Category Archives: Love & Loss

Vintage JaneBlog: Respecting the Turtles

January 3, 2013 · 80 comments

Every now and then I go back into the archives of my JaneBlog, and revisit something I’ve written, and share it with you again. Some I share because I like the blog or the story.  Others I share because I’m still working on that life lesson.   Respecting the Turtles is one of those blogs about learning a life lesson.  I wrote it in January 2010, three years ago, when Mac was nine months old and I was struggling with my writing and losing weight and my self-esteem.  I don’t know if you know, but I had terrible post-partum blues following Mac’s birth, and the medicine they gave me made it impossible for me to focus and write…but I had … Continue reading Vintage JaneBlog: Respecting the Turtles →

Let’s Make It Beautiful & Keep It Real

December 10, 2012 · 207 comments

I announced this week that 2012 was about personal change, and 2013 is going to be about professional change. So in 2013 I’m shaking it up professionally. I’m not going to write what I’ve been writing for all the publishers I’ve been writing for.  My choice.  I let my agent go and have yet to sign a contract with a new one.  My choice.  I’m anticipating changing what I write, and how I write, and possibly how I’m published.  It might even mean I don’t write for awhile if that’s what it takes to figure out what I still want to accomplish in my career, and which stories are the stories I need to tell. After forty plus books, I … Continue reading Let’s Make It Beautiful & Keep It Real →

Truths

November 1, 2012 · 59 comments

It’s November 1st.  Can hardly believe it.  It’s been such a crazy, busy, turbulent Fall. One of my friends told me over the weekend she missed my blogs, and wished I was writing more in my blogs, and sharing more, and I told her that I couldn’t.  That things had actually been very hard for the past eight weeks….ten weeks…and that I was barely getting from one place to another, and from one event to another, and yet, because I’m so private, and protective of my family, I don’t share that.  I don’t tell people too much.  I’m proud.  And I have a public face…the author face.  So I tend to shut down when I’m in the middle of a … Continue reading Truths →

I Heart Caitlin Crews

October 16, 2012 · 89 comments

A lot of you may know Megan Crane is a very close friend of mine but you may not know Megan also writes as Caitlin Crews and I just love her, and her books, and one of the best parts of moving to Orange County is that now I get to see more of her!  A couple weeks ago I convinced Megan she would enjoy a road trip to my hometown, and she was the most delightful date for the Tulare Library Foundation Auction fundraiser in Tulare, California, and then allowed me to give her the grand tour of my town, Visalia, which included a trip down Main Street, a drive past Dance-Arts, the library, and Taylor’s Hotdog stand (a … Continue reading I Heart Caitlin Crews →

Settling in…Sort of

July 11, 2012 · 123 comments

I’m in my house…barely! It’s a juggling act still, trying to get settled when we’re having contractors, electricians, plumbers, carpenters, heating specialists, and audio/visual techies in virtually every room.  My office, though, is pure chaos and I can’t write until it’s unpacked and organized, and sadly, I can’t even get to my office to unpack and organize when I’m needed in every other room to make decisions.  Help!! One of my boys, too, has decided not to move with me and it was a very sudden, shocking decision…at least for me.  I’ve never not had my boys live with me but son Ty didn’t want to leave Bellevue, and his dad was willing to move back there from Arizona so … Continue reading Settling in…Sort of →

A Special Good Woman Contest

June 20, 2012 · 139 comments

We leave Washington tomorrow. We’re on an 8 am flight to Orlando and then Saturday morning we board our Disney cruise with all my family, (Mom, sister, both my brothers and all their kids, too) and then after the cruise ends, we fly straight to Orange County to settle into the new house. It’s been a bittersweet month…..highs, lows, and tons of emotion as we say goodbye to Belleve which has been our home for sixteen years.  I moved here late June, just before Jake, my first baby, turned one, and now we leave end of June, just before he turns 17. Because of all the writing deadlines and family dramas (do any of you have family drama?!?  Please tell … Continue reading A Special Good Woman Contest →

Gardens & Goodbyes

May 14, 2012 · 72 comments

Five days until I move out of our beautiful Yarrow Point house and into a hotel for our last month here in Washington. So bittersweet!  It’s going to be very tough for us to say goodbye to this house and to Bellevue.  There are so many memories here.  Two of my three sons were born in Bellevue at Overlake Hospital.  This was our house after the divorce.  We closed on the house just two weeks after I met Ty Gurney for the first time.  And this was the house Mac came home to as a newborn in May 2009.  We did a two year remodel here, not knowing we’d be leaving for California so soon, so it’s a strange time…good, … Continue reading Gardens & Goodbyes →

Happy 3rd Birthday, Mac!

April 27, 2012 · 88 comments

It was my littlest guy’s 3rd birthday yesterday…can you believe it?  So many of you have been reading my blog and chatting with me since before I was even pregnant with him and now he’s a boy…playing Viking and knights and pirates.  He loves to dress up and wield a sword…and has quite an impressive sword collection at this point.  I’d be worried if I hadn’t had two other boys before him and realize this is just a boy loving being a boy! For his pirate party we invited his preschool class and his friends from soccer and five were able to come.  Every time a little boy or girl arrived he’d beam and say, “I have a friend here!” … Continue reading Happy 3rd Birthday, Mac! →

I Heart Lilian Darcy

March 1, 2012 · 78 comments

I’ve had a strange couple of months with regards to blogging and social media.  I’m finding it hard to do.  Don’t have a lot to say.  Find my thoughts (and me!) incredibly boring.  When I’m actively writing I don’t have a sense of outward things…just my story, and my family.  And trying to continually find something meaningful to say feels false, as I don’t always have meaningful things to say.  I’m a terrible reality TV junkie…love romance novels…love popcorn.  Love anything with sugar, butter and flour.  Love being lazy and disappearing from the world and being nothing.  Absolutely nothing.  Not even air or space.  I know it sounds crazy.  I am crazy.  Hopefully in a good way. And because its … Continue reading I Heart Lilian Darcy →

February Love

February 11, 2012 · 98 comments

Those of you who’ve read my blogs for awhile now know I love February, everything about February as its my birth month and Valentine’s Day and President’s Day and everything pink and red and sweet and sentimental.  I love Valentine decorations and how wonderfully short the month is compared to January and March.  I love that you get days that hint at March and Spring.  I love Valentine’s Day itself, smack dab in the middle of the month, and a day I make about the family and heart candies and fun, loving cards. I haven’t put up my usual Valentine decorations this year as everything is boxed and streamlined so that the Bellevue house will show properly.   As of … Continue reading February Love →