You ever feel like you’re running full force buy only going around in circles?

Give away winner, new giveaway, what I am reading, and another sneak peek of Gladwynn Grant Gets Her Footing

Do you ever feel like you are running full force but only going around and around in circles?

If you haven’t, well, let me tell you that I am doing that right now and it’s driving me crazy.

I’m having the worst time focusing these days, which is ironic since I chose “focus” as my word of the year this year. I chose it because I know I need to focus on Christ and my relationship with him more but also because I have a huge issue with focusing on one thing at a time.

Hopefully I’ll accomplish that goal at some point. For now, though, you wouldn’t even believe how long it has taken me to start and then finish this newsletter. Part of that reason was because of a snafu with Substack.

Today I have a lot on tap for you.

First, I thought I’d share some books I’ve been reading, a bit about what we’ve been doing lately, and then I want to give you a sneak peek of Gladwynn Grant Gets Her Footing and share with you some recent photos of the lilacs in our backyard.

What I’ve Been Reading

The past couple of months I have been writing more than I have been reading, but I have read a few books.

Among those have been a Hamish MacBeth story by M.C. Beaton – Death of a Poisoned Pen. I am not a huge fan of Beaton’s writing, or at least her later writing, but the story was fairly good – if not a little weird at times.

 I don’t know if I would recommend it to everyone, but if you enjoy quirky characters and strange mysteries, you might like this one.

My son and I are reading Fellowship of the Ring by J.R.R. Tolkien for his English and hope to finish it by the end of the school year, which is in four weeks. We are both enjoying it but there is a lot of writing about being lost in the forest in the beginning which was a bit tedious to me. Now that I am toward the end of the book, I am having a hard time putting it down.

He and I read The Hobbit a couple of years ago, also for school.

In case I haven’t mentioned it before, I am a homeschooling parent, so that’s what I mean when I say we are reading something for school.

Have you ever read J.R.R. Tolkien?

Last night I finished reading a mystery by Amanda Flower called Flowers and Foul Play. It is part of her Magical Garden Mystery series.

In case you are curious about it, here is a description:

Fiona Knox lost her fiancé and her flower shop—but when she flies to Scotland to inherit her godfather’s cottage and possibly magical walled garden, she may lose her life as well when she’s swept into a murder investigation.

Florist Fiona Knox’s life isn’t smelling so sweet these days. Her fiancé left her for their cake decorator. Then, her flower shop wilted after a chain florist opened next door. So when her godfather, Ian MacCallister, leaves her a cottage in Scotland, Fiona jumps on the next plane to Edinburgh. Ian, after all, is the one who taught her to love flowers. But when Ian’s elderly caretaker Hamish MacGregor shows her to the cottage upon her arrival, she finds the once resplendent grounds of Duncreigan in a dreadful shambles—with a dead body in the garden.

Minutes into her arrival, Fiona is already being questioned by the handsome Chief Inspector Neil Craig and getting her passport seized. But it’s Craig’s fixation on Uncle Ian’s loyal caretaker, Hamish, as a prime suspect, that really makes her worried. As Fiona strolls the town, she quickly realizes there are a whole bouquet of suspects much more likely to have killed Alastair Croft, the dead lawyer who seems to have had more enemies than friends.

Now it’s up to Fiona to clear Hamish’s name before it’s too late in Flowers and Foul Play, USA Today bestselling author Amanda Flower’s spellbinding first Magic Garden mystery.

This is my first book by her, and I enjoyed it. It was simple, fun, and unique.

Giveaway Winner

Last week I offered a giveaway of a book by Aubrey Taylor. Katja is the winner of the book. Congratulations Katja!

New Giveaway

This week I want to offer a new giveaway. This giveaway will be open for the next two weeks.

The giveaway is for an ebook copy of Tammy L. Gray’s Love and A Little White Lie.

Comment here that you’d be interested in the book and winning a copy.

Would you like to know what it’s about?

Description:

There's a lot of irony in hitting rock bottom

After a heartbreak leaves her reeling, January Sanders is open to anything--including moving into a cabin on her aunt's wedding-venue property and accepting a temporary position at her aunt's church despite being a lifelong skeptic of faith. Choosing to keep her doubts to herself, she's determined to give her all to supporting Grace Community's overworked staff while helping herself move on.

What she doesn't count on is meeting the church's handsome and charming guitarist. It's a match set for disaster, and yet January has no ability to stay away, even if it means pretending to have faith in a God she doesn't believe in.

Only this time, keeping her secret isn't as easy as she thought it would be. Especially when she's constantly running into her aunt's landscape architect, who seems to know everything about her past-and-present sins and makes no apologies about pushing her to deal with feelings she'd rather keep buried.

Torn between two worlds that can't coexist, can January find the healing that's eluded her, or will her resistance to the truth ruin any chance of happiness?

A Sneak Peek of Gladwynn Grant Gets Her Footing

I can’t believe I’m a month closer to all of my readers being able to officially meet Gladwynn Grant. The book releases July 18. Today I thought I’d offer a small excerpt between Gladwynn and her grandmother, Lucinda.

“When the sermon was over, she stood with Lucinda, realizing quickly that getting out of the church was going to take a long time. They were stopped every few seconds by someone who wanted to hug Lucinda or tell her about their new grandchild or update her on how a family member they’d been praying for was doing. Each time they were stopped, Lucinda would introduce Gladwynn, which required smiling and a level of extrovert behavior Gladwynn was not accustomed to.

There was something much different about forcing herself to talk to someone to gather information from them for a story than talking to someone for no other reason than chit-chatting. The one she got paid for and could push herself through. The other was excruciatingly uncomfortable and made her want to run home and bury herself under a quilt.

She pushed through for the sake of Lucinda, though, imagining that running screaming from the sanctuary would definitely create a scene that wouldn’t be easy for either of their reputations to recover from.

Half an hour later the warm sun was her reward for her resilience. Standing on the top step outside the church, she breathed in deeply and enjoyed the warmth for a brief second until her brain kicked into gear and alerted her that the air was still cold and stinging any skin exposed, especially her cheeks.

Lucinda leaned close to her, pulling on a pair of gloves. “I hope you don’t mind, but I invited Pastor Callahan over for lunch today.”

Gladwynn looked over her shoulder, confused. “When? While we were in there? I never saw you talk to him.”

Lucinda started down the steps. “I asked him when you rushed off to the bathroom. You know, the moment social barometer got too high and you were about to burst from having to be friendly for so long.”

Her grandmother really did know her better than almost anyone.

“That meter is still a bit full,” she said as she walked down the steps. “I hope I can muster up some more outgoing personality this afternoon.”

Lucinda patted her on the back. “Oh, you’ll be fine. Just pretend you’re interviewing him for the paper.”

Our lilacs before the freeze hit them

I can’t even believe I am writing that our lilacs were damaged in a freeze the other night in May, but I am. I took a ton of photographs of our lilacs over the last couple of weeks, especially last week, right before temperatures dropped to below freezing over night.

I do not enjoy the heat at all, but I am not a fan of freezing temperatures when it should be warm either!

A quote I read this week that I liked and could relate to:

“There is nothing that can replace the absence of someone dear to us, and one should not even attempt to do so. One must simply hold out and endure it. At first, that sounds very hard, but at the same time, it is also a great comfort. For to the extent, the emptiness truly remains unfilled one remains connected to the other person through it. It is wrong to say that God fills the emptiness. God in no way fills it but much more leaves it precisely unfilled and thus helps us preserve -- even in pain -- the authentic relationship. Furthermore, the more beautiful and full the remembrances, the more difficult the separation. But gratitude transforms the torment of memory into silent joy. One bears what was lovely in the past not as a thorn but as a precious gift deep within, a hidden treasure of which one can always be certain.”
― Dietrich Bonhoeffer

If you’d like to keep up on my writing more than on this newsletter site, you can follow my blog at www.lisahoweler.com.

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Thank you for reading along and I hope you’ll comment and let me know how you are doing and what you are reading these days!