"My ghost dog has been staring at a vault that shouldn't exist, the coven's founding symbol has one point too many, and someone just tried to exile my vampire husband to keep me from looking. Cool. " Book 6 is out today. leanneleeds.com/books/crysta...

Fable: exists, is amazing, fixes my plot holes Me: 🥰 Commerce Department: "Not on MY watch." Me: 😭 Imagine being a cozy mystery writer who finally found the perfect series-bible tool and losing it to an export control dispute. I am not a foreign adversary, I just need to remember Astra's eye color.

Today's coffee is being enjoyed alongside a Garden State Tortoise video, as nature intended. Who knew that watching tortoises live their best lives would be the calmest part of my day? 🐢☕

I love all of these books.

The "AI writing is unreadable trash" crowd and the "AI is sneaking into prize-winning books" crowd appear to be the same crowd. (No idea where the "AI sabotaged my book deliberately with sneaky intent" hangs. He's kinda confusing.)

In 2007, Stephen Colbert and his staff granted my kid a Make-A-Wish. They were warm, gracious, and made my kid feel like the most important person in the room — then kept in touch every few years until my kid was grown. As his show ends this week: thank you. Truly amazing people.

3 days. That's it. From May 21-23, you can download FREE paranormal cozy mystery book SETS—not just single titles, but full binge-worthy series. (The Owl Star Books 1-8 included!) After Saturday night, they all go back to full price. Don't sleep on this one! books.bookfunnel.com/freecozymyst...

A wellness retreat for the magically exhausted. A guru in a sensory tank. A “relaxing” weekend that’s anything but zen. 🦉 Owl is Calm – Owl Star Witch Mysteries #22 – is OUT NOW! 📖 leanneleeds.com/books/owl-is... #cozymystery #newrelease #kindleunlimited

Next book might be late.

"FBI Director VIP Snorkels Pearl Harbor" reads less like real news and more like a rejected Dan Brown plot point. Too unrealistic, they'd say. And yet. 🤿

Me, innocently exploring Google Antigravity: 🙂 Google, immediately: "New quotas! Cooldowns! Token limits!" I stared using GA and within days: quota cuts, token limits, Ultra cooldowns that didn't exist before. No one seriously using these tools needed this article to tell them any of this.

Facebook's suggested "Hi all! I just wanted to introduce myself and share a photo I took" intro for new group members is WILD. Nothing screams "trust me, I'm definitely a real person and not a scammer" like the same exact sentence everywhere. Who came up with this?

I just heard my husband tell one of our cats, "I love you. I want things to go well for you." 🥹 Thirty years together and I had no idea he was this squishy with the kitties. The cat, of course, walked away mid-sentence. Typical. 😹

Day 3 of rain. My word-count is up, my serotonin is down, and the cats have unionized against the weather. Coffee is the only thing holding this operation together. ☕

Her dead father sent a warning through a three-year-old. One word: cousins. Crystal Clear Claims — Mystwich Mindslider Mysteries Book 5 🔮 👉 leanneleeds.com/books/crysta...

"He was happy, he had a smile on his face. He didn't look stressed." That's how people reassured themselves Swalwell was innocent. Cool. Cool cool cool. Glad we're using vibes-based vetting for political leaders. 🙃

A single white hair has appeared at the front of my eyebrow like it's planting a flag. What is the evolutionary PURPOSE of this? Did my ancestors need one reflective eyebrow hair to fool predators when they became a certain age? Who looked at this and said "yes, keep that in the genome"?🧐

"Both sides are the same" is doing a LOT of heavy lifting right now. Like, structural-engineering-on-a-condemned-building levels of heavy lifting.

Me: Time to write! My brain: But have you checked the news about Iran lately? Me: … My brain: You're welcome. Concentrating in a world gone mad is its own kind of superpower. One I do not have today. ☕

Why on earth did Texas start the THCA ban *on* the 31st? Texas starting the THCA ban *on* the 31st makes zero sense, unless the goal was to trick us olds who logically assumed the end of the month would be the last day to buy. Oops. 🤦‍♀️

In other news, water's wet.

The fun part of writing 22 books in a series is when your character walks into a room and you think "wait, did I burn this building down six books ago?" Monday mornings are for fact-checking yourself.

The absolute luxury of editing with Google Antigravity: Highlighting a line, asking "Is this true?", and watching my little AI minion scour 21 previous books to find out if I hallucinated a piece of my own lore. Having this kind of instant continuity-checking power while editing is incredible. 🦉

I'm starting to think the only version of COTA I'll ever see is the Christmas one. MotoGP is there this weekend, my hub's a vet so tickets were half off, and he still said no because they were too expensive. And yes, he's a huge fan. (Yeah, I don't even bother asking about F1. I know the answer.)

The new Costco in Liberty Hill means you can now buy 48 rolls of toilet paper AND a rotisserie chicken without ever getting close to I-35. We're living in the future.

I first read about Cynthia Plaster Caster in Pamela Des Barres' groupie memoir years ago and thought it had to be exaggerated. It was not. Her collection ended up at MoMA PS1 and the Kinsey Institute. Sometimes real life is just too weird to be fiction.

David Muir: "Airports are in crisis." Congress: "We'll look into it." Narrator: They did not look into it. Congress is working on the airport situation with the same urgency they bring to everything else. So, see you in 2035.

A runaway parade float & a legacy built on a lie! 🐱 Burgers, Bunting, & Betrayal is LIVE in KU! 🇺🇸 leanneleeds.com/books/burgers-bunting-and-betrayal (Check the link for German, French, & Dutch translations! 🇳🇱 Dutch also available on Kobo!)

Somebody explain the Fetterman-Marjorie Taylor Green body swap episode. He's out here sounding like a Fox News audition tape and she's… not? It's funny. Both sides are staring at members of their own team going "wait, WHAT?" and honestly, that's the most bipartisan unity we've had in years.

"Every war is not only a defeat of politics but also a shameful surrender to the forces of evil." #PopeFrancis #PrayForPeace

Five chapters into edits and I just realized I contradicted my own lore. From three books ago. The cat didn't even have the decency to look sympathetic—she just yawned and rolled over on my notes. 😩📖

Anthropic walking back their safety commitments feels less like a surprise and more like an inevitability. Ethics are cute until the revenue numbers come in. 💸

We went from 'fake news' to full Ministry of Truth real fast.

Absolute gold from the AP today. A serial burglar gets tackled at Lunar New Year by two undercover cops hiding inside a dancing lion costume. If this doesn’t end up in a cozy mystery by 2027, the entire genre has failed us all. 📚🦁🔍

Supreme Court: "You can't use emergency powers to impose sweeping tariffs." The Administration, 5 minutes later: "Cool, I'll just use this other 1970s law to do the exact same thing." I've seen less predictable plot twists in a Hallmark mystery. 🙃

Mystwich Hollow’s wildest family reunion is LIVE! 🧛♀️✨ Fortuna Delphi is back, and her midlife crisis just got teeth. Her vampire husband’s twin sister is in town. The bad news? She’s a vampire hunter. Dive into the latest Mystwich Mindslider Mystery today: leanneleeds.com/books/crysta...

Me: *writes fiction about people getting away with things for too long* Reality: *arrests Prince Andrew on his birthday* Y'all, I cannot compete with real life's plot twists. 👀 I have been awake for twenty minutes and I need to sit down already. Whoah.

Colbert: *books Texas state rep for an interview* CBS Legal: No. Colbert: Can I mention it? CBS Legal: Also no. Colbert: does both, posts interview to YouTube Here's the interview a network censored before the FCC even made them. 🙃

I switched my whole book writing process to Markdown and I gotta say — after years of fighting Word formatting like it owed me money, processing everything in plain text feels almost suspiciously easy.

Me: *opens laptop, ready to conquer the week* Cat: *sits on laptop* Me: Okay so we're starting like THAT. Happy Monday, y'all. ☕😼

I’ve officially run out of pithy observations. The world is weird, the news is a fever dream, and I have the energy of a room-temperature cup of coffee. If you need me, I’ll be over here participating in the Olympic sport of staring at a wall. 🫠💤

Watching "The Librarians" and it is compelling. It's about librarians caught in the middle of the book banning battles happening across the country. Whatever your politics, it's worth your time—these are real people dealing with real consequences. #IndependentLens #Documentary #BannedBooks

Steve Bannon and Jeffrey Epstein trying to 'take down' the Pope sounds less like a news headline and more like the plot of a Dan Brown novel that was rejected for being 'too unrealistic.' How is this real life? 🕵️‍♂️🇻🇦🤌

ProWritingAid: 'YOU HAVE 8,432 ERRORS.' Me: clutching chest & mentally drafting my will ProWritingAid: '7 of your quotation marks are straight. The other 8,425 are curly.' ProWritingAid giving me a heart attack over 8,000 'errors' that turn out to be 7 straight quotes is the ultimate gaslight. ☕️📖

Ever since the Bad Bunny halftime show, my brain has been stuck on a loop singing 'Piragua' from In the Heights. I am currently a one-woman crossover event that nobody in my family asked for, but everyone is getting. 🍧🎤

Such a tiny typo, but I never would have gone looking in other books for the line in a 20+ book series. NotebookLM is such a game changer in handling these reported oopsies that make it through editing.

If I hear the word 'safe' one more time in this Tell-All, I’m calling a plumber to check the drains because I’m pretty sure that’s where my brain cells are going. It’s Part 4. We are all just hostage at this point. 🏳️ #SisterWives

It’s a crap day for a lot of reasons, and I wish I could fix everything for everyone. I can’t. But I can make sure this little guy has a heated house for the Austin cold front. Focus on the small wins when the big ones feel impossible. ❄️🏠

I’m currently at that point in the draft where I’ve typed 'something happens here' in brackets multiple times for three pages straight. My AI editing assistant is looking at me with what I can only describe as digital disappointment. 🤖📉

A massive cold front is hitting Austin on Saturday, or as we call it here: 'The Annual Stress Test for a Power Grid held together by thoughts, prayers, and repurposed guitar strings.' I’ve already secured three weeks' worth of HEB tortillas and a generator I don’t know how to use. 🕯️🌮