When I joined Goodreads a few years ago, I felt like I should write reviews for the books I read. After doing this for a month or two, I changed my mind.  I still will rate a book (as long as I finished reading it, and if I liked it enough to read it then […]

Favorite Book – Pueblos, Spaniards, and the Kingdom of New Mexico by John L. Kessell. I typically read more fantasy and historical fiction than anything else, but I do enjoy an occasional historical text. With my recent interest in genealogy, this book hit the spot.   My family originally settled in New Mexico during the Spanish […]

I finished the draft of my novel tentatively titled Lion’s Pride on Christmas day.  It ended up at 108,208 words.  I still don’t like the title much, but it is the best I’ve come up with so far.  This is the final novel in my Kingdom of Haven trilogy.  I sent it out to a […]

I started out NaNoWriMo with high hopes, and was not disappointed.  No, I didn’t make 50,000 words, but I did kick my latest project back into high gear.  To do this, I started tracking my word count at the beginning of November.  Seeing this progress helped me to push forward.  From then until now, I’ve […]

It never fails: when I choose to do NaNoWriMo my schedule gets squirrelly.  So far this month I’ve had four actual writing days for a total of 2835 words.  So I’m averaging about 700 words a day on those days (which is about my normal daily word count).  I have a rule that I do […]

National Novel Writing Month is upon us.  I participated for the first time in 2011 and hit my 50,000 word goal with a novel titled Half-hand.  I never quite finished that novel because I decided to complete a trilogy I was working on first.  In 2012 I participated with the second book in my Kingdom […]

Here is the Cathedral Basilica of St. Francis of Assisi in Santa Fe, New Mexico.  The original church on this site was built in 1626 but was destroyed in the 1680 Pueblo revolt.  This particular church was built in the late 1800’s. The San Miguel Mission church in Santa Fe is the oldest church structure […]

Growing limes turned out to be easier than I had anticipated.  I bought a lime tree last year and it produced its first crop of limes this year.  Above is the tree in the spring when the fruit started to get noticeable, and below are the limes.  There were actually twelve, but I used a couple […]

On our anniversary this year, my wife and I decided to visit Lake Lure, North Carolina.  It is a nice little lake town in the foothills of the Smokey Mountains.  We’ve stayed there before, but this time we decided to stay at the Lake Lure Inn. It appears that the Lake Lure Inn is mostly […]

The month of September has been a blur.  In the last few weeks, I’ve visited New Mexico, Colorado, Oregon, and Washington state.  Part was vacation and part was work, but it has been a busy time.  I think I wore out a pair of shoes hiking around the various states.  When I say “hiking”, I’m […]