I’ve got some good news. I have finally finished that spin-off novel I promised several years ago – a friends to lovers romance for Kadyn and Shae! My editor is working her magic, my beta readers have a draft in their hot little hands, and I have secured a stunning cover I can’t wait to share with you all. Finally, it is all coming together with a tentative release date in March. This has without a doubt been a labor of love, with challenges and distractions seemingly insurmountable at times. I am so happy to be nearing the finish line. 

Speaking of happy… after spending the last few years navigating a global pandemic and merely surviving… I have discovered I need to work on that… on being happy. The New Year’s resolution I have chosen for 2023 is to engage in more activities that make me happy. An integral part of that is trying to figure out what makes me happy. One strategy I have chosen to adopt is acknowledging when something makes me happy… literally stating aloud, “This makes me happy,” even when that feeling is fleeting. 

I have learned a few things already. While trying to pinpoint what makes me happy, I have discovered it truly is the little things. It is snuggling with my dogs, walking with my daughter, and a crisp blue sky. It is seeing leafless trees turn silver in the moonlight, a dusting of snow, and cozy socks. It is having a real conversation on the phone with my friends (instead of texting). It is chucking pistachios at my mom and seeing her initial confusion and disbelief morph into laughter. It is giving and receiving hugs, kissing my husband, sleeping in, and binge-watching Bridgerton. It is that precise moment each week when I finish grading for the classes I am teaching. It is the kind words my students share at the end of the semester. It is learning something new, engaging with someone new, and hearing a friend’s child has finally busted out of the hospital. It is seeing my daughter’s labs looking so good, it is a clean house, a warm cup of coffee, a piece of chocolate while it is melting in my mouth. It’s a completed task. It’s a Yoga stretch. It’s witnessing a good deed, it is helping someone in need, and… finishing my novel.

While I wasn’t surprised to discover these things make me happy, what I did find surprising is how frequently I feel happy. As odd as this may sound, I think I was allowing these moments to slip past me unnoticed. Now that  my “happy radar” is on, I am more aware and appreciative of these moments. 

The last few years have been difficult for all of us. It is long past time we carve out some happiness in the midst of this insanity… to find joy… to move past surviving and savor life. I hope you will join me in adopting strategies that will help you find your happy. If you do, let me know what you find. I would love to hear what makes you happy.

We have proven our strengths. We have proven that at a minimum we are exactly the same as you are. So do prove that you are with us… that you will not let us go… and then life will win over death; light will win over darkness. Glory be to Ukraine. – Volodymyr Zelenskyy, President of Ukraine, March 1, 2022

As many of you know, Ukraine-Russia relations feature heavily in The Broken Series. I thought I would share why I chose to weave this conflict into my novels, and why I feel we should stand with Ukraine now. I think this video is the perfect place to start. Please take a minute to listen to President Zelenskyy’s appeal to the EU. You might want to grab a tissue.

Some background information on the revolutions President Zelenskyy is referring to in this speech. The Orange Revolution was waged after a run-off vote for president in 2004 that was marred by corruption. The Ukrainians voted for the pro-western/pro-democracy candidate Viktor Yushchenko, who survived an assassination attempt (dioxin poisoning) while running against Putin’s preferred candidate, Viktor Yanukovych. Yanukovych was announced the winner, despite credible exit polls proving Yushchenko won. Over a million citizens poured into the streets of Kyiv every day until a free and fair election was held. Yushchenko (the pro-democracy candidate) won. The Orange revolution came to a peaceful end. No blood was spilled.

Sadly, Kremlin-backed Yanukovych secured the presidency in the next election. He imprisoned his political opponent Yulia Tymoshenko, who co-led the Orange Revolution, and he suspended the signing of the EU-Ukraine Association Agreement. That agreement forged stronger economic, social, political, and cultural ties between Ukraine and the EU. Yanukovych chose to strengthen ties with Russia instead, despite the Ukrainians’ deep and long-standing desire to become a member of the EU and NATO. The EuroMaidan revolution (aka Revolution of Dignity) followed. More than a hundred people were killed during the protests. Yanukovych fled his palace, but not before he and his cronies absconded with $40 billion in state assets. They currently live in Russia.

Ukraine’s former president Petro Poroshenko (pro-democracy) and current president Volodymyr Zelenskyy (also pro-democracy) are both fighting in the streets alongside the citizens of Ukraine to defend their country against Russia’s brutal, unprovoked war crimes, which can only be described as a David and Goliath fight. As I write this, international news outlets are reporting that Putin plans to replace President Zelenskyy with Yanukovych, the Kremlin-backed criminal who stole billions from the Ukrainian people before fleeing the country in 2014. I should note this is not the first time Putin has attacked a neighboring country and installed a puppet regime (see, e.g.: Belarus, Chechnya, Abkhazia, and South Ossetia). This is his modus operandi. I share this because I want people to understand how long Ukrainians have been fighting to end Putin’s meddling in their government, how desperately they want to align themselves with European countries, and how determined they are to fight for freedom and democracy. 

Why do I care? I taught conflict resolution in Ukraine in 2003. I also conducted research in Ukraine for the International Peace Research Association. I currently teach Conflict Resolution, NATO, and Human Security (just to name a few classes) for the American Military University. I have followed Ukraine’s progress and the challenges they have faced for decades. I am well aware of the tactics Putin has applied to undermine their democracy. He has applied those same tactics in twenty-seven other democracies, including the United States. He has made clear he will not stand for any NATO ally or NATO country on his border. If he takes Ukraine, there will be four NATO countries on his new, illegally acquired border. He will pick them off one by one, two by two, or altogether by shutting off their fuel, by applying economic warfare, political warfare, cyber warfare, and information warfare (just like he did in Ukraine). He will weaken them, and he will demand they leave NATO. If they do not comply, he will intervene militarily. If they do comply, he will demand they relinquish their militaries (the same demand he has made of Ukraine). He will force them to abandon trade agreements with other democracies, including the United States (just like he did in Ukraine). Once he gains control of these countries, he will apply the same tactics to gain control over the NATO countries on their borders. He will seize control of Europe and the Arctic region. Our world will remain a unipolar world but with Putin at the helm. Meanwhile, Putin will continue to disseminate propaganda fueling tribalism and social unrest in the United States. He will apply political warfare, economic warfare, cyber warfare, and will continue to threaten us with nuclear weapons until we submit. He has developed a nuclear weapon with advanced antimissile countermeasures designed to penetrate the U.S. missile defense shield aptly named Satan 2 (aka RS-28 Sarmat), which travels at 16,000 mph and carries 10 large warheads, all of which can target different locations. This weapon will be loaded into 50 ICBM silos this year. According to Military Today, “a single RS-28 missile with MIRVs can completely destroy three U.S. states.” This is what lies in the balance. This attack on Ukraine is only the beginning. Listen to President Zelenskyy’s other speeches issued over the past several days. He knows it isn’t just the Ukrainians’ he is fighting to save. It’s us. All of us.

And that is why I stand with Ukraine.

You know that feeling you get when you have been driving alone in the car, when your eyes are fixed on the road, but your brain drifts off to another place? You might be replaying a conversation or a past event inside your head, running through that never ending list of things to do, planning the next birthday celebration, working through the latest family dilemma, or daydreaming about some grand escape. Your eyes are fixed on the road, but you lose sight of your surroundings. You blink, and you realize you have traveled several miles. Twenty minutes have passed, and you haven’t a clue what has transpired during that time. You don’t recall driving past the usual landmarks, and you can’t quite fathom how you got there. It is an unsettling feeling. You were there, but you weren’t fully present.

That is how I’m feeling about 2021. I vaguely recall how it began. Vaguely. I don’t remember New Year’s Eve or Valentine’s Day. I couldn’t tell you what kind of cake I ate on my birthday or what, if anything, we did to celebrate Saint Patrick’s Day. School ended and summer began with very little fanfare because my children were still enrolled in distance learning. There were a few milestones I do recall… standing in line for the COVID vaccine, the excruciating loss of my sister-in-law, my husband’s prolonged absence as he grieved with his family and then quarantined outside the home for several weeks, the day my daughters got their COVID vaccines, that phone call I received alerting me to the fact my sixteen-year-old was rejecting her transplanted kidney, rolling our suitcases through the ER as we checked into the hospital, the day we busted out of the hospital (kidney once again stable), my fifteen-year-old daughter earning a spot on a highly competitive volleyball team, the joy I felt seeing her play, the fear I felt when she was exposed to COVID, the relief I felt when those test results came back negative, painting my office (something I’ve longed to do for well over a decade), the pride I felt when my daughter passed the test for her learner’s permit, and more recently… carving pumpkins with my brother and his family on a crisp fall day beneath a shockingly blue sky. 

While I can recall several highs and lows, there are huge chunks of time that are missing from my mind. It certainly doesn’t feel like eleven months have passed by. It is unsettling… losing nearly an entire year of your life. And, if I’m being totally honest, the same darn thing happened in 2020. I think these past two years will forever be known as the years we lost to COVID. Our calendars and our clocks kept chugging along, but our brains didn’t compute this passage of time. So many of the events that typically mark the passage of time were cancelled or muted. So here I sit… in November. We are hurtling toward the holidays, and I can’t fathom how we got here. Shockingly, this is my first and quite possibly my last blog post for 2021. I’m still trying to wrap my head around that. 

I want you to know I am still plugging along with Shae’s story (book six in the Broken Series). I’m working on the final chapter now. My editor still needs to work her magic, but that likely won’t happen until January. If all our stars align, we will get this book to print in time for Valentine’s Day. I’m not going to lie. This book has proven a bit of a bear, given the competing demands on my time, but I am eager to share it with you. I will offer this tiny bit of insight… Do you remember way back in the final chapter of Beautifully Broken when Shae was riding her bike on the Potomac River Trail?  She spotted Kri doing yoga in the park and stopped to tell her about that job opening at Seeds for Peace. It was the first time she met Kadyn, who was feeling all kinds of surly because Kri wasn’t answering her phone. Shae hugged Kri before they left for that scavenger hunt benefitting Saint Jude’s Children’s Hospital. When she did, she whispered, “What I wouldn’t give to be you for just one day.” Well, her fairy god-author has granted that wish and then some. I can’t wait for you to see what I have in store for her. Stay tuned. February will be here before you know it!

Before I sign off, let’s pinky promise… No more years lost to COVID. Enjoy the holidays. Every. Moment. No more blinking and wondering how you got there. Live in the moment.

Woah, that sounds like the perfect New Year’s resolution. 

Where’s that pinky?