Lissa Matthews's Blog, page 2

Spring Forward

I’m currently sitting on my back porch. The sun is out, the sky is as clear as it could possibly be, the temperature is just barely 70, and it’s so so so quiet.

I try to sit outside as often as possible spring through autumn. In the middle of summer that amounts to a few minutes in the morning and a few minutes in the evenings because once the sun is up, it’s like hell here in the South.

The trees are turning green, a few things are starting to bloom, and the mountains are calling in the distan...

It’s March…WTF?!?

I look around and wonder where the hell the first part of the year went… What have I done? What do I have to show for the first 70 days? I had such grand plans for 2024 and though it’s not anywhere near over, I’m struggling to find my way and dig myself out of the hole I’m in.

I have a lot of books I want to write. I have a few I’d like to revise. I have a new pen name I’d like to get off the ground. And I have Ella Claire that I’d like to add more titles to. Plus…so much other stuff. I’m not g...

It’s Racing Season…

…And I’m a romance author who writes about racing.

I haven’t been too interested in NASCAR the last couple of seasons, but for some reason, I’m kind of excited about this one. Maybe it’s because I’m working on (yes, I’m still working on) Checkered Curves (Stick Shift Motorsports, Book 3) and have another racing series planned that I’ve started writing and have a lot of ideas for other stories and spin-offs in my fictional sports world. I hope that’s it. I’ve missed watching races and being inter...

Rolex 24 at Daytona

It’s that time of year. Racing season.

For me, it all starts on the last weekend of January with the Rolex 24. It’s a 24 hour race that begins this afternoon and ends tomorrow afternoon. It’s sports cars, not stock cars or Indy cars. It’s an endurance race. It’s run in teams with multiple drivers, each one taking turns for a set or certain number of hours throughout the course of the 24 hour period. It’s part of the IMSA series (International Motor Sports Association). They run a much shorter r...

3 Days After Christmas…

The Billionaire of Gumdrop Valley is Available. Again.

I was cleaning up my month-at-a-glance dry erase calendar for January and working on Checkered Curves which will be turned in on January 1st to Amazon for release on the 5th (a week later than originally planned) and realizing that I’ve come a long way since the beginning of the year.

I had a few books re-covered and released them wide. (A Hunky Holiday, Slide Down on Me, Break Me)

I revised and re-released books one and two in two differen...

4 Days Before Christmas…

It’s just been one of those Decembers.

I was supposed to have a book out already. And it was out. For about 3 minutes. I took it down and have been revising it. Again. I was unhappy with it. It was awful. No matter what I did, I couldn’t figure out how to fix it, how to make it better, so rather than leave it up, I unpublished it and have been revising and rewriting it. It’ll be out before Christmas…

This is a part of writing that’s frustrating. Some stories flow with seemingly zero effort. Othe...

10 Days Before Christmas…

Technically, this happened about 12 days before Christmas, but the sake of this post, ya know… I made some Chocolate Dipped Gingerbread Biscotti. (The recipe came from Southern Living and can be found Here!) I didn’t plate it all pretty for you, but that doesn’t take anything away from how delicious they were!

I haven’t gotten into the holiday baking spirit in a long time. Actually, I haven’t been in the holiday spirit in a long time. I used to love it all, but something shifted and changed and...

10K Writing Weekends

I have some big writing goals to accomplish this year and I think it’s time to revive my 10K Weekends writing challenges.

Starting on Thursday at 7am and ending on Sunday at 7pm. Times are Eastern time.

10,000 words.

If you break it down and want/need a word count goal each of the 4 days, it’s 2500 words a day.

Of course, you don’t have to do it like that. Do it anyway you want to do it so long as you reach 10,000 words by Sunday at 7pm. For me, I’ll be doing sprints to help me get there. I won...

FSU WON!

It’s been a long time coming! And I am so proud of how this team has grown and changed and developed and that our coach, Mike Norvell has been able to recruit and pull from the transfer portal to craft and create a team that works after so many years of teams not working, only parts of them working.

We had a big, marquee game against LSU last night and we fucking won! (sure, they almost won because our defensive secondary fell apart and left everything wide open and there was that fumble at that...

I Won Camp NaNoWriMo!

The image isn’t very good, but really, it’s only posted as verification.

And I did win on Saturday afternoon. (Cue the balloons and cake and cheers!)

My writing goal wasn’t very high, but I made some progress on some stories that I wanted to make some progress on. I wanted to get an handle on how a few of my ideas would work, what I would want to do with them, etc… I am pleased with what I learned about these projects.

Writing daily is a hard thing for me. I don’t do well with it. Mainly becaus...