My publisher wants me to share this link with you, so here it is: read.macmillan.com/lp/enola-hol...

I am super pleased with the cover of the next, tenth, last #EnolaHolmes novel, forthcoming next year from Wednesday Books. Behold!

In case I haven't mentioned it, Legendary is currently filming #EnolaHolmes3, the third movie based on the character I created for my #EnolaHolmes novels. She's #SherlockHolmes' kid sister and she is a brilliantly intelligent hellion. I like the way those words go together. Intelligent hellion. Yes.

Twice today I have phoned my doctor and the person who answered said, "Muplesubrefo?" I said, "Huh?" She said, "Muplesubrefo?" I said, "I'm sorry, I still can't understand you." She said, "May. I. place. you. on. a. brief. hold?" I said, "Sure, no problem." I did not say, "Sheeesh."

"There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written. That is all." -- Oscar Wilde, in the preface to his only novel, The Picture of Dorian Grey.

According to my spies, the next movie about my brainchild #EnolaHolmes will start filming in April. That's next month! Like, in a few weeks! My state of mind demonstrates the word "dithering."

Celebrating my Irish heritige on St. Patrick's day!

My kids are coming to visit, so, making room for us to eat, I'm taking a big box and throwing into it all the junk that has accumulated on the kitchen table. My mother used to do the same thing when her kids visited. We found all the dozens of boxes in her bedroom closet after she passed away.

I haven't posted because, frankly, life has been crappy. Literally. For the past week the dog has had diarrhea. Despite my best efforts, my carpets will never be the same. And, due to my arthritic knees, addressing the problem has been downright painful. As you can see, Lula is feeling her guilt.

My husband went to the office supply store to buy a wall clock and came home with a ding-dong counter-top bell. He rings it at irregular, meaningless intervals throughout the day. For anyone who is thinking about marrying an eccentric person, this is the sort of thing you might have to put up with.

We have a superhuman presence in my house, an invisible force called The Great Cookie. No matter what happens, "It's the Cookie!" Everything depends on how the cookie crumbles.

I've been waiting for a whole year to post this adorable picture. Happy Valentine's Day!

It appears to me that my last #EnolaHolmes novel, the case of the Clanging Coffin, will be forthcoming in the UK first, not the USA! The British publisher has finished editing and has sent me a cover for approval, while the American publisher has not yet edited. I look forward to hearing from them.

I love to paint pictures, which involves keeping a container of water handy, and I love a nice big cup of diet cola with plenty of ice. When I'm painting, I often keep that handy, too. The problem is not to dip the paintbrush in the cola. It happens all too often. 😄

I have rediscovered good old Klondike solitaire and I am re-newly experiencing the joy of watching the cards bounce when I win. Who knew I would ever regard anything as modern as the internet with nostalgia!!

OMG! I am delighted to announce that Enola Holmes 3, another movie based on my books about Sherlock Holmes' kid sister, will begin filming this April! It's official! I am so excited! #EnolaHolmes #SherlockHolmes #MillieBobbyBrown #HenryCavill #Netflix #movie

I should be cleaning the refrigerator, folding the laundry, or any of a dozen other worthy chores, but I am, in fact, painting a picture of wildflowers. I figure that some day regrettably soon when I am breathing my last, I am unlikely to regret that I didn't spend more time doing housework

Depression is not a mood or a weakness, but a medical condition that causes one's mental processes to go haywire, including maybe intrusive thoughts of suicide. I can tell you this is terrifying, and it is devastating to live in fear of one's own mind. Please have empathy for those with depression.

Nostalgia here: this is my favorite cat taking possession of my favorite chair when I first brought it home. In years to follow, she single-handedly (two front paws clawed-edly?) dedicatedly and thoroughly destroyed it. She shredded that big, beautiful chair all by herself. Her masterpiece, I guess.

Because I've started painting with acrylics, and I have a canvas that needs to be primed, I watched a video about using #gesso. The title was "Gesso," but throughout the video, the subtitles referred to "JSO." JSO!! As a person who is fond of the English languate, I find this horrifying. 😱

Watching a video on how to paint with acrylics, I had the subtitles on and the volume off because I could not stand the artist's choice of music. You know how infuriating but hilarious subtitles can be? Yep, they refered to a lizard crimson and vulture marine blue. I can't wait for the whole zoo!

Regarding my adventures in the brave new world of painting with acrylics, I am astonished to discover that adding a bit of black to a glob of yellow makes a very useful olive green! May wonders never cease!

For the first time in my longish life I am trying to paint with acrylics, scraping and dabbing away at landscapes on canvas, and I am at the point of making mistakes that I will laugh at in months and years to come -- I mean, I hope I will laugh. Right now I am gnashing my teeth. Gnash, gnash.

I've written a lot of damn good #ShortStories in the past fifty years, with all due modesty (not). Some of the best are published by Untreed Reads, and I just went on their website searching for a link, but technology defeated me. However, you can find them on Amazon Kindle! They look like this:

In case you want to look educated as a #writer: it's not "peaked" one's interest; it's "piqued." It's not "should of" or would of." It's "should have, would have, could have," or "should've." I've given up on the fact that people "lie down" in bed, not "lay down," but it still annoys me. Have mercy.

For a potent dose of cuteness, this by Shawn Braley. ☺️

What I really hate is when I'm watching a video and there are subtitles and they are WRONG, they don't even remotely represent what the actors are actually saying, and I can't NOT read them because when words appear I read them, and I can't turn them off, oh woe and calamity! 😩

This. Freaking fascinating.

I sold the next, tenth, and definitively last #EnolaHolmes novel last year, but I have yet to receive any news on revision, and I know it will need editing; this is a fact of life for a #writer. At this point, I can only hope it gets published before I turn eighty. Everything always takes so long!

It's a new year, and I have a new set of paints. After a lifetime of watercolor, I'm trying acrylic! I have just the very basics: tubes of white, black, red, blue, and yellow, plus some brushes and a nifty palette knife. I am mixing colors and ruining canvases with utmost glee!🎨🖌️

#Writers, were you given more day planners than you need? Use them for keeping track of timelines and whereabouts for different characters in the novel you are working on. Even if your setting is long ago and far away, this can help you maneuver through days, weeks and months.

I gift you with "Happy New Year" by Guy Carleton Wiggens, painted when I was about ten years old -- not that I had anything to do with it. Do you recognize the city?

Aside from #writing, which is constant, I go through phases when it comes to crafts and hobbies. One such phase, a decade ago, was taking photos and manipulating them, posterizing them or playing with colors. This is one of my best.

This painting is "Christmas Eve, 1949," by Guy Wiggins. I was born in 1948, so I can witness to this. Happy holidays, everyone!

This is a hand-painted, full-sized mural done a couple of years ago by my friend Teanna Byerts for a nature park in the area where she lives. Never was there a fiercer Santa! I wish all of you a happy holiday season!

For a while there I kept chickens and ducks. The chickens kept up a mellow, clucky commentary and laid eggs. The ducks provided splishy splashy amusement and, to my surprise, defended the chickens from hawks. If a hawk showed up overhead, the ducks became minatory and very vertical.

When in doubt, post a photo of a cat. This adorable little calico/tabby mix was named Rezi, because she sounded like a resonator guitar, which was because she had a hole in the roof of her mouth, so food went up in her nose and she sneezed a lot. She was thin, frail, and fearless. I'm reminiscing.

Yesterday, reading a good book, I completely forgot who I am, especially and specifically that I am old. I put down the book, stood up, was surprised and smitten by the pain and toppling indignity usual to my age, and suddenly being old was just too, too much to bear! How could it happen to me???🙃

My editor tells me that this is his cat sitting on page 104 of my most recent #EnolaHolmes manuscript. I feel honored to have my words warmed (hatched?) by the hind end of such a handsome cat. I am wondering what the cat's name is. For some subliminal reason I feel convinced that the cat is male.

Here's something kind of faerie by way of season's greetings! Art by Andrew Stewart Jamieson.

"Ah. She wore a bustle? As the cannibal asked the missionary's wife, 'Are all your women so deformed?' Well, there is no accounting for the way ladies adorn themselves. The whims of the fair sex defy logic." -- #SherlockHolmes pontificating to his younger sister #EnolaHolmes

"For cycling, I should have been wearing 'rationals,' bloomers covered by a waterproof skirt, or indeed any skirt long enough to conceal my ankles. I knew my mother was criticised for failing properly to drape vulgar surfaces such as coal scuttles, the back of her piano, and me." #EnolaHolmes

I love to write, so why do I have trouble thinking of something to write here, on Bluesky? I love to paint, to dip my brush in the colors and enliven the white paper by making my marks, so why do I have trouble thinking of what picture I want to paint? 🖋️🖌️

I began #writing in 1974 and was first published, by Pocket Books, in 1977. I've been writing ever since; 50 years, 60 novels. Being a novelist has given me a life that has been rich, not in $, but in mysteries and intangibles. It's amazing what people will let one do in the name of research. ☺️

"The autumn trees, ravaged as they are, take on the flash of tattered flags kindling in the gloom of cool cathedral caves where gold letters on marble pages describe death in battle and how bones bleach and burn far away in Indian sands." -- random sentence from a book by Virginia Woolf. #literature

I was teaching a "how to #write" class, talking about words, that "nit-picking" refers to lice, not knits, and that "main force" means force of hand, and that "strait-jacket" refers to tightness, not rectitude, and somebody asked, "Do we have to know all this stuff?" Somebody was in the wrong class!

Indulging myself in my golden years, I buy these little wooden birds and paint them with watercolors that stain the wood beautifully. I used rainbow colors, totally imaginary, and I give a lot of birdies away, but the ones I keep, I write their names on the base. I name my babies, I mean. ♥️💛💙💚💜☺️

There are times when, partway through the day, I encounter a mirror and realize I forgot to brush my hair again. Then I realize it really doesn't matter. But then I remember a time when yeah, it mattered, people cared what I looked like, and I sigh.