In This Issue

• A short note from Shelley

• Artwork inspiration

• June/July Pappus Essay

• Journal Prompt

• Fiction: Segment from The Peony Hotel

• NEW SECTION—What I’m Reading

• Writing Update

A Short Note From Shelley

Dear Friend,

Time got away from me this summer, so welcome to the double June/July 2026 issue of Pink Dandy. June started out slow enough. I dug in the garden, planted some new shade perennials and another female winterberry bush and a few herbs and veggies: thyme, dill, a zucchini, six cherry tomatoes, and some basil. I mowed the lawn and replaced the mailbox (or was that in May?) and helped my sister-in-law set up a raised garden box for her own plant experiements. I took rides with neighbors generous with their pontoon boat and saw the new eagle babies in their nest at the top of a huge pine overlooking the lake. I met friends for lunch.

And then Craig arrived from Guam and life picked up speed and before I knew it, July 4th was here. We hosted a big holiday gathering: parents, sibling, offspring and offsprings’ significant others and spouse. Friends and neighbors stopped by. I was on my feet all but maybe 15 minutes that day from 8 AM to 5 PM when we all finally trooped down to the nearby community beach area on the lake to kayak, float on big floaty chairs, paint rocks in pretty designs, and watch the fireworks exploding over the cove across the lake once dusk settled. Sparklers and glow stick necklaces.

A neighbor I didn’t know with his three kids on bikes watched, too, (one of the niece’s boyfriends handed them some glow necklaces . . . so sweet!) and one of them began singing the American National Anthem at the end of the show, so we joined in. It was lovely.

And then, the tick bite.

I won’t go into it too much, but it was a nymph—just a tiny little thing I probably picked up in some deep leaf litter in the woods we were working in one day. I ended up infected with something called anaplasmosis, and it’s dangerous. At one point, I had the distinct feeling it could kill me if I didn’t pay attention and symptoms worsened. I’m now on the mend, however, and the experience has inspired me to clean up my diet.

So here I am a week later, and this newsletter is finally ready to send. Here you’ll read about the inspo behind this month’s lobster art. I’ll share a journal prompt after the pappus essay about committing to creativity as a vocation. As promised, there’s a new segment of the Guam story. You’ll get an update on my writing projects, as usual, and this month I’m adding a new section What I’m Reading. Maybe you’ll discover your next new novel or author.

It’s dawning on me that I view Pink Dandelions as much more than an author newsletter. It’s that, but even if I stopped publishing fiction, I’d keep this newsletter going because it is, of itself, a creative project dear to my heart. I hope you enjoy it. Drop me a comment or hit reply to email if you do.

Cheers!

Shelley

Artwork Inspo

This month’s art, Maine Heart Lobster, was inspired by my love for my home state. Maine is more than lobsters, of course, but the lobster is an iconic symbol of this place, a reminder of briny ocean scents, rocky coasts, lighthouses, fishing boats chugging into the harbor or out the channel. I made this one a blue and orange parti-colored beauty, a jewel of the sea, as a tribute to Maine—where beauty can often be found in deep and secret places and brought to the surface sometimes under the duress of a trap. I think there might be a lesson there.

June/July Pappus Essay: Commit to Creativity as a Vocation

Even When You Are Struggling and Unsure

Are you feeling that everything you are doing creatively and energetically is getting you nowhere? Do you sometimes wonder if it’s worth the time and effort to grow in your chosen hobby, profession, or non-profit volunteer work? Are you wondering if pursuing your interests is a waste of time that could be better spent doing something with a guaranteed outcome or reward?

I’ve been struggling with this lately. There are always doubts when you are a writer or artist, and I have a sneaky feeling there are also doubts in other fields, as well. “Did I make the right career choice? Should I have been a business major instead of an English lit major? Should I have started a YouTube channel about makeup/crypto/yoga/gossip ten years ago instead of sticking with my paralegal/admin assistant/data processing job that AI might wipe out in the next three years?”

I’m aware that we are all struggling.

If you are a writer, like me, you’re probably looking at the AI disruption, the over-crowded marketplace, the stats on the declining number of people who read even one book per year; you might be looking at your own sales numbers, your submission acceptances, your contest entries. You might be taking all this in and asking yourself, “Is it worth the effort anymore? If no one reads my work, is there any point of creating it?”

If you aren’t a writer, you might be feeling this about your volunteer work or even your profession. “I’m putting my heart and soul into helping this cause, and for what? Is it worth it? I’m giving my all to this company, but I feel unappreciated and stressed. Is it worth it?”

Lately, I’ve been feeling all this so hard.

My writing life has always sustained and supported me in more ways than I probably understand. I’m beginning to recognize that one of those supports was HOPE. Having hope kept me motivated. Having hope let me scramble over obstacles and keep going. I’m not even sure I had a clear vision of what I hoped. It was amorphous, and that’s what kept me from recognizing the importance of hope. I didn’t know what, exactly, I hoped for other than a vague, “I will work toward becoming a professional author.”

I think for me that meant I’d earn, through my writing, at least the equivalent of a teacher’s salary, since my profession would have been teaching English/Language Arts if I’d used my education degree as originally planned. Later, as those years slipped by to the point that unless I became a best-selling author tout de suit I’d never catch up to alternate-me’s lifetime earnings, I came up with an even more modest earnings goal: making the equivalent of a year’s minimum wage job. Now I’m beginning to come to grips with the reality that I’m unlikely to reach even that goal.

If you think this is easy for me to talk about, you’re wrong. It is painful. My heart hurts. The sense that I might have wasted my entire youth, energy, and earning potential on a pipe dream feels like losing. Feels like defeat. Feels like failure.

I’m going on 60 now, nearly to retirement age. Should I simply . . . stop?

There are certain questions that keep me occupied these days. If you aren’t making a living from your work, can you call it a profession or is it a hobby? Can it be something else? Something even more profound? Is there some positive way of looking at the creative impulse within me that I keep separate from capitalism and earnings and would allow me to move forward with joy, peace, and purpose?

After much consideration, I’ve decided: Yes. It can be a vocation.

Hobby v. Profession v. Vocation

A profession is work for which you’ve studied, prepared, and get paid for. A hobby is an activity in which you engage for enjoyment, not payment. A vocation is something deeper. It could also be your profession. It could also start out as a hobby. What makes the difference is your feeling about it. A vocation comes from the heart not the head, from emotion not reason. You nurture a vocation because you must, not because it makes sense.

According the the Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary online, the word vocation comes from the Latin vocāre which means “to call.” As in a “calling.” The word was first used in English in the 15th century, specifically in relation to “a calling from God to perform a particular task or function in life, especially a religious one.” [see: merriam-webster.com/word-of-the-day/vocation-2022-06-07]

Hobbies are great. There’s nothing wrong with having a hobby. In fact, hobbies give us a lot of joy, opportunities for camaraderie and socializing, keep our brains sharp, and fight ennui and boredom. If your creative/intellectual/societal interests are fun for you at the hobby level, that’s awesome. I have a few: Knitting. Drawing and collage. Reading. Gardening. Keeping a journal.

I’m rarely bored.

If, however, your major interest or passion goes beyond the hobby level because you feel an almost divine pull toward it and it doesn’t bring you fun so much as a sense that you are doing what you’re supposed to be doing; if you approach it like important deep work, but you haven’t been able to turn it into your profession, perhaps can be—in profound and profoundly satisfying ways—your vocation instead.

Knitting will never pull at my soul the way writing does. Gardening doesn’t feel like something I can’t not do. On the other hand, I’ll never be able to stop writing or sharing my writing any way I can (because story tellers need story readers. This I believe.) I’m pretty sure I was born to be a writer. I took to story telling even before I knew how to write, but once I put the two together, I felt compelled to do it.

It was a calling.

So, even now as I’m in a bit of a funk over the business side of trying to be a professional writer, I am embracing the art of writing as my vocation. I am letting go the desire to make a significant amount of money from my work, letting go the hope of making any money at it at all.

My vocation is writing. Your vocation might be art. It might be teaching. It might be parenting. It might be gardening. It might be homemaking. It might be serving in a religious capacity. It might be bee-keeping. It might be advocacy—for the oppressed, for animals, for the environment. It might be music, theater, or stand-up comedy. If you can’t make a living or even a partial living with your creative practice, make that practice your vocation.

Commit to your vocation. Commit to your creativity. Do it for yourself. Do it for others. Do it for our society that so desperately needs people right now who care about more than making a buck in a corrupt, late-stage capitalist Hunger Games [nod to Suzanne Collins for her brilliant series] and instead care about humanity, democracy, community, ethics, and love.

Journal Prompt

Reflect on all the types of work you engage with on a regular basis. What activities are your hobbies? How do these hobbies benefit your life? What work is your profession? Is it something you do for both money and inner satisfaction? Do you have a vocation? What makes that work feel different from professional tasks and/or your hobbies?

Fiction: Tree Bar Encounter from The Peony Hotel

[Here is an excerpt from a scene I wrote for the Guam book, The Peony Hotel. These sections are not being written in order. Right now I’m just writing them as they come to me. This is only part of the scene. I’ll send the second half next month. S.]

“You never call. You never write. I’m beginning to think you don’t really like me.” The smooth, deep voice behind her held more than a trace of humor.

Stephanie twisted in her chair. A tall man wearing shorts and a tropical shirt looked down at her. “May I?” he asked, pointing at the chair opposite her.

She turned around again and lifted her sweating cocktail. “I appreciate the effort, I really do, but I’m perfectly content to drink alone.”

And why wouldn’t she be? She was sitting at a prime corner table on the outdoor terrace of the Guam Hilton’s Tree Bar getting a little buzz off rum and guava juice. It was happy hour, not yet prime sunset time but getting there, the cloud-dotted sky tinged with the barest hint of pink.

The Hilton draped the hill overlooking Gov. Joseph Flores Beach Park. The bar terrace hung like the deck of a ship near the water. Below it, the sand of Ypao Beach rimmed the emerald grass of the park. Tourists snorkeled in the shallow, aquamarine water. A skyline of resort hotels bristled along the gentle curve of Tumon Bay all the way to the steep, distant cliff of Two Lovers Point.

The man laughed and pulled out the chair opposite her. “You don’t remember me?”

She stared at him. “You’re blocking my view.”

He stood and shifted the chair around to her right and sat down again. “Better?”

“The table over there would be preferable.” She hitched her head sideways before slanting a glance at him. Tan legs. Expensive-looking watch. No ring on his finger. Handsome and about her age.

He leaned forward. “You really don’t remember me? United 201 out of Honolulu? Warm nuts, cold champagne, and the charming gentleman in the pod across the aisle?”

“United . . .” She blinked. “Oh!”

“Forgot all about me, then. Good. Good to know how unmemorable I am even under ideal circumstances.” He lifted his hand to signal for the server.

“The flight. That’s right! Sorry. I, uh . . . ”

“Forgot. Like I said.”

The server, a pretty young Chamorro woman, glided to the table.

The man smiled. “Hafa adai. Please bring two more of whatever she’s drinking and a menu. Thank you so much.” When the server walked away, Stephanie’s companion leaned back in his chair. “What are you drinking, anyway?”

“A concoction called Guava Love Potion.”

“Will I like it?”

“You know what I like? Drinking alone.”

“That’s not what you said on the plane.”

Stephanie lifted her love potion to her lips and took two big gulps. She remembered him now, of course. His pod had been across the aisle and slightly ahead of hers, and as the people in coach boarded, shuffled, shushed their crying babies, and shoved carryons into limited overhead space, up in first class they’d been served cold champagne and warm nuts served in tiny, thick ceramic bowls. He’d fumbled with his sports jacket, computer bag, and cell phone, dropping the device into the aisle. When he bent to pick it up, he’d glanced back and caught her watching him.

. . . to be continued.

What I’m Reading

Fiction:

LOVE & LOBSTERS by Shannon M. Parker. Set on a remote Maine peninsula, a romance about a woman lobster fisherman and the guest in her lighthouse rental. Lots of dreamy descriptions of the Maine scenery. A unique point of view from the main character shared in pithy metaphors. A fun best friend. A quiet, small-town romance that feels like a Netflix holiday movie. This is my wake-up-have-coffee book. Not exactly a page-turner, but nice.

THE FIREMAN by Joe Hill. Set in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. A pandemic, but not our pandemic, novel of many pages. Hill writes a lot like his dad, Stephen King. He’s making a passive-type character into a heroine, and that takes some real skill. Believe it or not this is my before-bed book, mostly because I need something that compelling to keep my eyes open. Definitely a page-turner.

Non-Fiction:

MARILYN: The Classic by Norman Mailer. Written by Norman Mailer, this biography is also a pictorial biography with photos by many excellent photographers. Researching Marilyn Monroe has become a hobby of mine, with an eye toward a future project, of course. I find Mailer a bit challenging, to be honest. For my Gilmore Girls fans, do you remember the “Norman Mailer, I’m Pregnant” episode? Yeah, that's the author of this book. A good one to dip into here and there. Vintage coffee table book does double-duty as decor.

Magazines

The Atlantic Monthly, print edition. Happy to discover this at my local library. One of my favorite memories of high school is going to the Bangor Public Library to borrow copies of Seventeen Magazine. Now I’m enjoying catching up on the last two months of the Atlantic. Great article by David Brooks in the May 2026 issue about progressive versus traditionalist. It got me thinking about my hard-nosed stance on tech and advancement in science and media. It reinforced my feelings that we’ve lost our way in our individualism, and I totally agree with his ideas about teaching the humanities again.

Writing Update

Since returning to Maine I’ve been writing articles for the local newspaper again and loving it. It’s fun to get back into the community, interview people, highlight bookish news, and though I can’t say it was fun to cover a meeting for the town selectmen and the DEP over an environmental issue, it was good to flex those journalistic muscles a bit.

I’ve done a little, not much, on Liv 3. Having trouble with motivation for this one, plus I’m kind of stuck on part of the mystery. Hoping to get back to it this week once this letter is finished.

Heard back from a short story contest and did not advance to the final list. Bummer.

Will be speaking via Zoom with a mystery book club in Georgia in early August about Final Draft and the Olivia Lively series!

That’s It For Now

That’s all the news for now. I hope this finds you happy, healthy, and overflowing with creativity. Thank you, as always, for reading and for supporting my writing efforts. And just one more thing . . .

Pink Dandy Reader Opportunity: I’ve just ordered some special Olivia Lively bookplates, only 50 available, and I’m happy to sign one personalized to you. Just let me know by replying to this letter, and we’ll figure out a way for me to get one to you.

I’m still working on a bookmark. Keep watching here for when they are available.

XOXO, Shelley

In This Issue:

• A Short Note from Shelley

• May Art

• May Pappus Essay: Connect With Kindred Spirits

• Your Beautiful Life: Journal Prompt

• Writing News

A Short Note From Shelley

Dear Lovely Friend & Reader:

This has been a month of writerly disappointments tempered with the joy of a beautiful Maine spring, friends, family, lilacs, crabapple blossoms, cardinals and goldfinches at the feeder, peeper frogs singing at night, and, of course, DANDELIONS.

In this issue, I’ll share my inspiration for this month’s artwork; a journal prompt; an essay on finding community; a bit of writing-related news about my failed hopes and dreams . . . but not my happiness and creativity.

I hope you are enjoying the change of season this time of year. I hope you are finding good books to read. I hope you are hanging in there despite all the craziness in the world. Remember: there are good people out there, all around you, and we need to find each other and lift each other up.

Enjoy the letter!

Shelley

May Art:

This drawing colored with markers (the new set I picked up in Maine last month) was a third attempt at creating an image for this newsletter. First, I tried to draw an image of a writer I’m enjoying at the moment, but it just wouldn’t come out. So I dug out an old Victoria magazine, found an article on red hats, and drew this beautifully-designed chapeau, placing it on the head of an elegant woman and adding a cut-out illustration of spring violets and the suggestion that we “connect with kindred spirits.” The little strip of woven lace down the side finished the piece. Bonus? I got this month’s theme out of it.

May Pappus: Connect With Kindred Spirits

Did you go to the movie theater to see The Devil Wears Prada 2? I went with a friend, got the big tub of popcorn, and we had the BEST time!

There is something so deeply, satisfyingly human about sitting together in the same theater space, engaging in the same activity, and hearing laughter and groans and gasps, even slurping of drinks and clearing of throats and the occasional whisper or comment.

Of course, during a movie-theater experience, we ought to keep talking to a minimum. As polite humans, we must be considerate and kind. In fact, this is another reason why we should get back into public spaces more often: practice. We need to practice being polite, considerate, and kind members of the community, and humanity at large, again.

We’ve gotten a little rusty, haven’t we? The screen keeps everyone at more than arm’s length. It is literally a screen between you and the world. A distortion. A blind. A barrier. A shield. A divider.

Wow. I never really thought about that double-meaning, but oh-boy, does that ring true!

Sitting in our little rooms alone with our little black mirrors gives us a (selfish) ease but also takes something away from our human experience—the need to “deal with” each other. We don’t have to negotiate anything with anyone. We don’t have to compromise. We don’t have to wait our turn. At first glance this might seem convenient and lovely, but we are lessened because of it and don’t even recognize the loss.

We have become spoiled and, this is the worst part, LONELY.

So many experts are talking about this “loneliness epidemic” we are facing, and I believe (and others have said it) the solution is pretty simple. Turn off the phone. Shut the laptop. Close down the computer monitor. Get offline.

Or as our mother’s used to say: Go outside and find some friends to play with!

Finding Kindred Spirits

Did you read the Anne of Green Gables books when you were in elementary or middle school? Or maybe in high school? I can’t remember how old I was when I discovered Anne and her best friend, Diana Berry, who Anne called her kindred spirit, but the storyline immediately resonated with me.

As creatives, it’s important to find a community of kindred spirits.

Talking to other artists and writers and crafters feeds our own creativity. We share ideas and bounce things off each other. We may try a new technique or be inspired to use that fun stitch in our next knitting project. Maybe we see a friend’s quilt and think, “That pattern would make a beautiful wall hanging.” Or a friend’s watercolor or oil or sculpture inspires an ekphrastic story or poem. Music is poetry is music. They all meld together, the arts. Human expression, human insight, human emotion.

Not only can we learn from each other and be inspired by each other, we can BE THERE for each other, cheering each other on at gallery openings or poetry slams or author readings or theater productions or musical performances.

Yes, we can connect online, but being part of a local “scene” is so much more enlivening. So much more juicy. So much more FUN.

Online groups are easier, frictionless as they say, but lately I’m realizing these connections are lovely but somewhat shallow and easily ignored, changed, or thrown away. It’s pretty painless to unsubscribe, after all. There is no uncomfortable conversation. No break-up. People just fall away from each other, quietly and without friction or even acknowledgement. We watch our data like it means something, but it doesn’t touch our hearts.

What we (or at least I) crave is something deeper and in-person. I want to be part of a local, creative scene. It’s difficult and takes work and doesn’t always pan out, but sometimes it does. We just have to keep trying.

Some things that have worked for me: My last year in San Diego, I volunteered at the San Diego Writers Festival, and it felt so energizing and exciting to meet local writers and talk about their work and listen to them discuss their craft.

In Guam, I joined a couple of dance classes and that community also gets together for sunset cruises and performances and parties, too. To try to connect with the writing scene, I went to a book launch and (nervously) introduced myself to people involved with the University of Guam Press. At the Guam Navy base library, I tried to start a writing group, and it was looking good for a few weeks until we hit a snag, but I think this is still a possibility.

In Maine, over many years, I’ve gone to author readings, attended and applauded at Noir at Night group events, participated in mini-conferences like Maine Crime Wave and once a Maine Romance Writers of America day of workshops, and I’ve even shown up to the Maine Literary Awards. Everywhere I go, I buy books.

No One Said It Would Be Easy

While I can’t say these forays into the Maine literary scene have been totally successful, I do continue to look for “my” people, and I continue to cheerlead, encourage, engage, promote, buy/support, and do my best to be a good creative citizen, even if some people are less than generous or even appreciative of my efforts.

Most people are lovely and generous and kind, but some humans can be rude. It’s part of that friction I was talking about. It’s good to have friction. It toughens you up. My creative skin is now fairly leathery.

(I do notice the rudeness, however, even if I act nonchalant. And I talk to my friends—most of whom are readers, and I name names. Just sayin’)

Anyway, as an example of a good experience, while in Maine recently, I participated in an author-talk with two fellow writers at my local public library.

Three of us, novelist Kevin St. Jarre and poet Nylah Lyman and myself, read from our books and talked about writing and publishing and stories and poems. The small but lively people in the audience asked excellent questions that spurred discussion and they even shared some of their own ideas about writing, and it was just a fun time.

Of course, I semi-regularly meet and/or talk on the phone with individual writers, and in a pinch the video-chats and phone calls do the trick, but there’s nothing like having coffee and talking shop with a fellow/sister writer in person.

I’m hoping more of us are ready, now, to disengage from the machines and re-engage with the physical world and with people face-to-face. Creative-to-creative. There are reasons to hope, not least of them, the younger generation embracing analog.

As for Pink Dandelions, I love connecting with you via email newsletter, but I know it’s one more message in the overcrowded inbox. I work very hard to be authentic without being depressing, because the world is fraught enough. I am so grateful for your attention here. Still, it would be better if we were chatting over coffees or a glass of red at a hotel bar overlooking the ocean, wouldn’t it?

Maybe someday this newsletter will arrive in your mailbox, printed in ink on paper.

A couple people have suggested I start a YouTube channel. It’s tempting, but honestly? Philosophically, I believe we need to spend less time on these black mirrors and more time at the dinner table playing gin rummy with our friends. So, for now, I’m going to ponder about how to get this newsletter onto paper sometime in the future.

In the meantime . . .

Let’s try to bring some old-fashioned IRL things back, like:

Going out to the movies. Watching DVDs instead of streaming. Listening to a local radio station. Reading a local newspaper. Writing earnest letters to the editor. Getting out our old cds and even cassettes and listening to them instead of streaming. Going to a live music event. Going to a live theater event. Playing horseshoes or croquet on the lawn. Taking a walk after dinner. Going to church on Sunday morning, even if you are an agnostic. Borrowing books from the library. Doing crafts. Balancing checking accounts the old-fashioned way in your checkbook register, bonus if you do the math on paper instead of using a calculator. Going to the bank and saying hi to the teller instead of using online banking apps or the ATM. Keeping your phone on a table in the hallway instead of pasted to your body all day long. Playing cards on a rainy summer afternoon, with friends if they are around, or solitaire if not. Keeping a birding journal. Coloring books. Play-Dough. Writing a story by hand with a pen and paper. Making chocolate chip cookies. Picking strawberries and making homemade jam. Baking scones to go with the jam. Walking around garden tours to benefit local organizations. Reading poetry out loud. Playing charades. Participating or supporting community theater.

Just a few ideas. What else do you think would be nice to bring back? How many ways can we EJECT technology from our daily lives and still get stuff done, maybe with a little more FRICTION, which is something everyone is talking about these days? Because, turns out, friction is good for us, my friends.

Hit reply or leave a comment.

Your Beautiful Life: Journal Prompt

Write about a time your were involved in a creative “scene” whether that was music or art or writing or fiber art/craft, etc. What was it like? How did it inspire you? Write about the positives and negatives. Reflect back on the experience with as many details as you can remember.

Alternative or bonus: write about the kind of creative community you aspire to be part of now and in the future. Describe the type and the place and the activities. Is there a book, film, or tv show (I’m thinking Midnight in Paris) or historical group (example: Algonquin Round Table) that inspires you? How would being a part of a local “scene” like this impact your creative life? How could you tip-toe (or jump both feet) into a local creative community near you?

Writing News:

I’m working at a very slow pace on Liv 3. I revised and polished a 725-word short story to enter into a contest (must send that out today!)

Remember the class/mentorship I talked about in March? Well, let’s just say that did not turn out to be what I expected. I gave it three weeks, and what happened is that the program went through some behind-the-scenes upheaval (I don’t have details except what I could scrounge up on Reddit and from what eventually transpired in the program itself) and what I was getting from the program was not what was sold to me, i.e. a one-on-one mentorship. Luckily, I was able to request a refund.

However.

You might also remember that I intended this to be my last big push to get to the “next level.” Something went out of me when this failed, and my insides shifted, and suddenly I realized I don’t want to push any more. At all.

Yes, things have been building to this crisis all year. First, I decided to let my social media accounts go dormant. Now I’ve decided to stop blogging on Type M for Murder. My online writing journal lags for weeks and even months between posts, and I’m wavering on whether or not to keep that going (and being more faithful to it) or shutting it down.

I will definitely continue with Pink Dandelions because I feel called to it. I love it. I want to make it into a mailed letter someday.

I’m so, so, SO glad I made creativity and living a good life the focus of Pink Dandy rather than specifically writing craft, the publishing industry, getting an agent, etc. I don’t want to write about marketing, getting the books “out there,” indie versus small press versus trad publishing, ads, or begging people to please support my work financially. I don’t want to ask you to buy my books. If you want them, you’ll get them. If not, that’s ok.

If you are a fellow writer and someone who still wants to publish and have dreams of making a living or the New York Times or Amazon bestseller lists, I’m hear to cheer you on. I applaud anyone who hangs in there. It’s just not for me. The push. Not anymore.

Here’s what I do want:

I want to continue to write about living a joyful, creative life. I want to continue to inspire you to do the same. I am loving my life right now. A burden has been lifted. I feel free. Suddenly, I want to pick up my knitting needles again and finally make a sweater. I’m gardening. I’m drawing. I’m listening to bird songs. I’m polishing short stories, ones that are more literary.

Will I still write mysteries? I don’t know. I’ll finish up the Olivia Lively series and see how I feel. I may or may not write short mystery fiction.

I want to rewrite some old novels I have tucked away. I want to rewrite them for my own pleasure and satisfaction as literary or book club or women’s fiction.

Will I publish again? It depends. I’m not going to push, but if they come out well and I think readers would truly enjoy them, I might find a way, look for an agent or publisher, or indie pub them for anyone who is interested. But I’m not going to spend any emotional energy on what happens with the finished product. My energy is going into the creation.

I have no desire to be famous. At all. I’d really just love to delight my readers.

I hope this finds you and brings you some pleasure and some encouragement and some inspiration. Maybe it helps to see that I can try to rise and fail and still feel joyous and whole and happy, maybe even more so than when I was striving (ineffectively, it turns out) to make a living wage from my writing, and it just wasn’t happening.

I’m going back to writing for writing’s sake. I’m going to concentrate on being a creative, an artist, and a member of the writing community without any goal of making money. Don’t feel sorry for me. Yes, technically I’ve failed at a writing career, I suppose, but I’m feeling extraordinarily good about it. I promise.

Guam Story Update:

With all this going on this past month, I didn’t get anything done on The Peony Hotel. I will have something for you in June.

In This Issue:

• A Short Note from Shelley

• April Art

• Interview with Kay Brote of Jealous Bestie

• Your Beautiful Life Journal Prompt

• April Fiction: Deadline Migraine (The Peony Hotel)

A Short Note from Shelley

Hello Dear Reader!

Welcome to the April edition of Pink Dandelions. As I write this letter, spring is bursting out in little pockets in Maine where I’ve flown to escape Super Typhoon Sinlaku. Though I’d prepared myself in spirit to weather the storm with Hubby, he suprised me a couple of days before the typhoon hit. “I’m flying you out of here,” he said. He knew I was already feeling pretty homesick. The idea of being stuck in a humid, torrential-downpouring, screaming-windstorming, air-conditionerless, power-outed, no internet, no phones situation with a totally miserable Shelley probably scared him more than Sinlaku itself.

(Note: Be careful about your manifestation meditations. You don’t know how the universe will respond. Let’s just say, I didn’t expect a typhoon to get me home.)

Anyway, onto a plane I hopped. Then onto another. Then another. Then a bus. Then a car. Finally arriving in Maine, I fell gratefully to the soggy spring ground and lifted my face to the heavens. . . well, not quite. I DID walk around the yard and raked out the garden beds so the daffodils could glow a little brighter.

Found a tick in my bed the next day. The universe laughs.

The sun came out. Temps hit the 70s for a day or two before dropping back into the 40s and 30s. We had a thunder and hail storm one evening. I went to Marden’s with my friend, Wendy. I had lunch on my friend Donna’s porch. Another friend, Debbie, came over for a glass of wine and a chat.

I went to the town swap shop and found some books. I visited my parents for a week and poked around The Briar Patch, an indie bookstore in downtown Bangor, and bought my first Wizard of Oz edition (more on that in upcoming letters). We drove to Ellsworth for a black raspberry soft-serve at the Blueberry Hill Dairy Bar and talked to the nicest lady. She wore soft, loose, embroidered patchwork pants so cute I’m now thinking I might want to sew some for myself. Anyway, we had fun chatting while enjoying the sunshine, relatively warm weather, and the ice cream.

Nothing beats talking to people in real life these days, I swear. Try it if you haven’t in awhile, even if it feels awkward. We need to remember what it means to be HUMAN.

Speaking of which, I left my laptop closed for the week, determined to have as close to a digital detox as possible. I’m not missing social media at all. My accounts are still there, just sitting, but I feel very little urge to open them. As I said previously, socials were an outlet and a marketing tool, a place I created content but really didn’t ingest content. A few people have reached out to say they “miss me” on Facebook, but just a few. I realize just how much of an illusion “relevancy” is on the socials, how out of “site” out of mind a space it really is.

Guam survived the typhoon with some damage, but power is back on, everyone I know is okay, and we didn’t lose anything in the ‘fridge. It could have been worse.

In this issue, I’m really psyched to share with you an interview with my friend Kay Brote—artist and writer and personal trainer and now vintage (and handmade bead & vintage) jewelry shop proprietor on Etsy. She is the mistress of the pivot, and I think we can all learn a lot from her. (We can also get some extremely cool pieces of jewelry. I’ll share my new bracelet along with a few thoughts on the art of the “creative pivot.”

I’ll also share another segment of The Peony Hotel. Did you notice the drawing at the beginning of the letter? This is how I see my protagonist, Stephanie Hardy-Swett. She’s in her fifties, recently divorced, a literary novelist whose career has dwindled, a new resident of Guam, and an embarker onto a new career as a ghostwriter for a famous personality. (Did you catch the “pivot” theme running through this story?)

If you’ve ever had a dream go bust or fade, if you’ve ever had to start over in a new career, new creative medium, new relationship, or if you’ve ever wondered if you’re brave enough to get out of a rut and try something new, this April Pink Dandy is for you. I hope you love it.

Cheers!

Shelley

April Art

This month’s featured art (at the top of the letter) is a quick drawing I did to represent my main character in The Peony Hotel. I looked at a magazine photo for the pose but drew the facial characteristics out of my imagination. She’s a fading red-head, as you can see, partial to wearing black clothes and chunky jewelry in the winter and coastal grandma navy and white and beige in the summer.

I did this little piece, too. Pretty happy with how it came out. Do you think it would make a nice note card design?

The Art of the Pivot

A Pink Dandy Interview With Kay Brote of Jealous Bestie Jewelry

Kay Brote is a multi-dimensional creative, as you’ll read in this interview, and she’s recently found a passion for selling vintage jewelry via her fabulous new online Etsy shop called JEALOUS BESTIE JEWELRY. Kay and I met a long time ago in Maine, before she moved and I moved and she moved again and so did I. We both ended up out west for several years, me in California, she in Nevada. Along the way we’ve maintained an online texting pen-palship plus IRL visits to her home near Las Vegas.

We published our first books around the same time, and it was fun to share the ups and downs of that adventure. I’ve rarely met someone so multi-talented. She’s a fitness trainer, a gifted artist, a jewelry designer, a writer, and an online retailer where an eye for design, both in the jewelry pieces she finds and resells and the best ways to display them. And then there’s the marketing, specifically Instagram reels, one of which just went viral with nearly 300,000 views. Hint: It was about an 1980s Avon bracelet.

Though we did not meet in person for this interview, picture us sitting in her studio surrounded by glittery and glamorous vintage necklaces, earrings, and bracelets. Her paintings hang on the walls. A serene Buddha draped in necklaces meditates on the bookshelves where you can catch a glimpse of her domestic thriller novel, Love Lost on Cloud 9. Kay’s probably wearing her red glasses with the flower and gold-leaf appliques and a pink Mork & Mindy tee. (I “borrowed” that image from one of her Instagram posts. You can find her there under the handle jealousbestie).

Did I mention she’s wicked stylish, too? I’d be jealous, but with her in my friendship corner, there’s no need for that. Plus, I just snagged the most gorgeous bracelet from the shop, a one-of-a-kind piece that Kay designed from an old Chanel button and some pink baubles.

Shelley: What is Jealous Bestie and how did you come up with that name?

Kay: Jealous Bestie is all about the drama. I wanted a name that captured the moment someone stops you in the ladies’ room of a trendy Vegas restaurant just to demand where you got your necklace (yes, that has happened!). It’s a playful, ‘I love you, but I also kind of want to steal your jewelry’ vibe. It’s for the person who doesn’t want to blend in, they want to be the reason someone else is lovingly jealous.

Shelley: Why vintage jewelry?

Kay: Because modern, fast-fashion jewelry often feels like it’s missing a soul. I’ve been collecting since the 80s, after falling in love with Andie in Pretty in Pink and her vintage, thrift-store style. But even before that, I could regularly be found going through my mother’s costume jewelry to play dress up (and I still have her Kramer of NY rhinestone necklace that I will never, ever sell!). There’s a craftsmanship and a ‘presence’ to pieces from the 1950s through the 1980s that you just can’t replicate. That said, Jealous Bestie is more about the ‘Statement’ than a strict timeline. Whether it’s a mid-century rhinestone set or a bold Coach or Geiger piece from the 2010s, if it has a point of view, it’s in the shop. In a world currently obsessed with being ‘minimalist’ and beige, these pieces are how you reclaim your personality.

Shelley: How does starting and running Jealous Bestie feed your creativity?

Kay: Oh gosh, it feeds my creativity in a few different ways. First, the thrill of the hunt. There’s nothing like slinging my purse over my shoulder and heading into a thrift store or an estate sale. You just don’t know what you might find. Sometimes it’s a total bust, and I leave empty handed. Sometimes I find a designer signed piece in a pile of Claire’s and Target jewelry cast-offs and I nearly jump out of my skin. The visual storytelling is also fun for me. Finding a piece that’s been tucked away for decades and figuring out how to style and photograph it for a modern eye is like solving a puzzle. From the curation to the photography, it keeps my eyes sharp and ensures my world stays maximalist and colorful. What girl wouldn’t want to play with sparkly things all day?

Shelley: What are some other creative interests in your life, currently and in the past?

Kay: My creativity is a bit of a moving target. I used to think this was a lack of direction, or laziness, but surprise! It turned out to be ADHD. So now, I treat it like a superpower, and try to give my brain a few different release valves so I don’t burn out on any one thing. Currently, in addition to launching Jealous Bestie, I’ve been leaning heavily into digital design, creating fitness and wellness journals and products (Trainer Kay Studio) that help people navigate the noise of modern life, since I have been a personal trainer for about 15 years. I’m a big believer in finding balance in creative, intellectual, and physical pursuits, and lately, they’ve all been merging for me into one big creative playground.

Shelley: How has your creativity evolved over the years and where do you see your interests leading you in the future?

Kay: My creativity isn’t tied to one medium, it’s about curation and storytelling. During the pandemic, I retreated into myself and wrote and published a historical thriller novel, Love Lost on Cloud 9. It was an incredible lesson in ‘stick-to-itiveness’, proving I could finish a massive project even when it got hard. But once the world opened back up, I realized sitting at a desk all day no longer filled my creative well. I’ve learned that my brain is happiest when I have several ‘little’ projects moving at once. Now, I take that same discipline I used to write a book and apply it to the task of running a jewelry shop or the precision of digital design. The future for me isn’t about picking one lane. It’s about embracing a maximalist life where I can pivot from vintage rhinestones to wellness journals without losing my mojo.

Shelley: What is the question you wish I’d asked and what would your answer have been?

Kay: The Question. If you could take a time machine back to any decade for a one-hour shopping spree, where would we find you? I’d be at the high-end jewelry counter of a 1950s department store, but I wouldn't be looking for the big-name French designers. I’d be buying up every single Kramer of New York piece in the case. I’d be laughing to myself because I’d know that Christian Dior had Kramer making his jewelry at the time, and I was getting that same incredible quality and high-fashion look for a fraction of the price. Then in the last 10 minutes of that hour, I’d get a safety deposit box at a nearby bank and let the pieces age untouched. LOL. That’s the heart of what I do—finding the absolute best 'statement' without needing the permission of a massive price tag.

Subscribe now

I hope you’ve felt inspired by Kay’s creative journey and her openess to trying new ways of expressing her ideas, her point of view, her Maximalist style, and her entrepreneurial spirit. Perhaps, like me, you’ve always focused on one kind of art, and the thought of embarking on something new from a beginner place scares or intimidates you. Or maybe you think it’s too late to start over.

I get it. We’ve heard from writers like Malcolm Gladwell that it takes something like 10,000 hours to master a craft, a subject, an art, a skill. How, you wonder, could I possibly master something new in time to make something meaningful? To even begin to succeed?

Let me just point out one salient, but rarely mentioned point here. Who says you have to be a master at something in order to succeed? To be the BEST at something or working at the highest level in your field, yes. But success? That’s for each individual to decide. Success can be attained in stages, right? When you are starting out as a writer, finishing a short story, play, poem, or novel is one kind of success. Your next marker of success might be publishing in a small literary magazine, online publication, or your local newspaper. Next you might strive to gain an agent, get a contract offer from a publisher, or indie-pub and market your book or collection. You might be happy with a few hundred sales. Is this success? That’s for you to decide.

If your only marker of success is a mountain of money and/or winning top literary prizes, you might be out of luck. Even out of the tens of thousands of people who, in fact, complete those 10,000 hours, only a few of them will reach the pinnacle of their chosen field. I’m not saying you should give up. On the contrary, I encourage you to keep going if you still love the process and feel it’s the very best way for you to share your ideas and creativity with others. However, let’s say you get an inkling to try something else, say, pottery. Should you deny yourself the chance to experiment, to grow just because you don’t think you can become good enough to show your work in galleries and museums? Maybe you could be good enough to make some pieces for your friends and family. Maybe you could be good enough to open an online retail shop. Maybe practicing a different art opens you up to more possibilities in your writing or painting or dance or cooking.

My point is, don’t sell yourself short. Don’t deny yourself new pleasures just because you might not make money or otherwise “succeed” at it. Also, you might decide that your original medium might not fulfill you, no matter how much time you invest, and pivoting to something new might give your the jolt your need to become your most abundant, healthy, happy self.

Journal Prompt: Write down three creative skills you might be interested in pursuing. What draws you to each idea? How could you explore each skill further before making a committment to learning it? How do you feel when you imagine yourself growing in that direction? What emotions come up for you? What would happen if you picked one and took an introductory class or went to a performance or started an idea journal on the topic? Bonus: What does “success” mean to you? Do you have gradations of success in your mind or is it the whole enchilada or nada?

April Fiction:

Deadline Migraine, part 1, from The Peony Hotel

Here is a snippet from my slow work in progress, The Peony Hotel, set in Guam. Stephanie has left Maine to live in a residential resort hotel on the island. As a literary author, recently divorced, whose career has slipped, she’s agreed to work as a ghostwriter for an Evangelical vocal artist who wants to “write” a series of young adult historical mysteries. This job will give Stephanie a way to make a living, continue to write, but in a new direction and out of the public eye. She decided to move to Guam on a whim. Now she’s beginning to settle in . . .

Stephanie’s agent called her at 5:15 PM Guam/Chamorro Time. This meant that Dana, in her tiny 450 square foot Brooklyn apartment was awake and working at the ungodly hour of 3:13 AM. Dread settled into Stephanie’s solar plexus. Her head started to ache. “You’re up early,” she said. “How’s the weather in New York today?”

“Snowing. Frigid. The usual January horror show.” Dana slurped something, probably her favorite, English Breakfast tea, plenty of milk and sugar, tag dangling by its thready string over the rim of the Hello Kitty mug her agent preferred. Dana asked, “So, have you started the O’Halloran book yet?”

Stephanie winced. A yellow aura swirled in the far right corner of her vision that had nothing to do with the strong afternoon sunlight coming in through the patio doors. She’d forgotten to pull the slatted shades.

She’d been sitting at the dining room table and scrolling posts on the Guam Boonie Foodies group she’d joined last week, “boonie” being the local word for wild, as in “boonie dog” or “boonie chickens.” Dogs and cats and chickens lived wild on the island, the roosters crowing every morning from the overgrown lots and neighborhood lawns, dogs trotting together or separately down the rutted paved streets, the females’ teats swollen from their latest litters of pups. She rather liked the idea of a wild food gang, the delicious biker-vibe of it all.

The seventy or so members shared photos of their home-cooked meals, restaurant dishes they’d enjoyed or critiqued, fast-food purchases, and their opinions on local delicacies like empanadas, chicken kelaguen, lumpia, and pickled mangos sold at convenience stores with names like Dove’s Market, Mim’s Place, and Z Mart. The other day, inspired by these photos, Stephanie’d driven down to Don Don Donki Village, a Japanese-style supermarket so vast it had its own food court, and bought sushi grade tuna with the idea of making her own rolls for dinner. She’s spent a few hours perusing the aisles of Japanese, Vietnamese, and Filipino goods. Crunchy chili oil. Curry ramen noodles. Hojicha tea. Doenjang. Kimchi. Pickled tamarind. Crackers dusted with fish powder.

She’d come home without nori, so she’d eaten the tuna in a bowl with some leftover rice and a glug of soy sauce and some spicy kimchi on the side. Enough sake to make it seem fancy.

“Stephanie? You still there?”

“Yeah, sorry.” She had to focus on this call and get Dana off her back. “Yes, I’ve played around with the outline. It’s almost done,” she lied.

“Give me some details.”

“Okay. Well, as you know it’s a mystery series. Young adult. Historical.” She began to babble about whatever popped into her mind. “So, I thought in this story, Kate and her sister investigate a devastating barn fire. The local constable declares the fire an accident. Probably caused by a lantern left burning overnight. Anyway, Kate saw, or thinks she saw, someone sneaking around the barn that night and believes the fire was deliberately set.”

“Her family’s barn?”

“Um, no. A neighbor’s. He’s not the most reliable character in town, so people believe the worst. I’m working on several possible motives and red herrings and the key to solving the crime. Maybe the neighbor has a secret, something to hide from the close-knit community. Maybe he set the fire himself. Or maybe someone he’s wronged has taken revenge. I’m still figuring out the exact details.”

Most of the details. Pretty much all of them, in fact.

Dana didn’t need to know Stephanie’d just made all that up on the fly, though she had to admit, some of the ideas that had flown out her mouth weren’t half bad. She might actually use them now. She picked up a pen and looked around for paper to jot some notes. Maybe it was a good thing Dana’d called after all, because so far she’d made next to zero progress on the project, and since she’d already cashed the first advance check and it was paying for this overseas adventure, she really did need to produce something. Soon.

It wasn’t her fault, really, she comforted herself. She’d been through a lot the last couple of years between the scandal and her divorce, her empty nest, and the implosion of her writing career. She’d been in Guam for three weeks and had never felt less inspired to write in her entire life. She’d only wanted to breakfast on crispy chicken kelaguen empanadas washed down with ice-cold Mr. Brown’s canned coffee bought at Mim’s, lounge by the pool every afternoon while listening to soothing podcasts about impending global collapse, and scroll the Guam Boonie Foodies group photos for dinner inspiration.

She wound a strand of her greying auburn hair around an index finger and waited for Dana’s response.

That’s it for this month. I hope you enjoyed it. If you did, send me a note and let me know.

And don’t forget to order your copy of Strawberry Moon Mystery: An Olivia Lively Novella if you haven’t already. If you have read it, please leave a few words about it in a review. And tell your friends. You can find it on Amazon, and there’s a direct link on ShelleyBurbank.com.

In This Issue

• A Short Note from Shelley

• March Art

• March Pappus: Investing In Myself, or Delusional?

• March Fiction: The first segment of The Peony Hotel

A Short Note from Shelley

Dear Friendly Reader,

You know that feeling when you are driving down a two-lane road at dusk and the road is a series of distinct but gentle hills and the person driving the car speeds up as you climb the hill and releases the gas peddle at the crest and your stomach does that little lag, weightless suspension inside your torso thing just before you race back down the other side?

Raise your hand if you love that feeling. (I see you there, you amusement park rollercoaster junkies.)

Lately life for me feels like this road. A goal rises ahead. I press on the gas pedal, hold my breath, belt out some old Pat Benatar anthem, and race to the top. For one brief second, I hang there at the apex, suspended in time, task completed, holding that long high note with my heart drumming the background rhythm, feeling euphoric. Seconds later (it seems) I’m cruising down the backslope. After another brief moment in the shadowy valley, I’m climbing again, chugging toward that next goal, the next challenge, the next birthday, the next career step. It. Never. Ends.

Why do we do this to ourselves? Is that pause at the top is so very delicious? Why do we keep driving? More important, when do we know when we’ve arrived or when it’s time to pull over to the side of the road and park?

For over a year I worked on my 100-page novella Strawberry Moon Mystery. It consumed my writing life. YOU already know this if you’ve been following along with these newsletters. At the end of January, I finally released her into the world. I enjoyed the euphoria and weightlessness for maybe a day and raced down the back side of that hill screaming out the rolled-down windows, “Book for sale! Book for sale! Wheeeee!”

Well, here I am a mere month later, and the novella’s behind me. I hope you enjoyed it if you read it. If you did, would you mind leaving a review either on Goodreads or Amazon? It helps other readers decide whether or not to read it. And good news . . .

I’m starting up the slope of my next project, Liv #3, the third book in the Olivia Lively series. I’m about 5K words in already with a prologue and the first chapter drafted. My intent is to write this one in record time. Six weeks. Maybe eight. That’s a stretch for me. Plus, as you’ll read in the pappus essay, I will have homework of a different sort to finish, as well.

In this month’s Pink Dandy, I’m going to talk about an educational journey I’m about to take (yes, while writing the book) that may be a smart investment in myself or complete delusion. I really have no idea how it’s going to turn out.

I’ll also share what will be a new, regular, monthly segment, The Peony Resort Hotel. This is the Guam story, people. I’m going to use it as a vehicle to share my experience of being halfway around the world, far from family and friends, but exploring with ever more interest the life and culture here.

Look for descriptions of tropical beaches, palm trees, resort hotels, Japanese tourists, and good food. Follow along with a mid-life woman going through a late-stage coming of age and starting over after a divorce. I’m going to just write little scenes and vignettes. Maybe someday they will turn into a book. Maybe not. But you’ll read it here first.

So, that’s what you’ll find in this issue. Read on . . .

March Art

I’ve been neglecting my art. Today I grabbed a magazine, found a picture of a female model, quickly sketched the model’s POSE but not the details, and used art markers to create this dark-haired lady gazing over her shoulder. I think she looks skeptical.

Also, it seems I’m back to drawing crazy-eyed woman characters.

(Is this some outward manifestation of my inner shadow self? Who knows.)

Anyhoo, I like her. I’ll call her Janice. She’s a little harsh. A bit hardened by life. Her husband left her for a neighbor ten years ago and now she only dates younger men with mommy issues. She reads Tolstoy and Emily Henry with equal pleasure, volunteers as a dog-walker at the local no-kill shelter, and can whip up a perfect brie and mushroom omelette with just an iron skillet and a fork. She’ll serve you the omelette with a nice, cold white wine from the Loire Valley, her favorite brand that she orders in by the case, and she’ll play some Nat King Cole while you eat. Lilacs are her favorite flowers.

I think she’s going to become the best friend of my Guam character, Stephanie.

March Pappus: Investing in Myself, or Delusional?

Dear Reader, I’ve done a thing.

When I graduated with my undergraduate English Education degree way back in 1990, I considered whether or not I should apply to go to gradate school. I even took the GREs and scored very high in the verbal, above average in the logic, and “barely respectable” in math (and was happy it wasn’t worse!)

I probably could have gotten accepted into an English Lit or MFA program or maybe a Masters in Library Science, but at that point I couldn’t see investing more money into my education without any guarantee that I’d get a better job and a decent return on investment. Instead, I took a series of jobs—not teaching, ironicly—and worked on my writing the old-fashioned way. By writing.

This went on for years, and occasionally I’d daydream about applying for a low-residency MFA program. Oddly, though, graduate school never got any cheaper (she says sarcastically).

My decision to work rather than take on more education debt made sense to me at the time, and even now I think I made the right choice, although sometimes I do wonder how my writing style would be different if I’d gone the MFA route. Other opportunities have come and gone, and I’ve always made what I considered to be the frugal and responsible decision NOT to pump (a ton of) money into my literary dreams.

(Aside: What about Library Science? Library work, I discovered after a nine-week job at a circulation desk, wasn’t for me. I love libraries. I adore librarians. I would chain myself to a shelf if necessary to save the books from imminent destruction by some rampaging band of book banning religious zealots. But I don’t want to scan books out or put stickers on the spines of DVDs for hours every day. This sticker thing is real. Tiny round stickers in different colors and placed in exactly the one spot on the spine depending on the type of film. Sorry. I just couldn’t with the attention to detail. Love you, librarians. You do the work of the gods. Mwahhhh. Big kiss.)

Anyway, you get the picture. I’m frugal. I figured I could learn what I needed to learn on my own. That’s what writing magazines, online webinars, books like Stephen King’s On Writing and Shawn Coyne’s Story Grid Method and Anne Lamotte’s Bird by Bird were for.

See, part of my identity over the years has been “helpful stay-home spouse” making choices that saved our family money rather than earning it. Yes, I did work sometimes at various out-of-home employment when I needed/wanted to make some cash, but overall my economic philosophy was/is “Make less. Spend less. They can’t tax you on what you DON’T earn or spend.”

Investing In Myself

I may be delusional, but I’ve just done something so out of character, I can only think it’s either gonna be the smartest thing I ever did for myself or the stupidest. After forty years of autodidactic literary study, I signed up for a one-on-one writing mentorship program that will eat up the last bit of writing money I’ve earned and hoarded over the years, using it all in one last big spend.

I feel like I’m blowing on dice at the craps table at Ceasar’s Palace and hoping for sixes. Hey, it can happen.

What do I want to get out of this experience? Well, for one, I’m finally going to get some honest, professional feedback from a developmental editor trained in a system I find extremely cool and satisfyingly complex. I’m HOPING this feedback enables me to crank my writing up to the “next level.”

My goal is to write books that are so emotionally compelling and beautifully-written that readers stay up all night finishing them, can’t wait for the next one to come out, and tell all their friends about them. I want to write stories that delight a small but mighty group of dedicated and intelligent and thoughtful readers. And I want a publishing contract with an imprint big enough to pay me a decent advance and/or with a marketing budget that helps grow this readership further than I’ve been able to do for myself.

This mentorship should help me get there, if getting there is possible for me.

Or Delusional?

It’s very possible.

I could spend this money, take this mentorship, work my butt off, and still end up a little nobody in the wide world of literature. This is my last-ditch effort. This is what I’m telling myself and you, my readers. You’ve stood by me. You’ve encouraged me to keep going. You’ve told me my work is good, my books fun to read. You’ve told me I’m not writing in vain.

I am doing this because you believe in me, and I need to believe in myself enough to invest in myself and my craft. It’s kind of now or never.

I hope this doesn’t make me sound pathetic. That’s my fear. I’m opening myself up to ridicule and pity, and it makes me feel very vulnerable to share all this with you.

However, I hope my vulnerability encourages you, if you need encouraging. (Otherwise, enjoy the schadenfreude. I’m here to please.)

Are YOU Delusional, too?

If you are wondering whether or not you are worth investing money and time and continuing education into, if YOU have a dream you’d like to pursue, I hope I’m a positive example of someone daring to take one last chance on herself.

If I can do it, so can you.

I’m not telling you that your dream is doable and you should go for it. That’s not my call. Of course, be responsible. Of course, weigh the pros and cons. Of course, be smart. But I’m not sure being TOTALLY RATIONAL is the way to go here, either. Sometimes we have to go big or go home.

Only you can decide that for yourself. As for me, I’m going all in.

If it doesn’t work, I will retire. I will close up shop and write as a hobby until the day I die. Wish me luck, dear friends, and know that I’m here for you, too. I’m a really good cheerleader. I’ll give you encouragement if that’s what you need. I’ll listen and mirror back if that’s what you need at the moment. I want us to succeed in our goals. And I want us to not hate the way we get there.

Having fellow travelers along the way eases the burden. Let’s be delusional (or maybe genius!) together.

March Fiction: The Peony Hotel

SPRINKLES IN PARADISE

On her first morning in her new apartment at the Peony Resort Hotel overlooking Guam’s Hagåtña Bay, fifty-five year old Stephanie Hardy-Swett carried a steaming mug of coffee to her balcony, surveyed her beautiful surroundings, and wondered if she’d made a horrible mistake.

Below her to the left, a thin brown crescent of beach lined the curl of the bay. From a jungle-covered volcanic cliff, the resort rose like an ancient temple, large and pink and geometric. Two wings, ten floors each and constructed to look like steps, spread at light wide sheltering arms around walking paths, flowering trees, and expansive and shallow decorative pools of aquamarine water bubbling with fountains. The first-floor open-air terrace overlooked a swimming pool, spa pool, tiled patio dining area, and a bar. Stephanie gaze was drawn, however, to the turquoise water of the bay, a color so vibrant it was like viewing the world through a filter.

Movement near the strip of beach caught her attention. A pod of jet skis plowed lacy white ruffles in the bright shallows. Further out, curved and amorphous dark shapes lay under the water. These, Stephanie realized, were coral reefs protecting the bay from the deeper and darker blue water of the open ocean beyond.

Taking another sip of her coffee, sweetened with canned coconut milk she’d picked up the previous afternoon at the big K-Mart on North Marine Drive, Stephanie pictured Guam as it appeared on Google Map. It was a tiny speck in a vast ocean halfway around the world from family and friends and her old life in Maine, USA., visible on the map only if you really zoomed in.

The idea of all that water surrounding the island filled her with a sudden existential dread.

Feeling dizzy, she sank down a shabby rattan chair and pushed all thoughts from her head. Instead she calmly drank her coffee and focused her attention on small details. Swift white birds chasing each other in loops against the cloud-dotted sky. Palm fronts waving like many-fingered hands in a breeze so soft and warm it felt like a caress on her skin. Some kind of rampant, pink flowering vine draped over the tangled green jungle of the empty lot next door.

The Peony rose from this verdant promontory like a pink ziggurat. Her one-bedroom suite came “fully furnished” with decor from the late 1980s. She actually liked the pink-tiled bathroom and odd, ornate gold chandelier hanging in the small entryway, but she’d need to replace the faded duvet cover and pillow shams as well as find blankets or covers to throw over the ratty couch and chair in the living/dining area. Nothing could be done about the ugly yellow kitchen cabinets, she supposed, but maybe with some lamps and rugs and artwork in the other rooms, the miniscule kitchen would fade into a mustard-colored backdrop.

So back to the 80s, a snarky voice in her head whispered. Is this really what you wanted?

****

She’d run here with no definite return date. She’d made reservations, packed three gigantic suitcases, closed up the house in Maine, and gotten on a plane. Well, three planes. Boston to Los Angeles. L.A. to Honolulu. Honolulu to Guam.

Twenty-seven hours after she’d left Maine, she arrived at Won Pat International Airport, grateful for her first class sleeping pod and a prescribed sedative. After struggling to get her luggage onto a cart and clearing customs, she summoned a taxi and arrived at the Tsubaki Hotel in Tumon. After taking a shower and closing the blackout curtains, she’d popped another pill and slept for twelve hours. After another shower, a change into one of her new caftans, and a quick swipe of lipstick, she’d wandered down to the lobby bar for a cocktail with a pink flower floating in it and fish tacos.

She spent two weeks at the Tsubaki while looking for a permanent residence on island with a local real estate broker named Cynthia. Meanwhile, Stephanie’s literary agent, Dana, texted several times a day asking how she was doing and if she’d started working on the O’Halloran project yet.

Her middle child, Andie, phoned every morning, complaining about the fourteen-hour time difference and asking if Stephanie had come to her senses yet. “I think Daddy broke your mind,” she said one morning.

“Daddy didn’t break my mind,” Stephanie said. “He broke my heart, but I’m getting over it. This isn’t about your father. It’s about me and needing a change of scenery.”

“You call abandoning your home and family and moving halfway around the globe with just the clothes on your back a change of scenery?”

“Laptop.”

“What?” Andie sounded distracted. Something beeped loudly in the background.

“Not just my clothes. I brought my computer. And some books. And notepads. I’m here to write, remember?”

“Ghost-write, you mean.” Andie sighed. “Come on, Mom. This can’t really be something you want to do.”

“Why not?”

“Because you should be writing your own books, not that Faith or Charity or whats-her-name’s autobiography. She’s Evangelical for god’s sake. You are an atheist!”

“Hope.”

Silence. “You hope what?” Andie snapped.

“My client’s name is Hope. Not Charity. And I’m not writing her autobiography. I’m writing a young adult historical series that Hope will publish under her own name. It’s going to be fun. Better yet, she’s going to pay me a ludicrous sum of money to do it.”

“I don’t freakin’ care what her name is, Mom!” Andie’s voice rose. “I want you go come home where you belong and stop acting crazy.”

Stephanie felt a pang of motherly guilt. “I’m sorry this is disturbing you, baby. You know I love you. You know I’d do anything for you if I thought you really needed me. I’d be home on the next flight. But, Andrea, I don’t have to remind you that you live in D.C., not Maine. The last few years, you hardly ever came up to Pelham to visit.”

“So you’re punishing me for being busy with my career?”

This child is her father’s daughter, Stephanie thought. “Of course I’m not. I know it’s not convenient for you with your work schedule, and you should be concentrating on your career right now. My point is, whether I’m in Maine or Guam, it’s not that much of a difference for you. It’s just a matter of a few extra hours on a plane. Come visit! It’s gorgeous. Sun. Sand. Palm trees. I’ll cook your favorite meals every day, and we’ll explore the island and check out all the fancy hotel bars.”

“That sounds wondrous, but I’m too busy right now. My caseload is nuts, and I’m trying to date, but these apps are all so sketch, and ugh. I just get so tired.” Andie’s voice sounded teary. “I miss you, Mom.”

“I know baby. I miss you, too. It’s all gonna work out. This is how it’s supposed to be right now.”

Andie sniffed. “Okay, but promise me you’ll think about moving to D.C. when you’re done with that book.”

“Series.”

“Series. Whatever.”

Stephanie smiled. “ I promise I’ll think about it.”

****

Finishing her coffee and surveying her new tropical island surroundings, Stephanie wondered if Andie was right. Had she gone a little insane after Randy’s affair and the yoga studio prostitute ring scandal that followed?

Possibly. Who could blame her? She’d needed to escape. To land someplace soft and easy where no one knew her. Where no one she ran into in the market asked her how she was doing with pity in their eyes. Where women at the library didn’t abruptly stop whispering when she glanced in their direction. So she’d fled to the first place that caught her attention while skimming articles on the best places for Americans to live abroad, a place she’d barely heard of and couldn’t find on a map without computer assistance.

Guam. An island in the Marianas. Not far from the Philippines. Way far away.

The cotillion of jet skis danced circles in the bay and then headed for shore. Stephanie set her mug onto the mosaic tile top of the patio table and stood at the railing for an even better view. A light breeze stirred her hair, swirled the calf-length skirt of her old-fashioned white cotton and eyelet nightgown against her legs.

She’d had a long obsession with pretty Eilleen Fisher cotton nighties, and now she wondered if maybe she’d ditched them for something silky and French-laced and sexy, Randy wouldn’t have strayed.

She preferred L.L. Bean to Versace. Gardening and knitting to yoga and pilates. Over the years, she’d taken to wearing her hair in a messy knot, perching a set of reading glasses on her nose, and pounding out her next novel on her keyboard.

Perhaps she should have been pounding Randy.

Looking at her marriage from a distance (of 8,000 miles), she considered that some of the blame for the dissolution of her marriage could be hers. Maybe if she’d put a bit more spice into their sex life years ago, she never would have ended up disgraced and divorced and demoralized at mid-life.

So now she’d pivoted. She’d come to live in a new, exotic locale where nobody knew her, to work on a new project as a ghost-writer, and to figure out who she was if she wasn’t a wife, a literary novelist, and a mother. She’d given herself a chance to start over. She could become someone new. Someone adventurous and free. Unencumbered.

A wild feeling spiraled through her, flowing up from the soles of her feet to the top of her head. Without thinking, she grabbed handfuls of her nightgown and drew it over her head and off her body. Letting the gown fall to her feet, she threw her head back, felt the soft air swirl over her naked body, ran her hands in gleeful abandon over her slightly saggy breasts, rounded stomach, and widening hips.

Her shoulder length hair stirred in the breeze as she inhaled a deep, cleansing breath and let it out again, slowly, absorbing positive energy from the very air around her.

You could be an atheist and still believe in positive energy, right? She’d needed a change, and she’d taken change when it was presented to her. Yes, she felt cut off from everything she’d ever known–her kids, her old friends, her pretty New England town, her home, and even her past.

Sure, she might be a little untethered at the moment. Was that so terrible? What, she wondered, was the difference between untethered and unencumbered?

Attitude. The word came to her from some deep self dredged up from her subconscious, the voice of someone older, wiser, and waiting for her time in the sun. The only difference between untethered and unencumbered was attitude.

A drop of coolness fell on her arm. Naked and alone,she looked up at the sky and saw a small, dark cloud skudding quickly across the otherwise clear sky. It dropped rain as it sailed, a sprinkling of water, like a baptism just for her. She lifted her arms above her head, turned in a circle, let the sprinkles fall on her nakedness, and laughed out loud.

The rain stopped as quickly as it began. Still smiling, she looked down instead of up. Staring back at her from the poolside patio was a large group of Japanese tourists. They were waiting, she realized in that shocking moment, for the Peony’s daily 7-10:30 AM outdoor breakfast buffet. One older woman put her hand over the eyes of a young child at her side. Older men grinned. Some of the younger women looked pointedly away, but at least one had her phone out, taking shots of the crazy naked lady on the fifth-floor balcony.

Yelping, Stephanie grabbed her nightie and held it in front of her body. She reached behind her with the other hand, wrenching her shoulder as she tried to open the sliding door. When it finally opened wide enough, she slid into the safe, dim, air-conditioned interior of her furnished, one-bedroom apartment and wondered when the management would knock on her door and politely invite her to leave.

Thank You

That’s it for March. I hope you enjoyed the newsletter and the first of what I hope will be many Peony Hotel vignettes. Next month, look for my interview with Kirstie Brote, an artist, writer, personal trainer, and new Etsy shop owner and purveyor of vintage costume jewelry. Because we can’t live by books alone. Sometimes we need fashion.

Also, I’ll report on how the letter-writing project, Paper & Ink is going. Hint: good so far!

And I’ll update you, of course, on my progress on Liv #3.

Cheers!

Shelley

In This Issue

• A Short Note from Shelley

• Our Creativity Era Has Just Begun—a February pappus

• In Defiance of Sharks—a short story excerpt

• Writing & Publishing News

• Pen & Ink

A Short Note from Shelley

Dear Friend,

First, I want to thank all of you who read the seven launch week emails. I enjoyed sharing more of the “behind the scenes” story of how Strawberry Moon Mystery came into being, and from your comments both here and in other places, I think you enjoyed them, too.

Second, I’m moving past the frenetic energy of launch and salesy stuff and into a renewed era of being creatively focused. Sharply focused on just that—on creativity. I know it’s been a touchstone for this newsletter since its inception, but other parts of my writing life distracted me in a way that no longer feels worthwhile or even useful, namely social media and marketing and striving (the worse-tasting word in the world) to get attention in the “attention economy.”

More on that topic in the pappus essay along with some ideas for embracing your own creativity.

Third, I’m going to begin sharing snippets of short stories or complete flash fictions in each newsletter. I’d love your feedback as these might end up in a collection. Check out the excerpt from In Defiance of Sharks in this February edition.

Fourth, I’ll tell you a little bit about how the launch of Strawberry Moon went, what I’ve learned about indie publishing through this process, and what I’m working on next. See the Writing & Publishing News section.

Finally, as I’m embracing—in a tight, lover’s grip—this creative era, I long to move beyond the screen and into IRL again, including physical correspondence via the post office. Mail. Paper and ink and stamps.

I hope this Pink Dandelions newsletter/publication inspires you every month in your creative journey, whether it’s art or writing or decorating or gardening or crafting of all types. I want to hear about it! I truly want to know what you love and feel a need to create. Comment or send an email reply. I write back.

Please join me on this journey, and keep the swirling & blissful Creator’s Energy alive in your heart!

In solidarity & love,

Shelley

February Pappus: Our Creativity Era Has Just Begun

A pappus is the seed fluff drifting on the current soft air, carrying the seed to fertile soil in which it can germinate.

Since the new year and returning to Guam, I’ve been journaling nearly every day, sticking to that practice because it’s good for me emotionally, mentally, and creatively. These pages are free-form. Sometimes I make lists. Sometimes I free-form write a scene or a few paragraphs. Sometimes I plan and plot and bascially “take notes” from my imagination.

My journals are for me and only me. I rarely revisit them except if I want to retrieve some of those notes or plot ideas. I don’t care if they are pretty or ugly or in a different ink or uniform in structure. My handwriting is attrocious most of the time.

Yesterday, following this frantic, months-long period of rewriting, formatting, uploading, launching, and marketing my first self-published book, I found myself taking a deep breath, pouring words onto the page, and rededicating myself to the force that inspired me to write that book and everything else I’ve composed in my forty years of writing practice. The force of creativity.

Our New Creative Era Rising

With everything going on right now, and in spite of the tasteless, smell-less, sterile poison that is AI’s non-living“breath” seeping into nearly every corner of our human world, I feel something rising in humanity: a desire to turn our backs (some a little, some a lot) on technology and to return, instead, to our humanity. All our messy, emotional, fleshy, smelly, oozy, soaring, dancing, laughing, swirling in circles on the grass, and lifting our faces to feel the rain humanity.

Do you feel it? Do those words grab you by the hand and swing you around? Do they make your heart lift?

Typing them makes me feel happy. I wrote about this creativity era in my journal yesterday, about how I feel as if we are moving into a new phase of life, one that is more connected with actual, living things: people, nature, animals, human-made art and crafts, voices raised in song, feet pounding a rhythmic dance, long hugs, big smiles, and laughing together over a shared experience.

Our new creativity era has begun, I feel it swirling around me, and it brings a feeling of peace and giddiness at the same time. I want to create. I want to share. I want to be in commune with other creators.

I’m dedicating myself to creativity. I’m letting ego and the materialist/capitalist side of the writing life become just a sidenote to the main event. It feels like turning a corner. Here, something whispers to me, is the human-scaled place to dwell.

The road to this place has been rocky.

My Failure

Dear reader, I’ve failed. In the attention economy, I’ve failed. Pretty sure my heart wasn’t in it enough, or else I just wasn’t good at it. I never wanted to be famous, not even a little bit famous. I really just wanted my stories to find readers who would enjoy them, who would find my stories a respite from daily struggles, boredom, or even pain. But, yes, I wanted a somewhat larger number of readers than I’ve managed to gather so far. That’s my failure.

I’m confident in the quality of my work and storytelling. My failure is not reaching my readership.

I kept telling myself that I needed to be on the social media platforms in order to do everything I could for my stories (and for my publisher, too.) See, back in the 2010s I’d deleted my original personal Facebook page after getting sucked into political debate once too often. It felt icky. When I decided I needed to get back on Facebook in 2019, it was with a dedicated purpose: my professional writing career.

That was the year after I’d worked as a ghostwriter, wrote my first published book, saw it go into print by an academic press. I felt like my career was truly beginning after decades of practice, short story publication, and newspaper writing. I wanted to help that book succeed.

Sometime after that, I started an Instagram account. As I published two small press mystery novels, I shared the ups and downs (but mostly the ups because . . . marketing is a fake it until you make it kind of proposition) of my writing life plus parts of my life that might interest people in “the person behind the pen.”

And I was authentic. I don’t really know another way to be. I kept some things to myself (hello, politics!) yes. However, I didn’t gloss my life up to unreal shine and sparkle. I let my little light shine in belief that I’d attract the right readers, the right people into my circle.

But. BUT.

The culmination of my social media-ing has amounted to very little. If this is the “crowning moment” of my creative life, then I’m in deep trouble. Around the same time I jumped back into social media, the tech companies made that big algorithmic pivot. No longer would posts be shown to everyone who followed/friended you. In fact, the systems deliberately curtailed organic reach. It’s gotten worse every year.

It didn’t work for me. It’s not working for society, either. It’s a pox on our soul. So, I’ve decided I’m done with it.

Inspired by a few podcasters who happened to speak out against or at least investigate the dangers of social media—smart folks from different disciplines like Becca Syme in the writing coach space; Cal Newport in the tech space; Scott Galloway in the entrepreneur space; Jonathan Haight, Ezra Klein, Jon Favreau, and too many others to name—and some writers who have already taken the leap away from the social media platforms, I’m taking a 30-day break from Facebook and Instagram with the idea that I probably won’t return.

It feels like giving up on my writing career, but that’s a false message. It’s all a lie they’ve told us, the technocrats.

We don’t need social media. Social media needs all of US.

I am feeling very confident that I can be a happy, creative human without being on social media and begging for likes and follows and feeding a dopamine addiction. I can get pleasure from writing and quiet contemplation and by being in community with other people.

If this sounds appealing to you, but you aren’t sure where or how to begin your creativity era, read on.

Five Steps to Begin Your Creativity Era

One: rethink your relationship with social media and technology. I’m just beginning here with a 30-day hiatus from Facebook and Instagram, but I have a pretty good inkling that I won’t be returning. I’m going to delete my Bluesky account because I rarely use it. I never had TikTok. I’m 99% sure I deleted my old Twitter account after Elon grabbed it, and I never liked it anyway.

There are much better uses of my time than making social media content and the endless scroll.

What about Substack? Substack is a combination of blog, newsletter service, and social media, and I’m using it mostly for the newsletter service. I do subscribe to several letters.

Okay, it’s 35.

I know. I have a problem. It was 70 subscriptions yesterday, though, and I culled them to half. More culling to come.

There are a LOT of great people talking about cool things on here, and it’s tempting to want to “support” people we know and like. Still, if we are to listen to our own small, still, inner voices, we need quiet and we don’t need a clamour of other voices in our heads. So . . .

Two: Curate your inspirational sources. There are likely several podcasts, influencers, authors, newsletters, journalists, etc. that inspire and inform you in your daily and creative life. We all need this! However, we have so many choices and an overabundance of information, ideas, and inspirations that we can overwhelm our senses and become numb or envious or distracted or confused.

The cure is to curate your influences to only those that are the most helpful. Yes, I understand this might mean Pink Dandelions doesn’t make the cut. That’s okay. I just want you to focus on your best creative life. If I’m part of it, great. If not, let me go. (Although at one newsletter per month, I try not to be intrusive.)

Three: Dedicate a specific time for your creative practice and make it a habit. This can be controversial because I know some people do better with a more chaotic, random approach, but for many of us, we put our creative time LAST on our priority list. If we are going to honor the creative energy inside us (and the force I’m calling The Creative Energy of the Universe, aka the Creative Force), we need to set aside time to be with it. To practice. To get into flow. To build our creative muscles. To learn what resonates with us and through us.

Four: Share your creativity with others & make at least some IRL. This is the part that gets tricky. I don’t necessarily mean marketing or trying to capitalize your art. Those are fine, of course, but in some ways monetization distracts us from our original creative impulse, gives us an unhelpful “scorecard” of success, and potentially either corrupts or demoralizes us in our endeavor. Sharing, on the other hand, is a communal activity.

In Real Life, aka IRL. Take a class and meet some others who practice your art or craft. Start a group. Try to not always be online. Go to live events and talk to people about their work and yours. Read or sing at an open mic event. Conferences can be a good opportunity if you go for the knowledge and the community and not for the marketing. (see: scorecard above)

If you have the creative urge to start a newsletter, blog, or podcast, go for it. If you want to turn your short stories into a collection or your 350,000 word manuscript into a beautiful published novel, do it.

Just beware of the pitfalls of comparison, growth, attention, or lack of it. Do it to DO it, not for the attention or for money. There’s nothing wrong with making money. If you can make money with your art, excellent! I’ll applaud you. I don’t believe it is selling out by any means, and I love the idea of people being fairly compensated for the creative labors. If only we could all be so blessed. However, we all aren’t. That’s just the truth.

Hear me people: if you can’t make money with your art, it’s truly and magnificently okay. Do it for the love of creation. It will feed your soul, if not your stomach.

Nobody can take soul food away from you. If someone you follow consistently posts about success, specifically in the arenas of attention and money, and it makes you feel bad about yourself, drop them and take that power back. You deserve to feel good about your creative work. It’s what the Creative Force wants for us. I believe this with all my heart.

Five: Get into nature. We are of nature and by nature. We are closer to an ant than we are to that electronic plastic silicon screen device you are staring into right now, even the one with an artificial intelligence staring coldly out at us and analyzing the way we talk so it can better mimic us.

Nature soothes us. We breathe it in. We breathe it out. I quite like the Bible verse that goes: “Consider the lilies, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin. Yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.” (Matthew 6:27) Nature has so much to teach us. It nurtures us. So observe it. Eat it. Wear it. Take care of it.

I hope these ideas inspire you and give you some hope. Let’s just get out there and play, people! Let’s be our crazy, emotional, creative, human selves. Our creative era has begun.

Short Story

Excerpt from “In Defiance of Sharks” by Shelley Burbank

Bose worked at Skiff’s, a salty bar off the boardwalk and known for cheap well drinks and negligent carding policy. San Diego college girls patronized the place, and Bose spent more time in campus dormrooms than many matriculated students. If he wasn’t “at school” as he called it or behind the bar at Skiff’s, he’d be on his longboard, paddleracing anyone and everyone to catch the best waves, riding in with an enviable beauty and grace. As far as Lisette knew, he had no loftier ambitions, no secret desire to study philosophy or become a novelist or own his own bar or surf shop someday.

Lisette dragged her wetsuit over her rashguard and wiggled her arms into the sleeves. She found Gabe and Bose in the kitchen eating strawberry-flavored Poptarts. “About time,” Gabe said.

Bose met her eyes and tossed her a packet of pastries.

She smiled at him. “Thanks.”

—this is just a short excerpt from a longer, but not much longer story. I like it. I might include it in a collection one day. Do you like to read fiction here in the newsletter? I can never quite tell. If you do, drop a comment or reply email.

Writing & Publishing News

Strawberry Moon Mystery: An Olivia Lively Novella launched as an ebook on KDP January 28 and in paperback on Amazon February 11. Despite a lot of stated interest from lots of people over the last year and a half, sales have been sluggish.

It could be the length. Novellas are harder to sell than full-length novels. It could be the topic. Plagiarism isn’t as tasty to mystery readers as murder. It could be indie pubbing versus having a small press behind me. It could be the time of year, the after-holidays slump when the credit cards bills come due. It could be the chaos of the world. It could be the cost of everything and the affordability crisis. It could be I didn’t reach out to as many bookstagrammers and reviewers. I could be all of this or none of this.

HOWEVER, it’s not the quality of the work that’s the problem. It’s good. I know it is. What reviews have come in are glowing. I’m very pleased with the product itself, the paper and the format and the cover. It’s a piece of art on which I’m proud to have my name. It will sit on my shelf with the first two books in the series. I’ve sent a copy to my parents. I’ll sell it in person at events down the road. I’ll even do a Goodreads giveaway for the ebook once I get a few more reviews so hopefully I will reach a few more new readers that way.

This is the part of the writing career that tears at my heart like claws. It feels awful. But it’s part of the creative journey. I’m already working on the next full-length book.

I guess I better put a dead body in it just to be safe.

Anyway, it’s got a madly awesome hook. I can’t wait to tell you about it once I’ve drafted the thing. I have a good title, but for now, it’s just Liv 3. I’m holding the title as a surprise.

Paper & Ink

Since January I’ve been writing and sending paper & ink letters and cards through the mail. I’m really enjoying the old-fashioned correspondence! I encourage you to make a list of a few people and send them a letter. They will probably send you a letter back.

I have a couple of ideas for how our Pink Dandelions community can have some fun with snail mail. For one, I am making a bookmark from a hand-drawn and colored illustration of a scene from Strawberry Moon. These will be signed and numbered limited edition bookmarks, and I want to be able to get one to you in the mail.

[I made a sign-up form and was going to link it here. However, I remember the issue I had with putting a link in one of my newsletters. It tanked my deliveries. So I have to think a little bit more on how to do this efficiently. Stay tuned for details in March.]

That’s all my lovely people. Have a fabulous month, and look for the next newsletter the third week of March.

Well, I attempted all the ways to create this AS a video newsletter to no avail. Right now I’m attempting to upload the video recording I made on my phone to YouTube and typing this as I wait.

Sometimes I think about making a podcast on YouTube, but then I come to my senses and realize I need to spend my time writing books. It’s so easy to be distracted by all the other ways to build community, but I have to remind myself of my ultimate purpose—telling stories that will delight and entertain and speak to my readers.

Still, I think it would be fun to read some short stories on videos once in awhile. On my YouTube “channel” (really just a placeholder) I do have two recordings of me reading at open mics in San Diego if anyone is interested, but here we go with Inside Scoop, Day 7.

Again, thank you for hanging out with me during the special launch week series for my first indie publishing effort. It’s been fun for me to think about what you might find amusing and/or interesting about my inspiration and process.

I’ve been quite satisfied with how the novella’s been received in the big wide world out there, but honestly? If my current readers are happy and excited to get a new Liv Lively, then I’ve succeeded.

Of course, the other reason (besides wanting to give my readers something to read while they wait for books 3 & 4) for writing a short book with a lower price point is to hopefully attract even more readers into our community. My writing doesn’t fall exactly into they cozy mystery genre or mystery thriller or noir. It’s really a combo of women’s fiction & mystery, and that makes it a little difficult to reach the readers who will enjoy the books.

So having you here, cheering me on, encouraging me, means so much. If I can answer any questions or give any insights into writing or publishing, please reach out. I’m always happy to talk shop!

Meanwhile, the regular monthly Pink Dandelions will resume later on this month (3rd week of each month) with it’s focus on creativity, making the life you dream of, and nurturing your talents and aspirations and gifts.

See you in a few weeks!

Dear Friend & Loyal Reader:

I cannot believe this launch week is drawing to an end already, although I’d probably be shocked if I added up the word count for this Inside Scoop Series. Here we are on Day 6, and I’m going to talk about something about which I’m very enthusiastic—literary ‘zines.

What’s a ‘Zine Got to Do With It?

When I was first drafting Strawberry Moon Mystery and decided that the case would revolve around an accusation of literary theft (like Final Draft, Book 1), I had to figure out the parameters of the case. I had to discover who Bobbie-Ann Alcock was, what genre she wrote, how old she was, and why and how someone would even have the nerve to accuse a prolific and long-career author of plagiarism.

I decided Bobbie-Ann and her accuser, Linda Wood, grew up in the 80s, just as I did. Write what you know. It’s not bad advice. That meant they were in college the same years I was, and I had first-hand experience with a small college literary scene in the second half of that totally awesome decade. It was wonderfully easy to create the backstory that Liv would be investigating. I could almost be there in my mind.

My college, the University of Maine at Farmington, now has a good undergraduate writing degree program, but when I matriculated in 1986, that program did not exist. I took all the writing classes UMF offered: Intro to Poetry Writing, Intro to Fiction Writing, and an Intro to Theater class that wasn’t about playwriting, per se, but I did manage to write one as my big project.

There was an official literary magazine, The Sandy River Review, which came once per semester (it’s still publishing, though only in print once per year now with an online version called The River publishing on a rolling basis.) But the really cool place to see your name in print was this underground literary mag called The Blue Crow.

I wish I had access to my old college boxes, but alas they are back in Maine. I don’t recall the name of the editor who ran the thing my freshman year, but I have this picture of him in my head. I won’t even describe what I’m seeing because I can’t be sure this isn’t a false memory, but as a former Evangelical Christian schoolgirl, I remember being thrilled and a little shocked by some of the cartoons and artwork.

This was a ‘zine, a collection of photocopied pages of poetry, stories, art, photos, and hand-drawn comics, all stapled together under a colored-paper photocopied cover, hand-drawn and illustrated, usually by the editor. Somehow these ‘zines were distributed around campus. I don’t even know when or where I picked one up, but it was probably in a stack at the Student Center. All I knew was that a) I wanted to be a writer and b) this was where I could possibly get a start.

I remember submitting a poem and wondering what would happen, not knowing until the next edition came out, picking up the mag from the pile and scanning the contents page. The thrill of seeing my name in print for the first time! Wow!

Eventually I had pieces published in The Sandy River Review, as well, plus in one memorable semester, my short fiction piece was selected by my Intro to Fiction professor to appear in Thunder Eggs: The Best of Student Writing Across the Curriculum. (I suspect NOW that “The Hat” was chosen partly because it was a very short story of only a few pages. It wouldn’t take up much room, lol.)

But I also hope it showed some promise. I’m grateful to my creative writing professor, Patricia O’Donnell, for encouraging me when I was at that vulnerable beginner stage. And to my poetry professor, Marianne Baruch, who memorably wrote on my final collection project that if I didn’t keep writing poetry she’d “cloud up and rain on me.”

Dear Professor Baruch, I’m kinda’ damp, but I do write the occasional haiku.

So, when it came time for me to write about Bobbie-Ann Alcock and Linda Wood, two first-year students involved in the literary community at Barnes College, a fictional “little Ivy” in Lewiston, Maine, I drew on this experience.

I was lucky at UMF. I found another writer who lived down the hall in my dorm, and we read each others’ work and encouraged each other. Get this: WE STILL DO.

Yes, forty years later and my friend Mary Ann and I still read each others’ draft, give each other feedback, and encourage each other to continue on this writing journey.

Unlike Bobbie-Ann and Linda.

For their relationship, I basically took this friendship Mary Ann and I had in college as inspiration and, well, went in another direction. I don’t want to spoil the story, but the word “frenemies” is in the tagline.

Over the course of the story, Liv has to ferret out their history herself. Bobbie-Ann might be an unreliable client (Liv isn’t quite sure). Or maybe she’s completely sincere? She’s a smooth one, that Bobbie-Ann.

And because Liv’s conducting a background check on Linda Wood, she can’t actually contact or talk to her because P.I. rules, and in this way Linda’s and Bobbie-Ann’s story is gradually revealed from every source but their own two sets of lips!

As I wrote this story, I have to admit I fell in love with the whole concept. I also love the idea of Bobbie-Ann’s Sexy Psychopath series and wish I had the guts, time, and ability to write that first book under my fictional character’s name.

Maybe someday I’ll find a horror-writer collaborator who will write it so I don’t have to.

Make Your Own ‘Zines

The cool thing about the 80s and 90s ‘zines were the hand-crafted, Xeroxed, art-and lit-student vibe of the publications. I’ve heard they are making a little bit of a comeback now. Anything that gets us off our devices deserves more attention. Some libraries have ‘zine sections/collections.

Teachers of students of all ages are likely to introduce ‘zines as a fun project in their classrooms. I really think we should bring this art form back in a big way. Folding the paper for these mini-zines is half the fun!

What’s Up Tomorrow?

You’ve stuck with me this far, so what’s on the agenda for tomorrow? I’m considering creating a video newsletter as an experiment, basically wrapping up the week and reporting on how things went for me in the indie-pubbing sphere. But if the tech gets wonky on me, I’ll just talk about in writing.

Thank you to everyone who has written emails back to me and/or left nice comments here on the ‘Stack. It’s uplifting to know I’m not whispering into a void. If you’ve read the novella, I’d love to hear what you think. (Also, leave a rate/review on Amazon, if you can.)

Thank you, dear lovely readers. Have a great day/night.

If you haven’t caught your own copy of Strawberry Moon Mystery yet, click the link to Amazon below the graphic.

Buy for $1.99 on Amazon

Dear Friend & Loyal Reader:

Here we are on Day 5, no worse the wear, I hope. Today I’m going to talk about my inspiration for the setting details in Strawberry Moon. First of all, there’s the “cottage.” Now most of you probably know that a summer cottage doesn’t mean a tiny one-bedroom camp. Summer cottages are large home, sometimes even mansions.

From The Maine Memory Network, Mount Desert Island-Shaped by Nature:

As Mount Desert Island’s visitor count rose, many wealthy rusticators opted for greater luxury and privacy and built their own summer “cottages.” By 1890, the cottage-building boom had transformed Bar Harbor. It outdid the rest of the island in the number and sheer opulence of these seasonal homes, all given grandly imaginative names such as “Bogue Chitto,” “Bournemouth,” “Chatwold,” and “Thirlstane.” The town’s cottagers included well-born or self-made millionaires with prominent names like Astor, Pendleton, Procter, Pulitzer, Sears, and Vanderbilt. [https://mdi.mainememory.net/page/3714/display.html]

These wealthy robber barons, er, industrialists flocked to Maine to escape the summer heat, and they built gorgeous, rambling houses in many quaint villages up and down the rocky coast. I’ve long been fascinated by the architectural details of late 19th- and early 20th-century buildings. Queen Annes. Gothic Revival (oh, that gingerbread trim!) The sheer craftsmanship of crown moldings, glorious libraries, grand staircases, pressed tin ceilings, warrens of rooms leading into each other . . . and the occasional secret passageway.

The House

As I found myself drawn deeper into the story and “met” coastal grandma horror author, Bobbie-Ann Alcock, I envisioned the kind of home she’d live in during the summer. It had to be a stately Queen Anne on a winding road in a quaint, Maine village jutting out into the ocean. I was inspired by houses I saw on Peak’s Island, and in Belfast, Camden, and Kennebunkport. Also Farmington, even though it is far from the coast.

Bobbie-Ann’s house looks more like this, only with an ocean in front of it like in the first photo which I took last fall in Castine (a village with much older homes. Now there is a town to inspire some fiction!) Not only did I create one pretty house, I also presto-chango! DOUBLED it!

Yes, Bobbie-Anne’s cousin has an identical house next door, both homes built by brothers. In my original story, there was a tunnel running between the two houses, and in that tunnel Liv confronted a thief, fought hand-to-hand, and recovered the stolen property.

On revision, I decided it was a bit too cliche, a bit overblown, and not the way I wanted the story to go. What I ended up doing instead, I’ll leave you to discover on your own. You can tell me if you think the tunnel idea was better. (I really, really don’t.)

So the parts of the book that describe Bobbie-Ann’s were a joy for me to write. I could picture the sunlight falling through the windows onto the tea table, the dusty lavendar blue of the hydrangeas, the blowsy pink balls of peonies in the garden, the tall bookshelves, the stone patio, the writing room tucked away down a hidden hallway.

I’m not sure I’d want such a big house in real life now. Maybe if I had a lot of friends and family living with me. But oh, it’s fun to pretend for awhile.

The Village

Liv didn’t spend much time in Lindon Point, the coastal village I made up for this story, but she did go to the library, and for this scene I pictured the Norway Public Library. It’s a beautiful, stately brick building with white columns, wide steps, a porch in front of the BIG door. I used to live in Norway, Maine, and I know and love that library. Plunking a twin library in Lindon Point made me happy.

The rest of the town was shadowy in my imagination. I’m sure it’s all there . . . a park in the center with a white gazebo. A coffee shop. Several restaurants and lobster places. Some upscale gift shops and clothing places. The past fall, I met my writer friend Mary Ann in Bath, Maine, and that gorgeous town has a wonderful cozy, coastal town vibe. I think Lindon Point feels something like Bath and something even more like Peak’s Island. It’s a mashup of several town in Maine that I adore.

Portland, ME

What about Portland, you ask? Isn’t that where Liv lives and works? Yes. There are some scenes set in Portland, at Liv’s office in the gentrified Bayside neighborhood and in her Munjoy Hill apartment and even downtown where she meets her attorney friend, Patrick Ledeau, to discuss taking the case. In fact, meeting Ledeau, she parks her car near the new cafe/bookstore, NOVEL, on Congress St. When I was home, Craig and I stopped in to NOVEL to have a drink/coffee and of course buy a book.

Notice the tin ceiling? This is a wonderful place to sit and read or write for a bit, and they host events and even have a fun performance space downstairs. Someday I will have a book launch party there, I swear I will.

The Bookstore

Finally, an important scene or two takes place in Lewiston, Maine, just up the I-95 from Portland. Here Liv talks to some people in a fictional rehabilitation facility, which was surprisingly fun to write. I liked the characters we met there.

But one of my favorite scenes settings was in a fictional used bookstore I placed in a little alleyway next to a small park beside a bank. In the photo I snagged off Google Maps, the space has a blue awning. It’s so funny. I pictured The Book End with a black awning, the door built into the corner, and a black and gold sign hanging from a holder next to the door, so when I was looking on the street-view to find this today, I half expected to see what I’d imagined! It took me a minute to recognize the original!

I didn’t picture a glass door, either. And if you’ve ever been into a shabby, out-of-the-way used or antiquarian bookshop with no windows, you can picture the interior just fine. Lots of bookcases. Some scuffed wood floors. Threadbare Oriental carpets. The musty smell of old books. A checkout table that looks something like this photo that inspired me. Look at that lions-head detail. Now picture it piled with books and an old-fashioned register but also a credit card reader because this is 2026.

Today’s letter has been very photo-heavy today. I hope you found it interesting.

Now that I’m revisiting Strawberry Moon’s settings, I’m feeling drawn back into that dream-world. That’s one of the best things about writing fiction, being able to create your own places in your mind and spending time there. I kind of want to just sit and daydream a bit.

Of course, what you picture when you read will be not be exactly what I pictured when I wrote the scenes, but they will be close enough.

What’s Up Tomorrow?

On Day 6 I’m going to talk about the 1980s ‘zine culture as I experienced it. This was a MAJOR piece of this story. I enjoyed revisiting that time of my life, and I’m excited to share a little piece of my history with you tomorrow.

Look for Inside Scoop, Day 6 in your inbox tomorrow. If you are enjoying these, why not share the link with your reader friends and suggest they give it a try? Or suggest the novella to your book club and use these Inside Scoops for discussion topics. I’m also happy to Zoom in to say hi and answer questions. Just drop me a line and we can set it up.

If you haven’t howled for Strawberry Moon Mystery yet, click the link to Amazon below the graphic.

Buy for $1.99 on Amazon

Dear Friend & Loyal Reader:

Today’s topic is beta readers. A beta reader is a very special person who agrees to read a “best I can do” draft and give feedback about what works, what doesn’t work, places the narrative sags or drags, and even thematic issues.

In the past, I gathered a “street team” of early readers who agreed to read the draft, give feedback, but then also leave an honest review on reader sites (Goodreads, Amazon, BookBub, etc.) when the book launched.

This time I put out the call only to read and give feedback (not review though I imagine some of them will voluntarily), and several people offered to beta read Strawberry Moon Mystery. I sent the doc off to them and waited for responses.

Their responses were gold.

Here’s a tip: It’s good to get different types of readers involved at this stage. They bring different skills to the table.

One of my readers caught inconsistencies in the timeline. Attention to detail. Great catch!

One thought I had too many details, especially in the opening scene, and because of that feedback I was able to tighten the paragraphs. I tend to overwrite description. I get carried away with setting the scene: the smells, the sights, the way the air feels, the noises. It’s good to get a reminder that a little goes a long way.

Conversely, another reader LOVED the sensory details. This tempered my revisions to fall somewhere in between too many details and not enough.

The thing is, no writer or book will please all readers or please them the exact same way. We writers can only do the best we can do.

Another beta reader suggested I had gone too heavy on the theme. Totally spot on! Readers don’t need philsophies or theme bashed over their heads. Readers are smart and intuitive. They catch the themes consciously or subconsciously and don’t need the author talking down to them, or reiterating the point ad nauseam. Fixing this was probably the most delicate operation in my revision process.

I actually caught something myself while revisiting the manuscript. When I wrote the book the first time, I called the author character “Bobbie-Ann.” In the beta version, I’d changed the name to “Barbara” based on a beta reader’s feedback. Then I realized I already HAD a Barbara in the series (the English Dept. administrative assistant at the fictional Longfellow College in Portland, Maine.)

So, I changed Barbara back to Bobbie-Ann.

Once again, I went through the entire manuscript checking for inconsistencies in the timeline, typos, purple prose, overly-long and detailed descriptions, and most import, any too on-the-nose statements of theme. I aimed for subtlety. While I can’t say I succeeded in being as subtle as a literary novelist, I toned it down a few notches until I felt the book was as good as I could get it.

I saved one of my major cuts in a file because I kind of liked it. You can read it below.

Exclusive Bonus Cut

Liv felt a thrilling twinge of rebellious satisfaction and lifted her chin. After being raised in a privileged environment much like this one, she’d rejected her family’s lifestyle in favor of a career in private investigation. Her boutique agency, Lively Investigations, now specialized in intellectual property, corporate security, and insurance fraud, but she’d started out with the more prosaic background checks, cheating spouse cases, and process service jobs. Eschewing privilege and nepotism, she’d taken a chance on herself, and finally her ambition had begun to pay off.

Her life was a study in contrasts. She drove a basic sedan but indulged her taste for designer clothing labels and original art. She loved takeout pizza and old X-Files episodes, but ordered Veuve Cliquot by the case and patronized the opera. She’d dated both suitable doctors and unsuitable con artists–not to mention a flirtation with a certain FBI agent who popped in and out of her life with maddening regularity. A social chameleon, she considered her ability to mingle in diverse situations–both highbrow and low–an asset to her career.

Tonight was definitely on the highbrow side.

It’s not that this passage is horrible or anything. It simply didn’t add much to the forward momentum of a novella story that required a snappier pace. The backstory “info dump” wasn’t necessary, so I replaced it with:

These days, she wasn’t sure where she fit in. While she’d ditched the country club lifestyle of her parents in favor of what they considered a “seedy” career in private investigation, she still enjoyed some of the trappings.

Future Beta Readers Gladly Accepted

If you’d like to be a beta reader for me in the future, shoot me a reply email. I will put you on the list and will contact you before I send the manuscript to make sure you have time and energy to give feedback. (If you offer and I sent you the manuscript, I do expect that you’ll read it and send some notes back.)

What’s Coming Up Tomorrow?

Tomorrow I’ll share how my love of Victorian houses, quaint coastal Maine villages, and musty used bookstores inspired the setting when I was writing the novella.

Look for The Inside Scoop, Day 5 tomorrow.

If you haven’t scooped up Strawberry Moon Mystery and want to read it, click the link to Amazon below the graphic.

Buy on Amazon for $1.99

Dear Friend & Loyal Reader:

Here we are on Day 3 of the launch week series, and if you’ve stuck with me so far, I hope you are finding the content interesting. I think readers are often curious about how a book gets made—not so much the physical objects, although believe me that is amazing, and when I first saw a modern printing press churning out books, I sort of swooned—but rather how a story is created seemingly out of thin air.

The thing is, it isn’t THIN air. It’s thick—a vast, endless expanse inside an author’s consciousness. The material is kind of dark and light at the same time, a glimmering darkness like starlight sparkling on midnight ocean waves. Truth is, we authors don’t know what’s in there, what depths there are to explore, or how twisty things can get if we let ourselves just go with it.

NEW Liv Book in Progress

I’m able to describe this right now because I experienced it this afternoon. I was so tired of marketing, I decided to start working “for reals” on Liv Book 3. I already had a concept, but today I expanded on the original idea, pulled some ideas out of the deep, and surprised myself when Liv ended up getting on a plane to follow a suspect to Guam!

Now, this is gonna be challenging when I attempt to meld “Maine in October” vibes with Guam’s endless paradise vibes. Dark and light. New England and Micronesia.

Somehow I’m going to have to bring that Gothic darkness with Liv to Guam. I do love a good challenge. I’m thinking dark foliage at night, black butterflies, a formerly abandoned resort hotel, mold climbing the flaking paint on the cement walls. A building shaped like a ziggarat. An ancient cult symbol spray-painted on the front door. A shadowy business called Celestial Inanna, Inc.

To say that this came out of nowhere would be misleading. I’ve actually been obsessed with ancient civilizations lately, especially ancient Mesopotamia. I just didn’t expect it would show up in this particular story. Still, I think it will fit because of the secret hook of this book. In a way, it echoes a certain theme.

Or maybe it’s too much of a stretch and I’ll end up using this Guam idea in another book.

I don’t want to reveal the title of Liv 3 or the hook just yet. It’s a secret only a very few people know. (If one of those people is YOU, please shhhhhh!)

I’m going to try to draft this book in two months. Two. Months. I’m usually so slow, but draft isn’t the same as done. I’ll take many more months to revise and polish and revise some more because I really think this book is gonna be super cool in so many ways.

Meanwhile, back to the program at hand.

Timeline Fun & Games

When it was time to pick a spot for the Strawberry Moon novella on Olivia Lively’s character arch timeline, I had a couple of choices. I could have placed it before Final Draft (Book 1). A prequel. I could have set it after Night Moves (Book 2), which would have had to be September because of Book 3’s setting/time of October.

But really, I had no choice because I was writing about the Strawberry Moon, which takes place around June 20. That meant I could just fit it in between the books, and I had to use a short timeline to boot.

The hardest part here was continuity between what happened at the end of Final Draft and at the beginning of Night Moves. Secondary plotlines for both full-length books deal with Liv’s personal relationships with her best friend Ashleigh, her parents, and her love interests. Because I was mindful that some new readers would read the novella first, I didn’t want to give away big spoilers for Final Draft, but I also had to be true to that story.

I’m afraid that the novella might give away who Liv’s dating at the end of Book 1. It just couldn’t be helped. Or maybe I didn’t want to twist the narrative up into knots. What I didn’t give away is the mystery ending. I mention the Falwell-Tedeschi plagiarism case, but I don’t have any of the characters say what happened, who did what, to whom, or why.

But I did have to spend time considering all these angles.

Speaking of relationship plotlines, I left them almost completely out of the novella. Why? Because of the shorter page count and the narrative structure. Whereas novels have room to sprawl and space for multiple storylines, short stories have to be concise, novellas a little less so. For Strawberry Moon I kept the plot tight and focused on the mystery/case.

I wrote one short scene with Liv and her parents, and one chapter with Liv and Ashleigh as a denouement. In this scene, Liv explains the wrap-up of the case to Ashleigh, and this is also where ethical questions related to the situation are stated explicitly by the characters who take opposite sides.

I think it would be fun for book clubs to discuss!

The most interesting narrative choice was the timeline, I think. I decided to start in the present on the night of the plot’s climax. After a couple of chapters, the story jumps back in time to Liv being cajoled into taking the case and following her as she works to find clues and information. Then in the last part of the novella we pick up the story in the present and all is finally revealed.

That narrative structure was fun and a challenge. I considered rewriting it in straight chronological order, but this really worked best. I’m hoping readers find it fun and intriguing.

What’s Up Tomorrow?

If you’ve stuck with me through three essays in this series, thank you! Tomorrow I’m going to talk about my awesome beta readers, the feedback they gave me, and how I used that feedback to revise the story.

Look for The Inside Scoop, Day 4 tomorrow.

If you haven’t scooped up Strawberry Moon Mystery and want to read it, click the link to Amazon below the graphic.

Buy for $1.99 on Amazon

Welcome to the Strawberry Moon Mystery Inside Scoop Series, Day 2

So, yesterday I left off with me home from Belfast, sitting up in bed at my parents’ house rewriting the story I’d started on the rocky beach that morning, and trying to get to “the End” in what was supposed to be a short story.

In the photo above, you can see the pages I ripped out of my journal notebook. You can see on the stack on the left, that I even considered changing the title to “Fashionista & the Fence.” Luckily, I came to my senses, dropped the whole “steal the silver to fence it” angle, and came up with something else. (I didn’t even remember I’d written about stolen silverware!)

The first sentence of THAT version is “I know he’s stealing the family silver. I need you to prove it.” Seriously? What was I thinking? But as I continued on that page, I actually began to see my client character, Bobbie-Ann Alcock, and described her style (classic) and her haircut (silver bob). Her cousin, Augustus, is the supposed culprit. I remember now I was going to make him a drunk and a thief. Snippets are coming back to me now as I think about those first attempts.

If you look at the stack of papers on the right, you can see I’ve come up with the idea for a literary theft case rather than burglary of family heirlooms. Once I got that version started, I was able to run with it—scribble with it—and got to the end in the wee early morning hours. 3:30 am or so. That I do remember.

Then I put the pages away and continued on with my vacation. I also was about to celebrate the release of NIGHT MOVES, book 2 in the Olivia Lively series, so was buy with promotion and marketing stuff. We left Maine and went back to San Diego, and I began to work on a new outline based on The Story Grid Method.

The Story Grid Method

The Story Grid is a system developed by editor Shawn Coyne, and I find it helpful when planning rewrites. The “foolscap” page breaks the story up into three sections, beginning hook, middle build, and ending payoff. Each has its own rising action and climactic moment. Coyne also came up with scales of values for different kinds of genres. For crime the scale goes from tyranny to injustice to unfairness to justice. He also recognized several “obligatory scenes” readers expect for every genre.

The Story Grid concepts can be a bit overwhelming and complicated, but if you are the type of writer who likes neat, well-planned, tightly executed narrative structure, you might enjoy checking it out. I find with mystery, it’s pretty important to have strong bones holding up the narrative, even if that narrative is thin and whispy.

Anyway, by then I knew the story I wanted to write was too complex for a short story, or even a long short story. It was, I decided, the perfect story for a novella of about 100 pages.

I set to work, sporadically tweaking the outline and manipulating the narrative to make sure I was hitting all the obligatory scenes and climaxes and resolutions. Meanwhile, we packed up our household goods in San Diego and moved to Guam. It wasn’t until January, after our move, that I really decided to get this book written. Yesterday, I found entries in the journal.

Here’s a sample.

January 28, 2025: “I’ve started working on Strawberry Moon again.” (Note: One year to the day before I launched. No, I didn’t plan that.)

March 8: “For now I must finish Strawberry Moon. It’s taking me a long time because I lost my handwritten draft. How did I do that?” (I thought I’d left it in San Diego, but it didn’t arrive with my stuff. I just found those papers last summer in Maine, stuck under some other papers in my old office.)

May 14: “I think I’ve figured out the plot for S.M. once and for all using the Story Grid method and even got some new words yesterday, although I hadn’t put that scene on the grid—oh, the irony.”

July 7: “I finished S.M. last week. There is no big ____ scene, so that worries me, but I decided to do something surprising instead.”

A long the way, the story grew and morphed and developed. New characters showed up. Old characters changed almost completely. For example, Bobbie-Ann’s cousin “Augustus” became “Ambrose” in the final version. And he’s not an alcoholic, though he does like to socialize a bit, often on the golf course, sometimes in town with the locals.

I brought attorney Patrick Ledeau into the story. Bobbie-Ann is HIS client, and he hires Liv to conduct a background check into the woman accusing Bobbie-Ann of plagiarism. It was that woman, Linda Wood, a woman who attended the same liberal arts college as Bobbie-Ann, who really caught my interest.

During the polishing and final editing process many months later, one of my beta readers pointed out something I hadn’t noticed. Even though the story revolves around the antogonist, Linda Wood, she’s never actually on the page. I wish I could say I planned the story around that concept, but I’d be lying. Basically, because I told the story from Liv’s perspective, and because she would not be able, ethically, to interview or even talk to Linda Wood, the opportunity to let that character appear on the page narrowed considerably. Other characters had to “tell” her story to Liv who then was obliged to put the pieces together into a coherent whole.

This revelation led me to understand something about why I like writing this private detective series. I suddenly realized writing through the gaze of a private detective gave me the perfect way to pry into the secret, private lives of interesting characters without being an omniscient narrator. Liv finds out things about her “marks” that other characters are too polite to ask. Liv, in other words, can get the inside scoop.

By investigating Linda Wood, Liv is able to show/tell us Linda’s fascinating life story, and Linda doesn’t even have to speak!

What else showed up in later drafts? The 80s! Because Bobbie-Ann Alcock and Linda Wood knew each other in college, the plot stretched back to the 1980s. This was the era in which I went to college, an era of Goth subculture, punk rock, ragged clothes, black lipstick, and literary/art ‘zines and other alternative publications.

I’ll talk about my experience with college literary mags in another letter this week.

What’s Up Tomorrow?

I think I answered most of the questions I posted yesterday. As to who broke in to Bobbie-Ann’s Victorian cottage on the sea? It’s not Ambrose. I can’t tell you any more than that. You’ll have to read the book for yourself.

Tomorrow I’ll share how I worked to slip this story in between the two full-length books, what I had to consider when it came to Liv’s relationship plotlines, and why I didn’t use those plotlines in the novella.

I do hope you are enjoying this rather detailed account of one novella’s journey from idea to published book.

If you are intriqued, please take a moment to click the link below and purchase your own copy. It’s a bargain price at $1.99 and will be a good two-hour read at least. If you don’t have a Kindle eReader but do have a smart phone, you can get the Kindle app and read Strawberry Moon Mystery right on your phone.

Are you an ebook reader or a print enthusiast? Drop a comment or reply email.

Buy on Amazon

Thank you for reading. Look for Day 3 tomorrow!

In This Issue

• Announcing Launch of Strawberry Moon Mystery: An Olivia Lively Novella

• Reader Inside Scoop, Day 1: Where I Got The Idea for This Story

Strawberry Moon Launches Jan. 28, 2026

Dear Friend & Loyal Reader:

I’m so happy to finally share with you that the ebook of Strawberry Moon Mystery: An Olivia Lively Novella, has arrived! She’s a 100-page, approximately 2-hour read, and has all the sassy, Liv Lively, P.I. attitude and twisty mystery you loved in the first two full-length novels. (The print version will be out in a couple of weeks. I’m working on a strategy here. I’ll tell you more later this week.)

Anyway, take a peek at the description below.

From the author of the Olivia Lively, P.I. mystery series comes a new between-the-books novella that will keep you on the edge of your seat. Get ready to meet your next favorite female sleuth in Strawberry Moon Mystery.

"Boasting a wonderful cast of characters, engaging dialogue, and visually descriptive narrative . . . a delightfully entertaining series." --Dru Ann Love, award-winning reviewer and creator of Dru's Book Musings

Secrets. Frenemies. Betrayal. In this twisty novella, an accusation from the past threatens to ruin a reclusive author’s career unless private investigator Olivia Lively can uncover the truth.

Maine horror author Bobbie-Ann Alcock has been hiding behind her pen name for decades. As she’s about to launch the twentieth book in her Sexy Psychopath series, the reclusive writer’s true identity is revealed by an online influencer. When the books go viral, a former classmate crawls out of the murky past to accuse Bobbie-Ann of plagiarizing the first book in the series.

Portland, Maine private investigator Olivia Lively is reluctant to take on another plagiarism case, but when Bobbie-Ann’s lawyer begs for her help, Liv agrees to conduct a quick background investigation.

In her search for clues stretching back to the 1980s and college ‘zine culture, Liv tracks down the author’s former Ivy League classmates, skims decades-old literary magazines, and visits a shadowy used bookstore that may hold secrets related to the case. Though feeling something is amiss, Liv turns in her final report, and she believes the case is over.

However, on the night of June’s Strawberry Moon, Liv attends Bobbie-Ann’s elegant book launch party, and the evening culminates in a surprising revelation of old secrets, bitter frenemies, and a terrible betrayal.

To check it out for yourself, here is the link. Strawberry Moon on Amazon

Here’s the thing: This “between the books novella” is a first indie-pubbed offering from me, and because I’m new at this self-publishing gig, I decided to start with selling it on Amazon KDP rather than “going wide” with multiple retailers or setting up my own online store.

Because you know me, I’m sure you realize that I have mixed feelings about this decision. In a perfect world . . . well, I won’t even go there. I will say that although getting the book ready for publication (formatting, cover-creation, uploading to KDP after creating an author account, etc.) was challenging, it was a good challenge.

Yes, I was nervous, but trying new things and learning new processes keeps us intellectually limber, right? It’s energizing and exhausting and exhilarating all at once, and feeling all those emotions is so, so human. Isn’t that what we need right now? To remember we are human? To rejoice, even, in our flawed humanity? Humans are clever and sometimes silly and sometimes awful, but we have this drive to create, to dream, to enlighten, and to delight each other, and that is what I’m celebrating here on PINK DANDELIONS every month.

I’m so happy you are here to take the journey along with me!

Reader Inside Scoop, Day 1 of 7

So, as you know, I usually send out only one newsletter per month. Sometimes getting weekly Substacks can be overwhelming, especially if you subscribe to more than a handful. I know everyone means well and creators are trying to stand out in a crowded market, but it’s a lot of email every day/week in the old inbox.

I didn’t send a Pink Dandy out in December, partly because of the holidays but partly because I knew I’d be launching in January and had something up my sleeve.

In honor of Launch Week, and despite some misgivings because of overwhelm mentioned above, I’m going to be sending 7 letters in 7 days, each one with an inside scoop for my readers about my writing inspiration and process for creating this novella. I’ll be attempting to answer the questions you might have if we were meeting at a real-life launch event.

When this week is finished, I will return to the usual MONTHLY letter about creativity and living the life you imagine.

I really hope you enjoy this special week of letters as a kind of virtual book launch celebration with me in lieu of a big party with champagne and canapes and a jazzy band playing on the patio overlooking the Atlantic. (In a perfect world . . .)

If this daily email series idea fills you with horror & despair to hard to bear, please go ahead and unsubscribe. No hard feelings.

If not, here we go…Day 1.

This is rather unbelievable. I was scrolling through my photos just now because I knew I’d taken a few snaps on June 20, 2024 in Belfast. What I didn’t remember was that I’d actually taken a video of myself writing the title and first sentence of what would become the Strawberry Moon Mystery novella!

Above is a screenshot from the video. Now that I’m looking at it, I think the notebook pictured here is actually my journal from that year. I recognize that unraveled bit of pink yarn I’d used in the cover collage in 2024.

Anyway, by that summer of 2024, I’d already had one book published and another was due out in August, so I’d become quite used to thinking in terms of promo and marketing. I probably thought here, “Maybe it would be cool to have a video of me beginning to write this short story.” It’s possible I already posted this video on social media. Honestly, I can’t remember.

Yes, a Short Story

Once again, I ended up writing a book that started out as a short story. I’m three for three, peeps!

Final Draft started out as a flash fiction. Night Moves started out as a short story about Liv Lively that I intended to give away to lure new readers to the first book. I realized the hook was too good not to expand it into a full-length novel, and book 2 was born.

Now the third short story idea has turned into a novella. At least it’s not a full-length book again. Progress? You decide.

Where I Got My Idea

Okay, so here’s the scoop on where I got my idea for the novella. It was the 2024 Summer Solstice, and I was in central Maine visiting my parents. It also happened to be around the time of the full June Strawberry Moon. It was a hot, humid day, so Mom and Dad and I decided to head down to the oceanfront park in Belfast to escape the heat. We got our Dunkin’ coffees at the local shop, parked down along the oceanfront, and settled in our chairs.

The air smelled salty. The cool breeze and warm sunshine felt delicious on my skin. The coffee tasted sublime. While my parents read or chatted or watched the other beachgoers, I pulled out my notebook to do some writing, maybe a flash fic or short story. Something quick I could share with readers as a series teaser or maybe even submit to one of the mystery magazines. I knew it would be a Lively tale.

I looked across the bay and imagined a seafood restaurant overlooking the water, one of those places with red and white checkered plastic tablecloths and plastic ketchup bottles and little packets of tartar sauce you squeeze into your fried clams.

I thought about Olivia Lively solving some sort of case on this very night of the Strawberry Moon. That sounded fun and intriguing. Hooky, as they say. I began to write about Liv sitting at the restaurant (hard, white, plastic chair) and waiting for someone to show up, someone who’d called her about a private investigation job. It was a man. Kinda sketchy.

I think it was going to be a missing person’s case and/or some sort of heist thing, at first. Possibly something to do with an antique store or flea market? There was some dialogue and some sassy Liv thoughts and quips. I got a couple pages written and stopped.

It didn’t work.

I ripped the pages out of my notebook and set them aside and started over. That restaurant never returned again. Neither did the man. No missing person. I wasn’t even sure about the heist and antiques. But one thing remained. The title. Eventually we packed up and headed home—a big thunderstorm rolled in, I remember.

Later on that night, unable to get that title out of my head, I stayed up working on several drafts. Somewhere along the way, the sketchy man turned into a sketchy female author who owned a Victorian “cottage” in a coastal community much further south, just north of Portland. I asked myself, “How can I put an unusual twist on this?” and decided that she would be a HORROR writer who wrote several books about a sexy psychopath. Yes, this Coastal Grandma type with her silver bob haircut and preppy espadrilles wrote about a female Dexter. Turns out, someone broke into her house. (Remember the heist idea? It morphed from art to ephemera.)

Who broke in? And why? Where did this story take me? Did I end up keeping that idea or did it get crumpled up in a ball of yellow legal pad paper to which I’d switched my drafting? And how late did I stay up finishing the first draft?

I’ll share more in tomorrow’s letter, mindful of spoilers, of course. Look for Day 2 in your inbox tomorrow.

Cheers!

Shelley

In This Issue:

• A Season of Gratitude

• Writing & Publishing News

A Season of Gratitude

Dear Friend & Loyal Reader:

Here we are approaching the end of November, a time of year I used to not enjoy but which I now appreciate and embrace. Gone are the buds of spring, the flowers of summer, and the brilliant foliage fall. Instead, the earth drowses into brown and beige and dun; gray skies but sometimes a deep but not dark blue; brief sunsets and early dusk.

I now enjoy this cozy time of year. It’s a reminder, after all, that everything on earth follows a cycle of birth, life, decline, and death. Everything comes and everything goes. Life continues on its way. Season leads into season. We experience joyous moments but cannot sustain that feeling forever. Even grief, if it never completely leaves us, quiets and fades into the background.

I’m deep into middle age, perhaps even at the beginning of old age. It could be that this late-fall/early winter season appeals to me because I feel it in my bones. I’m grateful, very grateful, to have experienced all the earlier seasons and have survived into this one. I’ve tried since early years to be aware of my life as I live it, as it passes. I hope that I will continue to follow that tradition going forward. Not everything in my life has been easy and perfect, but it’s been pretty darn good! I am grateful for so much. Family. Home. Nature. Books. Education. Art. Mobility. Health.

These things will fade from me. I know this because everything, eventually, does. But for now, I’m going to look on them and ponder them and be grateful for them. These are gifts not to be taken lightly.

Hard Truths, Lately

Of course, I am grateful for the ability to make up stories and the ability to write them down and share them. Sometimes despondency overtakes me when I read about the state of the publishing industry. Lately it seems everyone—from bloggers, newsletters, and pod-casters to influential social media accounts—is talking about how “it’s okay to take a day job in order to support your writing career.”

It’s not exactly subtle, is it, this message?

Knowing how unlikely it is now to make a paying career by writing and selling books & stories, I sometimes feel deflated. Having worked for four decades on my craft only to arrive in an era awash in so much content that it’s hard to stand out, I am tempted to throw up my hands and say, “Forget it! I’m done!”

Despair is the bane of creativity, and I have to wonder if all this talk of day-jobs isn’t killing the creative impulse in many writers, young and old.

I understand why influential bookish people (agents and editors and writers and publishing folk) are taking stock of the publishing situation and being hard-eyed and rational about the industry and us poor writers’ chances of living by the pen. It’s truthful. I talk about it, too. And one could argue that it’s maybe better to swipe away the misty, gauzy dream and to approach the field with clear sight. However, it’s creatively deflating to feel all one’s work might be and might have been for nothing.

We Can Overcome this Despair

What is the remedy for creative depression? Gratitude. Appreciating the world around us—the people, the places, the natural & the handmade, the art & the craft, the beauty & the ugliness—appreciating enough to really see it and describe it and see the meaning in it. This noticing is what drives creativity.

Of course, as a storyteller, I want to share my stories with others, with you, my dear and loyal reader, and with others like you who are out there, possibly waiting for the stories I wish to tell. I’m not saying that everyone would enjoy my work, but I know some will. So, as long as I have this creative drive and some means of sharing, I’ll keep going.

I am grateful, so grateful, for you and all my readers. A story-teller without a story-listener is just a daydreamer. Yes, we can write for fun. Yes, we can write for ourselves. Yes, we can write for the sheer joy of it and the challenge of it.

However, a STORYTELLER needs a listener in order to be a storyteller.

So, thank you from the bottom of my heart for listening.

Writing and Publishing News

Just to prove that Strawberry Moon Mystery isn’t just a figment of my imagination, here is proof: A PROOF!

I purchased software called Atticus that can be used in a couple of ways. First, as writing software. As with Pro Writing Aid and others (like Novlr which is what I began using this year), you can write and organize your books and stories directly on the platform. You can also download it if you wish to have backups (always a good idea). Second, Atticus is a formatting software with many customizable templates that allows you to create the interior pages of a book you wish to publish.

I bought this mainly for the formatting capabilities. The program allows you to upload Word documents, so first I had to download my Google Doc manuscript as a Word doc. Then Atticus gives instructions on the best way to format the Word doc prior to uploading to Atticus. This means using “styles” to make all your chapter headings uniform as well as using three asterisks for scene breaks. Atticus “reads and interprets” these when it plugs the doc into the formatting templates.

After the book is uploaded, you can apply different templates, add graphics, change the template settings, and see what your book will look like on various e-readers and in print.

All very handy and cool.

So, I was able to choose the size of my print book and make it look the way I envisioned. I played around with some moon graphics, thinking maybe I’d use a line drawing on each chapter heading, but ultimately decided to use one of the Atticus graphics instead, keeping the novella format as close to the Encircle books formatting as possible for the sake of the series.

I then downloaded the file and sent it to Staples to be printed so my proofreader could mark it up. Reading and proofing on a print version is easier for many people, and this person is the absolute BEST at picking up every typo and oops on the page. As long as I’m diligent about making the corrections, I think this will be the “cleanest” of all my publications so far.

The next step was to take the page count and use KDPs full cover template to create a front-spine-back cover wrap on Canva. I already had an ebook cover created, but after futzing around with the full for a bit, I realized I needed to adjust the spacing just a little. That’s now complete.

All I have left to do is make my corrections and upload both the interior and exterior files, and then I can work on the KDP metadata.

I was really hoping to get this all done before the end of November, but as I’ve been visiting and traveling, this has been a slower process than I’d anticipated. I don’t want to rush. I want to be very careful and deliberate. And honestly? I’m not sure it matters all that much when the novella is released. Perhaps it would get lost in this busy holiday season?

So now I’m thinking it may be a January release. Start 2026 off right. And since it’s NOT a holiday-themed book, I imagine it may be more welcome. Then my goal is to write books 3 & 4 next year. Two. In one year. That’s ambitious for me, but nothing ventured, nothing gained. I’m ready to wrap up this series and get on to other stories I’m anxious and excited to share with you!

So, fear not. The novella will get here when the time is right. My biggest concern is creating a book/object that is as perfect as I can make it and a story that delights you. (My proofreader said it was the best Olivia story so far!)

Love & Peace,

Shelley

I wish you & yours a happy Thanksgiving Season.

In This Issue

• A Short Note from Shelley

• Reconnecting With Your Roots

• Writing and Publishing News

A Short Note from Shelley

Dear Loyal Readers & Friends,

I hope you’ve enjoyed your September and October. I must apologize for missing the September Pink Dandelions. As many of you know, Craig and I flew home to Maine for an extended annual vacay. We arrived at the end of August and promptly hosted a Labor Day BBQ, spent some days at the beach, kayaked, boated, visited friends up the coast, did some antique and vintage shopping, and commenced to cleaning up the yard at our house. And by cleaning I mean cutting brush, cutting small saplings, dragging brush into a giant pile, pulling dangling branches from incredibly tall oak trees, shaping the crab apple tree, and killing a nest of ground yellow jackets.

I loved rediscovering the wild purple asters growing along the gravel road on my family’s annual foliage walk. To me they symbolize the kind of creativity that blooms even as the mild and easy eras pass and things in the world get a little, shall we say, ragged? Let the wild asters flourish!

All this has been satisfying, and somewhere along the way I thought, “I’m feeling like myself again.”

The funny thing is, I didn’t realize I hadn’t been feeling like myself. Or maybe I was feeling like a DIFFERENT version of myself. I have my San Diego self. I have my Guam self. I have my Maine self. My Maine self, I believe, it my truest and deepest self.

More on this and on reconnecting with your roots to ignite a creative spark and updates on my publishing and writing can be found below.

Oh, and the August newsletter was flagged by the certain giant email company we all know and love. I shared a link to an interesting health & wellness coach that I found valuable, and apparently the email company sent my newsletter into people’s spam folders because of this link. My open rates were ruined.

In July I had the best open rates I’ve ever had; in August that dropped by about 70%. Talk about discouraging!

So I’m hoping THIS month’s Pink Dandelions finds its way to you. If it does, check your spam folder for the August edition and move it into your primary folder. I’d really appreciate it!

Reconnecting With Your Roots

I was sitting in one of the green Adirondack chairs outside my Maine house. A cup of coffee steamed at my elbow. I held a book open in my lap. The leaves of the crab apple had already begun to blacken and curl, but the oak trees held just a hint of color and the beeches remained green and lush. Suddenly, a wild feeling rushed into me. I felt her, my truest self, settle into my bones and under my skin. She ran her hands through my hair and held my face and said, “Nice to be you again.”

If you’ve been feeling disconnected or disconcerted or not quite yourself these days, it’s probably impacting your creativity. I truly believe our creative selves need a force field of protection from chaos, politics, and the kind of real-world problems that are not in our control. Of course we should and can handle our own real-world problems. Over these we have some agency, and when we have agency, we can approach issues creatively.

When we don't have agency, we can feel overwhelmed, confused, distracted, and unsettled. It becomes difficult to slip into the dream-world of a made-up story when life itself feels fraught. We’d have to be some sort of superhuman—or maybe a zen master—to not feel somewhat swirled right now, no matter what our personal views about society and politics and culture we hold dear.

So for that moment under the trees, at least, I became one with that ageless, creative soul inside me who finds the stories, who conjures the characters, who spins the words into pretty sentences, who paints the imagery. She’s grown over the years. She’s gained wisdom through experience. And I have to accept this inconvenient truth: she lives in Maine.

I’m going to have a stern talk with her as I’m returning to Guam soon. I’m going to cajole. I’m going to give her promises I hope I can keep. Because I want to take her with me!

Here’s what I’m thinking. I’ll bring a totem back with me that represents my true creative self. A charm. Something that will help me conjure her because she is the one with the spark. I’ll keep the totem on my desk where I write. I’ll also work on my meditation and journaling practices. I have so many stories I want to tell, so many books to write.

In a similar way, you may have art projects in mind but are finding it hard to get started again. You may be ready to redecorate a room or an entire house in a new style. You may have poetry themes and images knocking at your subconscious. Or needlework. Or a melody that comes to you at odd moments. Where ever you find your creative joy, whatever your creative impulse, you will feel more uplifted, energized, and happy if you are giving in to that expression.

If you are far from home or smack dab in the middle of your hometown, is there a way for you to reconnect to your past in order to ignite a creative spark in your present? Flip through photo albums and yearbooks. Walk the streets you grew up on. Imagine a tree you used to climb. Listen to music from the year you graduated high school or college or some old stuff your parents used to play when you were ten. Reach out to a childhood friend and chat about the old days.

Afterward, grab a journal and write about the experience. Invite your true self to come out and play.

Then get to work.

Let me know if you found this helpful, or not. Either way, I’d love to hear about your experience.

Writing & Publishing News

Being back home in Maine, I had two writer events scheduled. One was speaking at the South Freeport Congregational Church’s author luncheon. This quintessential New England white-painted, sharply-steepled church is about the most charming venue for an author talk you can imagine. They served a delicious farro and chicken salad and berry pie with ice cream, and then I spoke about creating characters and managing a character arc across a series. About thirty people were in attendance, and I sold a lot of copies of my books. Members of the local Freeport Woman’s Club attended, too, and I felt so very welcome by everyone. See photo below.

Next, I was privileged to be interviewed by Brian Sullivan on WABI TV Channel 5 for their Book Club on Thursday, October 2. Talk about surreal. This was one of my hometown TV stations growing up. The interview was a three and a half minute spot, and I was able to give a succinct description of my Olivia Lively series, character, and both books!

Here I am in the studio with Brian (and Olivia). People seemed impressed with my performance, and it was over so fast I really didn’t have time to get too nervous. You can find the interview online if you go to my Instagram and find the links in the profile.

Update on Strawberry Moon Mystery

I’ve taken steps! After getting feedback from beta readers, I made some changes, polished the paragraphs, and prepared the document. Then I set up my Amazon KDP account which was straight-forward and not painful (except for the uploading of my license for verification and Guam and not being in a state or a country but a territory).

Next, I researched and settled on a formatting program called Atticus. It was easy to upload my doc to the program, and learning the program has gone smoothly. I have a little bit more futzing to do with it, and then I can print it out and give it to my proofreader before doing the final copy edits and uploading it to KDP. I also need to create the full cover for the paperback version.

I can’t promise it will be ready to purchase in November, but I’m aiming for that, just in time for you to get some for stocking stuffers, work gift exchanges, your book club members, or just for yourself to read. It’s only going to be about 130 pages long, including the prologue of Final Draft for new readers to discover.

Happy Hallowe’en, Lovelies!

Shelley

In This Issue:

• A SHORT Note from Shelley

• August Pappus: Uncertainty Is Normal

• Writing & Publishing News

A Short Note from Shelley

Dear Friend & Loyal Reader:

I hope you are enjoying the last bits of August. For some of you, school has started, signaling the beginning of the fall already. Personally, I can’t quite wrap my head around the fact that September’s peeking around the edge of the calendar.

I’m keeping this newsletter short again. Treading the delicate line between thoughtful, useful, inspiring content and overwhelming you with words, words, words is the goal here. This month’s topic is creative uncertainty and how to deal with it.

Lots of Love,

Shelley

Subscribe now

Uncertainty is Normal

Have you ever wondered if your hard work will ever pay off? Do you sometimes worry that you made the wrong choice in career? Or living situation? Or, geesh, that haircut last week?

We all have regrets. We all have worries. We all feel a little uncertain, sometimes, about our choices.

I’m going to share something quite personal on this topic with you here, and I’m also going to give you an inside glimpse into the mantras I came up with the combat my doubts, fears, and anxiety.

Lately, I’ve been questioning my life’s purpose and my decision, over three decades ago, to forgo a teaching career in order to pursue writing. Writing books and stories has always been my dream. I truly believed that if I worked hard at it, practiced and learned, read tons of books, and gradually improved, I’d eventually be able to make a modest living as a mid-list author. (Or, if I was very lucky, a best-selling author.)

From age fourteen or so, I wanted to be Danielle Steel when I grew up.

Well, here I am in my late-50s and so far I’ve failed to achieve my goal. Have I had some success? Yes. I’ve published two novels (and a memoir as a ghostwriter) and a handful of short stories. I’m about to indie pub a novella in my mystery series. However, as I continue to study and learn all I can about the publishing industry, which is always in flux, what I’m coming to understand is that getting older before you “break out” is a problem.

I wish someone had warned me about this when I was 25.

It’s not impossible. There are many examples of older writers who have had their debut or first “successful” book after 50, 60, or even 70. Helen Hooven Santmyer published a few obscure books in her earlier life, but it was her epic …And Ladies of the Club that rocketed her to fame when she was in her 80s.

(Also, not many book titles start with ellipses. Very cool, Ms. Santmyer.)

Still, I don’t really want to wait that long. Or rather, I don’t want to keep feeling like my life hasn’t yet started when I’m already on the down-slope of late middle-age.

In 2025, at my age, the outlook for even a modestly successful writing career feels like a ship that drifting further away from shore, bobbing along out there, carried away by the currents of our times. AI being just one of those currents. A crowded marketplace being another. A fractured media environment. Silos. Social media algorithms. I’m not complaining. It’s just reality, but it’s a reality that makes my youthful choices seem naive, overly ambitious, and, well, wrong.

If I’d leaned in to a teaching career, I’d have done some good in the world. Instead what do I have to show for my time? A couple of small-press books and a handful of stories. Not nothing. Of course not. But it’s kind of depressing to think about it like that.

Can you relate? If so, read on because I have some insights and mantras that might help you the way they help me.

Mantras to Soothe Your Anxious Thoughts

One way to soothe anxiety and disappointment is to “accept and let go.”

Accepting reality for what it is takes away half the angst and conflict. When what you are fighting against can’t be changed, stop wasting energy on a losing battle. Embrace reality. Focus on acceptance. It’s okay. You won’t die from your disappointment, frustration, or even your bitter rage at the unfairness of it all. Feel your feelings. Don’t stuff them into a corner of your psyche to fester and grow icky mold and infect your entire being. Air those suckers out!

I find journaling to be extremely useful for this and have recently discovered there are actual therapeutic journaling practices that resolve not only psychological issues but chronic physiological ones, as well.

Since 5th grade or so, I’ve used a journal as an emotional outlet. This instinct probably saved me a lot of stress and pain over the years, and now, after reading Sach’s book about the mind-body connection and pain, I’ll be even more mindful and deliberate in my practice.

The second part of this strategy is to do what you love, regardless of outcome. This is the “letting go” part. Writing, for me, is its own reward. I’m lucky to be supported financially by my husband, but if I’d had to, I could have supported myself with a paying career (and I’ve done so now and again with various and sundry jobs) while continuing to work on my craft. You can work on your art or hobby for the love of it. If you aren’t able to support yourself through your art, let that expectation float away.

Letting go isn’t giving up. It doesn’t make you a failure. Quite the opposite. Do what you can to fix the problem, to pivot, to learn, to succeed, but let go of the expected outcome. Maybe the decorating project doesn’t turn out like you wanted. Let it go. Maybe a relationship took a difficult turn. Try to talk it out, but if the person doesn’t respond or you can’t resolve the conflict, let go of your expectations for that friendship. Accept it for what it is or end it.

As for the haircut, it will grow out. Get a hat. Or get another, shorter haircut. Then let go of your original vision, at least for awhile.

For me, I’ll continue to write my books, but if I don’t sell more than 100 copies next time, let alone make the best-seller list, that’s okay. My only expectation for myself is that I will finish the stories and put them out there one way or another for people who want to read them. My only expectation is for myself to finish them and make them available.

I’m letting go of expectations of making money and/or best-seller lists . . .but I’m not letting go of the dreams.

Don’t Relinquish Your Dreams

Finally, send your desires and dreams out to the universe. Don't relinquish your dreams, but do give up delusions of control. We can control our activities, our practices, our continued dedication to our craft, our vision for home, relationships, and beachy waves, but we can’t control the outcomes. The best thing, I believe, is to do the work and trust the process.

Here are the mantras that came to me today while I was doodling and ruminating:

• Forget ambition

• Just give your desires over to the universe

• Do the work & trust the process

• Have a vision & let the universe arrange life for you based on your vision

• Advance confidently in the direction of your dreams (Thanks, Henry David Thoreau, as always)

• Embrace your destiny, no matter what it turns out to be

Do any of these resonate with you? I believe in you and me. I believe the universe will provide what we need as long as we do what we can for ourselves. We can thrive even in difficult times. We can build a raft and trust that the universe will take us where we need—rather than where we want—to go.

This is a theme I’ll keep in mind as I write future books about women dealing with life, conflicts, relationships, careers, and dreams dashed and rebuilt. This is what you, the reader, can expect from me: I’ll write. I’ll put the books out there. I’ll keep you in mind, always, as I do so.

Writing & Publishing News

Strawberry Moon Mystery novella reaches the next stage.

My beta readers have spoken, and I’m making changes based on their feedback, which I gotta say, was excellent. Trust my readers to know what makes a story flow and what needs to be tweaked. You all are awesome, and I appreciate you so much! Every bit of feedback, either during the revision process or after the books are published, means the world to me. Your encouragement keeps me going.

This week, I’m especially grateful to my friend, MA, who, when I said, “Maybe I’ll retire,” told me, “Not until I’ve read that shoe book.” She’s referring to the 3rd Olivia Lively book with a ruby slippers mystery theme that I’ve had planned for several years now. Knowing at least one person wants to read it will be enough to keep me going as I get it out of my head and onto the page.

As for this between-the-books novella, I’m enjoying the re-writing process, although I’m experiencing some resistance to the finishing and upcoming publishing process. I’m not totally convinced indie publishing is for me, especially on KDP/Amazon (rankings! Ugh!). There are other options out there, some print-on-demand service companies, but I want to make it as easy as possible for you and all my readers to get your hands on Strawberry Moon. So far, Amazon seems like the best way to go.

If you have any better suggestions, let me know!

I have a couple of author events set up for this fall, so that lights a fire in me to finish. Look for more on those events in next month’s and November’s letters. I’ll have some photos to share.

I’m more active on Facebook and Instagram again in anticipation of the novella’s release. It seems as if these platforms are turning into a kind of “infotainment” product, and since I’m marketing myself as an author, it makes sense for me to have a presence there. It’s almost as if social medias are separate “internets” and our profiles are the“web pages.” Also, in some ways FB pages feel like the Yellow Pages of old. Or a newspaper with classifieds. One thing social media is NOT is social. The old, original idea of you and me posting our photos online to share with each other is gone. The algorithms see to that. The social media landscape has professionalized, and we are only meant to be on there to either consume or make informative or provocative or amusing content.

Does any of this make sense or resonate with you? I’d love to hear from you. Just hit the reply on your email and drop me a line.

Thanks for reading!

Leave a comment

In This Issue:

• Art: Penelope by Shelley

• A Short Note with Sunset Photo from Guam

• Writing & Publishing News

A Short Note from Shelley

Dear Friend & Loyal Reader:

While I usually write a long essay, I’m giving us a break this month.

It seems as if the weeks are flying by this summer. Living here in Guam, I miss the lake, fireflies, s’mores, boat rides, kayaking, loons calling, days on my favorite Maine beach, cucumber sandwiches, and most of all my friends & family. However, we will be visiting Maine this fall, and I’m looking forward to cozy sweaters, coffee with friends, autumn foliage walks, campfires, and apple picking.

But let’s not rush the season. Summer is too precious to squander.

Here on Guam, we are heading into “rainy” season, but the sun comes out most days, the air is warm, the palm trees sway in the breeze, and we enjoy glorious sunsets like the photo above. Almost every evening, Craig and I head out to the balcony to watch the sky change colors. The clouds are endlessly fascinating. We talk about the shapes like when we were kids. Remember lying on your back and watching the clouds? Simple pleasures really are the best.

Sometimes it’s difficult to know what TRULY brings you pleasure. I’ve realized this month that I’ve been “barking up the wrong tree” in several areas of my life, so it’s time for some pivots. Maybe you can relate.

Cozy & Boho

I’ve been obsessed the last couple of weeks with a YouTube channel called Little Boho Cottage which is all about cozy, bohemian, vintage, maximalist decor in a tiny 500 square foot cottage in upstate New York. The creator, Kate, has such a positive outlook, plus there’s little Charlie the Chihuahua and visits to thrift stores and walks in the woods. I’m really enjoying it.

For years I’ve idealized the idea of “minimalism,” but to be honest I never really loved the aesthetic of minimalist style. Keeping stuff out of landfills? Yes. Having stark white walls and one plant in a beige pot? No. I’ve always loved shopping at Goodwill and consignment shops. I love color and pattern. I love vintage china plates and cups, old linens, and floral paintings in gold frames. Buying items second-hand actually does keep stuff out of landfills.

I’ve collected a lot of art prints over the years, but one of my failings is not getting the art framed and hung on the walls. Most of my art is stored in my Maine house, but I decided I wanted to give my Guam apartment the cozy boho treatment and went looking for some thrift/consignment stores on the island.

It was a bust. Google pointed me toward one, but when we got there, it didn’t exist. Another was a small clothing-only shop in the mall. The other wasn’t open that day (a Saturday!) I still have the Salvation Army store to check out, but this was discouraging. However, I just heard about a couple of “swap meets” happening on island in the next couple of weeks, so wish me luck!

Since I’m still experimenting with art, perhaps I’ll end up making my own art. If I can find some frames.

My Color Palette

Because my hair is a natural dark, dark brown, I always thought my seasonal colors were “winter.” A few little hints the past few years made me question everything about my color palette. One hint was the turquoise jacket in my author photo. Whenever I wear it, I get compliments. It’s not a winter color. I bought this orange dress on a whim for a beach resort vacation last year and just now realized the color looks good on me.

Again, not a winter color. Then I remembered my favorite sweater is a medium green, not emerald. And a golden-khaki sweater looked good on me. And a warm gray turtleneck. And the medium blue denim dress I picked up last year. Hmmm.

A little research later, and I realized I actually look better in warm autumn colors! Gold, not silver, jewelry (I already knew that, but I didn’t want to admit it because I love silver jewelry.)

Why do we sometimes get something in our heads about the “right” thing and refuse to acknowledge the signs that we are actually on the “wrong” track?

There’s Nothing Shameful About a Pivot

It’s okay to admit when we’ve made a wrong turn. Life is about learning and growing, not stagnating, and certainly not “doubling down” when signs are pointing to a mistake. It’s okay to have made a wrong choice. We are human. We can change our minds, our positions, our behaviors, our tastes, and what we support.

And we shouldn’t scold or shame other people for being wrong and realizing it later than we’d hoped, either. Refusing to budge out of over-concern about consistency, or shaming people for changing, is a trap that not only makes us stagnant but also enables an often unhealthy status quo.

Speaking of traps. While I KNOW social media is both a trap and a mirage, lately I’ve fallen into posting and scrolling again. Not as much as previous years, but too much. There is something so seductive about the idea of using it for marketing. It seems easy. But the thing is, that’s not the best use of my time. While it’s tempting to double down on social media and try to “make it work,” the best use of my time is writing more books and stories.

So, I’m going to back off of socials once again. I’d love to find a way to share videos with all of you without overwhelming your inbox or social media feeds. I did like making my regular Friday Instagram videos. Maybe I can use Substack for that. If videos are something you’d be interested in watching, click reply and send me an email. If there’s interest, I’ll figure something out.

Meanwhile, I’m thinking of starting a regular chat on my Substack “channel.” What would you enjoy talking about? Books we’re reading? Shows we’re watching? We could all watch something fun and discuss it every week. Ask me Anything’s about writing, publishing industry, Guam life, creativity, or . . . anything and everything?

Send me an email. I’ll write back.

Cheers!

Shelley

Writing & Publishing News

I am happy to announce I’ve finished re-drafting Strawberry Moon and am working on revisions right now. I’ll be sending it out to a few beta readers, making any revisions based on that feedback, polishing, and then publishing it on KDP/Amazon. This will be my first indie/self-publishing venture, and I’m doing it this way because I think it will be easiest way to share it with you.

It’s novella-sized at about 116 pages, so a shorter read. Instead of the intertwining plots of the longer novels, it’s more tightly focused on the mystery plotline rather than Liv’s relationships.

This is the cover copy I’ve come up with. Suggestions for changes always welcome.

In this fast-paced, coastal Maine mystery novella, STRAWBERRY MOON, fashionable sleuth Olivia Lively agrees to conduct a background investigation related to a literary plagiarism lawsuit, culminating at a book launch party held at a famous writer’s coastal summer cottage. With clues stretching back to the 1980s and ‘zine culture, Liv’s investigation shines a light on wealth, privilege, and opportunity gaps in American society and ponders the question of who, if anyone, owns a story.

The story takes place between the full-length Olivia Lively mystery novels, FINAL DRAFT and NIGHT MOVES, and for readers new to the series and character, this short novella also includes the first chapters of each novel.

Mix Sex and the City’s fashion and relationship drama with Murder She Wrote’s coastal Maine setting, shake it up with a dash of Alias disguises, and you get the Olivia Lively Mysteries.

Meanwhile, I’ve continued to write for Type M for Murder every other week. You can find my latest post here. I was approached by a publicist who saw my stuff on the blog and asked if I’d read and write a review of her client’s book. I agreed and ended up analyzing the mystery elements rather than writing a reader-type review. If you are interested in what goes into planning and writing a mystery, take a peek.

As for other publishing industry news, things seem pretty grim, so I’ll spare you the details. I can only hope things brighten up a bit in the future.

Thank You for Opening & Reading this Letter

The brightest spot in my writing life these days is definitely this newsletter. I so love when I see people are opening it and reading. Knowing you are out there makes me feel like I’m not alone on this journey.

{Quick note: If you could do me a big favor and hit “reply” and say hi, I’d appreciate it. This tells the email system—and me!—that you want to keep getting my letter. You can also add me to your contact list by clicking on my name and create new contact if you haven’t already. Thank you, thank you!}

One thing I’ve realized lately is that no matter how high I soar or even if I get stuck without ever reaching the big, big goals, writing has given my life so much focus and meaning. It’s totally been worth it no matter what!

This is a huge realization forty years into this writing life.

Although I never really wanted to be famous, I DID want lots of people to enjoy reading my stories and words. There’s a conflict there, and I’m not sure, but it may have held me back early on. I’m working on being okay with whatever happens. I’m strong enough to deal with either massive acceptance or massive rejection and anything in between because . . .

My greatest achievement will be writing books that bring joy to my readers. That’s my goal. I just want you, my readers, to sink into the stories and forget about real life for awhile, and when you finish the last page I want you to sit back and go “ahhhhh.” If I can accomplish that, I’ll have succeeded.

Reading and writing have been the twin joys of my life. They sit on either shoulder like the Good Angel and the Other Good Angel.* Books are, to me, magical. I hope I can share more of that magic with YOU.

Be on the lookout for next month’s letter when I should have pre-order information for Strawberry Moon!

*The Devil’s in the phone screen, hahaha.

In this issue:

• June Art

• A Letter from Shelley

• June Pappus: Becoming the Stars of Our Own Lives

• Flash Fiction: She Waited, And When He Didn’t Show

• Writing News

• What I’m Reading

• Living in Guam

A Letter from Shelley

Dear Friend & Loyal Reader,

Can you believe we are halfway through 2025 already? How are things going for you so far? I so hope you are enjoying your time with meaningful work, projects, hobbies, books, family, and friends.

I’ve taken up some fitness classes and am enjoying meeting new people, even if we are just “workout” buddies a few times a week. I think C is happy to get me out of the apartment, too, so he can enjoy peace, quiet, and television of his choice. He can watch all the Yankees highlights and Sci-Fi shows he desires while I “sweat my way to fitness.”

Since I’ve been in Guam, I’ve become rather addicted to watching YouTube “challenge” videos. People doing 75 Hard. People doing 75 Soft. People making up their own challenges. My favorite by far is a young woman by the name of Natalie Marie who is challenging herself in several areas for six months: hobbies, fitness, health, beauty products, and organization. I just love her down-to-earth attitude.

In a recent episode, she listed all the things she’s “buying into” in 2025. One of them is a life-approach I dearly, dearly embrace: romanticizing your life.

I go in-depth in this month’s pappus essay. Warning: this is not short. I’m not good at the short essaying. I suggest choosing a time when you can grab a cup of coffee or tea or snack and settle in for the longer read.

I’m also sharing a flash fiction story instead of a journal prompt this month. Do you like the journal prompts? Do you use them? If you want more of them, please hit reply to this email and let me know. Otherwise, you might be getting more short stories instead of prompts. Fair warning.

XoXo,

Shelley

June Pappus

A pappus is the seed fluff drifting on a current of air, carrying the seed to fertile soil in which it can germinate. Let’s grow!

Becoming the Stars of Our Own Lives: Romanticizing Your Life is Delicious, not Delusional

It’s fun to romanticize your life. Here are some thoughts.

The Time I Cried in a Dunkin’ Donuts Parking Lot

Many years ago, my husband and I bought a house in a small, rural town in Maine. When you buy a house in Maine, you soon realize you need a pickup truck. Because we thought owning three vehicles for two drivers was excessive, and because my husband drove 108 miles a day, round-trip, for work, the truck became my mode of transportation for school library volunteering, grocery shopping, errands, and newspaper writing work travel.

The truck, an extended-cab F-150, was huge. Bright red. Much too big for my comfort.

I hated driving that thing. Oh, it was good to have the 4-wheel drive in bad weather. Also, sitting up higher than the vehicles around you has it’s perks, but maneuvering that thing into parking spaces gave me nightmares. One day I pulled into the tiny parking lot of the Biddeford Dunkin’ Donuts. When I came back to the truck, someone had parked their car very close to my passenger side door, making backing out difficult.

Reader, I cried.

Literally. Tears falling and heart thumping, I backed that truck slowly as I could and inched as close as I could to the vehicle parked behind me while turning the wheel as much as I dared. I was sure I was about to scrape one of the cars beside me. Inch. Inch. Finally, I made it, tears streaming down my face. Honestly, remembering this horrible moment, I realize I’d be fine if I never drove another gormy truck again.

However, and this is how a red F-150 relates to romanticizing one’s life, there were moments when driving this truck felt cool. I’d switch the radio to a country music station and roll the windows down on a nice summer day. I’d be wearing some cut-off jeans and a tee. The wind would blow strands of hair, escapees from my ponytail, around my face, sometimes sticking to my lipstick. I’d drape my arm out the window and sing along to Faith Hill as the truck’s tires ate up the narrow, hilly back roads of southern Maine. It was lovely.

I wasn’t delusional. I didn’t believe I was starring in a country music video. I just felt like I could be. I wasn’t pretending to be someone else. I was ENJOYING the moment, the romance of it, of being that denim-shorts-wearing woman and driving that big red truck down a country road.

Maybe it’s moments like these that drew me to storytelling in the first place. I still remember some moments from when I was a kid. Not big moments. Quiet ones. They felt . . . full. I’d be overcome with nostalgia for the moment I was still experiencing. Maybe it’s sentimentality.

I like to think it’s just part of my romantic nature. I could have channeled this romanticizing tendency into poetry or songwriting or art, but I loved stories. If I could romanticize my own life, surely I could invent characters who could experience similar moments on the page for readers to enjoy.

What is Romanticizing Your Life & How Can You Do More of It?

I missed the era when “Romanticizing Your Life” became a trend on social media. Apparently this happened during the pandemic. I’d noticed things like Cottage Core taking off and loved the aesthetic: the dreamy settings, the home-baked breads, the Victorian-esque picnics in the park.

From what I can tell, the trend might have been started by (at least it was exploded by) a TikTok influencer named Ashley Ward. In 2020, she posted a twenty-six second video of her lying on a blanket on the beach with a voice-over advising, “You have to start romanticizing your life. You have to start thinking of yourself as the main character.” This video has been liked over 542,000 times. People now talk about “main character energy.” Hashtags were spawned.

In 2022, even the New York Times published an article about it.

However, like everything trendy, there’s been push back. Creative people often embrace contrarianism. Going against the trends feels more exciting, more authentic, and often more interesting. So, as Natalie Marie (on her YouTube channel by the same name) alluded to, some people are posting about trends they are no longer buying into. Of course, when everyone starts posting about this same trend, they are buying into this new trend.

And then creative people like Natalie go in the contrarian direction and post about what they ARE buying into.

One practice she’s still buying into is the notion of romanticizing your life.

Okay, so here’s my perspective on all this. We are the stars of our own lives. I believe that romanticizing your own life, experiencing your existence as if you are the star of your own production, is playful, fun, and healthy. As far as we know for sure, this is the only life we get, or at least the only life we have right now. Romanticizing your life is one way to get the most out of it.

“I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practise resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life . . .”

—Henry David Thoreau

Sucking all the marrow out of life. Not losing any of the flavor. Savoring.

Good ol’ Henry David Thoreau got the idea of romanticizing his life when he went to live at Walden Pond and wrote his famous book (romanticized version of reality) about living simply and meditatively. In other words, he was quite a master of mindfulness, albeit one who ate at his neighbors’ tables when the beans ran out.

For me, romanticizing is savoring. It’s noticing. It’s watching your own life unfold. It’s recognizing the small, quiet moments that make up a life. It’s also directing your life in a way that is meaningful to you. It’s appreciating what you already have, the moment you are in, the person you already are even as you work to improve and learn and grow.

Do writers actually write better in coffee shops? Maybe some do while others don’t, but I suspect many writers enjoy writing in coffee shops because they are romanticizing the fact that they are writing in a coffee shop. They “see” themselves there, all serious and tapping at the keyboard, sipping their coffees and looking around at the setting and nearby customers. Yes, it’s good people-watching, but isn’t it also about self-watching? Just a little?

Nothing wrong with it! It’s healthy!

How about folding laundry? Yes, it can be a chore, but what if you took a moment to be in the moment. Listen to the static when you pull a sock away from a shirt. Smell the fabric softener. Gather an armful of warm bed sheets straight from the dryer on a chilly winter morning. If you really want to get into it, you can even take inspiration from Marie Kondo, who, now that I think about it, also falls along the Thoreau-Ashley Ward timeline with her admonishment to “choose what sparks joy.”

It’s not that anything changes materially when you practice romanticizing your life. The change is internal. Psychological. Mindful.

No Delulus

One word of caution is this: Don’t go so far as to start pretending your are someone or that your life is something other than it is and then BELIEVING it. Delusion is when you are not able to differentiate between what is real and what is imaginary. Delusion is the opposite of mindfulness.

Mindfulness is about paying attention to what’s there. Delusion is imagining what isn’t there.

I’m not a therapist. These ideas are just my opinion and rambling thoughts. Of course if you feel yourself slipping in any way away from reality, go see a professional!

This happened to me once. I allowed myself to be influenced by a person who delved into some spiritual practices that, for me, became dangerous. While some of these practices, like meditation and Reiki, were helpful, I began to feel weird and uncomfortable and frankly, scared. This person didn’t just live in “the real world.” They believed they could do things in a kind of other dimension and that there were spiritual forces at work all around us.

Now, religion does this, too, if you take it far enough, so I’m not going to get too deep into the topic. Perhaps my evangelical childhood set up some neural pathways in my head that made it easier for me to become overly influenced. The reason doesn’t matter. At a certain point, I recognized the danger and set some boundaries.

I’m thinking of that television show YOU which involved a smart and obsessive and troubled young bookstore owner who deludes himself about his relationship with a pretty, semi-talented writer. He ends up taking some horrible, shocking steps to make reality jibe with his delulu. Not cool.

10 Ways to Romanticize Your Life

If you are looking to romanticize your life, here are some ideas that might work for you.

• Journal. Maybe not every day, but when a moment strikes you, capture it in your journal. Make writing in your journal a romanticized moment, too. Find a pretty notebook. Get a pen that pleases you. Spray the pages with perfume. Press flowers in there, if you want. Draw. Add ribbons. Or go more masculine with a leather book with the wrap-around leather thongs. Write poetry or lyrics. Doodle.

• Make your bed first thing in the morning and straighten up your room. Smooth your bedspread and plump your throw pillows. Take a moment to enjoy the pretty appearance of your freshly-made bed. Pick the dirty clothes off the floor and put them in the hamper. Remove dirty water glasses from your bedside table. Arrange items on the table so they are in a pleasing configuration. Enjoy the sensation of having already accomplished something that day, of taking care of yourself and your space. When you return to the room later in the day, you will walk into a neat and organized room. Even better? When the weekend rolls around, you won’t have a disaster area to clean up.

• When you are doing some mundane, simple task like washing dishes or folding the laundry, find some way of making it more romantic. Choose a pleasant/sustainable dish soap. Hand-knit or crochet a dishcloth or two or buy one you like at a craft fair. Put on some of your favorite music and notice all the sensations. The scents. The feel of the water, bubbles, fabric, etc. I like to listen to Patsy Cline when I vacuum, dust, and do any sort of deep cleaning. It’s like I’m channeling a 1950s housewife without the crinoline skirt and rolled hair. (There’s one chore I’ll never be able to romanticize and that’s cleaning the bathroom. Taking a bubble BATH? Yes. Cleaning the bathtub? Sorry. Just gross. Nothing romantic about it. Prove me wrong!)

• A tea or coffee or cocktail hour ritual. Set a time of your day when you enjoy a beverage and turn it into a romantic scene in the movie of your life. Have your special mug or glass, your favorite fixings, a pretty cloth or paper napkin, maybe some flowers nearby. Bake some scones or cookies. Put together a pretty charcuterie board. Add music if that suits you. Share this time with a friend or loved one or keep it as a solitary, special time in your day that is just for you.

• When you go for a walk, notice the world around you. Are birds singing? How does the air feel on your skin? What can you hear and smell? Check out the trees and flowers and shrubs and gardens and walkways and window boxes and storefronts. What do you think about your neighborhood or the neighborhood in which you are walking? Oh! You are walking on the beach? Perfect romanticizing your life vibes.

• Cooking can be a pleasurable experience if we observe how we are slicing the carrots, chopping the onions, rinsing the lettuce leaves. Hear the sizzle of the butter in the pan before you toss in the onions and garlic? Sniff the lemon before you squeeze the juice over the veggies. Wear a cute apron! Carefully arrange the food on the plate the way a chef in a fancy restaurant would do. Wipe the edges. Serve your food to the table like you’re a master chef. Sit down to eat your meal as if a master chef presented it to you. Savor, savor, savor.

• Glow up your skincare routine. This is something I need to work on myself. Instead of blearily slathering on some night cream and calling it good, consider taking your time to gently exfoliate and spread the cream or serum over your face with the tips of your fingers, appreciating the cool or warm sensation. Use a pretty headband or cap to hold your hair back. Enjoy the scent of the products. Appreciate your beautiful, human face. Look at how you are aging. Think of how amazed your younger self would be to see herself now, older and wiser and with sharper cheekbones.

• Read outside your home. Take that new beach book to the beach, slather on some coconut-scented sunscreen, and enjoy the immersion. Pluck a classic from your shelves, pack a picnic, and spend some time reading in the park like you are a character from a E.M. Forster novel. Take an hour or two to peruse the shelves of your favorite bookstore and then take your newly-purchased tome to the coffee shop or nearby cafe. Indulge in a fancy coffee while you read. (I’m giddy just thinking about this!)

• Get together with friends. While you are with them, appreciate their quirks and loveliness. Be attentive to their words and feelings. Share your own ideas and stories while being open to their opinions. Focus on fun and sharing and laughter, not changing anyone’s mind or influencing them about anything. Just appreciate and love your people in that moment.

• Snuggle with your partner. You know how sometimes when it’s a special occasion like an anniversary or a dinner out that you’ve been planning for awhile and everything just seems a little flatter than you expected? What if you also took the regular, everyday moments to snuggle up with our loved one on the couch and really looked at them? Listened to the timbre of their voice? Noticed how they’ve changed over the years and yet are still the same person? Cool, right? Light a candle. Turn on a favorite old album (yes, you can still do that. It’s not all playlists all the time) and pour some wine or non-boozy beverage you both enjoy. Reminisce about your past. Recall your journey from young lovers to older ones. Be thankful for the world you’ve created together. For your joined life. For your time together on this earth.

Maybe romanticizing your life can’t happen every day, but it might be fun to try it out now and again. Experiment with it. If you end up feeling anxious, stop! If, however, you enjoy those moments, keep practicing. There are worse habits.

Flash Fiction

I wrote this flash fiction using this month’s artwork as my prompt, something I like to do with other artists’ and illustrators’ work sometimes. Who was the woman with the scarlet lips in the scarlet wrap? Why was she so dressed up? Why did she look pensive? Why only one earring? LOL. I didn’t answer that last question, but this is the story that bubbled up for me. Hope you enjoy! Please hit reply and let me know if you liked it. And feel free to use the art as your writing prompt this month.

She Waited, And When He Didn’t Show

#womensfiction #flashfiction

She waited, and when he didn’t show, she gathered the full, heavy skirt of her scarlet gown and made her way up the flight of steps to her balcony seat overlooking the parterre. Below, patrons slid past one another, men in tuxedos and women in beautiful finery.

She studied the program and the crystal light clusters hanging from the ceiling. Ever since the scene in her favorite film, Moonlighting, the one where Cher and Nicholas Cage fell in love to the timeless arias of La Boheme, she’d dreamed of dressing up one night and going to the Metropolitan Opera House to see a performance. Now, here she was, and though it stung that Patrick had stood her up, she felt a heady mixture of adventure, anticipation, and delight swirling inside of her.

It didn’t matter about the boy.

A few days earlier, she’d met him at a work function, a marketing meet and greet with social media influencers. Patrick had something like 200K followers across several accounts. His schtick was silly book reviews while doing sports: skateboarding, snowboarding, golf. Anything to show off his abs.

Carrying a small appetizer plate in one hand and a drink in the other, he approached the small cocktail table where she stood sipping a watermelon gin and tonic. “Hello there,” he said. He offered her a beet and feta appetizer skewered with arugula and a walnut in a stack. “Beet salad on a stick?”

He had a crooked smile and great hair. She laughed and shook her head.

“Name?” He popped the appetizer into his mouth and studied her as he chewed.

“Lainey. Lainey Bishop,” she told him. He suggested they procure her a second gin and tonic. She tried one of the appetizers. He told her he was from Boston and that he’d be in the city through the weekend.

An idea surfaced. She’d purchased two tickets to the opera hoping to cajole a friend into joining her, but he was fun and from out of town. Maybe he’d enjoy an evening at the Met. “I have an extra ticket to La Boheme on Thursday evening. I don’t suppose you’d like to join me?”

“You know, I’ve never been to the opera.” He slid his hands into the pockets of his trousers, gave the idea a few seconds of thought. “Sounds like something I should experience. Let’s do it, Newyorkle.”

She grinned. He’d already given her a nickname. Considering the G & T’s and the beet sticks, you might even say they’d had dinner and drinks, too.

Life moved fast in the city.

The agreed on a time to meet in the Met’s lobby and exchanged numbers. When he didn’t answer any of her texts over the next few days, she figured he’d changed his mind. She found she really didn’t care. He’d been a bit narcissistic anyway. Not someone she really wanted to get to know. Maybe he’d sensed that. Or maybe he’d never really intended to meet her at all.

The room was almost full, and she expected the curtain to rise any moment. Anticipating, she leaned forward. The orchestra tuned their instruments. The hushed chatter of the audience rose and fell in waves. —Shelley Burbank, June 2025

Writing News

If you’ve been following my writing journal (www.shelleyburbank.wordpress.com) at all, you probably know that I’m making real progress on the novella “Strawberry Moon Mystery.” I’ve written over 8,000 words this month and am one or two scenes away from finishing this second draft.

I know how many words I’ve written because I’ve moved my writing to a word processing and author system tool, called Novlr. Here there’s a writing studio. Novlr is also a learning environment for writing craft, provides a platform for authors’ websites with even the lowest tier of paid subscription, and is coming up with new and better ways to publish and market Novlr authors’ books.

So far, I’m really enjoying the platform and have become a lifetime/co-owner of the company. That’s right. They’re building it on a coop model. Pretty cool. The pro membership includes ProWritingAid proofing. The planning area gives you the option of setting up cards that represent the chapters or sections of your piece which allows you to plan, arrange, and rearrange as needed. The analytics section tracks words written, words deleted, days you’ve worked, writing streaks, and allows you to set daily and monthly goals.

There are also free lessons on craft and other writerly topics, articles, and a Discord community. (I’ve tried the writing sprint…fun!) I haven’t yet downloaded my work or created an ePub from the studio, so I can’t speak to that yet. But I’m excited by this product. Lately I seem to be on a positive streak with writing products after several years of missteps (hello stupid plugins).

If anyone wants to try Novlr Pro out for 30 days, use my code and explore the site. This helps me earn points as a co-owner. Code is FS-TSP-DD.

As usual, I’m writing every other week on Type M for Murder. Here’s one on focus.

I’m still keeping my social media to a minimum, but as I finish up Strawberry Moon, I’ll most likely have to spend more time on socials to spread the word that it’s available. It’s very unclear whether or not being on social media moves the needle on sales, but as I’ve used it for both Final Draft and Night Moves, I’m somewhat worried about how I might make sure all my readers know about the novella and find new readers, hopefully, without my Facebook and Instagram accounts.

So . . . I’ll use them for marketing even as I long to ditch them completely from my life limit my time spent scrolling.

What I’m Reading in June

I’m focusing on Women’s Fiction this summer. So far I’ve read an older novel by Danielle Steel called The Mistress. I’m kind of dying to recreate the book cover in a photo because I have a dress that exact green color. And then maybe do one like Taylor Jenkins Reid’s The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo. Speaking of TJR, I’ll be reading her new novel about women in the 1980s U.S. space program, Atmosphere. I have Gillian French’s Shaw Connelly Lives to Tell cued up and sent some people to her author event at the Bangor Public Library this week in my stead.

Living in Guam

I snapped this pic of an almost too vivid to believe sunset from our balcony a couple weeks ago. This is unfiltered.

We continue to acclimate to life on Guam. I’ve joined a couple of fitness classes at a nearby location (keeping some details private so if you know, please keep that to yourself) which gets me out of the apartment and shaking my bootie twice a week.

I signed up for the library adult summer reading program, and C and I went to a Music Bingo event on base. We are in the transition period between dry and rainy seasons and are told to expect a few typhoons in summer and fall, no telling if they will be big or small but we need to stock up on bottled water and nonperishable foods just in case.

So far, we had one week that was fairly cloudy/rainy but since then the sun has been out almost every day. The humidity only gets more oppressive, not less, but I’m finding it manageable, enjoyable even. I guess the tropical climate agrees with my older self.

We are going to try out a Chinese restaurant tonight for our Friday dinner. I’ll probably post about our experience on Shelley’s Journal.

Happy June, Lovelies! Enjoy your summer (winter if you are in the southern hemisphere) and stay healthy, calm, focused, and beautiful.

In this issue:

• A Letter from Shelley

• May Art

• Recipe: Berry Delicious Breakfast Bowl

• May Pappus: Joy is the Helium Balloon of Emotions

• Journal Prompt

• Writing News

• Publishing Industry News

A Letter from Shelley

Dear Loyal Reader:

This month’s topic is JOY.

We all want more joy, don’t we? However, chasing after joy sometimes leads to frustration, ennui, anger, jealousy, and other not-so-pleasant feelings. Will joy find you when you least expect it? Can you do anything to welcome joy into your life?

May seems like the right month to explore these questions, what with the sloughing off of winter and all and the expectations we put on summer vacations. Let’s take a moment to think about how joy operates before we go crazy chasing after it.

An announcement that MIGHT make you joyful

I’m gonna keep the main essay shorter than usual. Brevity. Succinctness. Concision. Economy. Just getting to the point already. A fun writerly fact is that it’s harder to write a short piece than a long one. Many writers and famous figures have spoken on the topic from Blaise Pascal to Henry David Thoreau and Benjamin Franklin.

“I have already made this paper too long, for which I must crave pardon, not having now time to make it shorter.”--Ben Franklin

Perhaps this one, found in a letter written by Mark Twain, is most appropriate here. Emphasis mine.

“You’ll have to excuse my lengthiness—the reason I dread writing letters is because I am so apt to get to slinging wisdom & forget to let up. Thus much precious time is lost.”--Mark Twain.

You probably don’t need my “wisdom” slinging at you in such copious amounts, so, Dear Reader, I will keep it brief(er) this month, and you can let me know if that worked out better for you.

Also, a welcome to all you new subscribers! I’m deeply honored you’d make room for me and Pink Dandelions once a month in your inbox. We all have limited time and energy. I truly appreciate it.

Cheers!

Shelley

May Art

Continuing with my drawing efforts. Working from a sales catalog image, I sketched with pencil in my art journal (it’s getting easier!) and then went to work with the markers. Layering shades is the key for complexions, I’ve discovered. First the rosy cheeks, THEN a wash of brown/gold over it. I added the word “JOY” because that’s how she looked to me. Voila! I had my topic for this month’s newsletter. Practicing art continues to bring me a feeling of accomplishment and, maybe more important, focus.

Easy Recipe–Berry Delicious Breakfast Bowl

I’m currently on a health & fitness journey and came up with this high-protein meal that is going to be my go-to summer breakfast. It’s so good.

¾ cup Oikos Greek Yogurt Triple Zero Vanilla

½ banana

1 cup Wyman’s frozen berry mix (thaw in ‘fridge unless you like it icy)

1 tbs chopped walnuts

1 tbs pumpkin seeds

Sprinkle of cinnamon

Layer this (seriously delicious) yogurt, then berries and banana. Sprinkle walnuts, seeds, and cinnamon on top. Enjoy! If you want to lower the fat, eliminate the walnuts (5 g) and/or seeds (5 g.) Most of the carbs come from the fruit, but they are so good and nutritious.

MyFitnessPal Nutrition Estimates: 322 cal. 67 g carbs. 11 g fat. 22 g protein. 24 g sugar. 64 g sodium.

May Pappus

Joy is the Helium Balloon of Emotions

A pappus is the seed fluff drifting on a current of air, carrying the seed to fertile soil in which it can germinate.

What is joy?

It’s that feeling you experience from time to time, often when you least expect it.

A feeling of lightness, of delight, of warmth, of laughter shooting up inside your chest.

Joy is the helium balloon of emotions, a round, full, brightly-colored bubble.

But then:

The string slips from your grasping fingertips, and you stare up after your joy as it floats up, up over the telephone poles, the treetops, and into the clouds away from you. Where did it go? Why did it go? How can you get it back?

Sometimes you go chasing it.

Sometimes you chase it even when you forgot what it looked like or how it came to you in the first place.

I have this theory. If you chase joy, it will elude you.

If you make joy your goal, you’ll make yourself miserable striving for it.

If you sit around expecting it, you’ll be waiting forever.

Joy sneaks up on you.

A Time I Felt a Rush of Unanticipated Joy

It was the end of August. Hubby and I had just moved to San Diego for a kind of trial run. He’d taken a temporary position that would last several months and had gone out west ahead of me.

Earlier that summer I’d flown to the midwest to interview Martha Brosio, the woman who hired me to co-write her memoir about her beloved husband, Richard Brosio, who had chosen to stop eating & drinking after suffering with primary progressive aphasia, a terminal illness that gradually took away his ability to speak, write, and process.

Richard had been a gifted college professor/philosopher. Besides Martha, I’d also interviewed family members and his doctor. I’d read his scholarly articles and books over the remainder of the summer, and I’d created a working outline. By the time I flew to San Diego, I was ready to begin drafting the book which, by its very nature, induced feelings of sadness, sympathy, respect, admiration, and a sense of life’s swift passage. One day you’re in high school falling in love; the next you’re watching your beloved slip from the world. Bittersweet.

(The Last Ten Days: Academia, Dementia, and the Choice to Die turned out to be, ultimately, a love story, a death & dying memoir, & a philosophy book all intertwined in a succinct 150 pages.)

Along with these tangled emotions, however, I felt excited about the opportunity to write an actual book that would be published. I also felt a mighty responsibility to do this job well. I believed in the message Martha wanted to convey.

So here I was on the west coast about to write my first published book. I was about to turn 50, a milestone birthday. Menopause was on the horizon. I’d lived in Maine my entire life. Maine is a cold place. I mean, five or six months of winter! Iffy springs!

Summers are nice, of course, but short. You end up cramming too much into those months: family reunions, cookouts, trips to the beach, camping weekends, hiking, more cookouts, etc. Busy, busy, busy.

That first San Diego morning Craig went off to work, leaving me alone in our downtown Gaslamp Quater apartment on K Street with a view of the convention center just across the trolley tracks. I got up, made myself a cup of coffee, grabbed my journal, and moseyed out to the balcony to start my day. I opened up my journal and began to write about how I might start the memoir . . . and the words simply flowed out.

By the end of that day I’d have a first draft of the prologue complete, but I didn’t know it right then. After a few pages, I put my pen down, sipped my coffee. As I looked out over the cityscape, it hit me: pure joy.

I felt buoyant. The sun was shining, but it wasn’t hot. The air was warm. Palm trees swayed in the light Pacific breeze. The air smelled different than Maine. I looked out on a city rather than the rural roads I’d spent my life traversing.

I never expected to live in San Diego. I never expected to go so far. I not only had a job writing a book with a compelling narrative and lovely co-author, but also the words were flowing when I called for them. (Of course there would be times the words didn’t come so easily; we do have to actually work for it sometimes.) I didn’t have to worry about 9-5 work or family or dog or community obligations or house. For a few blissful months, at least, I’d be on an adventure on the opposite coast with my husband of 30 years and a whole new culture and restaurants and museums and everything to explore.

I just sat there, grinning, basking in the pure joy of the moment. I knew it wouldn’t last, so I opened myself to the experience, soaking it in. “Remember this moment,” I told myself. “This is special.”

It didn’t last more than that morning, maybe a few hours, but the memory has. I hadn’t looked for it that day, that moment. It just came to me, unexpectedly.

I guess my point about joy is, don’t chase it.

We’ve All Done This

The special day arrives. Maybe you’d expected joy to wrap itself around you after reaching this particular milestone or attending a big event like a wedding, a birthday, a prom, an award ceremony. The anticipation of joy has buoyed you through days, weeks, maybe even month. Now the day arrives and, okay, yes, it’s kind of fun you suppose, but in a way it’s also sorta a let-down. It doesn’t meet the high expectations you set for it. Getting ready was more than half the fun.

Remembering this event now, you feel happy, yes. You created some good memories, and processing it at leisure brings you pleasure. You even think of it as one of the best times of your life, but were you joyful at the time? Often, I believe the answer is no. It’s too much to take in or you’ve put too much pressure on yourself or who knows what.

The thing is, at the moment, you want to feel joyful, but it just isn’t there. Not when you call for it.

Make Room for Joy

So if you can’t chase joy, how can you experience it more often? The best you can do, I believe, is make room in your life for joy. Create an environment that nurtures joy, that attracts it. Give that helium plenty of oxygen in the surrounding atmosphere to hold it up.

Specifically:

• Build good habits that, if consistently applied, blossom, at unexpected moments, into joy.

• Practice gratitude. Take moments every day to appreciate the good things in your life. The view of the lilac outside your window through the curtains. The smell of coffee in the morning. The curl of woodsmoke from the fire. The sound of kids laughing on the beach. A sentence that flows from somewhere in your subconscious. The perfect metaphor. The song from the summer before your senior year of high school playing on the grocery store speakers.

  (Maybe that’s nostalgia, but nostalgia, too, is a kind of bittersweet joy.)

• Create an inviting environment. This might mean organizing or minimizing your stuff, eating more healthy foods and moving your body more, taking a class and learning a new skill, reaching out to friends and family more often, journaling, meditating, letting go of old habits and people and things that no longer serve you.

• Put together a vision board either using paper and pens and collage materials or make a virtual board on Pinterest. When something pleases you, add it. Don’t judge yourself. Don’t worry about making this board perfect. Just use your instincts and imagination.

Don’t make joy your goal. Make it the result.

Joy is found in small moments. It’s found in doing the things that are not obligatory, but delightful to you. It’s created not by chasing success or fame or recognition but by applying yourself to meaningful tasks, hobbies, and relationships. When it comes to you, acknowledge it, revel in it, take a photo or make a mental snapshot of it, write a poem or journal about it so that you can relive it again in your memory.

Buy the Book

Journal Prompt

Chose one or both.

1. Write about a time you experienced profound joy.

2. How can you invite joy into your life starting today?

Writing News

I’m still writing away every other week for the Type M for Murder blog. On my last post, I examined the top 4 Amazon Kindle ebooks in my category to check out the covers and see how my Canva cover attempt stacked up.

https://typem4murder.blogspot.com/2025/05/cover-craft-examining-four-online-top.html

Strawberry Moon Mystery, the “long” short Olivia Lively story has some new scenes in it. I’m coming up on a year with this one as I drafted it on June 21, 2024! Hopefully she’ll be ready to go by June 21, 2025. I’m thinking I will experiment with KDP indie publishing with this story and hope it attracts some new readers to give Final Draft and Night Moves a try.

Publishing Industry News

Moving on Up

Congratulations to my fellow Encircle author, Catherine Dilts, for having her first book in her series picked up by Harlequin WorldWide Mysteries! The Body in the Cattails goes out to Harlequin book club subscribers and then will be available in August from Harlequin! Read more about this on https://typem4murder.blogspot.com/2025/05/twists-and-turns.html

AI Egg in the Face

The community is abuzz about an AI-generated best of summer reading book list that came out in the Chicago Sun-Times this week. Read all about it on Kathleeen Schmidt’s Publishing Confidential Substack here:

Publishing Confidential

The Curious Case of the AI-Generated Summer Reading Roundup

I am a busy lady these days, so I didn’t think I’d write a newsletter this week. I have other content planned for the following two editions of Publishing Confidential, which I think you’ll like. Currently, I am frustrated, angry, and shaking my head at what has become of book coverage…

Read more

a year ago · 176 likes · 57 comments · Kathleen Schmidt

Unreachable You?

Are you looking for more inspiration to get off of social media and start living without worrying about “showing up” online day in and day out? Me, too. Honestly, taking Facebook and Instagram off my phone has been a game-changer. I only pop onto them on my laptop when I have something to promote. I’m using it rather than it using me. If you are interested:

Check out Rea Frey & Alex Holguin’s Unreachable newsletter. They were on the ABC news live segment talking about how to entice kids to get off their screens this summer, as well, so I’m not the only one impressed by their take on the topic of unplugging ourselves from the matrix.

Unreachable

Who I Thought I Had to Be (and What I’m Choosing Instead)

Somewhere along the way, I stopped asking myself what I want…

Read more

a year ago · 1 like · Rea Frey & Alex Holguin

In this issue:

• A Letter from Shelley

• April Art

• April Pappus: Writing in Pajamas is a Cliché for a Reason

• Writing Prompt

• Writing News

• Publishing Industry News

• Living in Guam

A Letter from Shelley

First of all, I’d like to say thank you once again to the new subscribers this month! I’m so glad to welcome you to the Pink Dandelions community & hope that you will find inspiration, encouragement, and joy here with me and my loyal Dandies.

Substack has been a game-changer for me. Since my first letter, this community has grown by 66%. That floors me, to be honest. Yes, I started small, but considering my list had been in existence for several years with very little growth on another platform, I kind of want to pinch myself.

There’s my first cliché! More on this topic later.

For this month’s essay on living the creative life, I explore the role of purpose in our creative lives. You’ll also find a journal prompt, my most recent art, a note on why I revamped my online writing journal and an invitation to follow along, and a snippet of publishing industry news. I’ll also share recent photos from Guam.

I hope you are all feeling engaged and enthusiastic about your dreams, goals, work, and life. If you are, hooray! If not, please know you are not alone. The creative journey is less a bicycle excursion along a flat coastal road and more a hike up and down hills and valleys and twisty mountain paths and rocky stream beds.

Remember, we put up with the sweat and struggle for the glorious views along the way.

Cheers!

Shelley

April Art

I was thinking I might want to adopt a pet bird, and why not a pink one? I like this guy’s wary eyeball. He’s cheeky! Drawing continues to be a fun outlet for my creativity, mostly because I have no intention of being “an artist.” My purpose is to add texture and color to my writing projects, as I do here in this newsletter.

[I drew from a photograph I found online, but when I searched for it again, it eluded me. So, unfortunately, I’m not able to give credit to the original photographer. When I do, I’ll post it again with credit.]

April Pappus

A pappus is the seed fluff drifting on a current of air, carrying the seed to fertile soil in which it can germinate. Grow, my lovelies! Grow!

Writing In Pajamas is a Cliché for a Reason

Writing sneaks up on me.

Most mornings, I wake up and pour the first of my three cups of cafe au lait, turn on some classical music (I’m a casual Vivaldi/Baroque listener), and open the novel or nonfiction book I’m currently reading. Often, I’ll see a message from one of my friends back in the States has popped up on my phone. If the person is still online, we get into a conversation, sometimes long and sometimes short, but I don’t ignore these opportunities to connect because life overseas, so far, has been lonely.

This is my fault. I know I should get out there, join something, make some new, local friends, but so far I haven’t been able to summon the energy or the interest. I went through this when we moved from Maine to San Diego, and it’s exhausting and uncomfortable, though ultimately satisfying to meet new people.

I’m grateful for the few good friends I made in San Diego. My social bonds, however, feel stretched and thin. I long for community again.

My days are spent in my apartment rooms while my husband is at work. It’s disconcerting to realize how little outside interaction I require these days. Yes, loneliness runs beneath my skin like a slight prickle of tension, but most days it’s not enough to drive me out of the house and into the wider world. I have enough to keep me occupied for eight hours. Sometimes more. Getting out is something I need to work on.

Often during my cozy morning routine (coffee, music, book, texting), an idea for one of my projects will bubble up from my subconscious. If the idea is persistent, I’ll set my book aside, make my bed (I am a stickler for making the bed once I’m “up” for the day), and head to my desk. After taking the note, I’ll grab my planner and jot down an overly-ambitious task list for the day.

I check my email, read some of them, respond if necessary, and move on. (I used to check social media, but more often these days, I skip it. I’m trying to wean myself off, and it’s working. I don’t miss it.)

Since I’m already at my desk, I might open a project and begin writing. If I sit there long enough, I get into the zone. Maybe, like today, I finish a writing journal blog post and then start in on a newsletter essay or open the current fiction work in progress. Once I’m in this zone, two or three hours can pass, and then I “wake up” realizing my coffee is stone cold . . . and I’m still in my pajamas.

At this point, I wander to the kitchen to zap my coffee in the microwave. In the back of my mind I think, “I really should get dressed” followed immediately by, “But why?” It’s not like I’m slinking around in a silk nightie and peignoir and those feathery slipper-shoes. (Oh, if only my life were so glamorous!) No, I’m most likely in my saggy pair of llama pajama bottoms and a tee-shirt. Does it matter what I’m wearing?

I’m in my PJs right now, in fact. It’s two in the afternoon, and I’m still at this desk, not dressed for success, but maybe dressed just right for creativity.

I cannot be the only writer who, when lucky enough to be able to write at home, sits at her desk in her pajamas. It’s a cliche for a reason. When you are grappling with words and getting the images in your head onto the page, why not be comfortable?

Writing in bed is also an attractive option. If I have my laptop nearby and an idea blossoms, what could be easier than opening the lid and setting to work while reclining against the pillows? Some famous writers worked in bed: Proust, Wharton, and Colette, and others.

Are these examples the reason why the “writing in pajamas” cliché persists? Perhaps it isn’t so much a cliche as a truth universally acknowledged. Has that phrase also become a cliche? What is it about clichés that stick like burrs to the fabric of our narration, anyway?

The Experts Say

I’ve been dipping into John Gardner’s book On Becoming a Novelist (published posthumously in 1983) which is at once inspiring and depressing. Gardner wrote this book for serious students of writing. He’s a bit snobby about types of writing: namely, TV writing and the kind “you can generally count on” in “women’s magazine fiction.”

Ouch.

I once aspired to write that women’s magazine fiction—and did for a time until the market dried up—and I’d write it again if the market reemerged.

One of the first topics he covers when discussing whether someone “has it” in them to be a writer is the use of cliché.

“The writer with the worst odds . . . is the writer whose feel for the language seems incorrigibly perverted. . . The trouble with such language is not only that is is cliche (worn out, overused); but also that it is symptomatic of a crippling psychological set.”

Ouch, again!

So, Gardner wrote this book for the kind of writer who goes for an MFA or the equivalent in experience and temperament. The more literary writer. His stated purpose for writing the book:

“I write for those who desire, not publication at any cost, but publication one can be proud of—serious, honest fiction, the kind of novel that readers will find they enjoy reading more than once, the kind of fiction likely to survive . . . This book is for the beginning novelist who has already figured out that it is far more satisfying to write well than simply to write well enough to get published.” —John Gardner, On Becoming a Novelist

This book started me thinking about the idea of purpose in creative pursuits. As we pursue our creative goals, should we reflect, on a more regular basis, our creative purpose?

We all have our dreams and goals. Some of us want to do well enough at whatever it is to make a little (or a lot) of money. I’m not here to disparage that! I’d like to make a little (or a lot) of money from my writing, too.

Lately, though, I’ve been thinking about craft and the reason I wanted to be a writer in the first place. Yes, I wanted to “be a writer” and make a living from my writing, but if making a living was my primary goal, I could have picked a more likely career. Teacher. Lawyer. Retail store manager.

I wanted to spend my life in literary pursuits because I LOVED BOOKS. I had stories in my head, and I wanted to see if I could get them out of my head and into a form that captured them in an elegant, interesting, compelling, enjoyable way.

Any other job would just be a way to make money, and that’s the way it happened. I worked many jobs for a paycheck. Some I liked better than others. All the while I wrote. I dreamed. I hoped. I wrote some more, trying to become good enough to deserve publication and a readership.

Since publishing two novels, however, I realize making a living writing is probably a long shot for me. Most likely not in the cards. The likelihood of my winning the lottery and becoming a best-selling author recedes further every day. If it hasn’t happened by now, it probably won’t. On the other hand, never say never.

(Just playing, John Gardner!)

You might have dreams of turning your creative work into a paying gig or even a full-time living. Maybe you’re already there. Even if you managed to succeed a little or a whole lot, every so often you might want to take some time to review your purpose. Honestly. Deliberately. A soul-search in the dark of the night when no one is around to listen or care.

Are you still in it for the love of your art? Your interest in your topics? If making money and being popular has become the sole focus of your creative life, how does this impact your decisions? Your ethics? Your willingness to gamble savings and relationships in pursuit of a big payout?

A podcaster I respected recently published a self-help book. Before I had a chance to read it, I learned that she actually took the idea from a lesser-known individual (a poet!) and expanded the mantra into a book and then actually applied for a trademark so that she, and only she, would be able to use and profit from the two-word mantra the poet coined. She did not mention the originator of the concept. She did not give credit anywhere in the book, not even in the acknowledgments.

Was fame and fortune so important to this popular podcaster—not her stated purpose of helping others be their best selves—that she threw her ethics aside? She had to have known what she was doing was wrong.

I won’t be listening to her podcasts or watching her videos, at least until she makes amends and acknowledges her mistake. I’m not going to name her. I’m not into cancelling people.

What I am suggesting is, if we check our purpose, we might be less tempted to lie, cheat, or steal on our way to success.

What if it’s just failure?

Possibly, my decision to focus on purpose rather than success comes from my failure to realize my dreams.

So what?

Most of us won’t succeed in wild and magnificently public ways, so if we can embrace the idea of creative purpose rather than outward success, won’t our simpler, less showy lives be made more beautiful and meaningful?

And isn’t that the point of living?

Journal Prompt

PURPOSE. What is one goal or project you are working on right now? What is your purpose? Your why? Explore all the reasons why you are pursuing this particular goal at this time and in this place. How does this pursuit fit into the larger picture of your life? When you think about succeeding/fulfilling this purpose, what feelings swirl and surface? If you don’t totally succeed, how do you think it will feel? Is the pursuit as satisfying or nearly as satisfying as the ultimate result? Or almost beside the point?

If you’d like to share your journal entry with other newsletter readers, reply to this email and put your entry in the body of your email. I’d love to have a “Dandy Readers Write” section.

Did anyone write a short story about a dangerous butterfly from last months prompt? Me, either. I’ll try to write one this month.

Writing News

Where do I begin? This has been a big month of changes for me, in a GOOD way.

In assessing my writing career, i.e. doing my taxes, looking at my expenditures and income, and all my numbers including social media followers, newsletter subscribers, book sales, and such, I knew it was time, finally, to pivot in a number of ways.

Socials

First, while Facebook ads actually did help with sales, the outcome wasn’t so spectacular that it’s worth spending my own money on advertising when I only get half the profit my ad spend generates.

If I were self-publishing, I might be more tempted to throw money Meta’s way. On the other hand, I’m less enthused about social media than ever.

I recently heard a podcaster say that they had only a “modest” following of 20,000 on Instagram, and that wasn’t enough to keep them on the platform. Mind. Blown. I’ve yet to break 1000 followers on any of my socials. I never made it my goal to amass a huge following, but even I can see that if someone with 20K can’t make socials work, then what do I think I’m gonna do with 900 followers?

I wrote more about this on My Writing Journal blog in “The Way Back Files.”

Newsletter

A thousand readers of this newsletter, however, would be totally amazing, so much more “real” than social media followers. That’s my goal. I’m looking for a thousand true fans of my work to be opening my newsletter every month. I’m not going to “find” these readers on Facebook, Tik Tok, Instagram, or BlueSky. I’m going to find them by a) writing exceptional stories and essays and b)word of mouth.

“But, Shelley,” you say. “How are people going to find these exceptional stories when you write them if you aren’t schlepping them on socials?”

Glad you asked! I will be submitting my best work to magazines, anthologies, and contests. If I write a really, really good novel, I’ll look for an agent and/or a good small press. I’ll share some free stories on my writing journal. I’ll speak at libraries, women’s organizations, book clubs, and possibly on podcasts.

I have two novels out in the world that my kind of readers like. I just need more of those readers to find the Olivia Lively Mysteries and become fans. They will tell their friends. They will go to . . .

My New, Simplified Website

Yes, I’ve finally ditched my GoDaddy DIY website that gave me so much angst and anxiety over the past six years. Instead I’ve found a new platform called Novlr that offers paying members a free website. I found it super easy to drop photos and content into the template, and it just plain works like a charm.

I’ll share more in the months to come about Novlr. Meanwhile check out the new and improved (and simplified) website by clicking the button below.

ShelleyBurbank.com

GoDaddy’s help chat also helped with the transition of my domain to the new site. I’ve always been happy with their customer service responsiveness. I just never should have attempted to build my own website in the first place.

Revamped Blog

Because my old blog/writing journal was connected to the old site, I needed to move it somewhere else. I decided to move it to my VERY old Localista blog on shelleyburbank.wordpress.com. I updated the theme, changed the name of the blog, and voila, I was in business.

The best part for me is that Wordpress manages it and I have a subscribe button that works. At this point I’ve left the old Localista content up there, but I will be working on updating and weeding that stuff into submission soon. My old website blog content is now history. I did not download it. Some I drafted on Google Drive, but either way I’m sorry some of the links to interviews and reviews are gone.

I didn’t want to transfer any weird coding over to the new blog.

So if you’d like to follow along on my writing journey more closely/more often, you might like to subscribe to that blog/writing journal where I share photos of Guam, what I’m reading, what I’m thinking/feeling about writing and publishing, etc. several times a week. Click on the button below to take a peek.

My Writing Journal

Type M for Murder posts

Here is one on finding short story ideas while reading nonfiction.

Here is one on how the proposed tariffs might impact writing and publishing.

Publishing Industry News

I don’t have much to report, but I did enjoy a Substack newsletter by Heather Garbo about how agents are positioning women’s fiction type stories when they submit to editors.

The “category” called Women’s Fiction is understood by readers and is used on Amazon and other retailers, but agents are using terms like “upmarket fiction” and “book club fiction” while pitching to the industry, even if the industry might eventually tag the books “women’s fiction” in some of the marketing.

“Maybe this trend we are seeing of avoiding pitching as women’s fiction emerged as a way to better clarify where a title falls.” —Heather Garbo, Write Your Next Chapter.

From what I’m gathering around the industry interwebs, Women’s Fiction isn’t as hot as it’s been in the recent past, but that doesn’t mean it’s completely dead. Women’s Fic readers will still be looking for books about relationships, families, adult coming-of-age tales of transition and change, career struggles, drama, dramedy, and personal growth.

Women’s Fiction can be melded to almost any other genre and will make it stronger, deeper, more emotionally resonant, and memorable. (My Olivia Lively Mysteries are actually Women’s Fiction with a private investigator main character, hence crime elements in her career struggles and even her relationship issues!)

I’ll be continuing to follow the industry’s take on Women’s Fic.

You can read Garbo’s piece Should You Stop Pitching Your Manuscript as Women’s Fiction? by clicking on the title. I think you’ll find it fascinating and informative.

Guam News

A typical row of storefronts; it’s a jungle out there; salmon egg bennies at TuRé Cafe; the view on the deck at TuRé'Cafe.

We decorated the balcony, found this new cafe called TuRé which is right on the ocean, and are still enjoying the library and the beach on the Navy base. I’ve embarked on an exercise and healthy eating journey and have been working out almost every day focusing on strength training and cardio. I can see muscles again!

We spent Easter eating pastries and coffee for breakfast and then working: C on the laptop and me on housekeeping. If felt like a spring cleaning kind of day.

This weekend we have a hike planned plus a BBQ for C’s work. I’m going to make beef and veggie kabobs for the grill and pasta salad for a side. Maybe some chocolate chip cookies for the kiddos.

Hopefully, I’ll get back to trying whipping up some traditional Chamorro dishes in the kitchen. This last month found me in a bit of a funk, just drifting along on my Guam experience while wrestling with my tech and writing stuff, but I’m feeling more excited again now that I have a stable base under me.

Look for the next Pink Dandelions in May!

S.

In this issue:

• A Letter from Shelley

• March art

• March Pappus: The Creative Sanctuary

• Writing Prompt

• Writing News

• Publishing Industry News

• Living in Guam

Letter from Shelley

Dear Loyal Reader:

Welcome to all the new subscribers this month! I’m so happy that people are finding Pink Dandelions and giving it a try. Finding your readers is one of the harder parts of the writing life. With everyone and everything clamoring for our attention, it’s difficult to pick and choose who to support/follow.

I am extremely grateful to each and every one of you who gifts me with your attention. My sincerest hope is that I can give something of value in return each and every month. I can’t produce an actual book every month, but I can share with you my thoughts on nurturing your own creative life, no matter what form your creativity takes.

Even if you don’t believe you are creative, you are, I promise you. Creativity comes in countless forms: cooking, gardening, decorating…I know people who have turned housekeeping into an art form! Building an exercise program for yourself or starting a small, home-based business? Creative. Figuring out how to use a tool in a unique way to solve a problem? Creative. Writing a thoughtful note to a friend or relative? Creative.

Creativity is anything that uses human ingenuity to make the world a little less chaotic, a little more beautiful, a little safer for the people in it.

This month I’m going to give you a STORY writing prompt rather than a journal prompt. Someone asked me to give writing prompts, so I’m going to try that for awhile. Next month I’ll share a flash fiction based on the prompt: my own or one of yours! Send me your stories.

Maybe there’s another way we can share some of our stories? Would anyone be interested if I started a Dandies chat group where we could share our stories/poems/essays or just chat about living a creative life? If you’d be interested in this, drop me a note.

Finally, happy spring! Here in Guam, the weather stays pretty much the same every week. Tropical. Hot. Showers now and again. But I know my friends in the northern hemisphere are probably happy to see the snow melt and the daffodils bloom. Spring is a time of rebirth, re-energizing, and new beginnings. (For my southern hemisphere friends, it’s fall cozy time. Snuggle in. Rest. Cozy up with some projects and good books.)

Enjoy the March pappus about designating a creative sanctuary.

Cheers!

Shelley

Subscribe now

March Art

This month’s art is inspired by spring flowers. I’ve always loved pink apple blossoms. I saw this dress and coat in a 1960s photo and decided to see if I could capture its essence. I messed up the eyes on the chic model, so voila! Sunglasses.

It’s okay to make mistakes.

If you have some art you’d like to share, send it along. I’d be happy to share with my readers.

March Pappus

A pappus is the seed fluff drifting on a current of air, carrying the seed to fertile soil in which in can germinate. I hope these ideas help you in your nurturing of your own creative life.

The Creative Sanctuary: Designing spaces to safeguard your creative spirit

Sanctuary. The word brings to mind strong walls, safety, respite, care, defense against violence, a lighted space in the darkness, an oasis in a desert, a fortress in the wilderness, a sturdy roof and closed shutters in the face of a hurricane.

We all experience turbulence in our lives. Sometimes the chaos revolves around external forces, other times from personal challenges or changes. Even success can be disruptive to peace of mind.

I’ve written before about attention, how we create our reality from the things on which we focus. See Pink Dandelions, August 24, 2024

https://shelleyburbank.substack.com/p/vivaldi-crows-and-a-greek-philosopher

The other side of this attention coin is the concept of “paying” attention. We are literally paying companies, people, industries, media, authors, newsletter writers, etc. WITH our attention. Our attention has always been valuable, of course, but increasingly in our information age, it is actually being capitalized. Companies make money when we spend our time and attention on their platforms.

We are symbiotically involved in this attention economy. We give businesses our attention, we take what they offer in return, and with those materials we create our lives.

Your Life as Metaphorical Castle

Imagine, for a moment, your life as a castle. What rooms have you built and furnished in there? Is there a news room decorated with politics, talking heads, slogans, and symbols painted in red or blue or green–created from the podcasts, tv programs, books, newsletters, and social media accounts you follow? How about a room, probably the kitchen, for your favorite recipes, celebrity chefs, cookbooks, gadgets you salivate over online, diet blogs, and social media foodie groups? There might be a library made up of your Goodreads list. An art room with artist YouTube videos. A music room comprised of Spotify downloads. A screening room for Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, Max, Hulu, and Tubi. Your health and fitness room furnished with yet more videos plus gym memberships, magazine articles, and gurus yammering at you while selling their supplements, powders, fitness programs, and promises.

We’ve each built these castles from materials available to us 24/7, and if you are like me, you find yourself wandering around from one room to the other, sometimes aimlessly and sometimes with purpose. Each room pulls us in, claiming our attention. As time passes, the rooms become more crowded and more noisy. You feel your energy draining away. You long for escape, but where can you go? You’ve spent a ton of psychological energy creating these spaces, and to a greater or lesser extent they serve you, but you are feeling overwhelmed by it all and need rest.

You need a Creative Sanctuary.

The Creative Sanctuary can be both metaphorical/imaginative and physical. Why not consider creating both?

Physical Indoor Space

In your actual physical home, you might have a room or a corner of a room (or even your entire house) that can be designated your safe haven. This space is cozy, comforting, and full of things that spark and nourish your creativity. Most important, within this space you feel calm and protected from the chaos and demands of the outside world. Here are some ideas for designing a creative corner in your home.

• Declutter. A cluttered and disorganized space can distract us, make us feel tense and irritable, not to mention frustrated when we misplace items. An organized space relieves anxiety and helps us feel more in control of our lives.

• Meaningful objects. For some, simplicity feels soothing. Eliminating all but a few objects, plants, and colors creates a Zen vibe. For others, vibrant colors and multiple pieces of art and objets feel cozy, warm, and inspiring. It’s totally up to you! Decorate with what is useful and/or beautiful and/or meaningful in your Creative Sanctuary. Keep in mind that the more items you have, the harder you’ll have to work on maintaining order, but that is often worth it if the mementos and objects add to your sense of purpose and meaning.

• Light. Natural light in the morning is uplifting. If you spend time in your Creative Sanctuary in the morning, open your blinds and curtains and let the light pour in. Or go outside! According to many experts, going outside for at least 15 minutes and exposing your skin to UV rays increases Vitamin D. Candlelight or firelight flickering in the evening makes us feel safe, warm, and peaceful. Even if the bathroom is the only place in your home where you can find alone time, drawing a bath and lighting scented candles to place around the bathtub can be wonderfully relaxing.

• Scents. Scented oils, reed diffusers, scented candles, bath bubbles, fresh flowers, perfumes–scent is one of the most evocative of our senses, recalling memories and setting off reactions in our brains. The sense of smell is linked to our limbic system which is the emotional center of our brain. (See Note 1). Lavender, patchouli, citrus, vanilla, and eucalyptus can encourage calm and healing and focus. Learning about aromatherapy is fascinating. (Next month I’ll share some fun news about a friend’s new essential oil microbusiness for literary lovers here in our midst. Stay tuned!)

• Music. Your Creative Sanctuary might include your favorite music. I like to listen to classical music in the morning while I’m drinking my coffee and reading a book. I think it’s important to keep outside noise to a minimum unless it’s something natural like birdsong, ocean waves crashing, wind in the limbs of the trees, etc. Perhaps an ambient noise machine would be something to consider if you are in a busy city environment or have a house full of people.

• Comfortable furnishings. A squishy reading chair. A pretty writing desk. Soft rugs underfoot. Throw blankets. Pillows. For the bath, an inflatable neck pillow and fluffy towels. Artwork that soothes and/or inspires on the walls for contemplation. Plants that provide a touch of nature indoors as well as natural air filtration. And don’t forget to invite your cuddly pet. (What’s more comforting than snuggling up with your fur baby?)

• Creative tools. For some people, a creative sanctuary is the place to actually create art rather than meditate or read or doze. If that’s you, make sure you have your tools in place and that they bring you joy rather than pressure or frustration. (Having a laptop or printer that doesn’t work or dried out markers or brushes isn’t soothing!) Remember this space is your sanctuary. This is where you come to escape the pressure and instead play, create, and connect with your inner self.

Physical Outdoor Space

You might find a place outside in nature, as well. For instance, one of my sanctuaries is my favorite beach in Maine. This is a summer haven. In the late fall, winter, and spring, I can only dream of my Maine mornings spent with toes in the sand, coffee steaming in my travel mug, sunlight dancing on the water, a book in my L.L. Bean bag, and classical music streaming through my phone. Walking from my car toward the beach, I without fail feel an incredible sense of peace and calm drape over my entire being. It’s quite magical.

Maybe your idea of a creative sanctuary is hiking or walking in nature. Or snorkeling. Or snowboarding down a mountain. Spending time in nature is a wonderful way to disconnect from the media chatter, to remind ourselves that we are part of the natural world–not some bits and bytes in the metaverse but rather physical, natural beings made up of the same stuff as the plants and soil and other animals around us. Leave your phone in your pocket when you walk or hike. Do not listen to a podcast or catch up on the news. Use the walk as a meditative practice. Notice what is around you. Let your mind relax.

As part of their experiments in reducing their time online, Offline podcasters Jon Favreau and Max Fisher both found taking a walk for twenty minutes without their phones helped them feel more relaxed and happy. From the episode transcript: “I still had the same like assessment of what was happening in the world and why it was bad, but I just felt more equipped to face it. And the real benefit that I found was that on days where I took a walk at the end of the day and then after that like put my phone away, I was just like, I felt better all night. If I was with friends, I was much more present and much more like enjoying the time with them, much more effectively. And then I slept better…” (See Note 2)

Depending on your climate, you could even make an outdoor Creative Sanctuary space at your home. A man cave. A she shed. A wonderful screened porch with comfortable rocking chairs and a writing table. A patio with a firepit. If you live on the lake or ocean, a dock jutting out into the water or even your docked boat as a floating outdoor space. A favorite spot beside a brook or beneath a favorite tree. A gazebo in your garden. Find the place that resonates with you and set it up in a way that adds to the peaceful, the contemplative, the joyful.

Mental Creative Sanctuary

It’s also important to give yourself a safe space in your mind away from the distractions of the news cycle, opinion pieces, newsletters (yes, even this one), and what I call “coulda-shoulda” squawking online or in physical books, magazines, or conversations. Others’ voices telling us what to do, what to feel, what to think.

You can create a mental Creative Sanctuary by giving yourself time every day disconnected from anything that creates stress, guilt, or pressure. In your imaginary castle, this room would be free of anything screechy, preachy, pushy, loud, overly intrusive, demanding, ranting, wheedling, cajoling, begging, guilt-inducing, blood-pressure raising, exciting, divisive, partisan, or sarcastic. Maybe your mental sanctuary is your meditation time. Or it could be when you are exercising, walking, cooking, sewing, painting, or writing. It’s the time you disconnect from the outside world and commune, instead, with yourself.

Perhaps your mental Creative Sanctuary is found within a good book, or an uplifting show, or in the lyrics and melody of good music. The important and defining aspect of this space is that it feels safe, warm, nurturing, and restorative. It’s expansive. It nourishes rather than drains. You feel fuller, not depleted, after spending time in this mental space.

You can, of course, be in both the physical and mental Creative Sanctuary at the same time, but I think it’s pretty cool if you can make your way to the mental safe space anytime, anywhere you need to simply by tuning out the noise and clamour of the world.

I hope these musings give you some inspiration for creating your own Creative Sanctuary–a place to revive, rest, and reconnect with your creativity, joy, and inner self.

—-

Notes

1. https://www.maison21g.com/articles/how-fragrances-affect-your-mood-understanding-the-power-of-scents

2. https://crooked.com/podcast/what-post-democracy-america-looks-like/

Writing Prompt

“It was the last place she expected to find a butterfly.”

Write a flash fiction, flash essay/memoir or poem based on the sentence above. You can use the sentence as it is or not. It’s up to you. Genre is up to you. Give me a horror story about a butterfly, and I will give bonus points! (Um, there are no points, but you know what I mean.)

Send me your story by replying to this email if you would like some feedback and maybe a chance at publication in an upcoming newsletter.

My Writing News

I’m still struggling with my Strawberry Moon story. I’m sorry to not have better news on that one. It’s been tough this month, I’ll be honest. But I have done some work on it and figure it will be done when it’s done.

Meanwhile, the lovely author Donis Casey, who is a fellow Type M for Murder blogger, invited me to be her Tell Me Your Story guest this month. I’m so honored! For this piece I decided to go back to the beginnings of my writing journey, and I tell about my years of playing with Barbie and other fashion dolls and how this prompted me to write one of my first fiction stories. You can read it at DonisCasey.com

I’m still writing on the Type M for Murder blog every other Friday. In fact, I have a piece due today, so I’ll be heading there next. The last one was on a geeky writing craft topic. You may or may not be interesting in seeing how the sausage is made. If so go to Frame It Up where I talk in detail about Strawberry Moon and my ideas about a frame story structure.

I’m also researching for another project I’ve had in mind for a couple of years. It has to do with JFK conspiracy theories, so it was interesting that a bunch of documents were released this week. I may have missed my window for getting an edge. Originally I planned to write a series of novellas with the JFK story as a through-line. I’m not rethinking if I can make it a standalone novel.

If anyone has any ideas on resources about women’s lives in the late 1950s and the 1960s, let me know. That time period feels just out of reach for me. I’d LOVE to interview women who were in their early adulthood at that time. If you or someone you know might be interested in talking with me for background research purposes, let me know! Especially nurses or lawyers but really anyone who could tell me some challenges that women faced in those years.

Publishing Industry News

The big news this week is that the Atlantic has created a searchable database of all the books and articles Meta used to train it’s AI without author permission or compensation. My FB feed was full of posts this morning from authors talking about how their books were included. So of course I had to look up my name. Sure enough, Meta used NIGHT MOVES, my second Olivia Lively mystery.

I would have been crushed if they hadn’t! To have been left out/not deemed important enough to steal from would have been devastating! Haha, but also, true.

My thoughts on this are two-fold.

One, we should all consider ditching the socials. They are bad for us and bad for society. I’ll point out that while authors are screaming about this, they use Meta for free promotion and readership building and connection. It’s kind of a two-way street.

Two, we could consider ditching the entire ebook enterprise. Ebooks make it very easy for pirating sites (which is where Meta gained access to all this content) to steal and reproduce books. The industry has known about these sites for a long time, but as soon as one gets taken down, another springs up.

The way I look at it is this: people who buy or read for free on piracy sites are not the people who would buy the book otherwise. They simply would find different free content. In other words, piracy sites aren’t really impacting our sales.

However, it’s annoying and illegal. If we want to stop this, we could simply not publish digital content.

Like that’s gonna happen.

I’ve just added this publishing section for insider scoops for you, my dear Dandies. Readers may or may not be interested in the business side of writing, but for those who are, I hope you find this sort of tidbit interesting.

Guam News

Our household goods arrived, and we are all unpacked and settled! I am so happy to have my cooking stuff plus my office set up. It feels more like home. Actually, it feels like we took our San Diego apartment, picked it up, and set it down in this condo.

If you are zooming with us, you wouldn’t know the difference.

C and I headed to the Chamorro Village market on Wednesday to pick up some earrings we’d accidentally left behind at the shop. Here is one pair I’m wearing today with my Limerick, Maine tee! The cement pavilions at the village provide space for vendors of all kinds from jewelry to local food products to games. The place gets very crowded every Wednesday evening.

Lines for BBQ grow long. Vendors stand behind warming dishes full of delicious local favorites. Meats are pork, chicken, and beef. Chicken kaleguen which is like a chicken salad without the mayo. Red rice. Rice noodles. Corn. Spring rolls. I saw a fried banana roll that I will have to try. Many different types of fruit-based drinks.

The fiesta plates are $14 or so and come with two scoops of rice, three sides, and bbq. I had more than enough for dinner and leftovers for lunch the next day.

Last night we went back to Tumon Bay to our favorite pizza shop, Primo Pizzakaya. We chose a red-sauce pie with pineapple, onion, and jalapeno peppers, bacon, and guava. Yum! We ate in the bar, which looks like a library. Drinks are named for books like Memoirs of a Geisha, Moby Dick, and Little Fires Everywhere. I’m not drinking booze these days, so I contented myself with a Pelligrino with lime. Check out the menu if you are interested. MENU

For more frequent updates on all things Guam and writing, I keep a writing journal and post several times a week on ShelleyBurbank.com.

Happy March and Happy Spring!