My word for the 2015 New Year! What's yours?

Hello, dear friends, family, and fellow writers!!

It's another new year - which always sort of freaks me out. When I was a kid thinking about the Millennium year in 2000 and wondering what life would be like in the new millennium, it was so far off into the future I thought the Second Coming would be here first. And here we are 15 years later . . . like I say, freaky! Life often moves at breakneck speed, and, at other times of illness, death, grief, or waiting on the publishing world (especially when your book gets delayed over and over again!), time moves as slowly as a snail.

So the end of December was quiet here on the blog. So much happened after my East Coast Book Tour for FORBIDDEN was finished and I tried to catch up after 17 days away. First, I got sick. I came home to a major deadline, and we traveled to Arizona to get my mother-in-law's house ready to be put on the market after her passing in August. 

THEN I was working frantically on the revision for my editor at Harpercollins for Book 2 of the FORBIDDEN trilogy. After I turned it in there were about 10 days to decorate the house for Christmas, shop, wrap, bake, and all that good stuff.

And my oven broke.

And I got sick again on Christmas Eve. (I think I might be a little run-down.) :-)

Despite all of that, my holidays were lovely. It's always so nice to take a break and spend time with my family. My husband was off work for an entire week and my son Jared was home from college and we talked and played games and watched movies and read - and slept.

Today is January 11th, of course, and I'm still waiting for my new oven to get here. I'm *dying* to bake COOKIES so I can write all of my new projects this year, and revise to my little heart's (stomach's?) content! It's supposed to be here this week . . . fingers crossed. So I bought donuts at the grocery store last night. A girl's gotta do what a girl's gonna do. C'est la vie! :-)

Back to NEW YEARS. A new year. A time when I want to change the way I work and live and feel more in control of my life and goals, and become the person I want to be. 

Many writers choose a word at the beginning of each year. A word that describes their goals, their life, their dreams, their vision. I've been pondering for a couple of weeks now. I love so many of the words I've seen. I finally chose JOY. 

"Take joy", "Live joy", "Feel joy", "Express joy"," Believe in joy".

JOY!!!

Do you have a word for 2015? Please share in the comments! 

xo, 
Kimberley 

Ghost Tour Stop #4 with Elana Johnson

GHOST TOUR STOP #4 at ELANA JOHNSON'S BLOG. 

JUST CLICK. GO AHEAD! IT'S EASY, IT'S FUN. Read some funny stuff by Elana, plus a cool excerpt from FORGET ME NOT. And more Jewelry, too! So ENTER THE CONTEST!

And now I head back to the drafting cave.  Must. Write. 4,000 words. A. Day. Deadline. Coming. Soon.

Yikes!

Hand me come cookies, please!

I bought some yesterday at the Nestle Toll House Cookie Store while I was in town running around like a mad woman. I never even knew there was a Nestle Toll house Cookie Store! And me, a cookie connoisseur!

HAPPY WEDNESDAY! 

~Kimberley

Writing and Cookies

I started drafting a new middle-grade novel three weeks ago.

Actually, I just started getting ideas for a new book - ideas that made me very excited - and I dove in and wrote the first two chapters without really knowing where I was going. I have *never* done this before: just started writing while a few floaty ideas start banging my brain cells together.

Today I left my desk where I'm trying to move past a *stuck* point in Chapter Three and said, "I'm making chocolate chip cookies."

Me - who is actually trying to lose 20 pounds by May and the Whitney Award Banquet!

My family then told me very plainly - and with laughter - that they noticed that last summer when I was on my Armageddon Book Deadline of six weeks for CIRCLE OF SECRETS (October, 2011) that I was making a lot of chocolate chip cookies during that time. "So you're writing a new book, eh?"

I made a small, half batch - just enough to tide me over and get through the hump. And I figured out what was stalling me! So now I can move forward! And all because of chocolate chip cookies.

And YES, just like a kid, I still eat the raw cookie dough, too. In big spoonfuls. :-) And the cookies MUST have LOTS of chocolate chips in them. And they must be warm, right out of the oven. And drunk with ice cold milk.

What is your writing food fetish?

I didn't even realize until this afternoon that I HAD one! How very strange . . .