Blog

(read in 2025, not necessarily published then):

Tuck Everlasting by Natalie Babbitt

Witchmark, Stormsong, and Soulstar by C.L. Polk

The Silent Tower, The Silicon Mage, and Dog Wizard by Barbara Hambley

Enemy, Outlaw, and Ally by K. Eason

Always Look on the Bright Side of Life by Eric Idle

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer & Annie Barrows

The Original Daughter by Jemimah Wei

Never Have Your Dog Stuffed by Alan Alda

The Deepest Roots by Miranda Asebedo

Silent...

12/22 Monday 1:27 PM 31

Starting The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver. Hope this will break my bad Kindle streak.

Listening to: “Sarus Cranes” by Wild Ambience

It’s seriously tempting to just take this whole week off from doing anything at all productive. But as I already know I’m going to have to bake at least one loaf of bread before Thursday, and I already did some work on both books yesterday and dusted in my bedroom today, I might as well just carry on as usual. sigh. I also made...

12/16 Tuesday 2:48 PM 41

Listening to: “I’m Still Standing” by Elton John

Another busy week. I guess? I know, who am I making excuses to anyway?

Anyway, what have I been doing? Mostly the usual. But on Friday I suddenly decided that I needed to re-sort my pictures on the computer. Not even sure I remember why. But it took way longer than I thought it would. Pretty much killed that day.

Saturday evening was spent out, celebrating Will Stewart’s birthday. Fun, but I didn’t get to bed til nearly...

12/9 Tuesday 3:45 PM 29

I’m having a hard time keeping track of what day it is again. I don’t know why. The confusion is about both the day and the date. Aggravating. I’ve been convinced at various times today that it’s Monday and/or the 10th.

On Sunday it was so cold that I had to do my old PT exercises inside. I ended up having to do the clock reach with a spray bottle in my hand because Micky thought it was an invitation to attack my feet.

Yes we have gotten some snow today, but not a...

12/1 Monday 3:26 PM 14

Listening to: “Angelique” by Mike Oldfield

Was it a busy week? Actually it was kind of a lazy week. I celebrated Thanksgiving by having a Sims day. Did the grocery shopping on Friday (not at Walmart, obviously). The usual Sims day on Saturday, and then of course yesterday I had the end-of-week and end-of-month chores. I finished everything up just before supper time. It was a lot. But no, didn’t get much done that was actually productive. Oh, I shoveled the decks...

You know, the nice thing about house fires is that they progress in such a leisurely fashion that when the homeowner comes to your house to beg you to save her son, who’s gotten caught in some Halloween decorations and can’t get out, there’s plenty of time to try to clean out an absurdly tiny tunnel that’s somehow crammed full of assorted junk, give up on that, climb over the fence, make your way into the burning house through what appears to be some kind of zoo facility, make a mental note...

11/3 Monday 4:13 PM 53

Reading: Zamba: The True Story of the Greatest Lion Who Ever Lived by Ralph Helfer, The Art of Prophecy by Wesley Chu, Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children by Ransom Riggs

LFL find, giveaway, and Kindle purchase I really should have read ages ago, in that order.

How has it been a whole week? Oh yes, I remember: I got a bug in my head about sorting Sims files, and couldn’t rest til it was done. One of my typical time-wasting projects. That took up a lot of free...

Something different I wanted to share. This is a bread machine recipe, but if someone with more baking skills than I have wants to try converting it, go right ahead. It's a nice fall bread, although obviously you can make it any time. The recipe is about 50% a recipe I found somewhere and 50% trial and error on my part. (Please respect the recipe! When I say "trial and error" I do mean it, especially the "error" part.)

Ingredients:

3/4 cup warm (not hot) water

1/2 cup butternut squash...

10/13 Monday 53

Listening to: “Daddy Sang Bass” by Johnny Cash

Phew. This is my third writing session this afternoon. My hand is tired, especially since the work on Freed is still mostly copying that old story. I’ll be done with that soon, though, and have to go back to thinking again. sigh.

Looking at my last entry. I ended up making four pendants on Friday. Would have done more, but I ran out of time. Anyway, I’m happy with what I did get done. One of the pendants is for Cheryl; I got the...

10/9 Thursday 71

This is the warmest day we’ve had all week. And it still doesn’t feel that warm. oh well.

I discovered today that I’ve read 69 books this year, of the 70 I set for this year’s Goodreads challenge. And I’ll hit 70 after a few more minutes of Kindle reading. That’s an average of 1.6 books per week. Not that I’m competing with anybody but myself, but it’s nice to know I’ve read this many books even with all the ones I discarded from the Kindle this year. I read 78 last year, and...

10/5 Sunday 54

September 2025 library stats:

Books added: 112 (-8 over September 2024)

Books taken: 18 (-43 over September 2024)

Books donated in: 19 (-255 over September 2024)

Books donated out: 8 (-61 over September 2024)

Books returned: 1 (-6 over September 2024)

Listening to: Drama of the Week

The big event of the past week was Alyssa’s birthday party, which was kind of fun. Odd for me to realize that I was the oldest person there, though.

I finished Circle of Friends on Friday, but I’m unable...

Had a bit of a library fail today. We stopped at two libraries and I left two books in each of them. But then I also took a book from the first one and three from the second. Well, I can’t help it! I nearly took three from the first one, but finally chose the one that looked most interesting. Little did I know, when I was mentally applauding my self-restraint, that the other one would have a copy of Walden (which I’ve never read somehow) and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (which I haven’t...

Heather and I went back to the bookstore on Saturday so I could drop off copies of the rest of my books. And we got to see our display, right near the front of the store. Fun! And a bit humorous as well, because the little sign at the top read “New Local Authors”. I mean true, we’re new to the store, but . . .

Heather’s been in contact with Ferguson Books downtown, and with the First Avenue Market, which is a boutique-type shop that sells stuff made by local crafters. There’s been some...

So here’s the thing:

About a month ago, I decided to remove about half of each of my published novels from Wattpad, except for the first one, Silver and Blood, which I left intact. As I explained at the time, I made the decision mainly for one reason. A lot of people read the books, and a lot of people said they liked the books and would like to buy copies. But not one of them did. I had to conclude that, as is human nature, nobody wanted to buy what they could get for free.

So I did what I...

(I found this in my blog, from 2017, and thought I'd share it.) (Please do take the date into account for some of these answers, particularly the one about famous people I'd like to hang out with.)

First off, tell us a little bit about you~

My name is Trina Talma, though people I meet on Twitter more often see me as an anagram of that name. I am very nearly half a century old, and I live in the more civilized part of North Dakota with my husband, my son, my mother-in-law and five cats. I also...

I managed to do a little more work on Called from the Ashes the other day. But a minor character popped up to delay the story. I thought I was just about ready to start the “history” part – which is meant to be the main part. Then a kid in the audience piped up and asked Harry if it was true that she once brought some people back from the dead. Brat! Shut up so we can get on with what we want to get on with! Honestly! Now I’ll apparently have to deal with that in some way before I can go...

I had A Thought about the next part of This Dark Road. I couldn’t decide whether it should be told by Thel or Jann, or maybe by both. And I thought maybe Chael, or even Zani, or even Zania. But why not Sharrec? I can get into his back story from his point of view, rather than just having him info-dump it to Thel. And the beginning, something like this:

I don’t think I knew I would [fall in] love [with] Arathel Corthinn-Aldien the first time I saw her. I don’t believe in love at first sight,...

5 out of 5 stars. Fantasy mixed with historical fiction mixed with mystery mixed with romance, with some steampunk-ish elements sprinkled in. In other words, practically everything I want in a book, all together. Great world-building, interesting characters, and suspense to keep me turning pages. Plus, it's one of those rare fantasies that has sequels but doesn't end with a cliffhanger. I'm looking forward to reading the next book!

I thought I'd share the "beginnings" (air quotes intended) of the new Morstan/Karbegla book, not-so-tentatively titled Called from the Ashes. No real spoilers, since most of this is just stuff I wrote to orient myself and probably won't end up in the actual book.

“What is that?”

Of course it was obvious to all of us standing there on the beach what the thing was, even though I’d guess the majority of us had never seen a ship in real life. But it was something straight out of history books....

The other piece I revisited this year was chapter 11 of P.L. Travers’s Mary Poppins, titled “Christmas Shopping”. It begins with Mary, Jane, and Michael getting off the bus:

“I smell snow,” said Jane.

“I smell Christmas trees,” said Michael.

“I smell fried fish,” said Mary Poppins.

The magic of Christmas, indeed. They’re at the “Largest Shop in the World, and they were all going into it to do their Christmas shopping.” Jane and Michael busy themselves choosing oh-so-appropriate gifts – a...