Welcome to My Website. I'm So Glad you Found me.
2017 has been a busy year – too busy. If I could clone myself I would, so long as I could still experience all the happenings, because this is my life and I don’t want to miss it. The sad times are balanced by the happy times, and at the end of the day I have my family and friends, laughter, flowers, sunshine, and football. Yes, I’m a college football fiend. My husband doesn’t have the season tickets, I have the season tickets. I fell in love with football the very first time I saw a game, and the love still holds.
Amongst all the happenings that kept me running this past year, I wrote a book: The Woman Left Behind. The heroine, Jina, is in the running for my favorite heroine. She’s smart and funny and strong, and we all need people like that in our lives. She made me laugh. You’d think that I, as the writer, would know in advance what my characters are going to say and do, but nope, that isn’t how it works with me. I’m as surprised as everyone else by what comes out of their mouths. It’s a stream of consciousness thing, and I’m in a canoe paddling for all I’m worth, trying to keep up with them.
Here in Alabama we were pleased by an early December snowstorm that dumped almost a foot of snow on some locations. This is Alabama. Some years we barely have frost. Years ago my dad’s jonquils would usually start blooming around the end of January. You’d think we would frown at such an early snow, but, again – this is Alabama. Snow means schools are closed, so the kids are playing. Years ago my husband and I bought a snow-making machine and made a slope for the kids to slide down on inner tubes and snow discs. For years we didn’t get any snow at all even though the weather got plenty cold, so we’d make snow and the whole neighborhood would come play. We’d build a fire in the fire pit, toast marshmallows, drink hot chocolate, and watch the kids have a blast. A couple of times there were total strangers who came to play, because they could see the snow from the road and came to investigate. Some dude we didn’t know brought his snowboard. I’m still surprised anyone in Alabama even owns a snowboard.
This coming year for the newsletter, every month I intend to insert the first chapter of one of my older books. Normally I’ll also include a recipe, and a picture of a hunk. So far the hunk has been Gerard Butler, because you can’t go far wrong with that. :)
— Linda Howard
From Linda's Blog, The Story Behind the Story
I like taking photos of flowers from either beneath them, looking up at the sky, or from ground level.
The photo on the left is a dandelion; the photos on the right are crimson clover.
Baby Tank then and now
