Last year I began a new tradition in our new home of celebrating the Winter Solstice that occurs on December 21st or 22nd, depending on the year. This year, I continued that tradition and created a beautiful Yule altar complete with a golden “sun” candle, white candles, pine cones and sprigs from the trees in our yard, orange slices, and cinnamon sticks to mark the longest night of the year. For dinner, I cooked an English roast with carrots, celery, and served it with potatoes and a wilted-lettuce salad (salami, Honeycrisp apple, green pepper). It was a small delicious feast for my fiance and me. Yule goes back thousands of years with its roots in Germany and witnesses the longest night of the year, the Winter Solstice or the hibernal solstice. Winter has always been one of my favorite seasons despite the cold and the dark. There is a rare peace in the sparkling white snow and quiet air. And through the long nights, the earth manifests spring and gives us warmth and light, so it is in each of our lives. Without sorrow, we could not have happiness, only apathy.

The Road So Far

Eric and I enjoyed a Eric and I enjoyed a quiet month in October. We celebrated Halloween at our home with only one small group of trick o’ treaters! UGH, we had candy for days! Next year 2022 our wedding is over Halloween weekend so we won’t be worrying about that again.

We took a four-day weekend trip to New Orleans the second weekend in November and stayed with a good friend of ours. It was the perfect time to visit our wedding venue and do a cake tasting at the bakery we chose. Both the venue and cake were outstanding! I’m thrilled with both. I cannot gush enough over the cake, pineapple, with a vanilla almond buttercream frosting. It was light, moist, and utterly delicious 🤤 The Swiss Confectionery bakery has been in business for 100 years. The owner’s daughter, should she decide to take up the family business, would be the 6th generation to run it. It’s impressive to have such a long-lasting, successful business. Our venue is also a family-owned & operated business.

December was a great month for us. We finally finished our fence two days before we brought home our new puppy, Tsuki! She is the most beautiful, adorable, little thing! 😖😖😖 I just want to squeeze her all day long!!!

We celebrated Christmas with our family at home, and I was able to begin playing FFXIV: Endwalker, enjoying being a couch potato. I finished the game just before the new year and absolutely loved the storyline. Endwalker brought about the end to the major storylines from the inception of FFXIV in a satisfying, emotional, manner. It touched on themes that are represented in shows like Ted Lasso and in holidays like Yule-tide and Christmas. Endwalker emphasized the far reaches of kindness and empathy. It did not shy away from the darkness in human hearts even though we might yet travel to the furthest reaches of the universe, there will always be a light in that darkness.

Right at the end of the year, one of my bridesmaids and best friend from college, Katheryn Krouse, came to visit. It was a wonderful time to catch up and hang out. Unfortunately, there were devastating fires in Louisville and Superior, Colorado just two days before the end of the year. It destroyed 991 homes, making it the most damaging fire disaster in Colorado state history. While we had two friends that were evacuated during the burn, they both thankfully still have their homes. Even before the fires here, there were awful tornadoes earlier in December that wreaked havoc in Kentucky. On New Year’s Eve, we received the snowfall we had desperately been waiting for. It’s very frightening how dry it is here in Colorado and how serious climate change is swiftly becoming. The world may very well end in fire and flood and I’m reminded of Tool’s song Ænema. “Learn to Swim”. Although this disaster caused a sense of hopelessness, we hosted an engagement/new years party at our home. It was a small celebration in the company of good friends that uplifted our spirits. I’ll treasure that blessing for the rest of my life.

What I’ve Been Writing

While I was determined to edit The Red String of Fate, I didn’t make an incredible amount of progress. I paused once I hit chapter 3 due to damned inspiration that I finally released towards another book: Nine Kingdoms (tentative title). This is a book that I started back in high school and have wanted to revisit for a very long time. So I completed a rough outline of the book, plus the first two chapters by the time NaNoWriMo was underway in November. I had a great brainstorming session with my friend/editor Ellen Rozek about the key themes and conflicts in the book. It’s always a treat to discuss ideas with her, but also reminds me that I need to find a critique group to be more involved with.

Maggie’s group has been great, but slow to step into due to my own schedule conflicts. I’ve only made it twice to her sessions in the last several months. Now that I’m taking a break from writing until mid-February I’m wondering if I can find something that better fits my time?

What Else?

TV show highlight continue to be Ted Lasso. I finished the season of Only Murders in the Building all too fast and our trial of Hulu ended. We started the first couple episodes of the second season of The Witcher on Netflix and then we’ll be watching The Book of Boba Fett on Disney.

I finished a small abstract painting to hang up in the foyer of our house. I’m pretty proud of it! I’m not a great painter, but it is fun and relaxing to do. It was not as time-consuming as the last painting I completed either. I have a huge canvas 24×36 inches that I want to work on soon. I’m not sure what I would like to do for it since I’ve never painted on such a large space before. The largest I’ve worked on is 20×20.

As sad as it is, I removed the “Three Favorite Reads” section of this update because I did not finish a single book in Q4. I am very close to finishing Christopher Paolini’s book: To Sleep in a Sea of Stars, so that will be included in my 2022 reading challenge. Although I have enjoyed the book so far, I simply did not find the time or motivation to sit and read for the past month of December, really since before Thanksgiving.

Next

I’m on a break from all things writing for the month of January and beginning of February. I plan to revisit querying The Tower in February. I have 27 more agents that are on my list to submit. At the end of February I will go back to The Nine Kingdoms and continue working on the first draft of that. As of now, I have no Q1 plans for The Red String of Fate. Once I finish my own self-edit, I hope to have found a suitable critique group or perhaps pass it to Ellen if she has time in her own busy schedule.

So I give thanks at the end of the year for everything in my life; for this body and soul of mine, my creativity, my fiance Eric, our family, our friends, all of our health, for having this home, my job, and Tsuki. I look forward to a new year filled with many more ups and downs. Again, thank you for reading my thoughts here.

Cheers to a wonderful start to the year 2022! 🥂