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...
I was reminded of these family gatherings when I re-read, a week or so ago, the Christmas stories in Washington Irving’s Sketch Book, which was published between 1819 and 1820. This series centers around a Christmas in England, where Irving lived for several years. The first essay, simply called “Christmas”, is mainly a lament for “those honest days of yore,” when “the world was more homebred, social, and joyous than at present.”
“Of all the old festivals,” he writes, “that of Christmas...
There were some things we did every year when I was a kid, aside from making cookies and fruitcake. Probably the beginning of the Christmas season was when Dad hauled the artificial tree out of the basement. (I don’t know where he stashed it when we lived in the trailer; probably in the shed. I was too young to pay much attention to it back then.) We had the same tree for as long as I could remember, with color-coded branches that fit into the “trunk” one by one, level by level. (Some of...
A Secret Family Harvest by Helen Yeomans (2013). ***. What if money literally grew on trees? And what if very few people knew it? That’s the premise, and I don’t know if I’ve ever seen a book based on it before. The author and her characters spend about the first three-quarters of the book debating and speculating about what could happen if the secret of the money trees gets out. Then it does. And then the story wraps up pretty quickly and fairly neatly. It’s as if, once the “worst” happens,...
Now I want to share some thoughts on favorite Christmas foods. As promised, there will be fruitcake. There will also be gingerbread, and lefse, and pfeffernusse and sandbakkels. Those of you who didn’t grow up in strongly German or Scandinavian parts of the country likely don’t know what those last three items are. Be patient and all will be revealed.
To get it out of the way: fruitcake.
This past Saturday’s Christmas viewing was Hogfather (2006), a miniseries based on Terry Pratchett’s 1996 Discworld book of the same title. It’s a faithful adaptation, although as with most movies based on books, some things had to be left out. (Just as well, though, considering the movie clocks in at just over 3 hours long.) Suppose a cadre of supernatural beings, in the interest of enforcing their idea of order on the universe, decided to capture the belief system of ordinary people?...
Created, the Destroyer by Warren Murphy and Richard Sapir (1971). ***. The first book of the Remo Williams story. I don’t even remember getting this book and it wasn’t until I got into the actual story that I had any idea what it was (the prologue gave no clue). Being a fan of the Remo Williams movie, I jumped into it eagerly. The story is very different from that of the movie; the stakes of the plot seem lower, for one thing. Remo’s recruitment into the clandestine government agency is...
More favorite Christmas music: “A Christmas Song” by Jethro Tull. Not exactly an anti-Christmas song, but a bit cynical. “The Christmas spirit is not what you drink.” A quick meditation on the difference between the original meaning of the season and the over-indulgence of modern holiday celebrations. There’s a good live version of this song on Tull’s A Little Light Music.
“It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year” by Andy Williams. Perhaps mostly a nostalgia thing for me, since The Andy Williams Christmas Album (1963) was a staple in our house when I was a kid. It almost isn’t Christmas until I’ve heard this song. It’s kind of a list of all the fun stuff about Christmas: caroling and parties and family gatherings, “jingle belling” and “mistletoeing”. And the sweeping orchestral arrangement, heavy on the brass and bells, is the sound of the season.
