Curtiss Ann Matlock's Blog, page 14
July 17, 2021
Eight Years of Reshaping My Entire Existence
It is eight years since the hot July night that my husband passed from this world, and my existence as I had known it for forty-four years, since the age of seventeen, was shattered. Even now, when I think of it I can’t seem to breath. And yes, even after all this time, there remains a smidge of disbelief. How can the man who was my best friend, my lover, my husband, and yes, at times the father I never had, be gone? How can the life I knew be gone?
It was my friend and fellow writer, Mary An...
January 1, 2021
A Clean Desk for the New Year
Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote: “Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could. Some blunders and absurdities no doubt crept in; forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day; begin it well and serenely and with too high a spirit to be encumbered with your old nonsense.”
That part about ‘no doubt blunders crept in’ makes me laugh. My own life is ripe with daily blunders, no doubt about it. Each day a lesson of forgiveness, letting go, and the inevitable moving on and wi...
November 9, 2020
Book Recommendations
Hello, dear hearts. Are you like me, and get recommendations of books that look quite interesting, excitedly jot them down on the nearest piece of paper, and then promptly lose the paper? Thank goodness, new recommendations are always coming.
If You Dare, by Barbara Meyers. I highly recommend this book to my romance and women’s fiction readers. It grabs from the beginning and does not stop. The story plays like a movie on the screen, in fact the hero remains in my mind after all these weeks. Who...
October 26, 2020
Signs of Life
The dog and I just returned from a week-long camping excursion, almost a thousand miles of road travel to north Alabama mountains and back. As always I was struck by road signs. There are those highway signs that tell us that the bridge ices before the road–a novelty to someone who lives as far south as I do. Then, stretched over the multi-lanes of the highway crossing metropolitan areas, there was the modern digital read-out signs. These urge us to drive safely with our eyes on the road, while ...
April 15, 2020
Keeping On and Sale
What are your heartbreak losses?
In the past days, I have had friends tell me of heartbreaking losses in their lives. One experienced the death of a precious cat, another told of having lost her wedding photos in a flood, and yet another family I know lost a barn and contents to a fire. Many of us at this moment have lost jobs and income, loved ones, abilities, plans and dreams. There is scarcely a day that goes by that we dont have some sort of loss.
Heres is what struck me: Loss is...
April 7, 2020
Quarantine Time Book Sale!
Dear Sweets the Amazon delivery man called me that yesterday. I like it! for my small part in spreading comfort and joy at this time, I offer
4 Matlock Bestsellers On Sale! [image error] Mary In Color .99¢ Amazon / Nook & Apple [image error][image error][image error] $ 1.99 Sweet Dreams at the Goodnight Motel Love in a Small Town The Loves of Ruby DeeIf you enjoy one of my books, please leave a review. If you have left a review of my book, please know that I am sincerely...
February 5, 2020
Beginning Again, Again
[image error]With ears in the wind and hope flying, I work on a final, extensive edit of a novel that I have been editing since last year about this same time. That fact just struck me. Picture eyes rolling. How can time pass so fast? But we all know it does.
I began writing the book back in 2016. I remember it was October. It began as play, something a bit irreverent and silly as I tried to keep my sanity during what would turn into the last years of caring for my dear, slowly-declining mother–and as I...
January 2, 2020
I Chose My Word for 2020–Did You?
[image error]Each year I choose a guiding word, and I know many of you do, too. This year I’ve chosen Humility. I came to this word after an exchange of words with someone. Exchange of words is a more pleasant description than argument, which was what it was. I look back over the year and recall one heated exchange of words on the telephone with a service person about the delivery of my washing machine. In this instance heated exchange of words is a more pleasant description than saying hissy fit.
I went...
December 5, 2019
December Once Again
[image error]“Get ready, ladies. The opening bell rings on the traditional start of the Christmas Season with the dawning of this Friday after Thanksgiving.
It is time to clean the china and polish the silver. Time to wash, dust, vacuum, mop, possibly refinish, both the house and yourself. Drag out the decorations, buy decorations, put up decorations, find and haul out all the wrapping paper, ribbons and tags you bought on sale last year, along with those wonderfully priced Christmas cards, decide that...
November 27, 2019
It’s Pie-Making Day!
My son just telephoned to go over again the dishes I am bringing to the Thanksgiving meal tomorrow, and what he will be making. This year, for the first time, Thanksgiving will be at his house. He informed me of that change a few weeks ago. The mantel is passing to him. I thought I might be sad for this day, after all the years of doing Thanksgiving in my kitchen and house. I did sit blinking for a minute. But then I thought: Does this mean I don’t have to clean up? I think I’m ready for...
