Wow What A Week

I touch my face a billion times per day. Yes, I counted, which is why I haven’t been around much this week. I have itchy eyes and am aways messing with my hair and rubbing my achy neck and just generally transferring germs to my face and from my face to everywhere else. But now that’s a crime and also it’s scary to think that all this time people weren’t washing their hands or cleaning their houses. Gross! 🦠

Just when I think I’ve adjusted to the latest barrage of news about THE THING, here comes a new assault of information. Well, not information so much as stuff we’re not supposed to do anymore. First, it was hey quit hooking up with random men from the internet and I was all no problem been on that diet for over three years now. 👍🏻

Wash hands 87 times per day, got it. Clean everything all the time. Sure, okay. Unlike some of you lunatics, I already had Lysol and wipes and alcohol. Don’t go to China or Italy. Lol, okay. Don’t fly at all. Wait, what? Grrrr, okay… I canceled my trip to Vegas this week. Don’t sit in bars and restaurants. Sigh… I canceled Friday night plans and changed Saturday’s.

Tonight I read that Mayor Garcetti has shut all entertainment in Los Angeles ~ bars, gyms, libraries, museums, etc. Grocery stores are allowed to remain open and you can get restaurant takeout only. Governor Newsom says if you’re over 65 you should self-isolate. Luckily, I’m “only” 58, yet I plan to stay inside most of the time, basically go to work, then come home to work more and read/write/blog, and not do much else.

Oh, that’s actually my normal life! 🤣

Joking, sort of. Even though I’m not the most social of butterflies 🦋 I do make some plans… and I don’t enjoy being told I’m not allowed to. But I get it, I get it. I intend to comply with these guidelines in order to help myself and others too. It’s important.

Happily, we’re not really that isolated now, are we? There are so many ways we can stay connected without sitting next to each other in the same room. I’m looking at the bright side of this situation and saying, okay, how can I optimize my time? Well… read and write more obviously. I have lots of partially finished works in progress that I’d love to get on my Kindle shelf for you guys to buy, hehe. In a previous post, I mentioned that I plan to work on Ghosted this year again. Great opportunity!

And I definitely want to stay connected to Blogville! 💕 I know some of us have been drifting a bit or slowing down some, but I have every intention of soldiering on. My Monday Peeve and Thursday Inspiration posts will continue. I’ll do Jim’s Song Lyric Sundays as long as he hosts them. It’s rare I miss a (new) Wednesday Fandango FPQ, and I enjoy the Friday Flashbacks he began as well. I enjoy the weekly SOCS. Other prompts will happen as the mood moves me…

That brings us to the April A-Z Challenge. Last year, I said I wouldn’t do it again for a variety of reasons, but I’ve changed my mind. What’s funny is that I went to the website and was immediately annoyed just like last year! Oh, here’s one reason why I said I wouldn’t do it again… their ridiculous forms, etc. Well, ya know what? I’m going to do it without linking to them at all or jumping through hoops to get myself listed. I don’t care about trying to get more views here. If new peeps come by, great! But if the only readers I have are my “regulars,” I’m fine with that too. 😻

My theme is gonna be games. But I’m not gonna jabber on boringly about rules and game pieces and game theory and the history of chess or any crap like that you could go google for yourself. No. I’m gonna talk about how a game affected me. This blog is about ME! Me me me me!

~*~

Images credited to Bitmoji.

©️2020 Paula Light and Light Motifs II. No unauthorized use permitted. Please check out Paula’s books for sale on Amazon.

Bingo Update 3

Here’s my first Book Bingo post, followed by my next update. Today is my third bingo installment. Exciting, no? 🤣

So far in 2020 I have read 8 books. Here are my two latest reviews. Visit the links in the above paragraph if you’re interested in the previous reviews (they are brief).

Cappuccinos, Cupcakes, and a Corpse. I grabbed this book by Harper Lin only because of the cupcakes. I’m glad the bingo game is pushing me to read outside my usual genres, but if this is a typical cozy? Meh. The writing is lazy, tepid, and full of stereotypes.

*****SPOILER ALERT*****

Skip the italicized part if you plan to read this book!

I liked the budding romance between Francesca and Matty and the possibility that Matt killed his own father. That kept me going actually, that this whole nice guy routine was a total fraud, as it so often is, and the sweet boy Franny knew as a child had turned into a very bad man as they do. But no. After misdirecting us into thinking that an ex-con had done did the deed, Lin just flings a previously unknown character at us as the murderer. Well, poo! That’s no fun. I won’t read any more books by Harper Lin, no matter how much cake they contain.

Okay, you’re safe from the spoiler now! I’m moving on to a book written by an indie author, my friend JR Rasmussen. Unlike me, JR figured out how to focus on a genre and do the branding thing, gather a group of advance readers, and basically go about writing in a wholly professional way. She also has kick-ass covers on her books, not that we should judge by this, but… damn.

With that disclaimer, I also want to say that I wasn’t all that interested in reading her book A Dream Of Fire when it first came out. Dragons… meh. Magic… meh. Like I was happy for my friend and all, but I was sticking with romances. But then I got sucked into the whole Game of Thrones madness and was suddenly whoa dragons? Hell yes I wanna read a book with magical dragons!!! Gimme.

I loved A Dream Of Fire! Here is the 5-star review I just posted:

“Thoroughly enjoyed this witty and exciting story! I used to avoid this genre in general, but Game of Thrones got me hooked on dragons and magic in fiction. This was a superbly well written story with great dialogue and interesting characters. Loved the imaginative spells!”

So there you have it. Unfortunately, my loan expired for American Gods and in the meantime I’ve somehow accumulated a pile of other books to read. I’ll be working on those for my next update.

~*~

Image credit to Kriti and Ariel.

©️2020 Paula Light and Light Motifs II. No unauthorized use permitted. Please check out Paula’s books for sale on Amazon.

One Summer Never Ends

Happy February! I’m participating in Bee’s fun music challenge again and hope you’ll join in (you don’t have to play every day).

Today’s theme is a love song in summer. I’ve always loved “Suddenly Last Summer” by the Motels (also a movie with Elizabeth Taylor), but it took on new significance in 2016. I haven’t written much about that on here; even now it’s not only still incredibly painful, but also I write and write and yet the things I meant to say somehow have eluded me. Very strange. I have written a lot of oblique poetry about the situation, which works better. Pure emotion, less concrete explanation.

But I have a couple things in draft. Puzzle pieces to help me glue my mind together a little more securely. For now, here’s this…

~*~

Written for Love Is In Da Blog Day 23.

Image credit to Happy Color.

©️2020 Paula Light and Light Motifs II. No unauthorized use permitted. Please check out Paula’s books for sale on Amazon.

Book Bingo Update

Some of you may remember that I started the Book Bingo Challenge. Here is my first post on the topic with the three books I had already read and one in progress. That one was When We Believed In Mermaids by Barbara O’Neal. This was the best book I’ve read in ages and I highly recommend it. It had two POVs, so I checked that box.

Next, I read our very own Melody Finch’s We Hide What We Hate About Ourselves. I loved this book too. It allowed me to check the box for a book published in 2020.

Yesterday I finished a nonfiction book by Roger Rosenblatt called Rules for Aging. It was mildly amusing and had some clever insights. The best one was, of course, something I always say: no one is thinking about you, so quit worrying so much about it–they’re all thinking about themselves. But I prefer fiction in general.

I have a bunch of books to choose from to continue my card. I love to read! Also, I’ve finished writing my quirky political love story and am submitting it to Amazon for Kindle tonight, so expect me to nag you to buy it. 😀

~*~

Image credit to Kriti and Ariel.

©️2020 Paula Light and Light Motifs II. No unauthorized use permitted. Please check out Paula’s books for sale on Amazon.

Unpacking [socs]

I recently moved, so I dealt with a lot of packing and unpacking. I didn’t mind the packing so much because it made me feel organized and accomplished. Ooh another box filled, taped, labeled. Yay! I especially enjoyed throwing stuff out as I went along. Even though I consider myself to be a very cautious buyer lately, I still had a bunch of junk I didn’t need and never used.

Unpacking though… argh, what a pain. You think things will fit in a certain spot and then they don’t. You remember putting items in this box, but they aren’t there. You swore you got rid of a stupid thing and here it is again… WTF?

I can’t even relate to the concept of a “pack rat” ~ a person who never throws anything away. That boggles my mind. I’m always tossing stuff. I despise clutter! I was sad for a minute that I had to donate most of my remaining books, but now I’m glad. What freedom not to be bogged down with more things. Kindle books FTW!

If I had more time, I’d be deleting and dumping things constantly. Nothing feels better than to have empty space to begin creating anew. That goes for email boxes as well as meatspace.

~*~

Image credit to Shelley Krupa.

©️2020 Paula Light and Light Motifs II. No unauthorized use permitted. Please check out Paula’s books for sale on Amazon.

Reading Challenge Bingo

(While waiting for my personalized card, I’m “borrowing” one from the host site.)

Here’s a fun game for readers I discovered via Teresa. Try to fill out this bingo card for 2020 with a variety of books. Sounds easy, right? I usually read the same kinds of books (romances and mysteries), so this will push me to expand my repertoire. Luckily, I have a small head start. Naturally, I will be obsessed with completing my card! 🤣

So far this year I can mark off:

1. A book published in the last decade. The first book I read this year was The Color Master, an enjoyable collection of short stories by Aimee Bender published in 2013.

2. A memoir. Next I read Hungry Heart by Jennifer Weiner, which had some tasty sections about writing, but was mostly tedious and overlong. Dare I say whiny?

3. A young adult novel. Yeshiva Girl by Rachel Mankowitz is a compelling story of a teenaged girl in a Jewish school on Long Island. I was lucky to find this book via Rachel’s blog.

I am in the middle of When We Believed in Mermaids, which will allow me to check off the multiple POV box. After that I plan to read American Gods by Neil Gaiman, which is a bestseller.

~*~

Image credit to Kriti and Ariel.

©️2020 Paula Light and Light Motifs II. No unauthorized use permitted. Please check out Paula’s books for sale on Amazon.

On Our Way [socs]

On our way… to better days. That’s what we say, pumped up with our New Year’s Goals. Like many others, I’ve vowed to get in better shape… and the parking lot at the gym is crowded now. Yes, I drive to the gym, even though it’s in my condo complex, since management can’t seem to program my electronic key to get me through the last walk-thru gate. It’s like the opening sequence to Get Smart, if you’re old enough to remember that show. But whenever I ask about the key, the person who needs to deal with it has just left for the day. 🙄

I’m trying to avoid getting raging angry about so many things (another resolution). So what if I can’t walk through to the gym? It’s not the worst thing in the world. Now, the gate closest to my apartment has quit working from the outside… that’s okay, right? They’ll fix it eventually and it’s fine to take the long way around to a different gate. More exercise! Plus, it’s not like I do everything perfectly myself… I’ve made plenty of mistakes in my life too. As long as one gate works, and I can get home… like, whatever. 😜

My three words are from the chapter titled “Worth” in Jennifer Weiner’s book Hungry Heart. I don’t know why I purchased this book, except it has a picture of an upscale looking Hostess cupcake on the cover. I don’t think I’ve read any of her novels. I wanted to enjoy this book, because cupcake and also a smart and funny writer writing smartly and humorously about feeling fat and unloved… that’s so unusual! 🙃

But HH is incredibly tedious and dejavuey… like haven’t a million other smart fat girls written smartly and fatly about being smart and fat? Yawnnnn. And I find myself skimming much of Jennifer’s complaining. I loved her trip to Israel though, and how she finally decided to say eff it regarding other people’s opinions when she returned. Yeah! Who cares what people think! 😎

I thought the story would really take off from there, but no, back to yawwnville. An autobiography doesn’t have to be boring; I’ve read interesting ones. But they need to be edited, and saggy sections should be cut. Am I going to abandon it? No, I’ll probably skim the rest, so I can get credit for it on Goodreads. And I remain hopeful that there is something more to it I can enjoy, since I did get totally immersed in the one section. 🤩

Speaking of saggy things, exercise makes you hungry. If you burn up 100 calories on a bike, your brain will say hello time for a vat of pasta. And you can say no brain we are having a sensible scoop of tuna and some yummy crisp veggies. But our brain is sulking and plotting on how to trip us up. It’s not about being a “good” person or a “bad” person; we all come from a long line of people who avoided starving to death when there was very little food. Yay us and our superhero metabolisms. 😜

I see I forgot to finish this post Friday night and schedule it at 4am Saturday because I’ve been obsessed with watching Jeopardy on Netflix this week (not the GOAT thing, but catching up from last year). When I got home at 10, I turned on the TV, forgetting all about blogging. That’s unusual for me, but these are strange times. 😳

Luckily, I woke up earlier than God… and the first thing I thought of was yikes I didn’t post for SOCS! 😱

~*~

Image credit to Shelley Krupa.

©️2020 Paula Light and Light Motifs II. No unauthorized use permitted. Please check out Paula’s books for sale on Amazon.

2020 🥳✨💖

I am my own gaslighter;

I sabotage my dreams;

I whisper insults in my ear;

And dismantle my best themes.

But this time I refuse to yield

To my old self-doubting threat;

I begin to set my sights on stars

And I’ll have my best year yet!

~*~

Image from the Happy Color app.

©️2020 Paula Light and Light Motifs II. No unauthorized use permitted. Please check out Paula’s books for sale on Amazon.

Laura’s Music Challenge 38

Laura ends the year on a musical note by bringing back her song challenge and asking us to post 5 videos about beginnings, endings and/or looking forward.

Happy New Year! 🥳🥳🥳

~*~

Image from Bitmoji.

©️2019 Paula Light and Light Motifs II. No unauthorized use permitted. Please check out Paula’s books for sale on Amazon.

Looking Forward

I have been enjoying other bloggers’ recaps of the year past and usually I do something similar. This year however I’m skipping that type of detailed post. One reason is that I’m just too lazy to copypasta links to my top ten posts in a new post. Another is that I just don’t care which posts received the most views ~ and if I don’t care, why would you?

Lots of times a post I love (usually a poem) gets fewer views and comments than some picture of an old flower or whatever, so I find the stats pretty meaningless. I guess if I were monetizing the blog, I would obsess over such things, but I’m not and don’t. Also, it matters which day of the week and time of the day a post goes live, but I’m too busy to check that further. Plus, it’s boring.

The most important part of recapping the year in my opinion anyway is to thank everyone who has read my blog, whether regularly or sporadically, and interacted with my writing. So, would like to extend a hearty thank you to all my readers! ❤️ I appreciate all of you! 😍

Looking forward, my intent is to keep on blogging as usual but perhaps a bit lighter on quantity, since I’ve been refocusing on my unfinished writing projects. I began a new humorous story recently and it’s now taken priority over every other piece of fiction ~ I hope to have it available for sale on Kindle in the next few weeks. After that, I want to get serious about cleaning up my writing to-do list, like I said I would last year. 🙄

I spent a fair bit of time dealing with audio books last summer and was disappointed in the small amount of sales. I thought the talkers would do promo. I also assumed the site itself would market me. All wrong. Oh well. Since that was no fun at all, but writing is, I’ll stick with the written word.

I also need to read more books. With my move and other busy-ness, I’ve been in a reading lull. Writers need to read! Not just blogs and news, but real books. I can always feel my creativity and imagination begin to bubble and boil when I dive into the worlds that other writers have created. It’s a crucial component of the craft.

Dream big, my friends! 💖✨🥳

~*~

Image from Bitmoji.

©️2019 Paula Light and Light Motifs II. No unauthorized use permitted. Please check out Paula’s books for sale on Amazon.