These past few weeks, the weather in Virginia has alternated between pouring rain and blazing heat where even the breeze feels miserable, so I’ve been hanging out inside much more than usual. Since most of my outdoor plans have been cancelled thanks to the storms, I’ve been trying to find other things to do with my spare time. My air conditioner has been faithfully humming along in the house, but it’s still too hot to do much cooking on the stove, so I sought out recipes that are simple and don’t require a lot of (if any) time in the oven.
The watermelon sorbet recipe I found online called for frozen
watermelon, lemon and lime juice, and some honey. I put everything in the
blender and the result was amazing, better than any smoothie I’ve ever had
before. The pineapple drink recipe was easy to make. The result ended up being
what can only be described as way too pineapple-y. The pumpkin cookies my
daughter made were wonderful and I ate a ton of them, so many that I don’t want
anything pumpkin related for a while. The kale chips I tried to make turned out
bitter and burnt. I don’t know where I went wrong, but maybe kale should just
be kale and chips should just be chips.
I have also started drawing again. Drawing has started to
feel like a form of meditation for me. I use watercolor pencils which allows me
to put color in the picture and add texture without having to devote a huge
area to mixing colors and cleaning paint brushes. My cats would make a mess of
that kind of thing. My strategy is to work on a picture in the late evenings
for an hour or two, then put everything away until the next day or week. The
picture gets finished when it gets finished. Figuring out the shading, shadows,
and how to give the picture a soul is a problem to be worked out over time,
rather than a work project that needs to be solved immediately. Doing something
on my time versus when someone else demands results gives me peace and energizes
me.
When my children were small, there was no time for drawing
or trying new recipes. There was barely time for showering. Now that they are a
bit older, I am rediscovering parts of myself I had forgotten as well as
finding small pockets of time to create new parts of myself. This gradual opening
of time has given me the chance to explore in my writing as well, more so each
year. I haven’t stopped writing love stories, it’s just that I’ve had so many
ideas for so many different novels and short stories, I almost didn’t know
where to begin, so for a while, I just focused on writing other things.
This past year, I’ve written a fair amount of poetry as well
as some horror and science fiction short stories. I recently had a short story,
Garden of Kings, published in Wicked Shadow Press’ Dead Girls Walking anthology
in the purple volume. When my brain was ready, after trying a ton of new
recipes and rediscovering my love for drawing and playing tennis, I got back to
work on the romance novels in my to-be-written files.
In addition to working on the paranormal romance novels in
my Stranger Creatures series and my Haven Forest Resort series, I’ve also
started writing some new series where the female main characters are in their
forties. There need to be more stories featuring women who have lived a while,
seen some things, and don’t have any intention of putting up with a bunch of
bullshit. Age and experience make women’s perspectives incredibly valuable and I
am absolutely going to do my part to make us feel seen and heard.
If you’d like to follow me on social media for my latest
book information and excerpts, poems, contest info, book recommendations, and
other fun stuff, you can find me at:
Amazon Author Page: https://www.amazon.com/Christina-Lynn-Lambert/e/B01MCYK0K7
BookBub: https://www.bookbub.com/authors/christina-lynn-lambert
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/christinalynnlambert
Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/15900423.Christina_Lynn_Lambert
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/christinalynnlambert
Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/chris4lamb
Wordpress: https://christinalynnlambertwordpress.com
2 comments:
I hear you about the lousy weather. It's been well over 100 degrees here for months and now we're getting rain. Talk about pure awful.
Good for you for being so creative. Would love you to share some of your drawings here. :)
Thanks Tina. I'm in central VA and the heat and humidity have been so gross lately. Would love to share some drawings.
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