May the 4th be with you!

(See what I did there?)

I hope, dear reader friends, you are doing well. March and April were busy months for me. For one, at the end of the month I traveled for a week to Stockholm, Sweden. I visited with my daughter and son-in-law. I hadn’t seen them in two years, so it was a great week to catch up and meet my granddog and my grandcats. We had lovely weather while I was there, allowing me to see all parts of this very walkable city that’s built on a series of islands. Below is a picture of me a Spotify Global Headquarters, and then with my daughter outside of Fotografiska.

Sadly, when I got back, I’d developed cellulitis in my left hand, which meant that I went straight from picking up my luggage to the emergency room. I stayed in the hospital for two days after that. Then, mostly healed and loaded on antibiotics, two days later (I was never contagious), I pushed myself and drove from St. Louis to Kansas City for my last JEA/NSPA Convention. I attended my first conference in KC as a high school journalism student, so it was fitting to make KC my last stop as a retired journalism teacher. Besides presenting two sessions, I received the Journalism Education Association’s Lifetime Achievement Award, and I got to visit with great friends. Then I came home and slept.

Whew. The rest of April was much calmer, minus an eclipse, and the fact that I have a Fortunes of Texas book due to my editor at the end of May, and that I’m ramping up for the release of One Suite Deal at the end of June. Oh, and I presented a goal setting workshop for Missouri Romance Writers of America, and met friends for various happy hours.