It’s Summer Time

It’s summertime!

As a teacher, my life runs on cycles. Fall—start of school. Winter break. Semester change. Spring break. SUMMER! I look forward to each stage as they all move me forward. And well, truth be told, I don’t know anything different as I’ve been in the cycle of education since I was five, which OH MY GOD is almost 50 years. I feel sick—and, simultaneously grateful. Interesting dichotomy.

The last two months have been busy! This is not an understatement. The end of the school year offers the annual chaos of organizing a studio of ten months of creativity from 100 teens, exams, evaluations, and my best effort to help every teen end the year successfully—passing their art and English class. That’s the teaching life.

In the writing life, we had the book launch of Shepherd’s Call, and book signings. We attended street fairs, and are consistently busy with the packaging of lots of books to send to readers. I’m grateful for this too. These tasks are not small endeavors. When confronted with a lot of work and epic to-do lists I always take a breath and then, like a soldier of doing I say “challenge accepted.”

Until July, I’ve balanced teaching, writing, and life stuff (friends, family, home, etc.), but now, I can shift gears and drop teaching for a while. This thrills me immensely. See ya institute of education—.

But it’s not all rest! Even though it’s my holiday, I plan to be more productive and work on  Wolfe’s Blood, the last book in the Shepherd and Wolfe Mystery series.

These lovely, warm, long days of summer give me a productive edge—more so than winter. I’m not sure why exactly—perhaps I’m more relaxed or simply have more time on my hands. Either way, I look forward to the extra freedom to write.

So if you see me at the beach, or sitting at a local picnic bench, or in a coffee shop with my iPad, you’ll know that I’m hard at work. And if I see you at the beach, or campsite hopefully, you’ll have one of our books in your sunscreen-lotioned hands, enjoying summertime as much as I.

As always, thank you for reading lovelies.