Just Me

  Last year, I saw a posting from a writer friend that said there was one year where she challenged herself to only submit her work to paying markets. I thought that was an interesting challenge so I decided to do it, too.   Little did I know just HOW MUCH of a challenge it is!   So when January 2025 came around, that’s what I did. However, I soon realized that I have a soft spot for charity anthologies, and I REALLY wanted to have work included in anthologies that support charities which I believe in. So, I made an exception to submit work to charity anthologies. Then I saw friends posting about calls to submit to their nonpaying anthologies and E-zines. I liked what I saw and wanted to support them and their new venture, so I made another exception. And, in the end, I decided, okay, I will ONLY submit to the nonpaying stuff on Fridays.   And you would think that submitting my writing to only the paying publications meant I would be able to make enough o...

  My Christmas Eve wasn’t so great yesterday. I mean, yes, some good things happened: I finally got back an interview for the monthly newsletter (thanks, Natasha!), I got to watch Die Hard , the peanut butter blossom cookies I made for the very first time turned out really good and so yummy, and hubby made a nice Christmas Eve dinner, but some bad things happened too. I was missing my parents, I was sick with a queasy stomach for most of the day, I had a headache that lasted for hours that NOTHING helped (not even my prescription headache medicine!) and hubby bit my head off over the kitchen being messy. All of that put me into a DEEP depression and I just locked myself in my room for a while to try to calm down. (I tried to read on my phone but it wasn’t working!)   Still, I know the day could have been worse. The holidays are hard for a lot of people. My oldest recently had to talk someone out of trying to commit suicide and a new friend is having her first Christmas w...

  Photo Credit: Karolina Grabowska via Unsplash  In January of 2020, I got the news that my oldest was awarded a scholarship for college tuition. Supposedly, this scholarship would pay $21,000 for each undergrad year. At the time he was awarded the scholarship, he was told it was a FULL scholarship. So we were all under the impression that this meant it would cover the cost of his tuition for 4 years of college education. Around this time, he was also accepted at three universities, and he chose to attend the one that was closest to us in order to cut down on cost of room and board as well as transportation. Since he didn’t have a college fund set up for him to help pay for school, we were all thrilled that he had received this scholarship. We all thought we wouldn’t have to worry about him being able to afford going to college.   This was especially a big concern for me. I had attended college (a community college) for three years until there was no longer any fund...

  Happy June!   So hard to believe it is June already. Wow! School will be out soon. My youngest graduates from 8 th grade in a little over two weeks! I am still trying to process that my baby will be starting high school in the fall.   Anyway, today was a good first day of the month. Every time a month is ending, I always try to wrap up any loose ends for that month and get it all done. I like to have a strong start to the new month. There are “first day of the month” things that I always try to do.   And today, I did them. Yay! So today, I had a strong start to the new month.   Well, I did the “first day of the new month” stuff for June, anyway. Ha.   I am doing two writing challenges this month. Both of these challenges are in my most recent KU book, The Big Book of Writing Challenges .   One of the challenges is one I have already done and another was a challenge that a fellow writer shared about in her newsletter. No, I ha...