle pen name. Kirkus Reviews dubbed her critically acclaimed Anastasia Pollack Crafting Mystery series, “North Jersey’s more mature answer to Stephanie Plum.” In addition, Lois is a former literary agent and an award-winning craft and needlework designer who often draws much of her source material for both her characters and plots from her experiences in the crafts industry.

Website   Newsletter  Blog   Pinterest   Twitter   Goodreads   Bookbub