M.E. Tudor's Blog: Upcoming Event!, page 2

Tracy Chapman

I haven't gotten much done with my books this month. My life is still a chaotic mess, but I've been reading and listening to music more than I have in a while. I was so thrilled to see Tracy Chapman perform her classic song "Fast Car" with Luke Combs, who has made it a hit for himself. I had hoped they duet would happen after the song became so popular again and it was an amazing performance. 
Tracy is another songstress who touches my heart a lot when I'm thinking about the changes going on in my life. In fact, during previous changes when I was first coming to terms with my lesbianism, I was listening to Tracy's CDs "Telling Stories" and "New Beginning."
I feel that my life is headed for a new beginning and hopefully that will mean more telling stories for me. 

I'm still plugging along on my next YA lesbian romance, but it's been slow going. But, I have been reading and I would highly recommend this book by fellow lesbian fiction writer, KC Luck.

I'm also working with The Curve Foundation doing some archive work for them under my real name. It's been really interesting reading Curve magazines issues that I'd not gotten to see. The Curve Foundation is trying to help lesbian visibility and awareness around the world. If you get a chance check out there website. 
I'm also helping promote Lesbian Visibility Week, which is April 22-28th this year. I plan to make at least one of my books free during that week. 
That's all I have for now. Stay safe. Peace and blessings. 

 

Change

 

114341264 © Andranik Hakobyan | Dreamstime.com

Welcome to a new year, my friends. I am very happy to see 2023 in the rearview mirror. 2023 was a lot of things for me. I learned a lot about myself, and I'm not happy with who I have become. I have become a very unhappy and angry person. Part of that is because I feel that my life has been spiraling out of my control for a long time. Taking control meant making major changes that I have been afraid of making. But sometimes, you have to make painful changes for your mental health and happiness, and that's what I'm doing. 

I dug out my Melissa Etheridge CD Your Little Secret , and I've been listening to four of the songs from it on replay for the past few weeks. Those songs are: I Could Have Been You, Shriner's Park, Change, and This War Is Over. 

Change, in particular, speaks very strongly of where my life is right now. The lyrics that strike me the hardest are: "And so it goes, this, too, shall pass away. Cuts so strange. The only thing that stays the same is change."

The other Melissa Etheridge CD that I'm wearing out right now is Breakdown. It really speaks of how my life has been for the past several months, and I have had several breakdowns of my own. 

Changes are coming in the near future, and I am praying that they will make my life better. If all goes well, I will be able to spend more time focusing on my writing and get some new material out for my readers.

If you are experiencing hard times and going through changes, I hope you will find someone to talk to. I've enlisted the help of a therapist because I really needed someone who wasn't involved in my life to be able to give me their perspective on what needs to be done to make me happier. 

Okay, enough of that. What good has been going on? Well, besides rediscovering my love for Melissa Etheridge, I'm involved with The Curve Foundation's plans to make Lesbian Visibility Week in April very visible. I had not heard of this week of celebrating lesbians until I started working as the Archivist in Residence for The Curve Foundation. I'm very excited about helping more people find out about this week long celebration and hopefully get some of my local community involved. 

The Archivist in Residence job is as a volunteer, and it's been really interesting. I'm going through back issues of Curve Magazine and selecting specific articles to be cataloged so they are easier to find by people searching the archive of the magazine. If you are interested in perusing the back issues of Curve magazine, which go all the way back to 1991, check out this link to the archive.

In other news, all of my ebooks are currently 99 cents. I've taken The Wrong Place At The Right Time

down from the Smashwords platform so that I can make it available on Kindle Unlimited. My plan is to make it a box set with Judge Not
and The Perfect Proposal . 
I'm going to sign off for today. Sending prayers of joy and happiness to everyone reading this. 

It's NaNoWriMo Season

Today is the beginning of NaNoWriMo 2023, and I've decided to work on a new YA romance this year. It has been almost two years since I published a new book! I can't believe how time has gotten away from me, but I've started about five new projects in this time period, so my goal for 2024 is to finish at least three of them, including the YA romance I'm about to start. 
I had been torn about finishing a book I started during Camp NaNoWriMo in April or starting a new story. The story I started in April may not have 50,000 words left, but if I finish it next month, I can get it out to readers before the end of the year. Yes, I realize that is an overly ambitious goal, and that's why I decided to work on a new story for NaNoWriMo and start editing the book I started in April. 

Yesterday was Halloween, and it was my partner's birthday. She turned 65 yesterday, and I adore her. This year has been a wild ride, and I'm learning to handle the ups and downs better. The fact that we've been together for almost 24 years just amazes me. I can't believe she continues to put up with me. 

The one goal I have accomplished is getting most of my books on I Heart Sapphfic's bookfinder page. Hopefully, more people will find my books, and I'll get some new fans. I want to get into I Heart Sapphfic's 2024 reading challenge, but I may be too late. 

I really appreciate all the fans and readers who are still hanging with me. The past two years have been very challenging. I had brain surgery in March 2022, and I've recovered pretty well. I retired from my job at the library in April 2022, only to return part-time in July 2023. My house has filled up with more people, including my granddaughter's boyfriend, Joe, and my new great-grandson, Angel.  Both of my daughters' lives imploded within the same week back in June, and they are still picking up the pieces. and I've been involved with a lot of that, including taking in my oldest daughter, Jessica's cat, Jinx, and three of her kittens.

While all of this craziness is a perfect excuse for not writing, the bottom line is that I've been depressed and unmotivated, but the spark is coming back. I'm going to blame a little of my issues on the planets. Pluto and Saturn aren't in retrograde anymore, which I didn't know was a thing that could affect your life so much, but something I've been learning about. I've always been into astrology, but I've become even more so this year since just these two planets, which were in retrograde for a good portion of the years seem to have had a huge effect on my life. 

I'm also getting back into cooking, which used to be one of my passions. My daughter, Michelle, and I share this passion. She is also working on becoming an excellent gardener. She grew some wonderful tomatoes this year and ended up with a ton of green tomatoes left over, so I found a recipe for green tomato soup that turned out really great. 

Even though I haven't been writing much, I have been reading. My friend and the director of our library, Court Stevens, has a new book coming out next week. I read it on Netgalley, and I'm going to get my signed copy on November 12th. The book Last Girl Breathing is an excellent YA thriller/mystery. I highly recommend this book. 


I also read Heart Finds by Jaime Berry. This is a wonderful juvenile fiction story about a young girl trying to help her grandfather. 
My queer fiction reads were Gwen and Art Are Not in Love by Lex Croucher and Queen's Ransom: A Fog City Novel by Layne Reyne. I really enjoyed both of these books, and I have to warn you about Queen's Ransom. It's part of a queer series that will get you hooked. 


That sums up what I've been up to and what I hope to do. My other big goal is to update my website www.metudor.com. I've got a lot of work ahead of me, so I'm going to get to it. Until next time, I wish you peace and love. 

A Jumbled Mess

 224183155 © National Library Scotland | Dreamstime.com

The above picture is from air raid damage done at one of the hospitals of the St. John's Ambulance Association during one of the World Wars. This picture is a pretty good reflection of the way my life looks right now. One big jumbled mess. I just posted the post I wrote in Colorado at the end of May. I wrote that post before my life, and my daughters' lives imploded. 
I have not written more than a few pages since the first part of June because life has been so screwed up. I haven't been able to sit down for more than a few minutes at a time to work on my writing business. I'm completely unfocused and having a really hard time cleaning up the mess that my life has become. Things are slowly starting to calm down, and I'm praying that by the end of August, I will be able to sit down and finish one of the two stories I've been toggling back and forth between and get something published this year. 
I have decided that I'm going to discontinue my newsletter. It only goes out to about 30 people, and as a general rule, only one or two people ever open it. I don't want to spend time away from writing to put effort into something that is not serving me or my readers. 
Please keep my family in your prayers as we are working through the rubble of our lives. No one has died, thank God, but relationships have been in turmoil, and one ended. There's been a lot of shuffling around regarding who is living where and how the houses are set up. But the dust is starting to settle. I'm hoping by next week, when the grandkids go back to school, that will help get things back into a routine so I can work on my writing. I hope my readers don't give up on me. I still have lots of stories to tell. I've just got to get my life situated in a way that will allow me to get the stories written and out to the public. 

Hello from Colorado

I'm writing this post from beautiful Elk Meadows, a small community in the mountains above Ridgway, Colorado. This picture is the view from the house my daughter is renting for the week. She comes to Colorado every summer to get her sons, who live with their father in Montrose, Colorado. She usually stays for a week and visits with her cousin who lives here in Ridgway. I come with her just about every summer, or at least every other summer. 

I lived in Elk Meadows and Ridgway with my ex-husband back in the 1990s, when my girls were still little. It's a beautiful small town. Paradise really. But, like the Eagles say in their song The Last Resort, "Call someplace paradise, kiss it goodbye." The town is getting bigger, and the cost of living here has gotten out of reach for a lot of people who have lived here their whole lives. It's really quite sad. I miss seeing this view every day, but I wouldn't trade it for my Kentucky home, where the love of my life, Rosa, is from and will never leave. Plus, I'm a big prejudiced toward the beauty of Kentucky and its green rolling hills. 

In writing news, I finished the first draft of my WIP before I left Kentucky, and I will start on the second draft when I get home. I'm making notes and doing some editing on Ridgway Moon, the sequel to Learning to Love Again. I'm hoping to start loading episodes on Kindle Vella soon. I will also be putting Suddenly's new cover on Amazon and uploading the edited manuscript. The ebook version of Suddenly will include the first three episodes of College Hill, the sequel to Suddenly. 

Already May

 

This is a picture from my backyard from a few days ago. I love how green everything is. You can't see them, but honeysuckle vines are blooming on the back fence row. They aren't as fragrant this year, which is a bummer, but they are still pretty. 
Last month I mentioned my friend who had been diagnosed with dementia. I wanted to let you all know that she is in a very nice memory care assisted living facility and doing very well. Her doctors have found a medication combination that keeps her from having illusions and feeling very good. That has been super good news for everyone who cares about her.
On a sad note, a sweet lady who was my friend and the aunt of two of my grandchildren died of liver cirrhosis. We knew she was having health issues, but no one had any idea how bad things were. She went to live with her youngest brother, the boyfriend of my youngest daughter, and the father of my youngest granddaughter. Within a few days of moving in with them, my friend went to the hospital because of problems caused by her cirrhosis. The doctors told her that if she drank any alcohol again, she would die very soon. She went home and drank more. Personally, I think it was an act of suicide on her part. She knew what would happen and chose the drink anyway. Her life had become a sad mess, and I truly believe she decided she had nothing to live for. Thankfully, we all had a few more days with her, and she passed peacefully in my daughter's arms. She had just turned 49. It's so sad how life deals some people with the most difficult cards. She will be very missed.
So many reminders of the need to appreciate every day.

In happier news, I have formatted the new edition of Suddenly for ebook and print. The new edition of the ebook will have a new cover and will include the first three episodes of my Kindle Vella, College Hill: Season One, which follows my main characters, Jamie Edwards and PJ Thomas, from Suddenly through their first semester of college. These episodes are free on Kindle Vella, but I am also formatting them as a free gift for people who have read Suddenly in the past and follow me on my social media. 

I Heart Sapphfic is going to have another sale May 25-29. I will put the new edition of Suddenly in the sale for 99 cents. If you have not had a chance to read this very first book of mine, I hope you'll snap it up. It will also be available on Kindle Unlimited.

I will not be in town during the sale. I'm going to Colorado again with my youngest daughter to get two of her sons, who live with their father in Montrose. While there, I plan to take lots of pictures and develop ideas for new stories based on my favorite area of Ridway and Ouray. My books Avalance of Love and Learning to Love Again take place in Colorado. I'm going to put them in the I Heart Sapphfic sale as well. 

I hope all of you are enjoying the spring weather or fall if you're in the southern hemisphere. For those of you in the U. S., I hope you all have a happy and safe Memorial Day. 

April Showers And Spring Flowers

 

Happy April. I hope your month is starting off well. I'm a little sad this week, I had to cut down my lilac bush last year, and I'm really missing it. This time of the year, I usually have a bunch of them in the house, filling it with their lovely fragrance. I have two new bushes, and I'm hoping they will bloom by next spring and that our weed bushes won't take them over. That's what happened to my other lilac bush. I don't know what the weed bush is called, and I guess I should look it up since it's popping up all over our property. It's very invasive and took over my lilac bush despite me cutting the weed bush down several times. But my ornamental cherry trees are blooming, and their white petals are falling all over the yard giving it a pretty mixture of green and white with the occasional yellow dandelion poking through. 

Anyone who has read my books knows that I use a lot of references to nature. I love being outside. I love trees and flowers. I like for my characters to have strong affinities for nature. 

This spring has brought some very unusual weather for some places in the U. S., but here in Kentucky, we're having a pretty typical spring weather pattern. Each week has a few days of rain and a few days of sunshine. Yesterday it was 85℉, which is hot for this time of the year, but today it's rainy and only going to get up to 53℉, which is more like the correct temperature for this time of the year. 

This year has been a mixed bag already for family life and friends. My youngest grandson was diagnosed with cystic fibrosis at age nine. This is something usually discovered at birth nowadays, but if he hadn't continued to have problems with his lymph nodes, we might not know about it, but now that we do, we're working with his medication to keep him healthy. Thankfully it hasn't slowed him down. So he has been wearing himself out every day.

A dear friend of mine who had been a teacher and librarian for over 50 years was diagnosed with dementia last month. I've been helping her long-time friends take care of her until they finally got her into an assisted living facility. It's very sad to see someone who was sharp as a tack have delusions and forget where they are. 

On a high note, my oldest grandson talked me into getting Eagles tickets so he and I could go see them in Knoxville, Tennessee. I was a little put off by the price of tickets, but I was glad I coughed up the money for our nosebleed seats because it was an awesome show.

I've been on a bender about appreciating every day ever since my brain surgery which was a year ago March 29th. I've always taken for granted that I've been pretty healthy, but I haven't always appreciated my life with all its good and bad parts, but I am working very hard to get better about that. I hope you, dear reader, are appreciating every day for the gift it is. 

So, what's happening with my writing? Lots! I started a new story on the first of April as part of Camp NaNoWriMo, and it is flowing very well. I've already made arrangements with my editor for her to start working on it later this summer, with a planned release date in December because the book has a Christmas story in it. 

My editor has the first three chapters of College Hill, the continuing story of Jamie and PJ from my young adult romance, Suddenly. We have finished the third edition of editing which will be released with a new cover and the first three chapters of College Hill as bonus material just as soon as she finishes editing it. 

During the week of April 17 - 21, my book Learning to Love Again will be on sale as it is a part of I Heart SapphFic's reading challenge in the category of Divorce. It will be on sale that week for 99 cents, so I hope you'll drop by their page and vote for my book. 

Happy March! I hope the weather is treating you well, and...

Happy March! I hope the weather is treating you well, and I'm sending prayers out for those of you in places where the weather is ugly. Here in south-central Kentucky, we've had a mixed bag of weather, but the daffodils have been blooming.  Three of my books will be on sale during the I Heart SapphFic sale this weekend, along with a lot of other great books, so I hope you'll check that out. 

In other news, I've got the final edit for the 3rd Edition of Suddenly back from my editor and I'll be working on that as well as writing new material. I'll have the final cover art at the end of  April and hopefully have the new version of the book on Amazon by May 1st. The new version will include Season One of College Hill, the continuing story of Jamie and PJ from Suddenly. Check back to the blog and my website for updates. 

Also, if you sign up for my newsletter, you can get a free copy of my short erotic tale, Taste Testing. I don't use Bookfunnel yet, but I can send you a free copy in just about any format, so I hope you will take advantage of that. 

 

Getting Your Shit Together Is Hard

I know I'm not the only one who has had this feeling of AAUGH! Just when you think life is finally going your way and you're going to kick that football over the moon, some Lucy jerks it away at the last minute.

My main, and really only goal, for 2023 is to get my shit together, but it is hard. I make a schedule that I think I can stick with, and someone throws a monkey wrench in my plans, and down I go.

For those of you who read this blog, all five of you that may still be following me, you know that my life is complicated. When my partner and I got together 24 years ago, I had no idea of the hell my children and I were going to put her through, and I'm amazed every day that she's still here, or rather hasn't thrown us all out on the street. It's her house.

We survived my two daughters' psycho teenage years, raised three grandchildren, took care of my partner's mother and son when they were sick, and now we're about to become great-grandparents because my sixteen-year-old granddaughter decided she wanted to get pregnant. Mind you, this was not an oops. It was an intentional scheme that the child concocted, and I still have no idea what her endgame is, but it will affect many people who did not ask to be involved.

Last year was a very crazy year, but some good things came out of it. A lesion was found under my skull's dura mater. For a few terrifying months, I thought I might have brain cancer, but it turned out to be an angioma or noncancerous mass that I had removed on March 29, 2022. One of the good things that came out of this is that I finally left my job at the public library that I had grown to hate. I have never been a people person, but I like to help people, and I love books, so I always thought working at a library would be the perfect job, and it was for a while, but seeing homeless, drug addicts, and prostitutes use the library as their hang out did me in. That, and there was a lot of drama going on with the staff that had reached a point of being beyond ridiculous. It was worse than high school.

I started working with DoorDash before the end of 2021 and found that I loved being alone in my car. It was an easy job that didn't require a whole lot from me mentally, which was exactly what I needed. 

After my surgery, I had to stay home and rest for several weeks and found that I couldn't go back to the library. I just couldn't go back to dealing with people on that level, so I retired from the library and started working for DoorDash full-time. That means I have my own business delivering food, and I like it. It's a challenge sometimes to make enough money to pay the bills, but I deal with very few people.

One of the bad things that happened with all of this is that I was having trouble dealing with my writing business. My muse started skipping town, and I didn't have the energy to do the marketing work, so I let it go by the wayside. But I'm trying to get back on track. I've been writing more and trying to schedule my time so that I get more writing business done, but then those Lucys come along and rip that football away. The result is a very powerful depression that has been taking its toll.

Never fear, though; I will try to keep plugging along and hopefully have something new out soon. I'm still adding to College Hill's continuing story of Jamie and PJ from Suddenly. I've been working on completely re-vamping Suddenly and hope to have a better version with a new cover out soon.

I deeply appreciate the fans who have stuck with me all these years. I can't believe it's been more than 10 years since I first published Suddenly, and hopefully, I will have many more stories over the next 10 years.

Peace and love to you all. 

Life Gets In The Way

You might remember seeing this picture in a previous post. I used it to depict how my life was going at that time, and it's been like that again. I honestly can't remember all that has happened since August, but I do know I forgot to do a giveaway of Learning to Love Again for my birthday, so I'm going to do it for Christmas. Not only do I have several print copies of Learning to Love Again. , but I have copies of my YA thriller, Finding Jenna, as well.  And, if you are not interested in a print copy, Learning to Love Again will be going on sale the last week of December as part of I Heart SapphFic's big end-of-the-year sale. 
This has been a completely bizarre year. I published Learning to Love Again on January 1st of this year, and I thought I would publish more books this year, but that didn't happen. My doctor found a lesion in my skull, and for several terrifying days, I thought I might have metastatic brain cancer. I had brain surgery at the end of March and found out that I had a hemangioma, which is a benign vascular lesion that a surgeon removed. I retired from the job that I had been at for fifteen years, started DoorDashing part-time to support my writing, and watched my oldest grandchild graduate from high school and the from basic training. 
There was more craziness. My partner found out that she has two 20 percent blockages in her heart arteries. And my youngest grandson is having liver trouble and will have to have a biopsy next month. He is only nine.
With all that has happened, I have learned to slow down and appreciate each new day. I am so thankful for everything the Universe has given me, and I have peace within that I have never had. 
Despite only publishing one book this year, I have been working on revisions of Suddenly, which will be updated and given a new cover next year. I'm adding episodes to Suddenly Continued on Kindle Vella on Amazon, and I am currently working on a sequel to Learning to Love Again, titled Ridgway Moon, that I will be posting on Kindle Vella as I work on it and eventually, it will be released on Kindle Unlimited. 
I have been struggling with my energy levels since getting Covid early in the year and having my surgery, but I am hoping for great things to happen in 2023. 
If you are interested in a print copy of Learning to Love Again or Finding Jenna, please email me at metudor.com@gmail.com
Wishing you peace and blessings through the rest of December and the upcoming holidays. 
Keep safe.With Love,M. E.