I don't even know where to begin to add my horrible 2020 experiences to the pile of human ennui and pain we've all experienced during the Year+ of COVID. You would have thought I would have had ALL THE TIME IN THE WORLD TO WRITE during that year, but, no. So that's changing now, after a truly horrible winter. 

A year ago we were in the grips of "OMG, what is going on... masks? Washing our hands... we can't SEE the virus, how do we know we're safe?" We went from there to staying home every day with only quick jaunts to the stores for the basics. My husband even worked from home for four months, setting up his office in the library, We were scrambling for hand sanitizer and paper masks, even the thin rubber gloves I always have on hand anyway were scarce. It was very much Every Person for Themselves back then. A class I'd been taking in person cancelled before it was over, my writing conferences were cancelled. Luckily, the kids were already doing online school so that didn't change.

Fabric masks, hand sanitizer, never seeing anyone outside of our family except our neighbors we shouted to across the fence. It got old so fast, but, we kept going, one day at a time. I was working as a copy editor for a software company, Charley was working, kids were doing school, and the animals were all fat and sassy. 

2021 came and we thought, "This is it... 2021 is here, everything will be better!" But, no. 

In December we learned of a tragic accident in Idaho where an 18-year-old boy and his father plunged over the side of a dam because their truck hit ice on the road. They died, most likely on impact, from the 250-foot drop to the valley below. That boy used to be our son for a short time. We adopted him from China at the age of 6 in 2009. After bringing him home, we quickly realized our family was not the place for him, because of many reasons — he needed a LOT of therapy that we honestly couldn't afford. He was older than our two young daughters and it wasn't *safe* for him to be around them, and I did not know how to make this house safe for everyone. Much talking, much counseling, much going back and forth with our adoption agency, the perfect family was found, and they happened to be best friends with the family who had adopted our son's best friend in the orphanage just six months earlier. 

But then, in a moment in December, he was gone. Just... gone. Everything that child had gone through, everything we and he did to get him to where he needed to be... a place where he had grown up into an exceptionally handsome man, super smart, in a happy loving family, making good friends... and this is how his story ends? None of it made any sense at all.

His name was Nathan. RIP Nathan, you did not deserve to die like that. 

Christmas was a low-key affair for us. We spent a lot of time being thankful we were together, that we had everything we needed while so many in the world didn't. One day at a time....

January. Finally. The election was over, a new president was on the way. 2020 was over, time to fucking celebrate! Then my aunt called early on the 17th. My little brother had been at work the night before, closing up the gas station/minimart he was working at, when some asshole with a gun showed up and killed him. His name was Doug. He was 51.

The world shifted under me. I couldn't wrap my head around it. He was just, gone. I never got to say goodbye to my mother when she died in 2006, and now I didn't get to say goodbye to my brother. And it was just us three in our little family. 

I had to fly to St. Louis during a freaking pandemic, stay at my aunt and uncle's, and deal with my brother's everything — his little doublewide in the park he used to share with our mom, police, homicide detectives, family, friends, well wishers, literally everyone in town who knew him as "that man who was killed at the gas station," and then I'd get the Big Eyes and Sad Eyes and the Oh-My-God-That-Was-Your-Brother? Eyes.

But I met some really fantastic people: Larry works at the mission store there and I called him, hoping he could help me with all the clothes and housewares. he said not for two weeks, but then I told him who I was and that I was only in town for a short time and he said, "That was your brother??? OMG... I'll be there tomorrow at noon." 

Larry helped me clear the house of things to donate and then he ended up buying the house from me too. He's already renovated the front half and it looks AMAZING!!!! 

Mark was the firefighter who heard the shots from the firehouse across the street. He'd run over to see what happened and was with my brother when he passed. He'd known him -- saw him at the store all the time. Mark hadn't really slept since it had happened. He was speaking with people to help him somehow make sense of the senselessness of my sweet brother dying like that. He was reeling for weeks after.

My cousin Barb and I had been working the most on the house, and we gave Mark a little antique train car that was in my brother's house — he has it on display in the room that he's turning into his train room, so he has something to remember my brother by. 

I handled everything. I sold his house, closed the bank accounts, told his bills he was gone, dealt with reporters and had things notarized and stamped and I traded his brand-new car in for a slightly bigger car, and that's what I drove back to Oregon. The trip took five days and I barely remember it. I just know I drove for about eight hours a day and somehow made it home. Considering that entire trip only cost $800, I didn't do anything else but drive, sleep, and stop for gas and coffee. I arrived home on February 3.

February was a blur. I don't remember anything. I believe I watched a lot of movies, lying on the couch, luckily my girls are old enough that they were picking up the slack. I'm surprised I was able to sleep at night, and I managed not to eat pure junk during that time — probably because my kids were doing the cooking and they weren't feeding me a steady diet of chips, chocolate cake and ice cream. 

Toward the end of February, I noticed our cat Jack was not well. I took him to the vet with a heavy heart and they let me know that, yes, he was in liver failure and so then we had to say goodbye to Jack, our amazing, sweet, and wonderful cat of 14.5 years on March 2. 

I was just done. Three major losses in basically three months. I wanted to sleep for the next three years. My soul was tired. So. Tired.

On March 11, I woke up and realized it was my mother's birthday. She passed in 2006, but I still hold that day as a personal little holiday, sometimes I even have cake, but that morning I suddenly felt alive again. I'd always hated March since I'd grown up loving March because of her birthday -- but then she'd died on March 22, so I felt betrayed by the month for years... but that morning, I realized I felt good. Normal. And we went out and brought home a huge pile of food to celebrate her birthday with. 

That night after dinner my youngest came into my office and because we'd been looking at our shelter's page, waiting for kitten season to start because we decided to get a new kitten (Dad wanted his Maine coon... so we thought a shelter kitten would help balance out the cost in our minds of the Maine coon, I know... it made no sense), but what did we find? A little post about TWO Maine coon mix kittens, a brother and sister. WHAT

I called my friend who worked at the shelter after I'd filled in the form to request to see them the next day. We got there at noon, Charley soon after, and there they were — our new TINY BABIES. We named them Forest Night and Charlotte Moon. They'd been rescued from a nasty hoarder situation with 16 adult cats. They'd come in covered in dirt and fleas and underweight. We adopted them that day even though we didn't get to bring them home for another week. 

But now they are home. They turned 2.5 months old on our anniversary (our 24th on March 29), and they are fat and sassy and running all over the house, knocking shit over and driving our other cats cuckoo. March and my sanity was saved.

I had my blood draw in March also -- my A1C had dropped from 8.3 in January to 7.6, my cholesterol dropped 30 points, and everything else that needed to go down went down, including my weight. 
Despite ALL the bullshit thrown in my face by life. 
Despite ALL of the sadness and despair.
Despite ALL the insanity of 2020 and the Winter from Hell.

And I'm writing again. And walking again.
And I'm back to whole-food, plant-based lifestyle again.

Maybe this year really is turning around. 

CURRENT PROJECTS: I'm taking ALL of my notes on my new small town drama series and plowing them into Scrivener and Plottr. I'm trying to devise the best way to organize it all... there are 12 books in the series and I've moved the setting from Cordelia, a town based on Astoria, Oregon, to Hollyhock Hills, a little town in SW Oregon in the Valentina Valley — which is all based on the Umpqua Valley, where we call home now. 

The weather is different, the town is 100% made up... I plopped it down in a real valley, but there is no town there now, only a vineyard. (Don't tell the winery I erased their fields in my fictional world.) I have to do some name changes as well, but other than that, it's time to start weaving their stories together.

But I also have to finish Elliot Lake's last book. if I get his last book published and at least the first in the Hollyhock Hills series published this year, I'm calling that a win. 

Yesterday would have been my mother's 72nd birthday. Yeah. She's been gone for 12 years now, and so she never got to know her granddaughters.... and now I'm 50 and looking at gearing up to send my own kids off into the world in the next 5-10 years. Oy. Can't I just have them live with me forever? (Anyway.... not really a fan of March, y'all.)

Okay... if ANY of you notice me messing with THESE COVERS.... EVER. AGAIN. Please come to my house and slap the crap out of me. I'm done redesigning this series, and so next up is book #4 and it is a DOOZY! 

Elliot and Sky are going on an adventure -- to save their family, and not get themselves killed in the process, but they just might end up saving the world. Not too shabby for a couple of kids from the Oregon Coast. 

Now, Finding Mallory also got a new cover... that should be live tomorrow for the ebook and then the paperback should be caught up tomorrow afternoon at some point. I love this cover.... there's Mallory, setting off to find herself, find safety, find her future without giving herself away this time. 
YOU GO, GIRL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

My background is English literature. I was an honors English student throughout high school, and then into college... English literature classes were my Safe Zone as I was trying to figure out what I wanted to do with my life. I graduated with a wildland conservation degree from the College of Forestry at the University of Washington, with only needing a Shakespeare class for the double degree, but after seven years in college and nearly 200 credits, I was done. 

It all worked out, because after I graduated, what I wound up doing was newspaper reporting. Funny. I was writing. A LOT. FOR YEARS. I worked all over the Pacific Northwest, writing whatever they needed for the paper -- house fires, Baby New Year stories, school districts, city council meetings, Santa in the parade.... on and on and on. Everything. I wrote everything. And read everything. I read three or four books a week, lived at Half Price Books, had stacks of romances, mysteries, and thrillers PILED all over my house... and then I became a mom. And my thoughts turned from writing the news to writing stories. 

So, the point of that little trip through the past is, I landed on a book on craft and story structure that explained the anatomy of a story in ways I had NEVER thought of before, which is crazy. Shawn Coyne is the author of The Story Grid. After working as an editor for the Big Six/Five in New York City 4-EVER, he has poured his knowledge into this book... and blown MY mind. 

I'm currently writing COMBAT IN THE COLD.... I should have been done already, according to the little time frame thingy I had written for myself at the end of 2017. I had started it and had about 25,000 words done... when I started reading The Story Grid.

NOW, I have stepped back and plotted out the entire story -- I know what my inciting incidents for every Scene, Act, and both Story A and Story B are. Because they all have them --- every level of story has to have an order to it, because that's how our minds process a story. Derp. I have also mapped out my Complications, the Crisis, the Climax, and the Resolution for every of those sections as well, and it's GLORIOUS. 

So, NOW I am going to write that book and see how the Story Grid's road map works as I hammer out the last thriller in Elliot's story. I have to hurry, because they are traveling to the Arctic Circle and it's COLD UP THERE. 

Once COMBAT is out the door and Elliot and Sky are put to bed, I will be busting into my new series, currently titled THE CORDELIA SERIES (but that may change). The first book is THE WONDERLY GHOST, and it is also about 40,000 words done -- but now that I have the Amazing Plotting Plan from The Story Grid People, we'll see how it all comes together after I reopen that file. 

Peace! Oh, yeah.... and go see BLACK PANTHER!!!! 

You should have seen the earliest versions, of both the novels and the covers. I've learned a LOT since 2010, and while I've watched so many others soar into millionairehood around me, I'm still puttering around over here with my little books, but something's changed since this summer. Perhaps some weird combination of things -- the kids are older and more able to function without me 24-7, life is operating at a somewhat even keel right now, we're in our house and no longer renting (renting does weird things to my psyche because I never feel settled), all of which leaves me more thinking time, more working time, or maybe because all of the nitty gritty details about publishing in general don't scare me anymore. 

What really helped with that was getting out there, meeting other authors, finding the best pages on FB to follow, learning from them -- and that means learning what to do and what NOT to do -- and then whittling all of this down into a handful of lists:

• To sell books, you need THREE THINGS: a great book, a great blurb, and a great cover. 
• As far as marketing goes, do THREE THINGS WELL: have a newsletter, have a great comic con presence, Facebook ads, Amazon ads, do book clubs in your area for word of mouth, create great tie-ins for your series... choose THREE and excel with those three things. 
• And write every day. EVERY FREAKING DAY. 

And that's it. That's basically my business plan at this point. So I need to get to work. 

AIRTABLE
I have started using Airtable -- I'm working my way up to the pro plan, but I've found I'm able to do quite a bit with the free templates available to slobs like me. So far, I used their "Project Tracker" and renamed it "Novel Tracker," and now I have this great database where I've plugged in the books already published, plus all of the books I have planned. So far there are 22 books on that list (6 are already out) and I have more books swirling around in my head. 

But at a glance, I can see their titles, their series, if they're plotted, date for final draft, date to betas, date to publish, ISBNs, notes, etc. Plus, everything can be color-coded and that makes everything more fun. So I'm excited to work in more of their templates into my business plan. Excel has always freaked me out a bit, and AIRTABLE is sort of a mix of scrapbooking and Excel. If that makes sense. It probably doesn't, but that's okay. LOL 

Off to work on the daily word count! 

I'm excited to report that CONFLICT in the COVE is heading to beta readers this week. I had some other projects show up last week and the week before, but now I'm back on track with the third release in my Elliot Lake Mystery Series. 

My daughters and I started painting rocks a few weeks ago, and of course, it's taken over the entire dining room. I posted the rocks to Facebook and now I have orders for Christmas. :-) 

​Art is life. 

The black trees on the blue night sky are my "Treetangle Rocks" --- I have many, many, many more of these coming. 

April showers, and oh what showers we had in April. And March. And OMG January and December... all the way back through to October 1. We're approaching 90 inches of rain in Astoria since October 1, and up in the hills above town, the measurement soared past 112 inches sometime last week. That's a ton of water. 

But April showers bring May flowers, and this is our third day in a row of real, honest-to-Apollo sunshine. But May will also be bringing something else back into the world: Treetangle books to Amazon. ​

I'm trying to work faster, more efficiently, but there are always things vying for my time and energy. Like, my daughter was treated horribly at her track meet over the weekend, but then we had dear friends visit Saturday night, but then Sunday morning while I was still pissed over the track meet fiasco, I dropped my cell phone in the pancake batter of pancakes that I can't even eat because of my pre-existing condition. BUT -- the sun was OUT and every day is a new day with no mistakes (thank you, Anne Shirley!). 

​And now these babies are heading back to market, all shined up and fancied up and soon their cousin books will be finished and published too. Because you can't make a career out of one book. (Unless you are that guy who wrote about Matt Damon being stranded on Mars.) 

I've made a little checklist and will be clicking off each book as it once again hits Amazon in ebook and paperback. 
A checklist that will sit here mocking me if I'm unable to check off every damn book by the end of May. So bug me about it! 

Four have been out there before, but Chaos at the Coast is new. It was so funny going through all of my novels prior to their re-release, because I'd forgotten so much about their stories, it was like revisiting old friends. They all missed me and are screaming at me for sequels. Of course. Adds that to the checklist. 

Don't miss that I have the first chapters (or two, in the case of Six Dates with Jenna) here on the website to read, and also don't forget to sign up for Treetangle Talk, the newsletter associated with Treetangle Publishing. 

Be well and keep reading. 

Just a quick note to get this blog kicked off right. 

I'm in the middle of Crazy Month, and while I know most of us have crazy lives every month, March 29, 2017 was our 20th Wedding Anniversary, and April 29, 2017 is my 50th birthday. ***WHAAAT!!!!***

That is what I mean by CRAZY MONTH. 

Last year, on my 49th birthday, we were handed the keys to our new house in Astoria, Oregon -- the Buttercup Cottage. Built in 1918 by the Larson family, it's adorable and quirky and close enough to the Columbia River that we can hear the sea lions barking in the harbor and the Astoria Trolley dinging its way up and down the river. 

For our anniversary, we held a shindig for whoever could come over and share our grill and Party Salad -- and the cottage was packed! Now for my birthday this year, we will also be celebrating Daughter #1's 14th birthday, because her birthday falls on a Tuesday this year, and the other Saturday is the day of Daughter #2's final track meet! Welp. Did you follow all of that? 

So April 29th will be fun - my 50th, Emily's 14th, and the Buttercup Cottage's first anniversary of being our home in the Goondocks. 

Where I'm at with Treetangle Publishing -- I have one and a half books edited for re-publication. This website is virtually done, I've been adding links in the sidebar of this blog page, and I've been working on nonfiction for those pages. I will be tossing more merchandise options on Zazzle too, because there's more to life than pretty mugs. 

This blog post is a bit early, because I have only told some friends and my local writing groups about Treetangle Publishing... but by the end of April I want to be dropping my books back online in order to jump back in the game!