Happy December

We’re babysitting a friend’s little Pomeranian today. Barnaby is so jealous. Gigi, the Pomeranian, has a stroller and gets special medicine. We put out a little plate of treats to entice her to be cooperative when I stuck the syringe in her mouth and squirted the nasty medicine in, but Barnaby ate the treats. Gigi didn’t seem to mind. She hid inside her blankie in the stroller and went back to sleep. I think Barnaby is suffering from only child-itis.

Meanwhile, we’ve decorated the living room for the holidays and again, Barnaby, being a rascal, keeps jumping up on our coffee table and running off with the holiday gnome. He taunts me with it just out of range and then runs to his hiding place behind my recumbent bike (a huge affair) where no one can reach him. The gnome truly needs a holiday!

We’re keeping up a steady stream of little holiday events: friends for lunch, or afternoon tea, and an event here and there thanks to Sisters in Crime. I’m practicing standing up more in the kitchen so I can bake and not depend on Diana (my daughter) to do so much. I have to thank my Physical Therapist a lot. She warns me not to get too silly and still have a chair nearby and I do. But getting my hands into dough is such holiday fun. I don’t want to miss it.

I finished writing my novel, but have to edit it now. I thought the writing was hard, but editing is super hard. I read the pages over and over again and find little mistakes here and there. Then I have to keep myself from writing it all over again. The next step after editing is giving it to some folks who claim they will not read it as friends, but as understanding critics and will mark it up. My beta readers sound very enthusiastic so I expect oodles of red. Once that’s corrected, there are the query letters. It’s quite a process.

The website is changing for the new year. We’ll still have the same site address, but our host will be different so the site will look changed. I’m excited. Change is good. It reinvigorates you and makes it all new again.

I hope to see you on the 18th with our P.D. James book Mistletoe Murders. If not in December, then I hope to see you in January on the 22nd when we have Sherry Ickes talk to us about her series: Slice of Life Mystery Series about a cake decorator, and the Becky and Rufus Cross Country Series about a cross country trucking team. These are available on Amazon and in the library. A few of them are free on Kindle.

Happy holidays to you all! Thank you for making The Cozy Mystery Book Club something to look forward to each month. I hope that this December is full of lights, delicious food, and making merry!