First off, happy belated holidays!

I hope your time away from work was filled with fun, family, and champagne. Mine was. My only regret was not being able to see all of my siblings. Vee, you were missed. So much so, that I dug through Mom’s treasure trove of photo albums, and found this nugget.

All four of us together. When the hardest task we were faced with was standing still during my father’s excruciatingly long 10-minute photoshoot.

Ever since I’ve started photographing my own brood, I can empathize with my father on the difficulty of capturing squirmy toddlers. Perhaps the hardest part is having all of them look at the camera, with their eyes open and a smile on their little faces, at the same time. I’m sure any parent reading this email gets what I’m talking about!

Spurred on by a hefty amount of bubbly, I proclaimed I would publish 4 books. And then I thought about it, and proclaimed I would publish 3 books. And then, I thought about it some more, and said I would write 3 books and publish at least 2. And while I evaluated the judiciousness of this resolution, my brother-in-law chirped in, “At this rate, why not say you’ll write 3 chapters? Then for once, you might actually uphold your resolution.”
I’m not actually certain if he added that last part or if it’s the fiction writer in me who imagined it. But yes, I’m that girl. The sort who trumpets a bunch of changes and rarely follows through with them because:

What I do promise to write this year are memorable books. However many they might be.

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And speaking of new books, some of you might already know this, but I’ve finished writing part 2 of Rose Petal Graves, making it now a complete, 400-page novel. Here is a first look at the new cover.

Be sure to add it to your Goodreads shelf and don’t forget to pre-order it because the $1.99 price tag I’ve attached will go up to $3.99 after launch week.