Good Sunday morning, Marvellous Mavens. I'm sitting here on my couch, drinking coffee and working on my blog while my husband has One Piece on in the background. Our cats are already outside for the day. They sleep in the house and go outside during the day. They have a little bit of property to roam around, as cats like to do. My mom and sister and the other neighbor on our property all have cats for them to play with. Anyway, today I thought I'd share my progress with you.

Good morning, Marvellous Mavens. I know I'm a day late on the blog and for that I apologize. I didn't even realize yesterday was supposed to be a blog day until this morning. But, I did get a lot of work done in my editing project yesterday. And, that's what I wanted to talk to you guys about today: how things are going on my editing project of the Shelly Lawson books. I'm currently working on A Change of Pace. It started out difficult because I published that book 15 years a

Good morning, Marvellous Mavens! This little change from writing the blog every day has indeed helped me get more done on my editing project. I work on it most mornings. Right now, it's a little repetitive, because somehow the document is just one block of text, so I'm having to go in and add the indentations for the paragraphs, the page breaks and the space between the chapters. And that's before I can even start editing, even though I'm finding small edits to do along the w

Good morning, Marvellous Mavens. I have this feeling that my readers don't appreciate me flooding their inbox with my emails every day. Plus, it costs money to send out so many emails, now that I'm getting such a big mailing list. So, I've decided to scale it down to just twice a week on Tuesdays and Sundays. This idea literally came to me in my sleep last night. But, this way, I can spend most of my mornings focusing on the big editing job I've given myself: Editing all of t

Good morning, Marvellous Mavens! I hope your coffee is strong and you'll be able to get what you need to do done today. Especially since it's Monday again. But we can totally do this! Now that your Monday motivation is going, I'd like to talk about a recurring theme that I see time and time again in books I read as well as the books I write: The small town setting. Why do we love small town settings in books? Is it the cozy feel? I think that's exactly it. I actually grew up

Good morning, Marvellous Mavens! Well, now that the weather is cooling down, I can sit out on my porch and write my blog while the cats walk around me. As far as my weekly goals are concerned, my writing has taken a bit of a shift. I've decided to take all my books under the Lawson name off the shelf one-by-one and re-edit them a bit and publish them in my married name. So, that's what I've been doing. I've already started on A Change of Pace, which means this week, I need to

Good morning, Marvellous Mavens! ☕️✨ Today is the day! The Austin book-signing is officially here, and I am so excited to see you all. If you're dropping by today, I’ll have copies of Lady's Pearl ready for you, along with custom bookmarks and a bowl full of Dum-dums! 🍬 Here are all the details: Where: 9900 S Interstate 35, Austin, TX When: Today starting at 11:00 AM Checkout: Quick and easy Tap-to-Pay via Square Grab your coffee and come say hi—I can’t wait to chat and sign

Guess what, you guys! I finally just bit the bullet and self-published again, like I always do. So, without further ado, my new book, Grippy Sock Vacay (Grippy Sock Saga Vol. 1) is officially available for pre-order on Amazon for a January 1st release! Are you guys excited? Well, let me tell you a little about the book. When widow Promise meets smooth-talker Blayze in one of her stints in the psych ward, she’s immediately smitten, despite everyone and their mother telling her

Good morning, Marvellous Mavens! I hope you have a fabulous day ahead of you. Today, I'm answering a question submitted from Facebook. "What’s a character you’ve written who completely surprised you by becoming different from who you originally planned them to be?" My answer is pretty simple. I sort of see my characters as my friends and I know them backwards and forwards. Sometimes when I'm writing and need inspiration, I sort of have conversations in my head with them to ge

Good morning, Marvellous Mavens. I hope you're having a lovely Tuesday morning. Today, I'm turning the tables and letting you ask me your questions. So, if you have any burning questions for me, you can leave them in the comment section below and I will answer some of them in the coming posts.

Good morning, Marvellous Mavens! We've got 5 days until my Austin book-signing. I'm so excited to meet new readers and introduce them to my work. What can you look forward to on my table. I have copies of 5 of my books (because Squashing Writer's Block is only available in Kindle). I also have bookmarks. I've gotten a lot of compliments on their design. I also have a bowl full of Dum-dums on my table. If you come and buy a book from me, just be aware that I don't carry change

Good morning, Marvellous Mavens! I hope your coffee is warm and your pets are well-behaved today. One of my cats is sitting in an Amazon box on one side of me and the other is eating on the other side of me, so I'm surrounded by cats right now. So, I've made quite a bit of progress on both of my works-in-progress. I got Lies of Omission up to 5,000 words, and I got Grippy Sock Jail to 10,000 words! This is really exciting for me because I got them done in the same week. I bel

Good morning, Marvellous Mavens. I hope you're having a pleasant Saturday morning. Today, I thought I'd talk to you about what I love about writing. It's no secret that when I was younger, I had a lot more emotional problems. Dealing with Major Depression and Borderline Personality Disorder used to be a source of constant heartache. So, I would escape by daydreaming when I was younger and when I got a little older, escaping into the worlds of my stories. I would spend entire

Good morning, Marvellous Mavens! I hope you didn't wake up as early as me. Oh well. I'm using the time while hubby is asleep to get some uninterrupted work done. Yesterday, I stayed home on account of rain, and because of that, I got plenty of writing done. I got Lies of Omission up to 5,000 words and now I'm trying to get Grippy Sock Jail up to 10,000 words. With all the rain in the forecast, I should have it done before the end of the week. I really should be working on Gri

Good morning, Marvellous Mavens! I hope your coffee is hot and gives you the energy you need for the day. My Austin book-signing is 9 days away. Are you excited? Which of my books are you looking forward to picking up? What to expect at my table: Copies of 5 out of my 6 books, bookmarks, a bowl of candy, a framed synopsis of my latest book, Lady's Pearl, and a receipt book that I rarely use because I use Square now and if they want a receipt, I send it through that. I don't b

Good afternoon, Marvellous Mavens. I had an early physical therapy appointment, so I had to wait to write my blog after I got home. And that's kinda what I want to talk about today: How I fit writing into my often hectic schedule. Right now, we're living in a house that doesn't afford me a separate office, so my desk is in the living room. So, I've kind of leaned into the living room thing by writing on the couch. And, since my husband likes to watch tv, I just ask him to wat

Good morning, Marvellous Mavens! October in nearly here! You know what that means. It's almost time for my Austin book-signing, which is on October 10th. Then, I'll be back in San Antonio October 24th. Which of my books do you plan on picking up? Do you have any local Texas spot recommendations near the event location? Leave them in the comments below. If you can't make it to either of the book-signing locations, you can always order signed copies on TikTok and Shopify! Faceb

Good morning, Marvellous Mavens! I'm taking a coffee break with Samantha, the female main character in my Copake Lake Mysteries series, the third book Lies of Omission I'm writing right now. Hi, Sam. How are you holding up with everything going on in your life right now? Samantha: Well, I wasn't thrilled that I had to cut my honeymoon short, but I'm always down for a mystery. It was me who encouraged Jake to read that letter sooner rather than later, so I guess it's my own do

Good morning, Marvellous Mavens! I hope you're having a pleasant Sunday. I thought I'd go back to my usual Sunday goal check-in and also remind you guys about my upcoming lineup of October book-signings. Grippy Sock Jail is still at a word count of 8,268, because I've mostly been working on Lies of Omission, which is now up to 4,092. For my weekly goal, I'm gonna be optimistic and hope I can get to 10,000. I can at least try. I haven't been setting a timer for my writing, but

Good morning, Marvellous Mavens! Welcome to the weekend! Today, I thought I'd talk about my top 3 writing distractions that I deal with on a daily basis. For one, my husband always has the tv on while I'm writing, and sometimes what he's watching gets interesting. Usually, we're watching One Piece or Gilmore Girls or something else I can semi-ignore so I can write. But, sometimes, a part gets my interest and I get distracted from my writing. Another one is my cats. They get t