I’m clearing my life of unwanted clutter and offering up new and inventive ideas this year.
I’ve put out two new books in the last six months. Sometimes months of hard work on individual projects end up coming to fruition at approximately the same time and that is how it worked for me.
In the fall I released a fantasy YA book, Return to Glome’s Valley, which takes place in the valleys of southeast Oklahoma near the Heavener Runestone. It is the sequel to Glome’s Valley and takes place 14 years later when Ethan has become a man. He returns to the place he played as a child and finds escapades and secrets that only an adult could handle. Some mysteries should remain simply that. There are new adventures for some of the old characters and you might meet a dragon. It is available on Amazon at http://tinyurl.com/ybdsqr6w and Smashwords https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/750678 in paperback or electronic download.
Stones of Sandhill Island is part of the suspense series that takes place on a tourist island off the coast of Corpus Christi. Billie Stone – a legend in the Corpus Christi jazz scene – has come home to heal emotionally after her family is killed in a car accident. She struggles with PTSD and survivor guilt. She meditates and practices yoga to help with the symptoms and then her anchor – her mother, a former principal ballerina with the Corpus Christi Ballet – becomes ill with Parkinsons. Then Billie finds her mother held secrets.
Others also suffer from that effects of that fateful night. Joe Franks was a little drunk and never meant to hurt anyone when he hit the mini van that killed two people, but he spent a year in jail for manslaughter and lost his home, car, job, and self-respect. Now he delivers pizza for a living and blames Billie for his troubles.
On January 24, 2018 I will release the second in the Sandhill Island series. It can be pre-ordered on The Wild Rose Press site at https://catalog.thewildrosepress.com/search?controller=search&orderby=position&orderway=desc&search_query=peggy+chambers&submit_search= or Amazon where the Kindle version is currently available for preorder https://www.amazon.com/Stones-Sandhill-Island-Book-ebook/dp/B078JYFSHN/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1515334460&sr=8-2&keywords=peggy+chambers. If you loved the first, I hope you continue the story with the second. I plan a third as well and it is still a nugget in my mind.
A new year just begs for new reads. Check out Return to Glome’s Valley and Stones of Sandhill Island and leave a review. Authors love reviews!
I’m beginning a clean sweep with 2018! Out with the old and in with the new. 
I’m a day early but decided to go ahead and begin the 2018 blogs. Clearing your life will be the theme this year, because I need it! I’ve recently been looking at things in the cabinets, closets and even in the living room that I can do without. Maybe someone else can use them, but I know I don’t need them anymore. And along with the cleaning out, I plan to repaint my white woodwork after cleaning it, and clear each and every drawer, cabinet, and closet. It will be a trip down memory lane and a chance to clear out my life – and my mind.
I’ve been at this Christmas thing for a while now. I grew up in a family with two sisters and two parents and I remember one pair of cowboy boots handed down to whoever fit them that year. They were polished on Christmas Eve, and morning would find them full of nuts and fruit. No one thought about the stinky feet that had been there before the fruit, or the fact that Santa Claus brought fruit and nuts for three kids with one pair of boots. My dad would crack the nuts for us and we’d eat them and oranges for breakfast while the turkey roasted. Of course, we got dolls, what girl didn’t back then, and Mom made Christmas dresses for all of us.
Today I am hosting Caroline Giammanco, non-fiction author, and teacher, on my blog. Caroline hails from Missouri where she is a classroom English teacher at the local high school.
My guest blogger today is the uber-talented author, Peggy Jaeger. We’ve agreed there aren’t enough Peggy’s in literature and it was a good way for us to begin talking. Both of us writing for The Wild Rose Press, we sometimes get in each other’s way on the Tuesday night chat room when called on. Which Peggy?
My husband came down with a cold at Thanksgiving after a week of sitting in a deer stand. The cold weather made his body vulnerable to the rhinovirus that causes the common cold. When you have a cold it doesn’t feel very common, but they are everywhere. So far mankind has not found a cure for the common cold and every doctor will say, “it’s a virus and it has to run its course.” I read somewhere once that skin cancer had been cured by injecting it with the rhinovirus. That might be an urban legend, but then again, maybe there is a reason why we cannot, or should not, eradicate the common cold. 
Books make great Christmas presents. I know because I read them, and others do to. I grew up happy in the library. My sisters and I would walk the few blocks to the old Carnegie library in Enid during the summer and load up with as many books as our arms could hold (or the library would let us check out at one time). There was just something about the smell of ink on paper and the book in my hand that made me happy. I was transported to another world.
Check out the website of Shelley Workinger’s Foodfic blog! But what are they eating? We discuss food after the apocalypse.
Peggy Chambers "Views from the Hammock" site 