Her name was Dorothy. She smoked, she drank, and she swore, sometimes all at once.

She wore bright red lipstick.

She was cranky, and quite critical of my sweet mother, akin to a pick axe, who was her daughter-in-law. My sisters and brother and I, somewhat feral, made her anxious and jumpy.

I think you could say, politely, that she was “snippy.”

I got her curls. I got her height. I got her bluntness and her temper, although I’ve mellowed out in recent decades. I got most, but not all, of her nose.

I loved my Grandma Dorothy in a cautious way. She was married to my granddad who was in the airline industry way back when in Los Angeles.

Granddad was a Chuck Yeager drinking buddy. Let us stress the words “drinking buddy.” As in, Granddad was not afraid to slam back a few on a regular basis. He did not say “no” to scotch. Or bourbon. Or whiskey.

Maybe Grandma Dorothy was grumpy because of her husband and the copious scotch, that would make complete sense. Wife-Scotch-Husband is not a happy threesome.

Maybe it was because of the very tight constraints and total lack of equality our society, the government, and the church wrapped women up in, stifling and judgmental.

Grandma Dorothy was born in 1913. She didn’t have the opportunity or choice to become who she could have become. She was supposed to get married young, stay married forever, regardless, have children and become an obedient housewife, ready to serve one and all while wearing a clenched smile, clean apron, pearls, and heels.

But she was smart and sharp and I have an impossible time believing that the lack of freedom and fairness went over well with her at all. I would have been, at best, grumpy, so I have a lot of compassion for her.

She liked to play bridge with friends, drink and smoke, the haze heavy, the gossip as light as the martinis. But she wasn’t happy, even as a kid I could sense that.

My grandma made me cry one day over the shoes I was wearing for my First Communion in our Catholic church. I was in second grade.

I had learned a lot of loooonnng prayers for my First Communion and tried hard to remember them so I wouldn’t head straight to hell when I died, where I would meet the cackling devil wielding his tail, which was the implied and knee-knocking consequence.

I also had to learn the 10 Commandments. I knew I didn’t want to kill anyone or steal, but the one that said “thou shall not commit adultery” was confusing, and I figured it had something to do with being an adult.

I had listened to my Sunday school teachers so I wouldn’t mess up the church ceremony, where surely God would see any mistakes I made and perhaps send a lighting bolt. I wanted to appear holy for once in my little life.

I had a white veil and a white lacy dress and white socks, also with lace, ready to go for the big day, which my mother bought me. This was in utter contrast to the shorts and tank tops I wore every day under the heat of the Huntington Beach sun where I hula hooped and hopped after frogs.

I was supposed to wear shiny white Mary Jane shoes with a tiny strap, like all the other little girls, but I was not then, and have never been, a Mary Jane type of person. You cannot climb trees or chase people during tag in Mary Jane’s.

My mother, free-thinking and lovely, told me that I didn’t have to wear the prissy Mary Janes and I could buy the cool California sandals that I liked much better.

Later when I proudly showed my Grandma Dorothy my cool California sandals in my pink bedroom with the green tulip light she told me, in a sharp tone, “You are not going to look very pretty in those sandals, Cathy.”

Not pretty?

Now I had seen my face in the mirror many times. I was a happy kid but smart enough to know I was not “pretty.” Did I care? Not really. I had splendid parents, two sisters and a brother, lots of books, and two dogs. I played with all the kids on Deauville Drive for hours every day.

But this “not pretty” comment hurt my very tender feelings.

I adored my white dress because it swirled around me like a bell, and I felt pretty, for once, in all that finery. I did not need my grandma to tell me I wasn’t going to look pretty.

I will take a moment to tell you that my mother, always polite as her people were from the south and that’s just what you did as a lady, damn near took my Grandma’s head off and tossed it over our vegetable garden for making me sob into my potatoes in the dining room that night at dinner.

But never fear! I was not feeling vengeful at all when I put this event in my new book, “Ten Kids, Two Lemon Pies, and a Miracle.” It’s been decades, Grandma Dorothy is long gone, and I can happily announce that no lightning bolts hit me at my First Communion, nor did I break any of the 10 Commandments in church that day.

Afterwards, my parents proud, my lacy veil flapping in the wind, I headed outside to my hula hoop and daydreaming, relieved the fire-breathing devil would not be chasing me down any time soon.

Grandma Dorothy’s snappy comments now make me laugh. She said stuff she shouldn’t. If she thought it, it came out of her red-lipsticked mouth. If she was ticked off, you knew about it damn quick. She was sharp tongued and unfiltered, and if you triggered her temper, just get out of the way.

If she said something like that to me today, that I was not “pretty,” I’d probably laugh, shoot a twisty, comment right back at her, like, “I look just like you, baby,” and suggest she sling back a martini and chill out.

In Ten Kids, Two Lemon Pies and a Miracle, out September 8th, I have a character named Grumpy Grandma. She’s inspired by my Grandma Dorothy, minus the bright red lipstick, the cigarette in one hand and a drink in the other.

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This Grumpy Grandma is much worse than my own Grumpy Grandma. She’s a bit like an alligator and a hedge trimmer, blended together, with a dose of hypocritical self righteousness. She wields her religion around like a ball and chain.

She’s a lot of fun. Trust me, she is.

I hope you like the story. It is Book Two in the Deauville Drive Families series.

Link, Amazon only: Ten Kids, Two Lemon Pies, and a Miracle

Link, Amazon only: Ten Kids, Two Lovebirds, and a Singing Mermaid

Wishing you a bouquet of flowers because you deserve it.

Love to all.

Cathy

First, I will tell you that I have a new book out that you can pre-order today, and then I will tell you a story about a writer who is hanging on to her sanity with mudslide ice cream and slovenliness. Is slovenliness a word? I don’t know.

If you have not guessed already, that frazzled-razzled writer is me.

Anyhow, here is the handy dandy link on Amazon to my new book:

Ten Kids, Two Lemon Pies, and a Miracle

I am holding my breath, not until I pass out blue in the face, but still, and HOPING with all my might that you like it.

You can pre order the “Ten Kids, Two Lemon Pies, and a Miracle,” e-book now, and the paperback on September 8th. And, oh me-oh-my, I sure would appreciate it if you did. It is the second book in the Deauville Drive Families series.

Dropping a new book into the world with a wham and a bam means I can stress-eat chocolate mudslide ice cream with melted chocolate chips at 9:00 in the morning while sluffing around in my fashionable duck slippers…

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…and muttering to myself in fear, wondering if my book is terrible, and getting confirmation from not one, but TWO cats that it is, indeed, terrible, you can see their facial expressions here for proof…

…and I am wishing that I could fly to Alaska and disappear like a hermit which I won’t do because with my luck I will be gnawed on by a snaggle-toothed bear with bad breath or hit by a blizzard while I am dining on tea and crumpets outside my tent…

…which would be uncomfortable so I will eat more nutritional mudslide ice cream, do you see how this carton says “nutritional,” of course I did not write that, it must have been Innocent Husband, that naughty man…

…and I will hope for the best with my new book which is all that I can do because I chose this writing career when I was young and utterly clueless about these types of things, and also, with all this editing I can’t remember when I washed my hair and I think I may resemble a grumpy, delirious fairy who has no spell-casting abilities, poor me.

Whew.

Book One in the Deauville Drive series is already out and titled, “Ten Kids, Two Lovebirds, and a Singing Mermaid,” if you need a sweet, funny summer read.

Here’s that link:

Ten Kids, Two Lovebirds, and a Singing Mermaid

Yes, you definitely need to read Book One before Book Two so there is no confusion or bafflement. Lord knows I am confused and baffled enough for all of us.

Have a happy day, friends. I promise I will send you more information on the plot, which I should have done this time, but it is very late here and I need to go to bed and fight with Mrs. Insomnia.

I so, so hope you like Ten Kids, Two Lemon Pies, and a Miracle. Did I say that already?

If you do, maybe I will stop eating so much mudslide ice cream.

Cathy

I have put FOUR of my E-books on sale for, wait for it, FREE.

Zero.

Not a penney.

Did I spell penney right?
I think it’s penny. Only one ‘e.’

It is late and my brain is fuzzy-buzzy and I can’t get a penny for my thoughts. That was a ridiculous attempt at a joke, but I will leave it as is.

THIS “FREE” SALE IS GOING TO BE VERY SHORT so if you want the E-books, get them today.

Do not dawdle. Do not dilly dally.

Do not hop, skip, or jump.

Do not do this after you get yourself a huge goblet of wine, which you DO deserve, definitely. I know this to be true.

Do it now.

I want you to have happy-ending E-books to read this summer because we all need WAY less stress, I know our nerves are all frazzle-dazzled, so this is my little gift to you.

Tell your sisters, moms, grandmas, aunties, cats, chickens, etc.

Here is the list of my four E-books that are free…

You can go to this link to find them, only on Amazon, which should take you and your fantastic-self all of four seconds.

If the link is being mean and grumpy to you and won’t work, the titles are below and you know what to do.

Cathy's Amazon Page

Cheers, all.

Cathy

Julia’s Chocolates - my first book. The LAST book I was going to write, after MANY rejections that caused tears and slight temper tantrums. If this one had flipped and flopped I would have headed back to teaching school and (maybe) given up the dream of writing books. I’m glad I didn’t have to give up the dream because from the time I was 16 I knew I wanted to do one thing for work: WRITE.

I wrote wild. This came out of that wildness.

10 Kids, Two Lovebirds, and a Singing Mermaid. This book was inspired by my childhood on Deauville Drive in Huntington Beach, California. Two broken families, five kids each, find love and laughter together.

Book One of a series. Book Two will be out in September. Book Three in November.

It’s a sweet book. Oh, there’s pies in it. Life changing pies. Who doesn’t like pies? In fact, I need a pie. Maybe pecan.

No Place I’d Rather Be. This is a book for people who love cooking, true love, and history all wrapped up together.

And yes, thank you for asking, I did spend months and months researching every teeny tiny detail of history in this book and then I ended up using about 10 percent of it.

Alas, a recipe book from the ancestors told the truth.

Ruthie Deschutes O’Hara Has Ulterior Motives. Ruthie is who I want to be when I’m 70.

What’s the theme here? Love can find you at any age.

And: Never stop being your glorious self.

Now go get these e-books and then you can have your wine and pie.

First, though, I had to find a new dress, oh woe is me.

Why? Because somehow my one “fancy wedding dress” had shrunk, on its own volition, without my permission, in my closet, and now I could hardly get the zipper up. In fact the zipper got stuck a little above my waist. My waist!

I envisioned yelling at Innocent Husband to run upstairs zippity-quick for my clothing emergency. I would suck my stomach in with all my might, ask him to put his foot on my buttocks, then yank the zipper up to my neck. It would be a marital moment.

I then envisioned my waist sucked in tight, like I was in a whale bone corset of olden yore.

I wouldn’t be able to breathe or talk, my lungs flattened in my suffocating dress, and I would have to mime to Innocent Husband to yank the zipper back down lickety split.

He would look at me curiously and say, “Why is your face turning red, honey? Why are you hitting yourself on the back?”

Then he would think - in a panic - that I was choking and he would, intending to be a helper, whack-whack me on the back between my shoulder blades.

When the whacking didn’t work, Innocent Husband would grab me around the waist with both arms, yell, “HANG ON BABY!” and start the Heimlich maneuver into my gut, which he wouldn’t do right and then I’d feel like I couldn’t breathe AND I was going to have my stomach pushed up into my throat for the rest of my life.

What a mess!

Following this calamity of errors, I would faint to the floor in my corset-dress and the cats would look at me strangely.

With that nightmare vision fading, I managed to twist my arms into the most horrible angles - am I triple jointed? - inch the stubborn zipper down and tug that demon possessed dress off me. I was sweaty and resentful when finished.

I kicked the dress, then cursed it and said wisely, “I have not gotten fatter, you have deliberately shrunk yourself to insult me.” This happens in closets, those evil tiny rooms, we all know it to be true.

But then I had to shop. I hate shopping. I do. I can last about 40 minutes, then I’m ready to fake a heart attack to get out of there.

One fancy dress I tried on for the wedding made me look like a blood clot. I thought people would see me and think I was bleeding. That seemed unfair to the bride.

Another dress, for some reason, maybe it was the twisty-looking flowers and leaves, made me look like a gigantic, threatening hummingbird with a long beak.

Another dress hugged all the wrong curves. It was perfect if I wanted to look lumpy. Like cake batter.

A fourth dress made me look like a grumpy, uptight grandma, like my own grandma who liked hard liquor, bright red lipstick, and her cigarettes. I thought it was comfortable, I will admit, and therefore tempting, but I am not ready to be my grumpy grandma.

Finally, I found the dress. It was burgundy and had a fancy crystal loop at the neckline. It gathered in front with drapes of fabric covering what I needed covering so no one would think I was pregnant.

Pregnancy for me would clearly be an act of God and I would therefore act accordingly, though Innocent Husband would be completely flummoxed, the poor man.

I escaped from the mall and took a deep breath. I was free! I deserved chocolate for enduring that terrifying experience.

Thankfully, it was never about my dress. It was about the beautiful bride, who we all love dearly, and have known since she was seven years old. She is sunlight and monarch butterflies and the aurora borealis. And it was about her husband, a dear man, who is soulful music and the enduring Columbia River and the miraculous Milky Way.

It was about two families blending together, from one end of the world to the other, uncles and aunts, brothers and sisters, mothers and fathers and friends. Our daughters danced as bridesmaids with the bride and the other bridesmaids they’ve known since childhood.

Excellent speeches made me cry, including one by Adventurous Singing Daughter, the champagne flowed, the music rocked, and the laughter flowed around the mountains to the rushing river and out to the blue-green ocean waves.

The day was all about love. In love, romantic love, passionate love, love that lasts endlessly and forever. The love we all want, we all deserve.

We celebrated that in this messy, stressful world we live in, love has bloomed once again, like purple wisteria and waves of red poppies, like hope and new chapters.

I am glad that I didn’t buy the grumpy grandma dress, but in the end it would not have mattered. No one would have noticed, or cared, unless of course, I looked like a DANGEROUS, threatening hummingbird.

That would have been alarming to all.

Congratulations to the bride and groom. We love you, and always and forever will wish you joy and happiness, laughter and adventures.

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PS

By the way, I had a grumpy grandma and she was my inspiration for Grumpy Grandma in the second book of the Deauville Street series, out soon, titled, “Ten Kids, Two Lemon Pies, and a Miracle.” I hope you like it, I truly do.

I still sometimes play outside with friends, I don't climb trees because I will undoubtedly fall off, or break a branch with my billowing buttocks, and if I start cartwheeling, I will throw my back out with a crunch and a screech.

But I still read books. And I write them.

Currently, I’m editing two different books at the same time and I feel perpetually baffled. It’s too much for my bamboozled brain. The books are Book Two and Book Three of the Deauville Street Families series. This is the first one:

I am up late at night wondering if Book Two and Three are funny and entertaining or if they are magnificently horrible, only fit for a ferocious female warrior to shoot fire at, and if I should get a new job. For example, maybe I should start applying to work at coffee shops.

The problem with working in a coffee shop is that I have heard picky people order their complicated drinks using serious tones of voice. They want half-caf, and a shot of this or that, and soy milk and two ice cubes, not one, and no foam or more foam, or a sprinkle of cinnamon, and there is no way I could remember every minuscule detail and I would have to tell them, “I’m sorry, but I can’t remember all that so I’m going to pour you black coffee and you’re going to sit down and shut up.”

This would be rude! So I can’t be a barista.

Maybe I could become a penguin trainer. I like penguins! I relate to their waddling. But do they have those? Do penguins WANT to be trained? Probably not.

Maybe I could become a bulldozer driver but what if I turned the wheel the wrong way and drove right over someone’s house or a squirrel. I would never forgive myself and I’m sure the squirrel and her sisters wouldn’t either, rightfully so.

But back to my books.

I don’t trust my brain anymore to remember all the details from book to book in the Deauville Street Families series, or the names of all the characters, which is why I have an editor with eyes like a hungry hawk. Here are some examples of my memory issues so you know what she is dealing with:

For example, the hawk editor told me yesterday that I added a name that had never been in previous books and now he was messing things up. He even spoke, as if he belonged there, in that neighborhood, in that story, as if he’d been there forever, so I had to delete him without further ado and ask him, “Now who the hell are you?”

In the past, in one of my books, at the very end, I added the name of a character I’d killed off AND SHE SPOKE. As if she were STILL ALIVE. That was embarrassing.

I’ve also written the same ending TWICE in a different book, one right after the other, and didn’t notice it.

Recently I deleted several pages on impulse because the scenes weren’t working and they were kicking my kidneys sideways. Yes, this kidney twist can happen, I am sure of it.

Simon the Cat lowered his eyelids at me when I cackled as if this impulsive behavior was normal, but irritating to him, and I lowered my eyelids right back at him. What does he know? He doesn’t work at all, eats my food, scratches up my furniture and sometimes bites me.

Anyhow, when I am done with my line edits for Book Two, it will go flying back to my hawk editor for proofing and she will make sure that I have not added Dracula or a murder or a talking sexy squid accidentally as this is something I might do with this lagging memory of mine and my untamed imagination and temper.

Then, and only then, will the book be uploaded and sent off into the blue yonder of Amazon.

Book Two, titled “Ten Kids, Two Lemon Pies, and a Miracle,” will be out soon, (July?) unless I run away and join monks in their silence. Innocent Husband wishes that I would become a monk for a day, and be totally silent, but that is neither here nor there.

Here is the pretty cover. I will get you the Amazon link when I can.

I hope, I truly hope, that you will like it.

Book Three will be out November 1 or thereabouts. I am hoping to write Book Four and Five in 2027. We will see if I remember to do that. I mean, who knows at this point? If you see me wandering around the streets, remind me. Please.

If you need a summer e book now, I have put these books on sale for $2.99 for a short and sweet amount of time. If you buy them for your mother or friends or sisters, they will appreciate your gift, unless they hate my books, then the gift is blah blah.

Wishing you a strong, unbaffled brain with love and friendship,

Cathy

I thought you might need some summer books, so here’s a few I read fairly recently, that you might like. I am only writing a short description on each because of laziness and I need to edit, AGAIN, my own blasted book and hang out with Innocent Husband.

Innocent Husband and I recently had a romantic, seductive day cleaning out the garage and at the end we were both dusty and sweaty but sheesh. We can actually walk around in there now without crawling over the hood of the car like tipsy crabs or banging our shins on boxes and saying bad words.

But I digress. None of these books are “pretty good,” books, I would not do that to you. They’re ones that I could hardly put down.

Go forth and read.

Okay, I am not quite done with this one, because I am deliberately reading it slowly because I LOVE Jane Austen spin offs. I never want them to end. This is a time traveling romance, with two modern day Hollywood actors, completely at odds, utterly different people, who find themselves in the time of Austen with no way of getting back home.

Don’t need a political recommendation? I get it. Skip this one. This is about QAnon and how five different family members fell into the conspiracy theories and lies promoted by QAnon. I read it because I didn’t understand how people could possibly believe what QAnon promoted…and yet, this author showed me, with amazing compassion, the people who had been pulled into the tunnels of QAnon and why. She goes into their pasts and present, they’ve all endured horrible personal trauma, and how their QAnon belief system impacted their own lives and the lives of the people who love them.

Sometimes I think we have to read what makes us uncomfortable, even angry, in order to understand others’ opinions - even if we disagree with those opinions.

I recently was in an online book club run by an author I know. We read the essays in this book, and then discussed them. Every essay was incredibly different, zingily (I just made that word up) thoughtful, slinkily creative, and brain-popping interesting.

Okay, I hated one of the essays. I thought it was the most pretentious, isolating thing I’d ever read. It was as if the ego-driven author wanted to show off how many loooong, important words she could brilliantly squeeze in that no one had ever heard to make others feel small and somewhat stupid. I have no idea who she was trying to impress, and it certainly didn’t work with me.

I personally believe, as a writer, that the most important thing you can do is to reach your readers, relate to them, speak to their hearts and have a conversation with their brains. Her goal appeared to be verbal ostentation.

But the other essays that made me use my “thinker?” YES.

One note, this book was edited by Jia Tolentino. She recently participated in a very controversial New York Times interview and, honestly, I wanted to throw lemons at her. You’ll get why I’m saying this if you watch the interview. And there were opinions in that interview from all three participants that had my blood about boiling out of my skin. The interviewer herself just kept giggling about things her guests said that I thought she should have deeply questioned and confronted because their words were so privileged and offensive.

Here’s that interview:NY Times Interview

Watch it, don’t read it, it’s important to see and hear the nuances.

But if you want to read excellent essays, great book.

On a lighter note: Yesteryear is a book about a woman with a huge social media following living out on a farm. Reminds me very much of Ballerina Farm and the woman and her husband who run it. Anyhow, her life falls apart and she goes back in time…but there’s a twisty ending I didn’t see comin’ at me. Lots of fun.

I will not admit to watching reality TV.

But I do.

Why? Because it takes me away from life. There I am, stories sprinting through my head that I need to write, daily problems and worries, and I just want a break. So I watched The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City.

Bad Mormon is written by Heather Gay, one of those housewives. She talks about being Mormon, her divorce, etc. I thought it was interesting.

Now, that show? I have never been in any “friendships” like this in my entire life. The women fight and yell and attack and talk behind each other’s backs as if they’re being paid to be mean.

Oh, right. They are paid to be mean.

I pop my popcorn and settle in and thank God that I have fun and funny friends who are loyal and kind when live is going well for me and fun and funny and loyal and kind when my life falls apart. And I hope they feel the same about me because they are part of my heart.

You know, true friendship.

I’ve known of Jen Hatmaker for many years. She did seem like she had the perfect life: She was a wildly popular Christian leader and speaker and wrote NY Times best selling books, had a nice husband, a bunch of kids, and a cool house.

But, no one has a perfect life, some people just pretend it is, and her life fell apart when she woke up in bed at two in the morning and her marriage cracked, split open, and dissolved.

She’s honest about her long-term, struggling marriage and how, in the past, she put a smile on her face and faked that all was well. This is not meant as a criticism of Jen at all. Far from it. She sacrificed to keep her family together and she, obviously, had the right to keep her private life private. Sometimes we all have to fake that life is fine, for various reasons, when it is actually on fire.

Jen had not kept track of her money, and had no idea how much money she made or how much she had.

The divorce hellscape began.

I appreciated her honesty. Jen has taken stands on different, important issues that nearly cost her her career, her publisher dropped her, she received mountains of hate mail, church members verbally attacked her, and she lost a ton of money. I felt that that she showed enormous courage, character, and strength in publicly taking the stands she did.

She also dove deep into her own Christian beliefs and the church to better understand herself and her faith, and what had to go and what could stay.

And that’s it! There are more books I read and liked, but I need to garden and then follow my path back to laziness.

Oh, one more:

I don’t know what the author was thinking when she wrote this one. She must have been a bit off her rocker, slightly crazed. She might be a real odd duck.

But it was funny.

Only on Amazon.

Have a lovely day.

Cathy

Years ago, maybe a century, I was eating pancakes with my three kids at Tom’s Pancake House in Beaverton, Oregon.

I’ve been going to Tom’s since I was a kid, and now I bring my kids. I can see myself at 100 years old, cane in hand, hair whiter than snow, wearing bright red boots and shiny red lipstick, ordering pancakes in a screechy, old, but pleasant, voice.

That day I saw two women with white hair eating pancakes alone.

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And I started to wonder things that writers wonder. In this case, it was: What secrets are those women hiding?

Yes.

Secrets.

Don’t we all have them?

So what were theirs?

I could hardly eat. I wanted to leap up and ask them about those secrets, but they would think I’d lost my head and my kids would probably be, again, embarrassed by me. I might get myself banned from Tom’s for nosiness.

Stymied, sulking, I dumped more syrup on my pancakes for nutritional reasons and added more butter for luck. I peered surreptitiously at the women. They were both very pretty and elegant.

They looked so innocent, but they weren’t, I told myself, then cackled, a scintillating story already swirling in my slippery brain.

That secret-laden pancake extravaganza launched my book “The Last Time I Was Me.”

This is what I wrote:

“Women can look so innocent. And a few of them might be. Innocent, I mean. Most aren’t. Most have secrets. Pretty big ones if I do say so myself. They silently nurture raging passions they’ve smothered for years because life has insisted they do so. They hide who they truly are because they’re in a box and no one in their families would feel comfortable if they broke out of that box like a rose on speed. They think non-innocent thoughts like: Should I castrate my husband?

Women can smile and be gracious and kind. And most women usually are. Gracious and kind, I mean. But to assume that a woman, any woman, is completely innocent is to be completely naïve.”

This is all true, right?

Currently the E-Book for “The Last Time I Was Me” is FREE on Amazon only, for three days. If you would like it, get it. Please, tell a friend, or your sister (who could be, of course, your friend, too, unless she is grumpy), your mother, your resident vampire-ess, your pen pal, your enemy (for me, please), and your book groups who like wine and laughter.

Also, my E-Book, My Very Best Friend is FREE, too.

Wishing you a calm day and pancakes. Eat them. You’ll feel better.

This is the rest of the description of “The Last Time I Was Me.”

Jeanne Stewart has had a nervous breakdown in front of 834 advertising executives. Grief has caught up with her at last. Her mother died, and her boyfriend cheated on her. She retaliated against him using a condom, an exacto knife, a hot glue gun and peanut oil. Then she was arrested by police officers who were laughing so hard at her “crime,” Jeanne had to put on her own handcuffs.

Driving across the country to Oregon, in her growling blue Bronco, Jeanne knows her life has collapsed. She decides to stay in the small town of Weltana because she likes the pancakes she eats in a café and the people are kind.

Jeanne impulsively buys a rambling, run-down house along the river that needs as much work as she does. She makes quirky new friends and finds out how far she’ll go to protect those friends. Attending court-ordered anger management class soon has her running along a river naked, covering her body in paint, and participating in a raucous bar fight.

She does not expect to fall in love.

Happy reading, all.

Cathy

The squirrel has decided to claw through a screen in my roof to set up house inside my house, though no invitation was offered. She has also decided it would be best if she rips up my insulation and throws it outside with wild abandon so that it lands on my front porch.

She is a bad guest.

If I’m minding my own business, writing my books or pretending to write a book but instead I am daydreaming, I can hear her pounce onto my ceiling from her new doorway. She’s a little squirrel but she sounds like a an oversized, drunk raccoon doing cartwheels.

I can hardly blame her for making a home in our home. She gave birth to three baby squirrels in my attic as seen here.

I know all this because our handyman, Chris, climbed up in the attic quick as a wink to see where she was and if she was eating our wiring for dinner and he found…the three babies.

Innocent husband, Chris, and I decided to leave the baby squirrels, and their mother, be. We are not squirrel - killers, so Innocent Husband and I are living with the sound of thundering, tiny feet running across our ceiling.

We have named her Big Foot.

The mother goes in and out incessantly to get food for the babies. I am tired FOR her as I used to nurse twins so I know what it’s like.

I’m told that this noise problem will be fixed in about a month when the babies crawl out of my attic in search of nuts or beer or a cigarette, and at that time we can close their personal front door.

I had a squirrel fight on my hands but she has won. I hope to win later.

My father had a squirrel fight on his hands, too, we have this in common. He was in the midst of chemo and radiation for metastisized prostate cancer when he met his squirrel.

My dad, who studied engineering, specifically nuclear engineering, and whose analytical brain I did NOT inherit, was a devout Catholic. He never showed any fear about his terminal diagnosis.

One time, after many doctor appointments that got worse and worse, I asked him if he was scared, because I was in a quiet, grieving panic, and he said, quite calmly, “Well, honey, I haven’t been tested yet.”

What he meant was that nothing very scary had happened yet that had shaken his faith.

I didn’t know what to say to that. The whole thing, from the surprise diagnosis to treatments, had frightened the hell out of me, and I had had many begging conversations myself with God.

When the doctor told him what they were going to do to treat his prostate cancer, my father looked at him with those blue eyes that could barely conceal his laughter and said, “Aha! You’re going to castrate me, aren’t you doctor?” He thought he was very funny because, well, he was.

He had recently had radiation on the back of his head and he had agreed to be in a clinical trial that, seriously, would not help him at all and he knew it. The doctors told him so. He participated in the clinical trial, with very limited time left on this green earth, because the doctors were hoping to learn from his disease and the new medication they were giving him so other men could benefit in future.

My dad did it for the other men and, specifically, as he told me, for his own beloved grandsons.

He continued working as a college instructor, after a long career in tech. He saw his friends all the time, biked and ran and swam, a true athlete. Well into his seventies he was running a seven and a half minute mile like a train.

Soon he met his friend, the squirrel. Let’s call her Adeline, for fun. Adeline would, and could, do anything to reach my dad’s bird feeder so she could gobble up the bird food. He loved watching all kinds of birds flock to the feeder, all colors, all sizes, but what he loved most was watching Adeline figure out - no matter what he did to prevent it -how to get to the bird feeder.

He hung the bird feeder in different places, on the trellis, off it, and she found a way to get on it for lunch, sometimes leaping straight at it like a trapeze artist.

He put up a metal type roof to prevent her from jumping on it from the top. She curved herself around it, hanging upside down.

He hung it lower and higher, she twisted and spiralled.

Adeline won each time. My dad laughed. He was so entertained by his furry friend Adeline.

He still found such joy in life, in the littlest thing, and I have never forgotten that.

My dad said he had not been “tested” yet, but he had. He had simply passed the test with a rainbow of shining colors and courage, and a determination to relax into the time he had left.

Maybe he got his strength from his difficult childhood.

Maybe it was his nerves of steel. I had never seen him scared.

Maybe it was his deep, lifelong faith in God. He believed he was going to heaven and he would see my late mother again, and that brought him a deep peace.

What I did know was that he was having too much fun during his last days to meet with the hospice people. He had a lunch date with friends that day, so I met with her. I explained to the woman that my dad didn’t have time to die right now. She nodded.

My dad had dinner the night before he started sliding into death with friends at a restaurant and they had a great time, laughing for hours. His health had mostly held until that point, except for that pesky cancer, and sometimes the chemo, and it was like God gifted him one more hilarious night before he began the journey home.

Other friends come by the morning he died, and they called me as something had happened overnight…maybe a stroke, or several strokes, we didn’t know. “You need to come here right now, Cathy.”

When I got there he was staring at these huge collages of photos of my mom and his friends and four kids, smiling. We had made the collages for my mother’s funeral. He was not altogether there, a little confused, but so deeply happy in his memories. He sat down in his family room, adventurous Adeline not too far away, trying to cartwheel herself onto the bird feeder.

My sisters and brother and I all met there, together, and soon my dad was on his peaceful way out.

Four days later he died, a gentle death. Before he passed, lying in bed, my sister told me, when I was out of the room for a minute, that he sat straight up, looked into the corner in amazement, in awe, in peace, and said, “Oh my God.”

I don’t know what miraculous, shining scene he saw, I don’t know if it was God or Jesus or my mother or a brilliant sunset or a shining staircase upwards, but he was ready and he went.

He would be happy to know that Adeline got back on the bird feeder again, making it swing wildly.

She was very clever.

Just like our Big Foot thundering across our roof.

This is what I’m happy to know: Joy can come from squirrels. Tiny, little things in life can give you comedic relief. Being grateful for nature and animals can soothe the heart and mind. Love is the most important gift of all.

Wishing you all the best, always.

Cathy

A modern story about an herb-loving mother in a very old home, a special son, and a history of witches and magic in the family. Only on Amazon OR call your favorite librarian and ask her to order it.

It’s like we’re living in a political horror show with side orders of total destruction and innocent people being killed.

Today, after ascertaining that my brain was still in my head as best as it could be, I put on my red gardening boots, layered with dirt from all my years of gardening, and headed out.

I couldn’t handle any more news headlines, or my soul might self-ignite. I needed flowers.

I needed the gentle peace of my garden, chirping birds, and buzzing hummingbirds, to calm me down.

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I don’t know if I’m the only one who feels this way about their garden, but my garden often feels…emotional to me. It’s very personal. There are a lot of memories winding between the purple butterfly bushes and winter camellia.

I am very attached to all of my plants. Each spring when they pop up I say, “Hello there! Welcome back!”

Innocent Husband and I moved into this house in 2004 when Rebel Dancing Daughter, Adventurous Singing Daughter, and Darling Laughing Son were young. They loved playing in the front and back yards with their friends, who were all blessed with incredibly loud voices.

They loved running through the sprinklers like leaping leprechauns and chasing the cats. They loved reading outside on the lawn and eating pizza on the back patio.

Now, two live in Oakland and one in Austin. (Insert a grumpy, scrunched up face and a whining tone here. That’s me.)

They often skip in to see ole’ Innocent Husband and me and the cats, and soon we’re back outside on the patio eating pizza and laughing. But I miss the leprechaun-leaping kids, and sometimes I can almost hear them playing and spraying each other ingloriously in the face with the hose.

I love the colors in my garden. Happy colors, I would call them. Happy colors to beat back the darkness of the news and to show, once again, that spring is back, hope is here, beauty remains.

During Christmas I hung plastic balls on my pink magnolia trees which I planted years ago when they were about two feet tall. Every year they get taller and wider. I was going to take those pretty balls down as it’s no longer Christmas, but I don’t want to, so I have now renamed the balls “garden art.”

I have lungwort that recently burst into blue and pink blooms that my friend, Joan, gave me. If I ever move, I’m diggin’ that lungwort up and bringing Joan with me.

I have a snail, given to me by the kids on our patio. It was such a funny gift and when I see that gigantic snail, I just laugh.

I grow blue vinca because my late mother grew blue vinca when we lived on the house on Fisher Avenue when we first moved to Oregon from Huntington Beach. I was ten years old, scared to death to start over at a new school, and lonely for my friends and the sun.

She was an incredible gardener, but I didn’t catch the gardening hobby until after she died. I often think of her when I’m digging between the pink heather and golden lilies, weeding and planting, and sometimes we have ourselves a little chat about life and my problems. She is still easy to talk to.

I also have a “regal” looking pot from her, filled with blue flowers that I can’t remember the name of…

…and I have her burgundy clematis that is growing again, for the 24th year since she died. She loved that clematis. How could I not? (Find the frog. That’s from my friend, Claudia.)

I also still have my late father’s old fashioned charcoal fire starter that we would use when we were camping as kids. He really enjoyed this little metal gadget, and I remember him grilling us hamburgers. I think he’d think it funny that his gadget is now a flower pot.

When the pink cherry tree blooms in the front yard, Innocent Husband and I know that our anniversary is coming up. It’s very helpful to have that cherry tree for two creaky people who have a hard time pulling the right words out of our mouths lately or forget what we’re talking about mid-sentence.

When the cherry tree blooms it triggers our skittish, tired minds:

Oh! Look at that!

By golly.

Gee whiz.

The cherry tree is in bloom which means…uh…what was it? Can you remember, Innocent Husband?

Huh.

And then, as if we’ve been struck by a flying cranium in better condition than ours…

Ah yes! That’s it! It’s our anniversary! TA DA! We are brilliant.

What? We’ve been married THAT LONG?

Yes, my garden is personal, and so special, to me. A whimsical wonder of life. I always feel better when I’m covered in dirt, leaves in my hair, my garden lightening my spirit, my memories bringing me joy.

REMEMBER: Don’t look at the news TOO much. Don’t let yourself fall into a pit of despair. Walk outside. Read a book. Watch something ridiculous on TV like reality shows. Eat chocolate cake. Listen to music. Plant flowers. Turn off that phone. We will get through this.

We will.

Wishing you time for peace and time for quiet.

Cathy

It was the day I was marrying Innocent Husband.

I can’t remember why the white, lacy padded bra that would perch beneath my wedding dress was at my mother’s, but she promised to bring it when she and my father picked me up to haul me to the church.

An hour later, gathering up my cake-like wedding dress, worn by my mother, my white heels, and my near-hysterical nerves, we tumbled to the van. “You have my bra Mom, right?”

“Yes, of course I do, Cathy.”

She was breathless.

I was breathless.

“I would not forget your bra.” Her tone was a little snappy, but I let it go and clambered into our orange and white hippy van. I was snappy, too. As in: snappy-panicked.

Was I really getting married? It appeared that I was, given that my very Catholic, rule-abiding, gentle father was driving, almost on two wheels, around corners to get to the church on time, my mother and I clutching the door handles as if we might fly out.

It turned out that my dear mother forgot my bra.

We discovered this important fact as my bridesmaids squished me into my white poofy dress, my hair almost shellacked with hairspray. I looked like I’d been chased by a screeching peacock, eyes wide with fear.

My mother’s eyes were wide with fear, too, as she realized the bra was nowhere to be found. I laughed, which calmed my inner screeching peacock.

My mother was a well-mannered, proper lady. Her people were from the south, Arkansas and Texas, which explains it. In her view, one needed a bra for one’s wedding day. Braless was simply not done.

My mother sighed. You can’t remember everything in life.

My bridesmaids, the groomsmen, most sober, and friends and family smiled as I stiffly paraded down the aisle clutching my father’s arm with fingers that had turned into talons.

Braless.

In our wedding photos you can’t tell that my bosom was boundless and free. I hardly had any bosom anyhow because long ago I was a sleek and skinny thing but looking back at that braless photo 33 years ago, I see a young woman and her new husband, grinning and hopeful.

If I could, I would tell that bride she was in for a ride. Most of it good, not all of it. I would tell her that she was going to have to be strong for what life would throw at her in the decades ahead, that she would become a writer despite a full 20 years of literary rejections, and she would have three impossibly cool kids.

I would tell her she was marrying the right guy, that they would weather the storms and tornadoes together, and he didn’t mind at all that she wasn’t wearing a bra. “Sexy,” he’d whispered to her later, after the vows. “No bra.”

She’d laughed.

There was a lot more of that, too, the laughter.

Later my bridal bra was found on the kitchen counter near the toaster. I don’t know why my bra was near the toaster. At least my mother hadn’t toasted it, one must be grateful for small mercies.

My dear parents, the fast-driving father, and the bra-losing mother, are long gone, still greatly missed, but I am quite sure that today, mine and Innocent Husband’s 33rd anniversary, they would be laughing at our little wedding adventure.

**********************

I really don’t like this photo of Innocent Husband and me, we look better on our driftboat in the Deschutes River, but thought I’d share it anyhow.

I found it in the back of a messy closest and showed it to Innocent Husband today and he said, “Who the hell are those people?”

I don’t know, darlin’. I just don’t know. Give me a kiss and happy 33rd anniversary.

Through the good and the bad, it looks like we made it.

Wishing you all the best today and every day.

Cathy

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I didn’t know that I had squamous cell skin cancer because I couldn’t see it.

Tucked into my ear, almost as if it were evilly hiding, like a secret, I thought it might be a pimple, when I thought of it at all, which was…almost never.

But my dermatologist declared that she didn’t like the looks of it.

Holding my ear way out so she could peer in, she said things like, “How long have you had that?” and, “It’s a growth, Cathy. Not a pimple,” and finally, “We’re taking that out.”

There was the slightest hint of a reprimand in her voice as if I should have used my third eye to peer into my ear.

The doctor is about my daughters’ age and while she was scolding me, I thought about how fast I have become old. I sighed.

Although the needle used to numb my ear looked fit for a crocodile, after a few teeny, tiny shots, the “suspicious offender” was cut out and dropped in a jar filled with solution, ready to be biopsied.

I was grateful that they had not taken my brain and dropped it into a jar filled with solution. That would have been upsetting.

The smart-o people who did the biopsy didn’t like it, either, so I got a call telling me that I needed to meet with another doctor that week. Two days later, I was up on that brown, faux-leather exam table that we all hate to be on. Nothing fun happens on exam tables.

That doctor’s happy assistant started shooting my ear up again with teeny, tiny shots, fit for that same crocodile, so I wouldn’t feel a whisper of pain when the knife performed it’s slash and dash.

The new doctor (knife wielder) walked in, and she was about my daughters’ age, too. I sighed again. How old am I anyhow?

Soon the young knife wielder eliminated a chunk of my ear and took it away to the place where they scrupulously study these things and look for bad secrets.

Thankfully, she did not need to cut out a second chunk of my ear, leaving me with a gaping hole, which would have frightened children and cats, as she had dug deep and wide and got out what should not have been in my ear in the first place.

I was soon permitted to hop off the no-fun brown exam table, about the size of a coffin now that I’m thinking about it, and prepare to go on my merry way. I wondered if the missing part of my ear would forever miss me.

Innocent Husband had insisted on coming with me to my appointment, although I told him it wasn’t necessary at all as I had no intention of screeching or being a baby, and he watched the whole thing without fainting.

Innocent Husband was a little white around the gills, but otherwise upright. I was quite proud of his bravery. Good job, Innocent Husband, you sexy thing, you.

I thanked the doctor for her time and skipped on out like a happy fairy before they could cut something else out of me.

Now I have a lovely band aid and a wad of gauze sticking out the side of my face. One would think I might be self conscious about this. I am not. I am too cranky to be self conscious. What a waste of time.

One might think I would be worried about a large, circular scar in my ear.

I am not the slightest bit worried. I do not care. Another waste of time.

I have many scars, starting with the one on my knee that I got during my first ten years of life growing up on Deauville Drive in Huntington Beach, California. I rode bikes and crashed, zipped around on my skateboard and crashed, climbed and fell out of trees and crashed, tumbled off our rickety fort, and with giggling glee jumped off swings at high altitudes…and crashed.

I have a different scar on my forehead from two pre-cancerous areas, too.

Scars = Life.

But I am glad I went to the dermatologist for my yearly exam.

So this is a reminder, my friends, to go and get those medical checks, even if ya get a scar or if white coats make you feel like having a panic attack.

Yes, let them send a snake up your nether regions and get your colonoscopy. Get naked and have your skin examined. Let ‘em squish your boobs during your mammogram. Plop those feet in horse stirrups for your pap smear. Go to the dentist even if you hate the sound of a drill near your face. Get your blood pressure checked.

Go and say hi and what’s shakin’ to your doctor when something seems off. Get your vaccines, even though no one likes pokey shots. They are better than dreaded diseases.

Take care of yourself, friends. Please.

And don’t watch / read the calamitous news TOO much because the stress makes us all nervous and fidgety and extremely worried and our bodies don’t like that.

Wishing you well always.

Cathy

And now, back we go in time…

I saw a woman the other day that I don’t like.

It’s been many years since I’ve seen her, but I recognized her. I was in my car, she was walking along the sidewalk.

No, I did not try to hit her, that would have been uncalled for. Plus, I would have gone to jail and my coloring clashes mightily with orange. I also don’t like jumpsuits, communal showers, or anyone telling me what to do.

Knowing all this, I drove on by. She didn’t see me, and she wouldn’t have recognized me anyhow. I am quite sure that when we met nineteen years ago I didn’t make the slightest imprint on her little brain.

So who was this woman? She was a checker at our local grocery store.

I was a young mother then, three kids under the age of three, and had quit my job as a teacher to stay home. I was delighted, and grateful, to be at home with the kids, but financially it was like a cyclone hit.

We had a 1450 square foot home, a car payment, and Innocent Husband’s student loan.

We were check to check, each month, and the slightest surprise – car repairs, dish washer breaking, etc. threw us off a mini financial cliff.

I cut coupons religiously, planned all meals around the coupons, then headed up to the grocery store, three kids in the basket, or one kid in the basket, and pushing a stroller with my sweet twin babies.

One rainy Oregon day, after carefully buying all my groceries, with my kids in the cart/stroller, coupons ready to go, I headed to the checkout lanes.

I handed this woman my coupons and she all but rolled her eyes straight back into her head. It was as if I’d handed her a dead possum and asked her to stuff it and get it ready for a funeral.

She put all my coupons, one by one, in a pile, then crossed her fingers, as if she were praying, and said in a condescending, pseudo-exhausted voice, “Well, let’s begin.”

The line was long, it got longer, as she methodically, and with arrogant glee, rejected one coupon after another, about a third of them. Her tone said, “Don’t try to rip off our store!”

The cereal I bought was four ounces too small for that coupon to work. This coupon didn’t apply because I didn’t buy something else I was required to along with it. This coupon expired yesterday. This coupon was ‘buy two, get the third one for free.' Not one.

Now, clearly, I made a mistake with the products and the coupons. Tired mother, hardly thinking/sleeping with twin babies and a three year old. My fault.

I should have noticed the cereal coupon was for the twenty ounce box only.

But it was her patronizing voice and how slowly she processed the coupons, as if to deliberately embarrass me in front of everyone in that line, at length. It was her simmering anger that I had brought coupons in, as if I was trying to rip off the store, as if I was nothing.

I was so humiliated I could hardly speak. We finally left, the kids fussing, the line longer and impatient, yes I heard the sighs, our groceries in the bags, my checkbook crushed.

I was tired of having to hunt for spare change under the car seats, so I was extra sensitive then, and I realized this, but I cried in the car that day.

I really didn’t need anyone making me feel poorer and more desperate than I already felt.

Innocent Husband and I are in a different financial place now. We moved to a new house, the student loan and car payment are long gone. The checkbook isn’t crushed.

But when I saw that woman walking along it all came back - how she treated me with such disdain, a mother juggling young children, using coupons because that was the way she was going to make the food budget work that week.

You remember how people treat you especially when you’re in a tough place in life, don’t you?

I didn’t run her over when I saw her. I didn’t stop to say anything. I don’t wish her ill at all. But I have learned two things from her. One, an act of meanness can last a long time in someone else’s life.

And two - I’ll share this wisdom with you, friends - when you see someone you don’t like refrain from hitting them with your car.

You’re not gonna look good in an orange jumpsuit, either, and you so know it, you do.

Wishing you a happy day, as always, and kindness from strangers.

Cathy

(Simon would NEVER say anything mean to anyone.)

The day before Innocent Husband and I had driven to downtown Portland, Oregon - not Portland, Maine. He trudged his handsome-self down to work in his office, a boring and mind-numbing time, and I skipped down to the waterfront for a run along the Willamette River, wishing my buttocks would quit growing.

Part of the reason I went for a run is because The Pathological One said that Portland was “war ravaged,” and “burning.”

Surprise: NO WARS. Nothing was burning.

It was a pleasant and calm day in Portland with people participating in the usual. For example, I saw a woman wearing butterfly wings while biking. People laughed on jet skis and drank apple juice on boats, while others skateboarded while singing. This is typical Portland. Bring your rainbow hair, your tutu, and your dogs in strollers and you’ll fit right in.

There were a LOT of kids running around and babbling in strollers and biking and there were grandparents who were clearly trying to spoil their grandchildren - probably without parental permission. These people were threats to everyone, naturally, and probably planning attacks.

But once I ascertained there was no war, I ran along the river, relieved there were no bombs, drones, or tanks.

I was also glad there were not masked agents in full battle gear hanging out of black SUVs like avenging devils, the likes of whom Minnesota is enduring now.

The goblin and the spike he brought with him came that night.

Many weeks later, after hoping the pain would go away but, alas, it did not, Dr. H. ordered an x-ray. I - UGH - have arthritis in my knee, in all likelihood given to me by the above-mentioned goblin. I didn’t invite the arthritis to come. I want it to leave. It apparently does not wish to do so.

As someone who has run (slowly, like a sloth) her entire life, and who was recently running four or five times a week, three miles at a shot, and walking, often to clear out an overheated and slightly anxious mind, this has not been fun.

What has worked for me and my old knee is biking. Apparently, biking “lubricates the knee.” Sounds a bit odd, especially when I read the word ‘lubricate’ and think of something else, however it has recently worked to remove the spike the goblin inserted and it has helped me walk without looking like a 102 year old woman.

The other day I heard a monk talk on a facebook reel. (This part will make sense soon.)

Or maybe it was instagram, I don’t know. I am irritated, wary, and overwhelmingly suspicious of any fake-cheerful instagrammy advice, any financially-motivated, supplement-selling, don’t-believe-science-or-doctors, pseudo-gurus arrogantly telling me how I should live with “intention,” who all collectively appear to have one brain cell.

But the monk, I listened to him. He said things like this, “Go outside every day. Your brain re-wires when it’s outside.” He is not a doctor, I don’t think your brain will actually re-wire. What I DO believe is that being outside helps to calm your mind down. It helps you breathe again. It helps to feel the cool breeze, to capture a cloud, to see a rainbow.

He also said that when you don’t leave your house then you will start to live in the past and worry yourself needlessly for what is coming in the future. As a writer I am home alone A LOT wandering around in my daydreams and creating made-up people.

So that hit home because Alice, My Anxiety, does come to visit me now and then and she likes to make me worry about what’s coming in the future and what happened in the past, and whatever dreadful thing is happening today in Washington DC.

This makes writing books a little difficult, unless I give these worries to a hapless character, and then it works.

The monk also said that the more you stay inside, the less you want to leave.

I like hanging with my cats, and watching my garden grow, and I read our current appalling headlines, so it is very tempting to shut the door and stay in and pretend what is happening in this country is not happening.

But I don’t stay inside, and I don’t hide from what is happening, and I like to be outside.

To help my arthritic knee, to show the goblin who is boss, and to take a break from the headlines, I biked in a park near my house, with lots of natural areas, which means I was around ducks, birds, a white egret, and beaver dams. I have put these photos throughout this newsletter.

I encourage you to free your brain and go outside, too.

You need to find a little peace in your life. We are in chaotic times and we all need to study the nooks and crannies of trees, the architectural wonder of beaver dams, graceful blue herons, the sun, the perfection of snowflakes, the swirling wind, and the birds to stay sane.

Go. Go outside.

When you’re home, read a book or watch a funny show.

And take care. We will get through this.

(Keep goblins out of your bedroom, too.)

Yours very sincerely,

Cathy

I think we need a little break.

As you know, books can take our minds away from life and head-banging stress. They can magically drop us into another world with new people and events. Given the horrible headlines, you might need another world right now.

As a gift to you, my E-book “No Place I’d Rather Be” is FREE until Friday.
Go to this link on Amazon:

https://shorturl.at/jQke4

Happy reading, wishing you all the best during these difficult times.

Here’s the summary:

A grandmother who won’t talk about her past, a 100-year-old cookbook filled with family secrets, and an unintentionally hilarious cooking show combine in Cathy Lamb’s delicious, heart-warming novel.

Olivia Martindale is on the run with her almost-adopted daughters, their biological mother, out of jail, now stalking them. Back home in Montana, she knows she’ll find safety and love with her family.

An accomplished chef, she also knows that she’s dead broke and, after throwing a chicken at the head chef of the restaurant she worked at, she has no job. She moves into her grandparents’ log cabin and finds a handwritten cookbook hidden in the attic complete with pictures of old villages, horse drawn carts, geraniums, families, homes with red doors, and a menorah.

Some of the recipes are over 100 years old and titled, “Isaac’s Pecan and Brown Sugar Pastry,” and “Renata’s Challah Bread.” Olivia has no idea who these people are, but it’s the cake recipes - Black Forest gateau with cherries, German apple cake, Kuchen bars with vanilla custard, and Leipzig carrot cake cake – that draw Olivia in.

Taking a chance, Olivia films herself making her ancestors’ recipes and posting them to social media. She is an imperfect cook and funny, unexpected mishaps happen – a mixer takes off into the air as if possessed; her mother, a blunt talking doctor, talks about sewing people back together and the importance of red wine; and her nephew, Kyle, explodes a fake cake to show what baking soda can do.

Olivia has a tasty hit on her hands but an incessant ache in her heart. She left Jace, her husband, two years ago for a reason and that painful reason is still between them.

Learning about the strength and courage of her ancestors through the cookbook, Olivia finally dares to wish for what she wants most of all: Love.

Cathy

Ugh.

I have known this since 2005 when I first sold Julia’s Chocolates.

Write a book, market a book. That, dear ladies and gentlemen, is the literary deal.

Side Note Here for a Sec: When Innocent Husband read Julia’s Chocolates he was supremely, silly-shocked. As in, “WHO ARE YOU, CATHY?”

There were some crazy scenes in there with women engaging in some slightly unhinged, though healing, moonlight-induced “activities,” which probably brought on his unbridled feelings of mystification and bafflement.

It was like he didn’t know who he was sleeping with anymore.

In fact, one time he put down Julia’s Chocolates and said, his voice constricted, “You thought of, uh, all of this?” He paused. “By yourself?”

Oh yeah, Innocent Husband, dear. I did. Perhaps I’m not who you thought. Surprise!

He blinked in confusion at me through his glasses, like an owl. I tried to look svelte and mysterious, like a sexy spy. (That was hard.)

But I digress. I, personally, would rather write books, talk to myself, chase ostriches, dress up like a caterpillar for a week, or loudly and authoritatively announce in a crowded elevator, “We will now be leaving for Planet Uto. Please hold on and prepare for light speed force,” than market my books.

Alas, not marketing is not a possibility in our rockin’ and rollin’ (read: brutal) publishing world.

Marketing your own books, to me, is almost embarrassing. You have to get off your bottom, waddle on over to your computer, wrestle with the social media dragons, and say, “BUY MY BOOK.”

Or, LOOK AT ME. I WROTE A BOOK.

(As if writing books is something special. It isn’t. It is a job like any other occupation. Teacher. Vegas dancer. Doctor. Pet psychologist. Horse Whisperer. Nurse. Stripper. Electrician. Fairy. Plumber. Ghost. Landscaper. Fortune Teller. Taylor Swift.)

Or, you must announce, in a non-irritating voice, MY BOOK IS A MOST EXCELLENT STORY! YOU WILL LOVE IT.

I have no idea if anyone will love my books. I hope so. I truly hope you do, and I am grateful to every single person who has ever read any of my books.

I grew up in a family with lovely, strict parents with certain “behavioral expectations” of their children who thought that bragging was a deadly sin.

Promoting yourself, boasting, just might send you to hell in a hand basket. It also indicated that you had poor manners, which was another deadly sin and soon you’d be dancin’ with the devil.

Poor manners were unacceptable.

So writing and marketing my books, minding my manners, and not promoting myself, ever, so I don’t have to go and dance with the devil, have all clashed together like a hurricane, and perhaps, a field full of cows in my tired mind.

I need to finish editing Ten Kids BOOK TWO. I need to start writing Ten Kids BOOK THREE. I need to finish writing this Substack newsletter. I need to watch a reality show to take me away from our country’s reality.

But now, I have done a wee little bit of marketing right here. Ta da!

Frankly, I feel practically virtuous. Surely deserving of lemon cake with buttercream icing.

Back to my Pathetic Marketing Message: If you need a book for you, or for someone else, here are a few of mine. All on Amazon and Kindle Unlimited.

ALSO, call your friendly librarian and ask her to order them, then you’ll get them for FREE.

Wishing you all the best, time to read and time to think, time to play in nature and time to try something new and cool.

Cathy

When I wrote Bellini’s Christmas Burlesque Show, a character named Bellini popped into my mind like a reindeer falling through my roof. Boom. I frowned at myself in bafflement.

What just happened?

Why would she have a name like Bellini? That’s an alcoholic drink. It’s apparently quite tasty with peach puree and prosecco. I would not know, I’ve never had one because I don’t drink.

Why do I not drink?

Let’s just say I went through a wild and rebellious and giggly time starting when I was 13. My equally rather wild, but quite fun friends, decided it would be best if we raided a few of the parents’ liquor cabinets. Yes, at 13.

We did not raid MY parents’ liquor cabinet, because there was no liquor in our home. My parents, delightful, always there, kind, smart, totally dedicated to their family, did not drink.

UNLESS it was the wine at Catholic mass, which my mother refused to do, smartly, because everyone in the whole church was drinking out of the SAME holy goblet of wine at that altar, by God.

I mean, speaking from someone who is not afraid of germs at all, and will eat a cookie off the floor in a heartbeat, YUCK.

My father, who DID drink the wine had, at one time, seriously thought about becoming a Catholic priest, hence, he upturned the holy goblet and probably prayed that he would not get tuberculosis or typhus.

Thankfully, as I would not be here, my father decided he wanted a wife and a bunch of kids more than the priesthood and daily goblets of wine.

These two, my mother a well-loved English teacher, somehow produced a kid who wanted to push some alcoholic boundaries.

Who knows why I wanted to break rules? I don’t. I was 13. I could barely think at that time. It was like my brain had not been switched to “ON,” yet, but hopefully would in future.

One time I went to the ice skating rink with previously mentioned rule-breaking teenage friends and we got all tipsy / drunk. Rule for Life: Do not ice skate while tipsy drunk. You will spend most of the time on your butt on the ice and get wet and maybe bash your noggin in.

This silly debauchery continued for several years, and then at 20 I had a very bad night with tequila in college.

I was at a barn dance with a nice date named Jeff. We went to a pre-party where tequila was served. I didn’t know that tequila could sneak up on you like a thief in the night. I didn’t know what a cursed and devious liquor it was, woe is me, oh woe is me.

Jeff was friendly and kind and we danced in the barn but the tequila DID sneak up on me, chased me around, and got its talons into my suspicious stomach, angry circulatory system and innocent liver.

After that barn dance I felt sick for a week. A WEEK.

Like I’d been run over by a frightened gazelle, say, and then sickened by the broth from a wicked warlock’s cauldron, then dropped into a pond filled with algae from an eagle’s talons.

And that was it.

I stopped drinking.

Now, in the last 30+ years there were two kahluas and cream in two different vacation spots, both about 15 years ago. AND, when I had a fun, mobbed party at my house for my high school reunion a few months ago, one of my classmates brought in two boxes of her acclaimed wine. I did have a sip and now I know that she knows how to crush grapes perfectly deliciously.

(You might ask if some of my ice skating friends / fellow rebels from school were at my reunion party and I will tell you yes, many of them were! They all turned out amazing and would probably ground their own children for months or maybe eternally and forevemore if they did what we did as they would not tolerate such coyote-like sneaky antics.)

My own kids, Rebel Dancing Daughter, Adventurous Singing Daughter, and Darling Laughing Son, older, smarter, preparing to take care of their easily-confused and dottering mother in upcoming years have, upon occasion, pushed me to try whatever alcoholic drink they’re dallying in for jolly entertainment.

For their amusement I have taken a teeny tiny sip on that rare dare and I will tell you this: I feel like I’m drinking poison.

It’s like all of my taste buds wake up and start screaming for their lives. It’s as if fire has just been poured into my mouth. I can only describe it as imbibing horror. Or terror. I would not drink a shot of vodka if you paid me. I would not be able to swallow tequila without feeling like my brain was being bombed.

I truly cannot stand the taste of alcohol. I would give up my stove before I drank a beer.

Does it bother me when other people drink? Oh, hell-o no. Drink away. Have a lovely time. Bring wine or scotch to my house and guzzle it. I don’t care. You should have seen the stash and the keg my still incredibly cool high school friends rolled into my house.

My tastebuds, however, are the enemies of alcohol.

So, it makes sense that when I was planning my Christmas book, I would ALSO think of a woman named Whiskey, right?

(No.)

And I would ask myself why she was named Whiskey, which led to my knowing that Whiskey started a bar in Montana, one of my favorite places on Earth, when she was young, and a single mother, which led me to know that Whiskey, a take-life-by-the-bullhorns and shake ‘em, glittery kind of woman would name her daughter Bellini.

And then I had to make Bellini an introverted children’s book writer and illustrator because I have written a children’s chapter book, that’s been rejected a ton, and wouldn’t that be a delight if it were ever published? So I dreamed of success through Bellini.

And I gave Bellini a broken heart, and the hero was a real man, and his heart was broken, too, and of course I had to put Bellini back in charge of the raucous, rowdy Montana bar she’d grown up in, AND she had to put together a Christmas show, which her effervescent mother named “Lady Whiskey’s T and A Christmas Burlesque Show.”

The “T and A” part was not what you think, it was T for ‘tinsel’ and A for ‘All I want for Christmas is Santa.’

NOT the other phrase, you naughty-thinker, you.

I hope you like this happy ending, funny love story and yes, of course, do drink wine or a Bellini or whiskey or a margarita or strawberry daiquiri while reading. The book will taste better for you then.

(But not for me.)

Cheers and love to all.

Cathy

Mrs. Claus thought it would be helpful if you could read the first page or so of each of the three stories in my new book WANTED: Christmas Miracles.

Amazon only: Wanted: Christmas Miracles

Mrs. Claus is magical and she knows stuff like this. She is, after all, the person who really brings Christmas to everyone. She handles the toy shop, the gift list, figures out who’s been naughty and nice, takes care of the reindeer, encourages the elves, fixes the sleigh, makes all repairs, and sets the GPS for Santa’s ride through the stars.

I have a habit of listening to her.

Below are the first pages of the three short stories within WANTED: Christmas Miracles. I am wishing you time to read them, time to be alone with your wine / hot chocolate / Christmas cookies and time to enjoy the holidays without feeling frazzled / overwhelmed / dreading your in-laws.

Cheers.
Cathy

A Very Merry Christmas:

I live on the top floor of a three-story brick house built in 1889 that I bought about a year ago and transformed into my bed and breakfast/morning café business.

When I’m in my bedroom with the peaked roof I can see all over Telena and to the Elk Horn mountains. I feel like I’m in a very tall, old tree house with a claw foot tub.

My bedroom is a lovely place to temporarily lose my mind. I decorated my four-poster bed with a light yellow flowered comforter, and a mountain of white pillows, with white lacy material draped over the posts. I have a white dresser and desk and a pile of books to read by my nightstand.

How would Logan look in my bed? I smashed that thought because then I would have to deal with his look of disgust when he knew what I know about myself.

Also on the third floor are two other small bedrooms for Sarah and Jacob, my sister’s kids who have had too much heartbreak in their lives and now live with me, a living area with French doors to a small deck, and a bathroom.

My home has a coal chute through which, obviously, coal used to be funneled. I have an old carriage house on the property that used to house, obviously, horses and a carriage. The home has a short stair rail because people were much shorter when this home was built, wide, ornate white trim, and eleven-foot tall ceilings on floors one and two. Downstairs there is one guest bedroom, a parlor with a piano and a fireplace, a sun-filled dining area with a fireplace, and a kitchen.

On the second floor there are four bedrooms that I’ve decorated with four-poster beds, wooden chests, old-fashioned wallpaper, stacked hatboxes, and armoires.

I have named my bed and breakfast, “Meredith’s Bed and Breakfast,” because at the time, in the midst of a stress tornado, I couldn’t think of anything more clever.

I did some research, and my home has more history in it than a history book.

It was built by a Jewish businessman. He had five daughters and a wife. One of his girls ended up marrying the boy who lived directly behind this house; another left town with a convict.

Apparently he was a handsome convict.

A railroad executive also lived here with three different wives, who all predeceased him. He had nine kids, a timepiece, and a top hat. I have framed that photo in my entry. A mine owner lived here, alone, and he apparently fancied the ladies. A millionaire lived here for two decades and never left the house. Three sisters bought it at one point.

One owned a bar; one worked at a church; one was a doctor who provided birth control to Telena. They had many “gentlemen” callers. It was also once a popular house of “ill repute,” as confirmed by an old newspaper article. The madam in charge was named, no kidding, Hearty Tallfeather.

Christmas in Montana

I am, currently, the manager for the hard-rock band Hellfire.

I am quitting tomorrow. My boss, front man Ace Hellfire, real name Peter Watson, son of a pastor, will be unhappy.

It’s going to be a sticky situation, but it doesn’t change my mind.

I have been traveling the world for ten years with Ace, his band, and crew. I have listened to more eardrum-splitting concerts and head-banging rehearsals, and been witness to more temper tantrums and wildness than I ever wanted to see. My nerves are shot, my exhaustion complete.

I don’t think I want to travel again unless it’s to a remote cabin in the woods.

I love to sew, but I haven’t sewn in years. I love to embroider, but I don’t know if Iremember the cross-stitch. I love to cook, but haven’t followed a recipe in way too long. I love to ski, garden, and ride horses, but I never do any of those things.

I have lived out of suitcases for much of every year, my outfits a collage of color, but now I want to find a home, stay in it, and set up a sewing room.

I am a country girl from Kalulell, Montana, who has been working with hard-core rock musicians out of Los Angeles and I am done. I am headed home for Christmas, and then I will figure out Plan F, the F standing for my Future.

I miss small town life. I have always missed it, especially during the Christmas season. I did not miss, however, what happened on a snowy, dark night on a curvy road. It still haunts me.

Some might say I ran from small town country life, that I wanted the twinkly lights of the city and the excitement.

They would be wrong. I was never running from it. I loved it.

I was running from him.

Suzanna’s Stockings

I didn’t look dead.

At least, not yet.

But I didn’t look too good, either.

I watched a nurse in purple scrubs flutter about my bed. I was glad to see that she had gray hair, all plaited into tiny braids, and that she was not some young thing with a skinny waist, sleek hair, and perky boobs.

No, if I was going to be surrounded by blipping and bleeping machines, IV poles, and rails around my mattress in a darkened hospital room, I wanted someone experienced poking and prodding at me.

She examined a chart, made some notations, checked the machines, my pulse, my forehead, then, for a second, she stood, examining my pale, pasty face, half-hidden by an oxygen mask, her expression tired and sad.

I glanced at her nameplate. Adanna. She shook her head, sighed, then left the room, shutting the door quietly behind her.

I continued watching myself. Myself wasn’t moving in the hospital bed. Myself was hardly breathing.

My hair was splayed out on the pillow, blah and boring. I hardly made a mound at all under the thin hospital blankets. Was there a body? Or was my head attached to my neck and that was that?

I hadn’t realized how skinny I’d gotten.

Yuck.

But I had been busy. My gift shop business was struggling and I had almost no money.

The Pooles were headed for disaster and I didn’t know how to help them, Carly had a secret, Patricia seemed downright…scared, our beach town’s very character was at risk, Ronna was deteriorating, Jack Benson was wreaking havoc in my life and in my nether regions, and I was engaged to someone else.

Most of all, I was trying to be happy.

Yes. Trying hard. And I was almost there.

Sort of. Not really.

Actually, the happy part hadn’t been working.

I sat down on the hospital bed next to myself and picked up one of my hands. Limp. Cool.

Deadlike, my nails chipped and ragged, my hands cracked with dryness.

Cold Oregon winters on the coast, especially here at Canyon Beach, can do that to you.

Perhaps I’d get the first manicure of my life when I left here.

My face, white like a toilet, and so very still, appeared to be almost caving in on itself.

Sheesh. Maybe I’d get my first facial, too.

At that moment all the machines in the room started ringing and zinging, a light flashed, an alarm blared. I scrambled off the bed so the doctors and nurses charging into the room could get to the me lying there in bed with an oxygen mask.

They hollered orders at each other and a huge light was swung over my body. Tools whipped from one hand to another, a machine was rolled in and liquid stuff dropped into my IV.

“We’re losing her!” a doctor shouted. “She’s crashing, people!”

Merry Christmas! Happy holidays!

Many years ago, in the North Pole, amidst the leaping reindeer and the busy elves, these stories were previously published in “Our First Christmas,” “Holiday Magic,” and “Comfort and Joy.”

Have a lovely day.
Cathy

Laziness has struck. These are the ten things I did to avoid working.

1. Leroy the Cat and I went on a walk. Yes, I walk Leroy. He likes it. We stroll down one street, back home, then we go down another street. It’s very exciting for him. See? You can tell he’s excited.

   

2. I stepped on the scale to see how much I weigh. That was a shocker. I got off and on again, off and on and the same mean, terrible number kept coming up. I told the scale it was “total crap,” and a “liar.” No wonder none of my pants fit. Perhaps I will not have cookies for the next two years.

3. I ran in the woods. Slowly. I hurt my dang knee again. I ran along a river and the next morning it felt like a little elf snuck in and mercilessly shoved a spike into it. So it was more of an awkward limp-run. I felt like an old, creaking woman. A woman was running very slowly. She passed me.

   

4. I watched a reality show. Don’t ask which one. I am too embarrassed to say as you will think I have lost my ever lovin’ mind, but it has the word ‘housewives,’ in it. These screaming, spoiled, botoxed-to-within-an-inch-of-their-lives women sometimes throw things, like flowers and alcoholic drinks, at each other. (Their faces do not move while doing so.)

   They are alternately yelling at each other on full blast, mouths open to the size of the Grand Canyon bearing sharp teeth and demanding that the other women, “Be my friend!!” amid accusations that, “You are NOT my friend!” They also lie constantly. The amount they spend on jewelry could feed a family of four, plus a pet dragon, for years.

5. It is nauseating. I have no idea why I am gripped by this. What does this say about me? Nothing good. At least MY girlfriends are only a little crazy, except that one, or maybe two, but she does crazy really well and with a lot of class, and some of my girlfriends are downright totally sane and I love all of them.

5. I called Innocent Husband. We discussed how he has done a very poor job of winning us the lottery and we made a plan to increase his success.

   

6. I called / texted Rebel Dancing Daughter, Adventurous Singing Daughter, and Darling Laughing Son. Everybody’s doing good, thankfully, gratefully, happily. You know how it is: When the kids aren’t happy, Momma’s not happy.

   

7. I pretended I was going to clean my house. Too dull! Too dreary! Boring! I sat down and enjoyed the lights on my Christmas tree and hummed, “I saw someone kissing Santa Claus,” and “Crocodile Rock.”

8. I daydreamed and took a tour of my garden. I call this “working on my books.”

9. I took a minute to curse that one person I don’t like and I arrogantly reminded Ms. Karma that she had some work to do. Then I felt very guilty for thinking vengeful thoughts so I took it back.

10. I made cookies despite my lying, pestering, manipulative scale. I have one life and chocolate chip cookies belong in it. I ate the cookies.

Finally, I ended my procrastination activities and, yes, I edited more of Ten Kids, Two Lovebirds, and a Singing Mermaid Book Two. This took me into the early hours of the morning. I work best between 10 at night and two in the morning when all is quiet and I can let the introvert in me out and about.

I got lost in the story and I laughed and I remembered my fun and funny childhood in Huntington Beach on Deauville Drive and the many people that I loved there, some who are still here with us and some who I will see again one day, up in the puffy clouds, around the arc of a rainbow, angels’ wings fluttering about.

This thought was very soothing to me.

Back to writing.

Ten Kids Number Two will be out, I think, I hope, in the first half of 2026.

Wishing you and yours good health, love, and happiness.

Cathy

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Below are the first few pages of my new, romantic, HOPEFULLY very funny book titled Bellini’s Christmas Burlesque Show, set in Montana.

Now, I’m quite biased. But I think the story’s funny. I laughed when I wrote it.

I do have an odd sense of humor though. Some might say “strange” or “edgy” or “deeply puzzling.”

Amazon only, paperback and e-book, click on this pretty link: Bellini's Christmas Burlesque Show

I do laugh aloud, all by myself, when I think of something amusing or when I am thinking slightly vengeful thoughts about people who deserve it. The latter is not a “nice” part of my personality. It is in the “naughty” or “not nice” column on Santa’s List. Mrs. Claus already knows about it, so no sense telling her.

My laughter may be alarming to unsuspecting people when I am walking along the winding bike trails near my home and all the sudden I burst into cackling-witch-like giggles. This usually occurs when I am talking to the characters in my book and they tell me what crazy-*ss thing they’re going to do next.

I ignore the unsuspecting people’s side glances because I live in Oregon. “Unique” behavior is accepted, even encouraged, here. We have been known to wear butterfly wings or silver foil wigs or tutus while riding bikes for no reason. Side glances do not bother us.

As to edgy humor, in Bellini’s Christmas Burlesque Show there is a stolen uterus (A doctor took it, of course! What were you thinking?), a mother named Whiskey, a daughter named Bellini, a raucous bar in a small Montana town, a handsome architect, and a town Christmas pageant named Lady Whiskey’s T and A Christmas Burlesque Show.

That’s right. Who would name a Christmas pageant “T and A?” But it’s not what you think at all, you silly, why would I write that?

Bellini’s Christmas Burlesque Show is also romantic. As someone who has been married for 32 years to Innocent Husband, I love a little romance in the books I read and write.

But, just so you know, when Innocent Husband reads my hot romance scenes, his eyes seem like they might pop and drop right out of his head and roll away, scaring the cats, as my words have surprised him, but that’s okay!

It’s good to keep some spice in a marriage and maintain a mysterious allure.

To all of you: Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, Happy Holidays, Happy Solstice, Happy Reading Days. I hope you enjoy, and laugh, while reading, Bellini’s Christmas Burlesque Show.

Cheers.

Cathy

Chapter One

Bellini

“Honey, my uterus has been stolen, and I need you to come home for Christmas and run the bar. Bring the cats.”

What? What did my mom want me to do?

I instinctively slapped a hand to my forehead and accidently stabbed myself with the black felt pen I was holding. “Ouch,” I said into my phone. “Mom, first off, what do you mean your uterus has been stolen?”

And what do you mean I need to come home for Christmas and run the bar? That’s a no.

“The good Dr. Brenda took it.”

“Where…What are you talking about? When?” I slumped back in my chair in my peaceful, little white and pink cottage in Oregon that no longer felt quite so peaceful. “When did the doctor steal your uterus?”

“Two days ago.”

“And why did Dr. Brenda steal it, Mom?”

“Perhaps ‘steal’ isn’t quite the right word, Bellini Mae. I did give permission, although reluctantly so.”

Yes, that is my name. Bellini Mae. As in the drink Bellini, which has prosecco and peach puree in it. I cannot talk about Bellinis right now. “What is the right word, then?”

“That uterus of mine had been giving me fits for years. It was a shriveled and annoying thing, fit for a prickly witch, not someone like me, and I finally told Dr. Brenda, ‘Take that brat out.’”

I held my breath for long seconds as my brain processed the conversation. Take that brat out. Yes, that’s how my mother, Whiskey O’Donnell, talks. She is an original. Her real name is Margaret Marie O’Donnell. Yes, that’s Irish. She unofficially changed her name when she bought her bar and named it Lady Whiskey’s. “Mom, why didn’t you call me before this? Before you had your uterus taken out?”

“Because your aunt Emmie is here, and she’s taking care of me, and I thought we could handle things ourselves, along with help from The Sisters.”

“The Sisters” are my mother’s six sisters. They’re all outspoken, opinionated, loud, and the kindest ball-breaking women you’ll ever meet, but they are exhausting. It’s like watching seven human hurricanes at once. I have twenty-five first cousins and more first cousins once removed. I love my family in Montana, but I live in Oregon because I cannot endure the heartbreak of seeing him again, but that is another story that I will tell after getting to the bottom of this prickly uterus issue.

“Mom, this is upsetting. You should have told me.” Tears sprang to my eyes. “I would have been there for you. Why did you wait this long to tell me?”

“Because I have respect for you and your time. I know you’re working on your Roxy Belle books, sugarplum, and I didn’t want to turn your world upside down and shake it like a martini, but now I’m afraid I’m going to have to do that. I need someone to run Lady Whiskey’s.”

“Oh, dear God, no.” The words escaped before I could stop them. I did not want to run Lady Whiskey’s Bar and Grill—for many reasons. One reason was that I needed to write another Roxy Belle book, but I could not think of anything to write. No storyline. No plot. Nothing. That was a problem.

“Oh, dear God, yes, Bellini Mae O’Donnell! You’re the only one who can handle the customers and the staff and the books and the occasional”—she coughed— “bar fight.”

“Bar fights are more than occasional, Mom.” I stabbed myself in the forehead again with my black pen and sighed at my own clumsy self. I dropped the pen to protect me from myself.

“Nonsense. You know how to break them up, anyhow. Everyone was so impressed with your peacekeeping abilities that night last December when Bobby Joe and Lucien were fighting, and you settled everything right on down when you wielded that chair like a lasso and yelled, ‘Who wants to get hit in the head? I said, who wants to get hit in the head?’ Those boys knew you would sooner smack their craniums than allow them to continue fighting and ruin our wholesome family environment.”

I choked a bit on that. Wholesome family environment? It’s a bar. It’s loud. Raucous. Teetering on being out of control when it’s packed. No minors are allowed, except for me when I was a kid and my mother had me mixing drinks in the back. A five-year-old should not know how to make Manhattans and cosmopolitans, but I did. I thought it was fun to add tiny umbrellas and lemon slices and mint to the drinks.

“You have a powerful temper you unharness now and then like an avenging goddess, and everyone knows it.”

“I do not have a temper.” I sounded a tad wimpy.

And here’s Christmas Book #1, also only available on Amazon. The pretty little link:

Wanted: Christmas Miracles

Thanks to the magic of Mrs. Claus, three elves, two reindeer, and a snowwoman, the e-book for my brand new novel, “Bellini’s Christmas Burlesque Show,” is available for pre-order today. Release date is November 30th for the e-book and paperback.

I loved writing it. As soon as I knew my main character’s name was Bellini, and her mother’s nickname was Whiskey, I had my story.

Only on Amazon:Bellini's Christmas Burlesque Show

Here’s the short and sweet summary:

Mrs. Claus recommends this funny Christmas love story, set in Montana, complete with a sparkling burlesque show, a bar named Lady Whiskey’s, and two people who need a little magic in their lives.

Bellini O’Donnell’s mother, Whiskey, has had her uterus stolen.

By a doctor, of course, but Whiskey needs Bellini to come home for Christmas to help her recover. “Pack the cats in suitcases,” Whiskey insists, “grab your notebooks and drawing paper, steel your loins, and come home to Montana!”

Bellini doesn’t want to “steel her loins.” She doesn’t want to return to Kalulell, especially over Christmas. She doesn’t want to run her mother’s raucous bar. She doesn’t want to organize the annual holiday performance named, “Lady Whiskey’s T and A Christmas Burlesque Show.” She doesn’t want to set eyes on Logan.

No, Bellini, who lives in a pink and white cottage in Oregon, is a children’s book author and illustrator, an introvert with four cats, and a Scrabble and chess enthusiast who wants to stay home. She likes being a “house hermit.”

But she also wants to help her beloved, charismatic mother, so she has no choice. Bellini packs up her four screeching cats and flies home, telling herself she can avoid the love of her life, Logan Hamilton. Who knew they would meet in kindergarten painting Christmas trees and adding a red puff ball to Rudolph’s nose and that would lead to the best love story ever…until it ended.

Bellini never told Logan why she broke up with him after high school. She didn’t tell him about the threats. She didn’t tell him what he would lose if they stayed together. She honestly believed she was making the best decision for him, no matter that it broke her heart.

As soon as Bellini is back in snowy Christmas-loving Kalulell, she’s managing Lady Whiskey’s, taking care of her blunt-speaking mother, planning the hilarious burlesque show, and handling Logan, who apparently has never forgotten her, either.

Protective, romantic, charming, he is the same as always: Irresistible. Even Mrs. Claus’s heart would be atwitter.

But their reality has not changed, and Bellini knows they still can’t be together unless a Christmas miracle is around the corner…

Happy Holidays, Merry Christmas, I so hope you enjoy Bellini’s Christmas Burlesque Show!

Cathy