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25 09, 2025

Guest Author Today – Pamela S Thibodeaux

By |2025-09-07T17:04:12-05:00September 25th, 2025|Author Interview, Guest author, Guest blogger|2 Comments

Welcome Pamela S Thibodeaux, my Guest Author Spotlight today. She’s here to tell us about her novel, My Heart Weeps.

Meet Pamela ~ Award-winning author, life coach, and spiritual mentor.

“Inspirational with an Edge!” ™ is her author tagline and also defines her life, her writing, and her coaching style.

~~~~~~

Pamela is sharing with us why she wrote My Heart Weeps.

My beloved passed away in 2009. A couple of years later, while talking with a gentleman whom I’d been seeing, I made the remark, “I feel your love for me in every fiber of my being, and my heart weeps because I’m just not ready for anything more than friendship.” My next comment was, “That sounds like a book title.”

This book took eight years to write, was released on the anniversary of my husband’s death, and is the story of one woman’s journey from grief into new life and parallels mine.

When life takes everything, your world stops. Can a retreat heal the broken lives of two wounded souls?

Melena Rhyker’s world shattered the day her husband died. Lost without the man of her dreams, she digs deep to find a path out of her sorrow. Discovering an artistic retreat, she vows to find a reason to carry on and focus her life in a new direction. Can she heal her own heart and find her new beginning?

Garrett Saunders knows pain. He’s spent most of his life hiding from his past. Regrets and lies haunt him, but he longs to leave them behind and embrace his true self. Will Melena’s efforts to rebuild her life in the face of such grief encourage him to exorcise his own demons of guilt and shame?

Will two hurting people find peace, wholeness, and perhaps love in the heart of Texas?

~~~~~~

~EXCERPT from My Heart Weeps

At 6 p.m., she pulled into the carport, turned off the engine and laid her head on the steering wheel.

“Well, I’m home again. Made it through another agonizing eight hours or so, now to get through another night.”

Gathering every ounce of courage she could summon, she disembarked from her vehicle, retrieved the mail from the box beside the door, and entered the house. She thumbed through the envelopes and advertisements, then laid them on the table and poured a glass of juice. She reached for the bottle of over-the-counter pain reliever and froze.

It would be so easy to end this pain.

Oh, what an enticing thought. Just take a handful of pills and end it all. Would she wake up in heaven? Would Jesus meet her there? Would Jonathan? What about the kids or Mama—would they understand? Or would she destroy them? Where was the faith she claimed to have? Why was it failing her now?

~~~~~~

To see how love and faith conquer all, grab your copy of Pamela Thibodeaux’s second-chance women’s fiction at these retailers:

Amazon: https://amzn.to/4lN4mr4

Other Online Retailers: https://books2read.com/MyHeartWeeps

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DISCLAIMER: I do not read every book/author I host. Please do your book research before you buy.

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18 09, 2025

By |2025-09-10T14:52:02-05:00September 18th, 2025|Guest blogger|0 Comments

Reignite Your Creativity: How to Fuel Personal and Professional Momentum

A Guest Blog by Jenna Sherman

Image: Freepik

You’ve probably felt that flat, uninspired lull where everything feels recycled. The deadlines don’t slow down, but your spark does.

You’ve read the mantras, made the lists, drank the coffee. Still, you can’t shake the sense that your best ideas are stuck behind some invisible wall.

Creativity isn’t a luxury; it’s oxygen for both your breakthroughs and your balance.

To shake the dust off, you don’t need a reinvention—just a few well-placed ignitions.

~Break out of habitual patterns
Routines offer safety, but they rarely spark brilliance. Shake things loose by changing your route, rearranging your workspace, or tackling the first task of the day from an angle you’ve never tried before. Even something as simple as switching coffee shops can make you feel like you’ve got a new set of eyes. Fresh surroundings generate friction—and friction creates the heat you need to make something new.

~Embrace playful improvisation
Creativity thrives when you drop the pressure to be right and instead allow yourself to experiment. Techniques like loose sketching, absurd prompts, or chaotic brainstorming can jolt you out of stagnation. It’s not about the result. It’s about tricking your brain into motion by giving it permission to fail loudly and learn quickly.

~Let quiet reflection fuel ideas
Silence can be productive. After enough external noise, your creative system needs room to metabolize. Instead of brute-forcing the next big idea, lean into low-stimulus space—go analog, pause, notice. That space between inputs, where your brain meanders without a plan, often holds more potential than any list of tactics. Let the silence work on you before you try to work through it.

~Shift career paths
Sometimes creative burnout isn’t a signal to rest—it’s a nudge to redirect. When you step into a different field, especially one that challenges you to think and act in new ways, your brain wakes up again. For those balancing work and personal life, online programs offer a practical way to pivot without hitting pause. Changing your career doesn’t mean abandoning your past—it means repurposing it with intention.

~Let ideas spill like confetti
Creativity isn’t always tidy. Sometimes, it’s a flood of scattered, unfinished thoughts. In those bursts, let go of the urge to prune as you go. Give yourself the license to capture wildly, sloppily, even embarrassingly. Editing comes later—what matters first is getting enough raw material out to work with.

~Use mindfulness to clear mental noise
Mental clutter piles up, especially when your brain is bouncing between unfinished loops. Before you try to brainstorm your way out of the fog, pause. Mindfulness helps clear noise, and what’s left is attention—sharp, useful, and available. A few minutes of focused breathing or sensory check-ins can make the difference between circling and striking. It’s not meditation for show—it’s for oxygen.

~Channel creativity through habit and curiosity
You don’t need to wait for a flash of insight to get back in motion. Momentum builds through rhythm, not lightning bolts. People who generate meaningful ideas on repeat rely on consistency. Curiosity fuels innovation and creativity more reliably than any morning routine ever could.

You don’t need to be someone else to be creative again—you just need to reroute what’s already there. A new setting, a playful riff, a quiet pause, a messy outpouring, a moment of breath, a flicker of curiosity—these aren’t hacks. They’re moves. Use them. Not all at once, not perfectly, but enough to break the seal and let the energy through. Your creativity isn’t gone. It’s just waiting for an invitation back to the surface.

~~~~~~~~~~~

Jenna Sherman is a mom of three (two girls and a boy). She created Parent-Leaders.com to help other parents acquire the skills they need to raise future leaders by providing a collection of valuable, up-to-date, authoritative resources.

Take a minute to visit Jenna Sherman’s blog for helpful tips. Or visit her blogs here:

6 Tips for Balancing a New Baby and New Business

Freelancing for College Students

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11 09, 2025

By |2025-09-11T08:21:01-05:00September 11th, 2025|Holidays, Writer's Life|1 Comment

Today is Patriot Day, the twenty-fourth anniversary of 9-11. The day we pause to honor and remember those who lost their lives.

It’s a bittersweet holiday for too many. One that triggers memories for many of us.

I can describe exactly where I was, what I was doing, and all those feelings stir again.

That morning, I was having a cup of tea and watching the Today show on NBC. Matt Lauer stopped his author interview mid-question, and the screen switched to a commercial break.

When the cameras returned, he and Katie Couric showed a replay of the first plane striking the first tower.

Then I stared in horror as the second plane hit the other tower in real time. I could not believe what I was seeing.

Fear and panic washed through my body. I was convinced our country was under enemy attack. Fighter jets flying overhead outside my Houston home only heightened my concern.

I made frantic calls to warn friends and family. My heart raced until everyone finally made it safely home.

Our nephew’s family lives in Battery Park, close to the World Trade Center. We’d walked over to the Towers for lunch when visiting them in the summer of 2001. Thankfully, he and his family were able to walk through thick clouds filled with debris and escape across the Hudson. His eyewitness account still sends chills down my spine.

As the day progressed and we learned of the attack on the Pentagon and the plane crash in Pennsylvania, the horror and anxiety only increased.

The anniversary of 9-11 stirs my memories every year. I get through the day by remembering how our country came together and supported each other. I’m reminded of Charles R. Swindoll’s words:

“Life is 10% what happens to us and 90% how we react to it.”

Next year, we plan to visit the Museum and Memorial to pay our respects in person.

The original broadcast of the 9-11-2001 Today Show can be seen here.

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8 09, 2025

September Moons

By |2025-09-08T09:22:39-05:00September 8th, 2025|Make Me Think Monday|1 Comment

One of my favorite things about September is the big, bright moons. Seems like you can almost reach out and touch them.

Last night, we had a Corn Moon, named because it coincides with harvesting corn in much of the northern United States.

A Corn Moon symbolizes the time of harvest and gratitude, marking the end of summer and the transition into autumn. It encourages reflection on what has been grown in life, both physically and spiritually, and invites letting go of what no longer serves you.

There was also a total lunar eclipse in the middle of the day. Unfortunately, the moon was below our horizon in the United States, so we missed it.

But parts of Europe, Africa, Australia, Asia, Antarctica, the western Pacific, and the Indian Ocean – around 85% of Earth’s population – were in the eclipse-viewing zone. During a total eclipse, the moon can turn a deep shade of red then it’s called a Blood Moon.

Here’s a Harvest Moon setting above the Statue of Liberty, taken by Nicholas Isabella (@NycStormChaser) on September 10, 2022.

The September 7 Corn Moon looks like a Harvest Moon, though it wasn’t called a harvest moon.

The Harvest Moon – the closest full moon to the autumn equinox – has a reputation for being bigger, brighter, and more yellow than other full moons. It’s not truly bigger, brighter, or more pumpkin-colored than other full moons. It just appears to be.

The reason: our moon normally rises on average 50 minutes later every day as the year moves on. A Harvest Moon rises only 30 minutes later. Those twenty minutes make a difference in how big the moon appears.

The name Harvest likely sprang from the lips of farmers who, in the days before tractor lights, used its light to gather their crops, despite the diminishing daylight hours. Then, as the light faded in the west, the moon would soon rise in the east to illuminate the fields throughout the night.

The recent Corn Moon was the third and final full moon of our Northern Hemisphere summer, which has three full moons between the June 21 solstice and September 22 equinox.

If you missed the Corn Moon, hang on because on October 6-7, a Harvest Moon will appear. Don’t miss that one.

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21 08, 2025

We have a guest author!

By |2025-08-16T09:00:14-05:00August 21st, 2025|Guest author, Guest blogger|2 Comments

Today, we welcome my writer friend from France.  J. Arlene Culiner is here to talk about story settings and her novel, The Unpredictable Colors of Love

Meet Ms. Culiner ~ Writer, social critical artist, and impenitent teller of tall tales

Arlene was born in New York and raised in Toronto. She has crossed much of Europe on foot, has lived in a mud house on the Great Hungarian Plain, in a Bavarian castle, a Turkish cave dwelling, a haunted house on the English moors, and a Dutch canal. She now resides in a 400-year-old former inn in a French village of no interest where, much to local dismay, she protects spiders, snakes, and weeds. Observing people in cafes, in their homes, on trains, or in the streets, she eavesdrops on all private conversations and delights in hearing any nasty, funny, ridiculous, sad, romantic, or boastful story. And when she can’t uncover really salacious gossip, she makes it up.

Author Websites http://www.j-arleneculiner.com

Author links: https://linktr.ee/j.arleneculiner

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Thank you, Judythe, for inviting me to be on your blog and present The Unpredictable Colors of Love.

I love setting my romances in the out-of-the-way places I’ve lived. The three books in my Blake’s Folly Romance series take place in a Nevada semi-ghost town where roads are unpaved ruts, and the doors of abandoned shacks slap in the endless wind. Felicity’s Power is set in an isolated cove on the California coast, and in my romantic suspense, The Turkish Affair, I present an archaeological site in central Turkey where theft is rife and the police are untrustworthy.

Yet, somehow, I’ve avoided writing about the country where I now live: France. Is it because the France portrayed in so many romances is nothing like the real country? Because people want fantasy more than reality? They want cafés where people engage in deep philosophical conversations and beret-wearing men with baguettes under their arm pass by on creaking bicycles.

In that mythical France, food is always wonderful, and Art is important to all.

In reality, people in cafés talk about football, television, or social media. Those beret men are long gone, and food is often — like elsewhere — created industrially, then frozen and shipped to restaurants where it’s heated up in a microwave oven. As for Art…

Fine. What would happen if I wrote a romance set in an artist’s retreat in the real France? If I describe what is actually going on in the countryside, add in a château that, like so many, was almost doomed to disappear?

If I do all that, would it still be a good setting for a romance?

Of course, it would. Thus: The Unpredictable Colors of Love,

Callie Patterson, an unsuccessful artist, hopes that a relationship with the irresistible and magnetic Nicholas Trier will pave the way to success. She follows him to France, where, in a magnificent château, he holds his artists’ retreats. But famous men surround themselves with hangers-on and demand complete loyalty.

Callie soon finds herself far more attracted to Michel Alexandre, the estate gardener, who loves and protects trees and every living creature. But if she wants to make a name for herself, she’ll have to choose Nicholas and his world.

Except nothing is quite the way it seems, and perhaps success isn’t the most important thing, after all.

~~~~~~

Excerpt from The Unpredictable Colors of Love

Callie dropped the backpack filled with art supplies and, uninvited, sat down on the soggy ground not far from where Michel was digging. She didn’t even own a houseplant, but a banal conversation about twigs and saplings was what she craved at the moment. “Okay, tell me why there isn’t a hedge here now.”
“Because, years ago, the farmer ripped out all the hedges to have larger fields for his agricultural machinery. Now we’re bringing back a balanced environment.”
“You’re not planning to replace every single hedge on your own, are you?”
“Of course not,” he scoffed. Picking up a small spade, he loosened another patch of earth. “There are thousands of trees and shrubs to replant, and that would be an impossible task for only one person.” With gentle fingers, he spread the delicate roots of a tiny shrub, tucked it into place in the little hole, then tamped down the moist soil with his palm. Reached for another, and then another.
She watched silently as he planted, and strangely enough, it was almost a sensual sight. His hands were broad, strong, and deeply tanned from working outdoors; his long fingers were beautifully shaped. And under that denim shirt of his, there was the alluring suggestion of tight sinew and warm, fragrant skin. Did she still find him bear-like? No, not exactly. Something more, something…
           “A penny for your thoughts.” Michel was watching her with those disconcerting eyes of his, very dark, with heavy lids and thick lashes.
She felt the blush as it traveled upward, flooding her neck, her face. He hadn’t caught what she had been thinking, had he? Perhaps he had. Surely, he’d seen how her gaze had slipped over his hands, his arms, his chest, and shoulders. How incredibly humiliating! What vaguely plausible answer could she give? “Oh…just remembering something.”
“Ah.” Eyebrows raised in overt amusement, he smirked—rather cockily—then went back to working on the next hole, the next shrub.

BUY LINKS:

https://www.amazon.com/Unpredictable-Colors-Love-Arlene-Culiner-ebook/dp/B0DCZWF836

https://books2read.com/TheUnpredictableColorsOfLove

Book Trailer: https://youtu.be/27nE-cCHNqM

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12 08, 2025

Fall’s Coming!

By |2025-08-11T15:21:04-05:00August 12th, 2025|A Writer's Life|1 Comment

August 2025 ends soon. Summer’s over, and school has started. I saw the yellow buses on the road this morning.

It’s been a hot summer. I’m more than ready. Officially, September 1 marks the beginning of the meteorological fall season, and the autumnal equinox occurs on September 22, 2025. Our days will be shorter and cooler.

Every year at the end of August, this one-time schoolteacher becomes a little nostalgic. Not that I’d like to be back teaching in a classroom again. I’m quite content to be home writing my stories and publishing books.

Once the back-to-school chatter begins, I can’t stop a part of me from missing the excitement of setting up my classroom and seeing the eager young faces on the first day of school.

I swallow the lump of memories in my throat whenever I spot a school bus and pause to send up a prayer for a “really good year” for the bus driver, the kids, and the teacher waiting in their classroom.

Back-to-school this year meant two great-grandchildren headed off to big school. One to Pre-K and the other to Kindergarten. Seems only yesterday I watched their mother, my granddaughter, go off to big school.

The end of August signals more than back to school, though. It’s the freshness of new beginnings.

A time of changes.

A mid-year New Year’s Day.

I’m looking forward to the new season. What about you?

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25 06, 2025

Word Magic

By |2025-06-12T07:43:12-05:00June 25th, 2025|#Wednesdaythoughts, Wednesday Words of Wisdom, Writing Craft|1 Comment

Webster defines word magic as magic involving the use of words in a manner determined by a belief that the very act of uttering a word summons or directly affects the person or thing that the word refers to.

Christopher Vogler (one of my very favorite writing teachers) describes word magic like this:

“Many cultures believed the letters of their alphabets were far more than just symbols for communication, recording transactions, or recalling history. They believed letters were powerful, magical symbols that could be used to cast spells and predict the future. The Norse runes and the Hebrew alphabet are simple letters for spelling words, but also deep symbols of cosmic significance.”

Chris goes further to say, “When you spell a word correctly, you are in effect casting a spell, charging these abstract, arbitrary symbols with meaning and power.”

I’m not sure I have to worry about any words I write casting spells. AI spell-checker can’t even come up with choices for what I’ve typed most of the time.

I do believe, however, that once the words form into sentences and sentences into paragraphs, another magic occurs – story magic. Vogler calls it The Hero’s Journey, a mystical path that readers sense on some level. Storytellers have the incredible ability to cast a spell and transport readers into an imaginary world with their word pictures. Don’t you feel a sense of magic when you read or hear some stories?

But there’s also another aspect of word magic, too.

Consider the adage, “Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words can never harm me.” As much as we might want or wish otherwise, the truth is that words do have the power to hurt or heal us.

Whenever we speak, we should choose words carefully. And, for sure, watch what we post on social media.

Consider this quote from Pearl Strachan Hurd, a British politician in the 1930s whose sole legacy is this quote, which emphasizes the destructive power language can have.

Atom bombs conjure images of death, violence, and war. Not a pretty picture at all.

As writers and storytellers, like the shamans or medicine men and women of ancient cultures, we should recognize the incredible power we have with our words.

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