#weekendcoffeeshare #158 – March 30, 2024

Hello, everyone, and welcome to #weekendcoffeeshare #158. Help yourself to one of several brews or a cup of green or black tea. Grab your beverage, have a seat in my writing room, and we’ll catch up!

As Natalie points out, it’s the end of one entire quarter of 2024! I can’t believe three months of 2024 are already gone. The older you get, the faster time flies! If we were having coffee this morning, I would tell you that this last quarter has been one of the busiest I’ve had in a long time. I’ve had several projects that I’ve tackled but not necessarily finished.

The first quarter has been my time to break back into to blogging and I’ve surely enjoyed blogging with all of you. My fiction skills were rusty (or non-existent) and I’m trying to hone them a bit by writing for the excellent Challenges here on WordPress. I’ve also written a few non-fiction pieces on topics near and dear to my heart. My Appalachian series, for example. Stories here and there about other non-fiction topics, rescue dogs and hunting dogs. Politics. A little travel writing. These areas in which I write will continue on into second quarter 2024.

One project is a novella, perhaps an e-book, that I’m working on. The genre is fantasy which I’ve never written before. I find it fascinating and quite difficult. I have enjoyed the world building phase a great deal. I’ve found that fantasy is challenging. My novella is set in a particular time and I want the details of that time accurately depicted. It’s required a lot of research and I’m still not quite there yet, but I’m gaining on it! This WIP will extend into the second quarter of 2024 and probably beyond. What’s your latest WIP that will go on for some time this year?

On a personal note, busy is an understatement. It’s just barely the beginning of spring here in the Northern Hemisphere. That means outside work like cleaning up the yard and flower beds. I love in the forest so no vegetable beds, I’m afraid. We get our spring, summer, and fall vegetables from local farmers’ markets. We are starting, but just starting, to see signs of spring here. We’ve had warm weather early and I’m afraid my plants will be killed back by frost. Our last frost date isn’t until May 15.

These crocuses and ferns will be fine if it frosts, but I have peonies, iris, clematis, and hostas that may not be fine.

On another subject, my husband has spent the last six months dealing with medical challenges. We hope that he is now stable and maybe even getting some better. We’re had a lot of medical paperwork and doctor’s appointments to attend to.

Another activity I will be involved in during the second quarter of 2024 is dog training. Our German Shepherd, Sophie, is both obedience and protection trained. She just needs some brushing up on her skills. If our Corgi, Hazel, can stay well, she needs obedience training. Hazel doesn’t understand (yet) the concept of obedience since she has been sick. She seems to be getting better!

The only travel we have planned, to date, is short trips to Kentucky State Parks. We take Sophie with us and she has a blast. She always gets a hamburger on the way home.

What is everyone reading? I am reading the new novel by Kristen Hannah, The Women. It is about a girl in her early 20s, back in the 1960’s, who is a nurse and volunteers in the Army to be an Army surgical nurse in South Vietnam. Believe me, it is worth a read. If you weren’t around during the Vietnam War, you’ll learn a lot. If you were, you will remember a lot.

Thank you so much for coming to my #weekendcoffeeshare #158 this weekend!

Thank you to Natalie the Explorer for hosting #weekendendcoffeeshare!