Coming Back from a LOOONG Break
Cultivating balance, Taking breaks and Stepping back into the Wheel of Life with some Really Good News! How to keep it going and...Keep reading for 3 announcements!
If you’ve been reading Music, Musings, and the Muse this year, I’m sure you’re waiting for some kind of happy ending to all the “sheesh” and “oh no” going on in my life. ME TOO! I finally have great news to share! Three announcements! Keep reading!
Number One!
Forewarned is a National Indie Excellence Award Finalist! This is like when your baby grows up and becomes a star player! I’m thrilled!
2026 has been a year of adaptation, new habits and new routines. It feels like I was swept up by a hurricane. So what. Life throws us all lemons. We get behind. We lose motivation. Family members need our attention. We muddle through. And my story isn’t new, just new for me.
So stepping away from my writing life has been a much needed break for me. While I’ve been quietly meditating, studying Tarot and hiding out in my basement, I’ve also been editing and revising a couple old manuscripts. And trying to figure out what I want to be when I grow up. One of those things I want to be is (Epiphany!) an Author! And (Hooray!) I have a couple books in stores and I already know how to write a story, get it edited and hit publish! (Yay!)
This is all good news.
However, when life turns upside down, you sometimes have to relearn how to get things done. THAT. Has been much less easy. The before me had everything going exactly the way I wanted. I had a schedule, I time blocked my days into segments. The morning was spent writing, in the afternoon I taught, or did marketing for the books. Piano teaching, time with the hubs, time with the family fit into this schedule. I was damn organized- though you wouldn’t be able to tell that by looking at my desk. I kept handwritten notes for everything. The best part of my day was crossing something off the list!
Then things went awry. Unanticipated trauma threw me off the horse so to speak. If this has happened to you, or maybe you’re just struggling to get your butt in the chair, here are some great “get back in the saddle” tips from my Friday Blackbird Writers LIVE cohosts, Valerie Biel and TK Sheffield. Here, they discuss the Work- Life Balance. Truly excellent tips for creating balance.
And here are some tips from me: How I—slowly—am getting back into the groove.
Lists. For one, if I don’t write it down, I don’t remember to do it. Seeing whatever on paper helps enormously. The cool part of making lists is crossing the DONE items off, or better yet-throwing the list away. Completed!
Time Blocking. So—having the hours blocked out for each day was helpful before, so I thought I’d do it again. But it has taken me months to actually stick to that schedule. If scheduling is hard for you too, I get it! I’m distracted—is that a hummingbird? I don’t always sit down and start on my project. Often I manage my email first. My favorite procrastination technique is to “cultivate” my email and spam/trash/block everything I don’t want to read. Recently I decided that if I “have” to cultivate, as in there are 70 to 100 new emails (eek!) I’ll move to the project next.
Here’s a picture of my handwritten daily schedule. Notice the closeup on the right of an hour by hour list. I made this in January and it did help me get back on track, especially on days when I was hit hard by grief. I didn’t pressure myself to get it all done. Some days I sank down into my art and shut off my phone. It was fine. It was what I needed at the time, and I still have days like that.
Set The Timer for one hour. If you have a BIG project, like proofreading a 340 page manuscript, set the timer and don’t get up until time’s up. You might find that you get into it and the timer goes off before you’re ready to quit! If not- keep your butt in the chair till the school bell rings.
Finish One Thing. It can be a small thing, like proof reading two chapters. I would get two chapters done then be so into the story I wanted to do two more. Best part? I got to cross those chapters off the list.
Get an Accountability Partner. This is great if you do all the tricks above and still don’t want to dive into your project. I find that if I tell someone- anyone -that I’m going to publish one manuscript this summer, I feel the mild pressure to actually do it. That pressure niggles at me until I get it done. An accountability partner will keep asking, did you start it? Did you finish it? Did you publish?
Which leads me to my second bit of news!
Number Two!
Deepest Secrets: Detective Morgan Jewell Book II is up for presale! The long awaited sequel to Best Kept Secrets is FINALLY Here!
A missing informant. A fragile undercover operation. A detective one misstep from losing control.
Detective Morgan Jewell is sent undercover to Pine Bluff, Wisconsin to investigate the disappearance of Jake Verninac—an informant who vanished and is presumed dead. His last known contacts tie him to a local drug network with suspected connections to a larger operation. To get close, Morgan has to earn trust by stepping back into habits she fought hard to break. As she reconstructs Jake’s final movements, the case is anything but stable. Witnesses are unreliable. Evidence is thin. The community closes ranks.
The case stalls and pressure builds. Mandatory psychotherapy forces her to revisit the night her best friend was murdered… and the version of events she’s never fully believed. But Morgan now draws on her unsteady memory to find a nugget of truth.
Back in Pine Bluff, the evidence doesn’t add up. Someone is lying.
Someone is protecting something.
And the truth is closer than it should be.
In this case, the biggest break may already be in front of her—hidden in plain sight.
Number Three!
The third bit of news is a sneak peek. With the National Indie Excellence Award, I decided to give Forewarned a makeover. There are many good reasons for doing this. To make it fit more cleanly into the Paranormal Fiction category. To simplify the images on the cover. To give it a bright new look. The true reveal will coincide with SAFE KEEPING - a new paranormal thriller, a standalone (coming September 1). More to come on that book in July!
What I’m reading:
Jeannee Sacken’s The Women Who Stand Between
Sheila Lowe’s The Lies Between the Lines
Sean Patrick Little’s Wide Open Empty
Anne Louise Bannon’s Death of a Proper Bostonian
Do you have resources to help you get your butt in the chair? How do you self motivate? Share your tools in the comments below! And… Thank you so much for reading!
Great tips on the time blocking . . . I have yet to perfect it, but I have quit scheduling over my time blocks once they're on the calendar, so that's improvement. Cannot wait for Deepest Secret to be out and for the big reveal of your new Forewarned cover!! Very cool projects!
So glad some of the pieces are coming together. Don't forget to give yourself break time each day to relax. Hugs!