Writing - the ups and downs

‘Good life’ hard to see when you have it One winter several years ago, my husband and I traveled to Florida to visit my sister in a community built on a golf course. CLICK ON THE TITLE TO GO TO THE SITE. Thought you might want to check out my essay that appeared in the Columbus Dispatch today, New Year's Eve. A fun way to end the year with my essay in print. It's a very revised version of our move to and from sunny Florida. Enjoy! And have a Happy New Year.

Just finished reading Margaret Dilloway's How to Be an American Housewife. Wow. What a read. Couldn't put it down. About a Japanese bride and her military husband. Shoko tries hard, harder than anyone I ever knew, to be the perfect wife and mother in her new country. More often than not she believes she has failed. You'll learn through her trials and tribulations that this is not so. She succeeds very well as a woman who loves her husband and children more than life itself. Even when her spirit is tested as she faces death. Great characters and beautiful writing, the first novel by Margaret Dilloway. I'm not giving away any more of the story. It touched my heart and soul and these characters are still ambling around in my mind several days after I put the book down. Here's to a new year of great books, great writing, and most of all good health to us all. Blessings, Barb

I started to write about my regrets of the past two months. How I haven't been well and I haven't written, not much anyway and how blah blah blah - my life isn't going as I want it to. Bah humbug to that sort of post. However I realized I needed to write about the hope that has filled my heart in the last few days. As I worked yesterday on "the" story, I felt motivation pour through my veins and I realized that spending time regretting something is spending valuable time I could have used anticipating what my characters would be doing next. Or anticipating the next story that's mulling around in my brain. OR actually working at the computer turning my dreams into reality! I have a number of ideas with help from writing buddy Sherry Hartzler on epubbing some of our work. She's already doing a bang up job of promoting her books Three Moons Over Sedona and Island Passage over at Amazon, ebooks for Kindle. You might want to check them out. Very inexpensive

Once upon a time we had a home in a subdivision outside Columbus. We lived there for fifteen years. My husband had been transferred back to Ohio from Michigan.  In that lovely home we had family dinners and saw two of our three daughters graduate from high school. Our oldest was already living on her own. Our beloved Pug, Sammy, came there to live when he was only six weeks old and so little he couldn’t master the jump up onto the back patio which was only a few inches off the ground. From Sammy we learned all about real love.  From that house, our youngest daughter graduated college a few years after her father retired there.  In that house we met old friends and new. Found a church home. Established roots in the community. From there, we married off all three daughters and began to welcome grandbabies. Our middle daughter sadly got divorced and moved back in (sadly) with two babies. Whew. What a change in our lives! Then, she remarried and moved out again. That house saw nu