But one of the things I always try to make sure of is that there is time to read. As a young kid, I always saw my mom reading all the time, especially while waiting for my brother’s therapies and doctor appointments.

Reading has been such a way to turn of my brain, that I will 100% always want to pick up a book rather than watch a TV show. Which means now that my boyfriend has bullied me into watching Supernatural, it will take us a year to watch it all.

Because again, I’d rather read a book.

May Reading List

• Yesteryear by Caro Claire Burke

• Toe to Toe by Falon Ballard

• A Serial Killer’s Guide to Marriage by Asia Mackay

• Caught Up by Liz Tomforde

• His & Hers by Alice Feeney

• Clean Point by Meg Jones

• Bad Men (audiobook) by Julie Mae Cohen

• You Are Fatally Invited by Ande Pliego

• Our Perfect Storm by Carley Fortune

• Stolen in Death by J.D. Robb

• Such a Clever Girl by Darby Kane

• Catch Her if You Can by Tessa Bailey

I’ve read four and I’m about to start Our Perfect Storm (which I thought was called One Perfect Storm until last night, whoops).

Even if I just read for an hour a night, I think I’ll be able to read most of these books in the next two weeks. I’ll have a week where I’m house-sitting and I anticipating a lot of reading that week (and lots of puppy cuddles).

Whatever you’re wanting to read this month, I hope you have all the great reads to start the month.

Winter? I’m more okay with snuggling up with a book and a blanket and not doing much else. Summer? I want to be in the sun, in the water, creating, thinking, moving forward.

So this is the time for that, right?

If I want to replenish my well, now is the time to do it. Except looking at my calendar, maybe I’m replenishing it a little too fast.

Much like April, May will feature several family events and four weekends in a row where I am not home to rest. And somewhere in the middle of all that is life.

(Legit, I don’t know how my parents were busy every weekend with four kids and weren’t just ready for a nap).

But when it comes to May, there are four core goals I’m focusing on.

May Goals

Writing: brainstorm and plot out the rest of my main series, the And She Runs series.

I’ve talked about this before online, but part of why I rewrote The Assassin to begin with was because I knew how I wanted the series to end, but I didn’t know how to get there and it was kind of a plodding mess.

Rewriting is giving me the opportunity to redo that, but I need to take the time to figure out the pacing and high level points of the series to set me up for success in the long term. Depending on how far I get into this process, I might start outlining the sequel, And She Hunts.

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Reading: Read at least 10 books.

I’ve been accumulating more books than I’m reading them, so I need to pick it up on the reading front. As I go to the pool more and more, my reading will increase. And I’ll share my reading list later this week.

Health: Move my body.

While losing weight and gaining strength is as much eating well as it is working out, I tend to eat better when I work out. In fact, as I write this, I’m on the treadmill before work, the second day in a row. I lifted weights last night, too.

This is a goal I feel I start and stop so often but I really want to stick to it. No matter how tired I am right now.

Career: Find a new job.

I know the job market is shit right now, and yet, it feels like it will always be that way. Especially with AI and a career that has been ten years of entry-level sales/customer service (customer success is what they call it now). So if it won’t get better, there’s no reason to wait.

Ideally I find a job soon, but bare minimum I need to be in a new role in the fall.

Four main goals, but of course there are plenty of other things going on, too. Two trips to Bryan/College Station, one to San Antonio, and work. The calendar is booked and busy.

I should set the scene. My maternal grandparents moved here in the 1970s and my mom grew up in Austin. My grandparents still live in the same house they bought when they moved here for my grandfather’s job at IBM (often jokingly referred to as the shorthand for “I’ve Been Moved”). So as a kid, I made multiple trips a year to Austin to visit both my maternal grandparents, and for a time, my paternal grandparents who lived in Georgtown, about 30 miles north of Austin.

When I say I-35 is probably one of my most traveled roads, I mean it.

But as a kid, it was a lot of time at my grandparents’ house, and not a lot of exploring the town. I thought Austin was boring, because I was a kid and never got to really experience the town when I came to visit. I swore I’d never move here.

Then right around the time I graduated college, I was in town for Christmas and I just felt it. There was something in my soul, in my body, whatever you want to call it, I just knew deep down that I was going to end up in Austin.

And then I ended up landing a job working for a political firm in the midst of the 2016 election. And I’ve been here ever since. At thirty-two, a decade is almost a third of my life and so much has happened since then.

I’ve worked in politics, in legal tech, in customer support and sales. I’ve worked at Apple for a contract, I’ve worked from home, I’ve done two stints being unemployed. And through all of that, Austin has been my home. With it’s weird weather and ungodly amount of cockroaches.

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The first few years of being Austin, I did Austin things. Went to coffee shops, breweries, sports events, I tried to get out and about in town and go to events. I love how many independent places there are here - from bookstores to breweries to coffee shops. I love the history of this place, especially considering I didn’t at one point. I’ve been here through some of the scariest times in Austin - like the 2018 serial bombing scenario, Covid, and the 2021 ice storm - and yet, this place has become home.

While I’ve become much more of a homebody since covid, there’s this desire to still explore the city I live in and I hope I get to do more of that for a long time.

Never thought I’d be here, but here we are 10 years into Austin and I don’t see myself leaving for at least a few more years. Whether it’s two or ten years or twenty more, here’s to the next adventure, Austin.

Every weekend was packed with family moments, both for my family and my boyfriend’s family. I’m absolutely exhausted between all of this and work, but my heart feels full and I haven’t had that all year.

The first weekend was Easter and we went to the southern side of Houston, almost near the coast. My boyfriend grew up there, so we spent the weekend visting his family. Even before I lost my grandfather this year, I really wanted to spend every possibility with my family, and now after being with my boyfriend for several years, that includes his family. It’s fun to slowly integrate into a family, bit by bit.

The second weekend, I went back to my hometown to hang out at my parents’ house one last time before they move. They bought that house when I was five and I’m now thirty-two. It’s bittersweet because there are so many reasons for them to move and start a new chapter in life. I’m happy they get to do that, but also knowing that he house that built me will belong to strangers in two months is weird.

I went up there one last time to just hang out and give myself some good good-bye memories. Before that trip this month, the last time I had been up to my parents’ house was for my grandfather’s funeral in February. While there might there might have been something poetic in that being the final time, I didn’t want it to be, so I went up this month. My mom and I went to the Ft. Worth Zoo to see the baby elephants before they move, and I went to Texas Roadhouse for the first time ever. Funny to think as a Texan I’d never been there before.

In between these weekends, I was still working and trying to start a first draft. I got 23,000 words done in Lost in the Canyon before I cracked the screen on my laptop. It’s fixed now after a week long stay at the Apple store and that killed my writing momentum, whoops. The day I dropped my laptop off at the Apple store, all of my family was in town to celebrate my Opa’s 90th birthday. How lucky am I that both of my grandfathers lived to 90? My nana will be 90 next year.

This past weekend, I thought would be quiet but we went to brunch both mornings (at the same place in Cedar Park), ran through Austin to check out some indie book stores for Independent Book Store day and just get out of the house. It was fun to run through central Austin when I live closer to the suburbs than downtown.

And even crazier? May basically looks the same - so many family events, so many road trips through Texas, and yet, I still have goals I want to accomplish in between them all.

Writing Recap

I started Lost in the Canyon on April 1st and my goal was 2,000 words a day. By the time I broke my laptop screen, I was averaging probably 1,700-1,800 words a day. However, it was a tough draft. I jumped into writing too soon before I really dug through to understand what the story was that I wanted to write. It was more vibes and aesthetics than it was plot and structure when I started. So I’m putting a pause on it to go back to my other series and to look for a job.

But I did get almost 23,000 words done tihs month.

Reading Recap

I read a few books in April, not as many as I wanted but I did read most of the books on my original TBR list.

• The Storm by Rachel Hawkins

• The Right Move by Liz Tomforde

• All the Little Houses by May Cobb

• Main Character Energy by Jamie Veron

• Yesteryear by Caro Claire Burke

I started Yesteryear just a couple of days ago, so that’ll be mostly considered a May read

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Other little notes

I watched the Artemis II launch and splashdown. The first two weeks, while I was working, I was watching Artemis II coverage. I even orders a little Rise plushie this week. I’ll forget I ordered him by the time he makes it to my house.

I finally watched a miniseries that has been on my list for a few years, Anne Boleyn on AMC+. It made some noise on the internet a few years ago for casting Jodie Smith-Turner as Anne Boleyn, but it was billed a pschologyical thriller look at Anne Boleyn’s last four months. Maybe I just know too much about Anne Boleyn and the rest of Henry’s six wives, but I felt this show was lacking the thriller aspect.

Watched a lot Dallas Stars games and severe weather and my boyfriend decided we were going to start Supernatural, too.

April was so busy, so full. Now it’s time to do it all over again in May.

Watching such a cool experience has relit my love for space travel, though I don’t want to go up into space (I hate flying on planes, I can’t even imagine being blasted off in a rocket). Space exploration really feels like the biggest and best of humanity.

Photo by Terence Burke on Unsplash

Looking back at my childhood, before I was a teenager, but still old enough to remember big events, there are always two that stick out: 9/11 and the Columbia Space Shuttle Disaster.

I was seven when 9/11 hit and to this day, it trips me out a little that none of my siblings remember 9/11, they were all too young. None of them probably remember Columbia either. But I do.

Didn’t understand it at the time, but I remember. My dad took me to the YMCA to sign up for basketball and they had the local news on. The news had coverage of the Columbia. I grew up in North Texas, in the suburbs of the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex, and that’s where a lot of Columbia broke up on reentry, so the images you see even to this day, those happened in the sky I looked up at.

That’s probably why it stuck with me so much, and I remember asking my dad if we’d say “We remember 02-01-2003” like we did for 9/11. He told me we probably wouldn’t and he was right. Sometimes the Columbia disaster feels like something no one remembers besides me.

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But it sparked something in me - this fascination with space exploration. I remember watching the last space shuttle launch, trying to explain to my younger siblings, who were eleven and ten at the time, why this was such a big deal. We weren’t going to space anymore.

I remember being in my car in May 2020, when two astronauts were launched to the ISS with a Crew Dragon capsule. In the grips of the pandemic, seeing something as cool as space flight again. While I am a total scardy cat of heights (or of falling, I guess you could say), there is something about space flight that is so incredible.

Then I read Atmsophere by Taylor Jenkins Reid, which is about astronauts falling in love, and the reinvigorated my love of space flight. I watched every documentary I could find about Challenger and Columbia to understand how they happened and what

Science has advanced so far, we can break the barrier of the atmosphere to see what lies beyond our blue dot. As a writer, I often think that half of my job is to explore feelings and moments in time. Space is exploring the unknown, the beyond. Exploring moments or feeling, those are things we know, we just find new layers to.

Only so many people have explored beyond our world.

Not only is exploration an incredible feat, but just launching people into space - that is insane (in the best ways possible). To defy gravity, the atmosphere - it’s a huge collaboration. It requires people to be the best at what they do. As someone who feels like a jack of all trades, seeing people who absolutely kick ass at what they do and they are incredible at that one thing, it’s inspiring.

For as many moments these past few years that required an eye roll or an “what the hell is happening here?”, seeing Artemis II launch, see the moon and splash down safely, with such precision.

It makes me proud to be a human, to see such collaboration - the best of the best - working together for a common cause. It shows we can be better than just what we are now - that we can strive for greatness. That humans can work together for something bigger than ourselves.

We need more moments like this, because we all deserve to excited about humanity and for what we can do.

And I hope that we see more of this - not just exploration, I know we have more Artemis missions are on the way. But this sense of pride of the incredible things humans can do when we strive for our best.

Also, I definitely want a Rise plushie.

While I did publish my monthly recap and my April To Be Read, I just didn’t have time to publish my quarterly goals. I love quarterly goals, setting up an idea of what I want the next three months to look like. Then breaking them down into monthly goals - goal setting and dreaming big - favorite combo.

After quarter one, I really needed this reset, and it is already packed with things happening. My grandfather turns 90 this month, we had Easter yesterday, and my parents are moving for the first time since I was five (I’m thirty-two now), so my weekends for the next month and a half are booked with family events. Birthdays, graduations, unpacking, and even dog-sitting for a week.

There is so much going on in my personal life, it almost feels like it’s the holidays. Except it’s hot, so I guess it’s the holidays in Australia (since December is summer there).

Even then, this is the time of year where I feel the most alive. So, we’re going to be busy, but I hope it’s exciting busy, where I go to bed tired because I feel like I did well that day.

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My Quarter Two Goals

My Writing Goals

• Write the first draft of Lost in the Canyon, a stand-alone mystery

• Plot out the big moments for the rest of my main series

• Write the first draft of And She Hunts, the sequel to my latest book, And She Runs

My goal for Lost in the Canyon is to finish it by mid-May. I will be house-sitting at the end of May and want to spend that week plotting out the main series.

On top of writing, an indie author must also market her books, and there are a few things I need to do for that.

• finish my website, I need to write a new bio page

• focus on trial reels on Instagram

• finish my email sign up auto-responder for my pen name

My Life Goals (the non-writing goals)

• find a new job

• lots of traveling

• read 20 books

• start moving my body more, walking and swimming laps

• move away from Notion, which has been my go-to app for a long time. Maybe I’ll do a blog post about that process at some point, but I think I’m going to move to Obsidian

• summer clean my house, like spring cleaning but not in the spring

So many things on the calendar for this quarter and I find myself looking forward to the months ahead.

But this is not a weather post, this a reading post. The reason I mention pool season is because pool season is when I do most of my reading. A few hours at the pool, a few beers and a kindle, and I am unstoppable. At least when it comes to reading.

Now this year is a little unique in that I have travel/family plans six out of the next weekends. So I’m not totally sure the first time I’ll get to go to the pool and actually dip into the water. The moment I do, though, it’ll be with my kindle in hand.

I always love taking my kindle to the pool, because with the e-ink display, I can see it well in the sun, and it’s more waterproof than a physical book. So as we move to pool season, I’ll be reading more books on my Kindle than on my TBR cart.

My April To Be Read List

1. The Storm by Rachel Hawkins

2. Game Point by Meg Jones

3. All the Little House by May Cobb

4. The Right Move by Liz Tomforde

5. A Serial Killer’s Guide to Marriage by Asia Mackay

6. Main Character Energy by Caitlin Devlin

7. His & Hers by Alice Feeney

It’s a shorter list this month but that’s intentional. There’s so much going on and since I’m head deep in writing a new book. But even writers need to read to keep sharp - just like athletes watch film, and for the next few months, it’ll just be me and my kindle hanging out at the pool.

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Thankfully it mostly delivered. No one died, no one caught the flu. No random job changes to make me want to yank my hair out. In fact, I am more or less temporarily in a different role at work, helping out in a queue that involves a lot less talking to people every single day.

The days I’m in my normal queue versus the temporary queue, it’s quite crazy how different my mood feels after the end of the day.

March was the month for healing, for spending some time outside. I went to the pool during lunch a few times just to read (it’s still too cold to get into the water), started brainstorming and outlining a book, too.

My boyfriend and I tackled some house projects, like decluttering spots in the house, cleaning, and finally taking down the Christmas tree. Literally did that yesterday, whoops.

Filed my taxes like an adult, too. After the hectic start of the year, this really felt like the month to take a step back and just collect on what I needed to do and take care of.

One of my goals this year, too, was to catch up on some needed doctor’s appointments. I finally went to the eye doctor’s in the middle of the month and picked up some new glasses this week. The last time I got new glasses was the day Joe Biden was inaugurated, so it’s been a hot minute.

Writing Update

I started brainstorming my newest book, outlined about half of it and started writing it on Monday. For the month of March, I wrote 4,069. Considering that was all in the last two days of the month, I will take it.

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Reading Update

I only read three books in February and I am happy to say I read more in March. In March I finished five and started a sixth book.

• Murder by Cheesecake: A Golden Girls Cozy Mystery by Rachel Ekstrom Courage

• It’s Not Here by Mary Kubica

• Alter Ego by Alex Segura

• An Academic Affair by Jodi McAlister

• You Belong Here by Megan Miranda

• The Storm by Rachel Hawkins (started this one, but haven’t finished it yet)

As we get closer to summer, I’m hoping for more memories, more fun and a few more sunburns.

February was such a blur, I only read three books when I wanted to read more. So, I’m wanting to be intentional about picking up a book this month, compared to last month.

With pool season right around the corner, I know my reading will go up, but I have so many physical books to read through. During pool season, I lean on my kindle a lot, because it is more waterproof than a physical, paper book.

So this month, I really want to focus on reading on my physical books and put a little dent in my list.

March To Be Read list:

• Murder by Cheesecake: A Golden Girls Cozy Mystery by Rachel Ekstrom Courage

• It’s Not Her by Mary Kubica

• An Academic Affair by Jodi McAlister

• You Belong Here by Megan Miranda

• And Now, Back to You by B.K. Borison

• Clean Point by Meg Jones

• Friends with Benefits by Marisa Kanter

• You are Fatally Invited by Ande Pliego

• The First Ladies by Marie Benedict and Victoria Christopher Murray

• Stolen in Death by J.D. Robb

• Alter Ego by Alex Segura

• Catch Her if You Can by Tessa Bailey

At the rate my year is going, even if I get half of these read, I’ll be happy.

It’s been a month and I need to get to work. Not even because “it’s been long enough” to grieve or anything like that, but I want to get back to work because I feel in the last few months, even before all of this happened, I’ve lost a lot touch with my creative side and I miss it.

For so long in my life, I didn’t think of myself as a creative. I can’t draw to save my life, I’m not big on arts and crafts. So as a kid and even a young adult, I always felt that because I didn’t like those things, I couldn’t be creative.

It time and work to accept that I am creative, even if it looks different than what I grew up believing. But lately, I feel so out of touch from that side and I need to find my way back. So, my goals this month are a combination of trying to get back to that, but also taking care of things that will take up clutter in my brain so I can focus on my creativity.

March Goals

Writing Goals

• brainstorm a new version of my stand-alone book, Lost in the Canyon. I needed to change up my writing schedule, so I’ll be brainstorming and outlining this month to give myself plenty of time to get it ready to write in April.

Marketing Goals

• finish redoing my author website, I’m rebuilding it and redesigning it in spurts.

• post on social media regularly, you know, to promote my books.

Health & Wellness Goals

• Journal at least 3 times a week. I’ve been using the Apple Journaling app off and on this year, and I love it because it syncs with my devices, so I can start on my phone and pick up on my computer if it’s a long journal entry.

• Plan for Quarter 2. Needless to say, Quarter 1 was kind of nightmare, so we’ll plan for Quarter 2 this month with the HB90 method.

Other Goals:

• Spring clean my house

• find a new job

• read 10 books

• maybe go to the pool at the end of the month? I usually wait until April, but I went mid-March last year and it was 85 degrees or more multiple days this past week in February, so I think we might go the last weekend of March if it’s still warm.

Spring going into Summer is always the time that I feel most at peace. The warm air, the sun on my skin, hitting the pool, I’m ready for the warmth. And to crush some goals I hope.

Here’s to hoping March is worth it.

To best describe how February was a nightmare, we have to go back to the last week of January. I’m in the car with my boyfriend, driving to H-E-B, and my sister calls me. My sister does not typically call me unless she needs help with something or wants to deliver terrible news - like calling me to tell me our family dog died in 2021.

This call was the later, to tell me that my dad and aunt were talking about sending my grandfather to hospice care. He’d been sick off and on since the fall, and looked rough when I had seen him at Thanksgiving. After several stints in the hospital and rehab, he was just not responding well and mentally he was ready to go.

Friday night, he went to hospice. Sunday, February 1st, at 9:15 at night, my dad called: my grandfather had passed away. He had been 95, he was ready to go, but it still caught me off guard. A week before that, I had no idea it was the end.

I was incredibly lucky to have 32 years with three of my four grandparents, but now I hope my grandfather is up there with my grandmother, after being apart for fourteen years.

Needless to say, I took time off from work, I didn’t go back to work until February 12th, I think. I worked Thursday and Friday and then woke up sick Saturday morning. I thought it was allergies, there was a cold front that came through that day that kicked up stuff, but by the end of the day, I had spiked a fever (I think the last time I had a fever was in 2020) and my muscles were sore, muscles that don’t usually hurt, like my hips.

Sunday morning, I finally broke down and took a Covid/Flu test and I was positive for Flu A. Even now, two weeks later, I still don’t feel 100%. Prolonged talking irritates my throat and I have this cough I can’t seem to shake. The stress of this month is showing up physically, too. My acne is the worst it’s been in a while, my hair is falling out more frequently and I am not sleeping well.

February is only twenty-eight days long but it felt so long. I am truly hoping that March is boring and normal, because I need some of that.

And while most of the month felt like I was floating in another reality, there were still some good moments. We went a Super Bowl party after getting back to Austin, I got to see some of my mom’s friends at my grandfather’s funeral. My mom has two friends who I’ve known really my entire life, and it was nice to see them. At one point in my life, they would have been the women I would have called if I couldn’t get a hold of my own parents.

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My grandfather that passed away was my paternal grandfather, so to see people show up to support my mom as she lost her father-in-law, it was really sweet to see.

At work, I’m so incredibly lucky that my new supervisor is so protective of her people. While I’ve dealt with the flu, she’s moved me into queues where I didn’t have to speak and irritate my throat and I had my annual review this past week that I think went really well.

But, even in those moments, most of the month was lackluster. I didn’t write any words and in fact, in the past few days, I’ve had to think about what my writing is going to look like for the rest of the year (I’ve decided that 2026 actually starts today).

I did read three books in February.

• My Husband’s Wife by Alice Feeney

• Most Eligible by Isabelle Engel

• The Future Saints by Ashley Winstead

If I had to sum up February, it would simply be: I survived.

I knew it would be a rough month going into the month - mostly because I knew that my new role I’d be starting was going to be tough. And it was, I spent most days drained beyond belief, checking out after I clocked…

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