My Father by Bea TIfton

 I got the call at 2:00 in the morning. Phone calls at that time of night are never good, and this one was devastating. My father had passed away in the hospital from complications of Parkinson’s disease.

When I was a little girl, I idolized my father. He went out of town for his work as a defense contractor and I anxiously awaited his return. Each year we went on vacation. We loved going to San Antonio, but we also went to Washington, D.C., California, Arizona, New Mexico, among other states. Dad often went to Europe for work and one year we went with him, visiting Germany, Italy, Switzerland, and England. Dad wanted us to experience every country we could, even if it was just for a day.

When he was younger, he loved to sing silly songs around the house, off key but with much enthusiasm. Before we went on vacation, he would always sing, “We’re on our way to somewhere, the three of us and you.” My favorite was “Be Kind to Your Web-footed friends, for the duck may be somebody’s mother. Be kind to your friends in the swamp, where the weather is very, very, dawmp.” I’m not sure where he got some of his little gems, but I just loved them. And I can’t hear Peter, Paul, and Mary’s song, “Lemon Tree” without hearing his voice singing it. Now it makes me tear up.

One day, out of the blue, when Dad and I were the only ones home, he asked, “Want to make popcorn balls?” Of course I did. He didn’t use a recipe; we made popcorn and he made syrup to coat them. After we had shaped the popcorn balls and triumphantly placed them on waxed paper, my mother came home. As she surveyed the piles of dishes and the counter that we had effectively shellacked, she gasped and clutched her pearls. It‘s a good thing she didn’t have a weak heart or we would have lost her. Cleaning up the kitchen wasn’t as fun as getting it dirty, but the popcorn balls were delicious.

Dad loved to fish. Being a rocket scientist can be a stressful job, but when we were on the water he just let all that stress go. I didn’t fish and my mother sat and read. I looked for turtles, watched the birds, and just looked around at the peaceful lake. When Dad was through fishing, he would take a couple of laps around the lake and I loved that more than almost anything. We saw some amazing things when we were in the boat. When we lived in Florida, we saw a manatee and Dad carefully maneuvered slowly around him. And once we rounded the curve of the lake and an entire flock of flamingoes took flight. I still remember the sense of wonder as I watched the magnificent birds fly away.

Dad had an amazing life. He was extremely intelligent, and his interests included history, paleontology, archeology, especially of the Anasazi culture, Biblical archeology, history, astronomy, and meteorology. He would patiently answer my questions and he just knew a lot about a lot of things. He couldn’t talk about everything because of his high security clearance, but he still had plenty of anecdotes. He walked away from two helicopter crashes, he walked off one flight as some highjackers walked on (no one was injured on the flight and they went to Cuba), he had several patents for things that were used in his work and he actually invented a cow EKG to discover why cattle were dying on cattle trucks. He was headhunted to work for NASA for the first trip to the moon but he didn’t want to move to Houston. He was always fascinated with rockets and I wondered if that was why. And some fun things are he worked at the radio station in Lubbock when his classmate, Buddy Holly, came in to record. He rode on one flight with Elvis. Dad didn’t try to push through the entourage and talk to him but he said a woman sat in Elvis’ lap the entire way.

There are already things I wished I had asked him, stories I’ll never hear. I think, “Oh, I need to tell Dad,” or “Dad and I can watch that movie together.” Then I remember.

I love you, Dad. And I know you loved me, too.

 

 

Photo Credits: 
Dad with a baby Bea, personal collection
Manuel Munoz "Lemons Growing on Tree Under Sunlight" Pexels.com
Dad with a good catch, personal collection
Shuttercraftsman "Beautiful Flamingos in Turkish Wetlands" Pexels.com
Lilburn Smith 1937-2025

Holding On, Letting Go — and Finally Choosing Me ~Sherri Easley

Most of my life, I’ve been someone who holds on to things that do not serve me.

I hold on to people long after they’ve drifted or betrayed me. I hold on to jobs that drain me. I hold on to routines, roles, and responsibilities out of loyalty, out of love, out of the fear that if I let go, I’ll lose part of myself.

Maybe you know that feeling—that stubborn ache in the chest when something isn’t working anymore, but you just can’t bring yourself to walk away. We’re taught that letting go is failure. That endurance is noble. That the more we sacrifice, the more worthy we are.

But what they don’t tell you is that holding on is its own kind of prison.

You wake up one day and realize you’ve stayed for the title, the paycheck, the history, the shoulds. You look around and the spark is gone. Not just in the thing you’re clinging to—but in you.

And so, after years of giving, building, proving, and staying longer than I should have, I’m choosing something different- I am choosing me.

I decided a couple of weeks ago to give up my corporate job at Boeing. I owe them a lot. I literally started my life over- at least financially, 10 years ago with nothing but my education and experience and my work with them has allowed financial stability, a home, and has allowed me to build a small business around my sewing and embroidery.

Retirement, for me, isn’t an ending. It’s a return. A return to curiosity, creativity, and quiet mornings and snuggles with my pets. To projects that don’t come with deadlines. To joy that isn’t tied to productivity. To the version of me that existed before I became what society required of me.

In this case, letting go isn’t a weakness. It’s wisdom. It’s recognizing that growth requires space—and sometimes that means releasing the things (and people) that once rooted us, so we can rise.

So here’s to the art of knowing when to hold on—and the courage it takes to finally let go.

I’m not done dreaming. I’m just dreaming differently.

And it feels like freedom.

WHERE THE WAGON TRAIN BROKE DOWN By Caroline Clemmons

One of my favorite songs opens, "Summertime and the livin' is easy...." In spite of that, summer is my least favorite season. Please give me spring and fall with more moderate temperatures.  I donate my sunscreen lotion to the sun lovers while I choose to remain indoors with a good book and soothing music.

That's what I'd choose, all right, but life doesn't work that way, does it?

Once we had a dark blue car with the same color leather seats. We kept towels in the vehicle to sit on when wearing shorts. We also threw a towel over the steering wheel if we had to park in the open. Nothing like fastening a molten metal seat belt buckle over a child, right? Car manufacturers have caught on since those days, and the interior of modern cars are not quite the roasting pans of the past. 

I live in North Central Texas, and we have many extremely hot days. Once when friends from Tampa visited, the temperature was 113F, unusually high for us. Their ten-year-old son asked me, "Why do you live here?"

My usual reply to this complex question is, "This is where the wagon train broke down."

I'm still not a fan of summer. 

Procrastination and Obsession

I've been procrastinating something for a very long time, and when I finished it this week, it wasn't all that hard. Because of course. 

I think because my day job (I work at an elementary school) is so emotionally draining, that I procrastinate the creative stuff. Then when I finally buckle down and do it, I get mad at myself since it was never as big or bad as I thought it would be.

And on that note, I sent off my novella to my formatter! She's going to make it pretty and I'll get that baby uploaded ASAP! I'm listing it as free for the first week it's available, but I'm not telling anyone except my newsletter subscribers, so sign up now if you want to be one of the first to get it! It'll be one whole dollar after that first week, so jump on it!

Sign up for my newsletter here

I recently started watching My Demon on Netflix. It's a K-Drama about a demon whose powers get accidentally transferred to a woman who has an assassin out to get her. The thing is, she thinks he's a weirdo who won't leave her alone so she wants nothing to do with him. But! He's constantly saving her life, so he needs to stay close to her. OMG it's forbidden romance, it's enemies-to-lovers, it's Paranormal Romance, and it's hitting all the right notes for me. So, that being said, feed my new obsession! Send me either book or show recs that fit this Paranormal Romance vibe! Please and thank you!

Look at him all broody

Look at them all being enemies and stuff

And now look at them battling their attraction...Swoon...

So yeah, watch it, send me recs, you know what to do!

Summer Sundown by Liz Flaherty

In a town close to where we live, the arts council hosts the Summer Sundown series, where music is played for an hour each Sunday night. You take your lawn chair and sit and watch. You drink the complimentary water, get a free ticket to win a go-cup (which I haven't won) and you listen and applaud and talk to the other people there. Sometimes, like this past Sunday, it was so hot I was whining almost as loud as Sarah and Ron Luginbill were singing. (Sarah was hot, too--it wasn't just me.)

Now--surprise, surprise!--I am not a summer person. Once I no longer had kids in summer sports and activities, I was done with it. I just stay in the house most of the time, and hurry between it and the air conditioned car if I have to leave it. I consider any temperature above 80 degrees to be wholly unnecessary, high humidity to be a death threat from a ticked-off Mother Nature, and summer storms to be ... well, exciting, but also scary. 

Regardless of my complaints (which are fully justified), I have to admit that Summer Sundown is a delight all its own. Not just the weekly event in Logansport, Indiana, where we move our lawn chairs over and over to avoid the attack of the slowly falling sun, although there's a specialness to those performances. But no, it's the sundown itself. The few moments in time that make you say oh, look and stand in silent amazement until the sun slips into the horizon. While I have always been a sunrise person, the end of the day brings something with it. 

We talk about closure a lot, and it gives us that. We search for beauty in every day--it gives us that. For those of us who draw life and joy from color, the night sky and the summering of the earth gives us both strength and succor. Summer and its glorious sunsets bring us ice-cream days, baseball games and swimming pools, and gatherings when we revive, renew, and share memories with friends and family we don't see often enough. 

We share music and fireworks, water fights and slow swinging on the porch, lightning bug watches and strawberry moons. Did I say I wasn't a summer person? I know I did, and I really do like spring and fall better, but that does nothing to take away from the year's middle months and its sundowns.

As a writer, I have to laugh about the seasons, because writing usually doesn't "land right." Here at the end of June, I'm finishing a book in the Christmas season. What I write in December often follows a summer romance. Many times, I write about summer and fall together, because I love the transition time, but I actually am not sure when I write them. 

Right now, in a Book Funnel special, The Summer of Sorrow and Dance, is on sale for 99 cents. It's one of my favorite summer stories ever, and I'm sure Dinah and Zach enjoy more than one Summer Sundown.

Awesome Is Hard Work by Joan Reeves

Good morning! If you knew everything I've been called upon to do in the last 2 weeks, you'd understand why I'm posting late today.

We attended two graduations out of town, then a funeral in west Texas, then a reunion in Louisiana. All of that was exhausting, but then everything hit at once. 

BRIEF RECAP

1. We signed a contract to sell property in another county which necessitated our presence for various meetings with the buyers, inspections, and arranging for a few things to be done there. All of that took several trips there and back (240 miles round trip).

2. After much arguing back and forth discussion, my Darling Husband convinced me to put our current house in town up for sale. Reason? He wants a much bigger lot with a much bigger garage. Me? I'm okay with where we are, but happy husband = happy, uh, can't think of anything that rhymes with husband. (Saying happy wife = happy life is much easier.)

3. Spent an entire week removing everything from bookshelves, cabinets, etc. so the furniture could be moved to allow the painters access to the walls.

4. We packed about a million books it seems along with stuff stored in the cabinetry that was to be moved. 

I decided there was no way I wanted to put all that back in place if we were going to sell the house so we rented a storage facility and moved what seemed like hundreds of boxes into storage.

5. Darling Hubby decided he wanted to also store the pool table because "looking Lous" always seem to want to roll the balls on the pool table.

He's protective of his Olhausen so he deconstructed it and got a strapping young man to help him move the slate, etc. into storage.

6. All paintings, etc. were taken from the walls and rugs rolled up. 

7. We finished all of that deconstructing this morning—minutes before the painting crew showed up.

Now, I'm in my office, which was painted a year ago and isn't part of the week's painting adventure, but there are paintings stacked against the walls, a half dozen lamps on the floor, and other hazards.

I have just enough space to walk from the door to my chair in front of the computer. I'm praying this will all be finished by Friday.

MORE TIME SUCKS SCHEDULED

Of all times to have a tooth that needs to be crowned! Had a day of dental anguish to get the tooth prepped for crown. Permanent crown scheduled for July 3.

The rest of this month and into July is filled with more of the same because this next weekend we must arrange for movers to remove everything from our house in the country and into storage. 

I'm exhausted just recounting all of this.

To make matters worse, I have a July deadline to upload my new book, OLD ENOUGH TO BE BOLD. I'm concerned I may not complete everything that needs to be done to make it publishable.

That means I haven't promoted it other than mentioning it in a few places.I had extended the release date twice already, but the universe keeps throwing curve balls at me. I'm worried. If I have to change the release date again, I'll be penalized by Amazon and banned for 1 year from setting up a pre-order. 

Yikes! But if I have to extend again, I'll just have to live with the consequences. I'll blow up that bridge when I come to it.

LIFE GOES ON

I'll keep writing and trying to be "awesome" —whatever that means—and get the book done. In the meantime, I have 2 books on sale for 99¢. Both are guaranteed to give you heated romance and lots of laughs.

THE TROUBLE WITH LOVE  is a spicy Enemies to Lovers Romantic Comedy set in a small Texas town. Just click the link to learn more about it.

You can also read it with Kindle Unlimited.

There's an audio book of it too for those who love to listen to a good book, but the audio edition is not  on sale.

Also on sale is SCENTS AND SENSUALITY which is also on Kindle Unlimited. This spicy fake boyfriend RomCom is part of the Love, Laughter, and Shenanigans series.

Click the link to learn more about this hugely popular RomCom that's been on the UK romance bestseller list since January. (I love that it's also selling in India and France—the USA too of course.)  

Scents and Sensuality is also available as an audio book too.

By the way, on the audio book link, you can listen to an excerpt which is entertaining in itself.

So that's my frantic, frazzled life since May. How are things in your Life? I certainly hope it's more serene and peaceful than mine.

Enjoy the rest of June. Here in Texas, July means the door to the furnace will probably be blocked open. See you then!

(I'm online: SlingWords * Website * Facebook * Romance Gems...Authors & Readers Meet.)

Want advance notice of sales and new releases?

Sign up for I LOVE READING, Joan's free newsletter.

45 Pounds Down and Still Not a Fashionista ~ Sherri Easley

I thought losing 45 pounds would feel like a victory parade. Cue the glitter, the applause, the breezy montage of me tossing old clothes over my shoulder and strutting into a dressing room like a woman reborn.

Instead, I found myself in a department store three-way mirror, wondering if I’d wandered into a circus funhouse.

Here’s the thing no one tells you: when your body changes, your style doesn’t automatically download a new user manual. I’m not a fashionista. I like to write about strong women and overcoming obstacles, not crop pants and rise lengths. And when it comes to jeans? I’d rather wrestle a love triangle than figure out if I’m “curvy high-rise” or “straight ankle-cut.”

I stood there in the dressing room—half undressed, fully confused—staring at a label that read “slimming stretch.” Lies. The only thing it slimmed was my patience.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m proud of the work it took to lose the weight. But in that moment, all I wanted was a pair of jeans that fit and didn’t try to gaslight me with a size number that made no sense. I miss the elastic waistbands. I miss the yoga pants. I miss not caring!

But maybe that’s the lesson. We’re all in transition—whether it’s our bodies, our stories, or our characters. And just like romance, sometimes you have to try on a dozen awkward fits before you find the perfect one.

For now? I’m celebrating my size-uncertain hips and my unapologetically soft style. If my heroine can slay demons dressed in leathers and face paint, I can survive shopping for new clothes.

Maybe…

Meanwhile, my writing is as unpredictable as my shopping- Here is the next part of chapter one: 

I remember nothing of life before Master Faren. It was as though I’d sprung to life at five winters old—filthy, barefoot, and half-starved—appearing on his doorstep with nothing but a soot-streaked face, a bag of rune stones and a strange black quill clutched in my hand.

I was just a little mortal girl with a strange mark on her left shoulder, raised and pale like molten wax hardened in the shape of a flame and a quill. A mark that prickled during storms and that sometimes, in the stillness between heartbeats, hummed.

 No name. No origin. No recollection of my past.

With hair black as a raven’s wing and eyes the color of storm-soaked earth, I stood out among the flaxen-haired, fair-skinned villagers who prized sameness like a virtue. And in a place where uniformity was sacred, I was an unforgivable deviation.

Whispers followed me through the narrow lanes of Dalswyth. Some claimed I was a changeling. Others swore I’d crawled from the underworld. Children ran from me. Old women crossed themselves.

I wasn’t a monster, though; I was just different.           

At first, the rejection stung—sharp as frostbite, and just as numbing.

Master Faren always found me. He’d wrap me in his arms until the tears dried, then sit me in the crook of his armchair and read to me about ancient legends until the ache in my chest dulled into something quieter. Something bearable.

But pain taught me something else: how to disappear.

By the time I was older, I’d stopped trying to belong. I’d started to climb.

When the village boys chased me with sticks, yelling names I didn’t understand—old slurs for changelings and witch-born things—I didn’t fight back. I didn’t have to. I could vanish when it suited me, slipping through broken fences, up drainpipes, into attic beams or beneath crumbling stone.

It became a kind of game… one I always won.

I could scale rooftops before I knew how to braid my hair. I moved through spaces most people never noticed—low windows, high ledges, the hollow between walls. I could land without a sound. Breathe like I didn’t need air.

The townspeople whispered that I had no bones. That I was half-spirit. That I climbed like a cat and fell like a leaf.

And maybe… they weren’t wrong.

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

How is your Summer writing coming along?