Summer Goals

June 2025 News to Nosh

The rain soaked just about everything, leaving this June morning lush and clean. I should collect some fresh herbs and pluck lettuce and broccoli babe from the garden, go grocery shopping, and clean off those spider colonies that live in the too-high ceiling corners, but the June newsletter is due.

Spring is a busy time at the homestead. Husband, Matt, takes on yard projects and delegates chores for me. Boats need to be launched. I have the proverbial spring cleaning should-do and the daily have-to-dos lists, most of which I don’t like to do. 

However, when a friend offers her beach house for a long weekend, and my South Carolina granddaughter moves up from elementary school to (sniff) middle school, and my grandbaby, who lives across the country, turns one-year-old, I drop everything, plan, and go. It’s an exhausting juggle, but so worthwhile to rearrange schedules and timelines.

I had a setback during the last half of May. A virus and/or hack shut me down. It took two weeks to get the PC back! Thankfully, Pedro, the savvy tech guy in town from Tech Boys, put everything right and got me up and running. The lesson learned from this nightmare is to know how to reboot in safe-mode and never call the number on the screen. Call someone with the know-how. 

While waiting for the repair, I typed on my 5×8 tablet and phone, which proved slower than my usual snail’s pace. There was a positive outcome—I set summer goals. 

 Summer is a busy and fun time of year, and so much more rewarding than mulching and cleaning windows. In between sailing, beach bumming, visiting and hosting, I plan to work on craft with Nicole Rodriquez at Stop Writing Alone, exercise my writing brain and muscle and get back into a routine. 

Substack will be my go-to writerly social media platform. I am still navigating the details, so growth continues to be at a snail’s pace. Like weight loss, a slow plod forward towards the goal is more sustaining than a dash and burn pace. I’ll keep Facebook, Instagram, WordPress and MailerLite in the loop, but Substack will be ground zero for book news, event updates, stories and essays. I’m not sure if I want to start a payable account on Substack. It’s intriguing, but for now, I am not up to the pressure. 

My new project is a historical fiction (maybe fantasy) novella series, The Eyes of the Strega. Presently, I am deep in researching Sicilian history and mythology and putting the first few chapters together. I strive to have a rough draft of the first book completed by Labor Day. I may release a chapter, some interesting research, or character profiles as I go along in Substack. Feedback from fellow readers and writers are always welcomed.

I will also repost Journal On! Grand Prompts to Ask your Grands and other essays from my WordPress site. There are several children’s book ideas and concepts I want to craft. Two stories may be ready for a traditional publishing house home, but that is the big anxiety step. I am going to let those stories marinate until late fall or winter.

So that’s my writerly News to Nosh for June 2025.

Stay tuned for updates.

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