New senior pup! Happy Holidays to us!

Hubby and I will be extra busy this holiday season. We've missed having a fur baby around and adopted a senior pup on Saturday. She came with health issues, as many rescues do, but hers are treatable, unlike our previous hospice rescue. We have a wonderful vet who is helping us get the right treatments for her. We're into the day 4 mark and she is already getting more comfortable with us and our routines. We're learning her personality, which is quite mellow and loving, though I suspect more of it will come out as she starts to feel better and gets to trust us fully. 

Our first senior rescue that we picked up at a local shelter, crossed the rainbow bridge almost three years ago. She loved people and adapted to us right away. She had some separation anxiety, as they all do. And she was extremely well-behaved, except when she saw another dog. Then she did what we called the Linda Blair Exorcist thing. Our trainer said it was fear aggression most likely from being taken from her mother too early and never socialized as a puppy. Humans' fault, never the dog. It took over a year, but with positive reinforcement and the help of our trainer, we got her to tolerate one dog, a friend's senior golden, and though she would never tolerate any other dogs, she eventually calmed down on her walks and realized we would keep her safe. Though, we never went anywhere without treats in our pocket. We adapted her outings to this issue and she gave us six years of unconditional love and snuggles. I still miss her every day. 

As anyone who has adopted knows, the first few days with a new pup is tiring, because it's an adjustment period for everyone. Puppies are a lot more work than older dogs, another reason to love the little seniors! When they're sick or have abandoment issues, it means a bit more care for the humans in the household, but they're extremely grateful when someone adopts them and totally worth it. This is our third senior rescue. Our second was a hospice situation, which was also rewarding because she wasn't alone in her final days.

Since we work from home, we're the perfect household for a senior that needs some extra care. Our new baby doesn't have any issues with other dogs, but her physical problems mean she can only do short walks. We have a stroller from our previous seniors and she loves it already. She also loves car rides, so that means we can take her just about anywhere with us. We live in a very dog-friendly city, which makes our lives easier too. 

I took the week off from writing to focus on our new family addition and to help speed up the bonding process. Like babies, dogs take work on our part, some needing a little extra, but seniors are wonderful and have a lot of love to give, so happy holidays to us!

I wish each of you a wonderful holiday season and a safe new year.

Happy Halloween month!

October is our favorite month here in the desert because our high temperatures start to drop from the 100s into the 80s. Plus, Halloween is my favorite holiday. We've got all the decorations up and ave been watching Halloween movies, like Hocus Pocus and HP2. We'll soon watch Buffy and Bewitched Halloween episodes. October also reminds me of some jobs I worked between Hollywood acting and dancing gigs back in the 1980's. Gigs aren't guaranteed to last for a long time, and getting the next one can sometimes take a while, so we often worked other jobs to pay the bills.

Some weren't very memorable or were downright awful, but two companies, American Greetings and Joseph Markovits, were my favorites, just behind my Waldenbooks (I met my husband there) and my library page days. I don't need a lot of management when working and prefer jobs that I can do alone or with very little interference from others. Probably why I became a writer.

Markovits was a huge artificial flower company, and AG, well you probably know they make cards, wrapping and decor items. Markovits is long gone but AG is still around and seems to be doing well. Back in the day, I was allowed to take some retired items from both companies, and I still have a few of them that we use to decorate our current home and for various holidays.

I took care of the flower arrangements at the Markovits showroom so corporate customers could see the products when they came to town. I was a merchandiser for AG, which meant traveling to various stores to refill cards and put up current displays. The Halloween stuff was my favorite, of course. Nostalgia is a strong mistress, especially as we get older and the world changes around us, and I'll always have fond memories of those two companies, especially around the holidays.

If you're looking for Halloween reads, please check out my Desert Magick series with witches, ghosts, mediums and more at http://www.danadaviswriting.com/Desert%20Magick.html

Have a safe and fun Halloween!

New low price on my teen adventures!

With most of the home repairs done, I can now concentrate on finishing my next novel. I have 2 wonderful writers groups that I'm a member of now, as well as a new critique group. Writing is a solitary job so having other writers to chat with and offer support and friendship is a wonderful outlet, even for those of us who are introverts. Or maybe especially for us introverts.

In the meantime, my teen novels now have new low prices, so if you or anyone you know enjoys books for the tween/teen set, be sure to check out this web page http://www.danadaviswriting.com/Teen%20Adventures.html

The new pricing includes my teen sci-fi adventure, Quest for Freedom

Enjoy and happy reading!

Dog days of summer

We recently adopted a hospice dog and spent her final days comforting her and letting her know that she is loved. That was hard on us to say goodbye, but we're so glad we could do that for her. I highly recommend it if you have the time and money to care for a fur baby in need.

I'm back to writing on a regular schedule this week, and we're down to one repair left on our home for this year. Next year, we plan to put in a pool or a swim spa, which will allow us to enjoy the summer heat and stay cool outside. We're both looking forward to that! Hard to believe we've been in this house almost a year now.

This is the really hot time of year in Arizona so we've been walking early in the mornings before the triple digit temps start, riding our stationary bike, and playing Wii sports. I also take an in-person dance class, which is a great way to stay cool and get exercise, in addition to online classes and Zoom writers meetings. We do a lot of cooking together and play Scrabble while we watch our beloved Dodgers play on TV. We're both homebodies and it's nice having a somewhat normal life again. 

Enjoy your summer and I hope everyone is staying safe and hydrated. 

Moving, traveling and writing, oh my!

What a whirlwind we've been living in the past 7 months! We moved from Oregon back to Arizona to be closer to our SoCal family and other relatives in this area of the country. We've been doing repairs to our forever home since we moved in, which has been an experience with all the delays in getting materials. We still have a couple of items to tend to but we took a break a couple of weeks ago and went on a trip to visit relatives for the first time since before the pandemic hit. Travel is always stressful for me with Meniere's Disease and flying after several years of no travel was an added stress, but everything went smoothly and we got back a week ago, then entertained guests for a week here. I didn't have a vertigo attack, which I'm so grateful for! It's the little things, right?

We're staying low-key this holiday weekend and I will be getting back to my regular writing schedule on Tuesday, which I'm stoked about. Since moving, I've joined some writing groups that survived covid, as well as signed up for in-person dance and exercise classes. Things are still crazy in this world but getting back to something that feels normal helps a lot right now. I have two books coming out over the next couple of years so I will be very busy writing, editing, and workshopping those, and I really cherish being around other creatives. In fact, I feed on that creative energy, even though I'm an introvert. I'll post updates on the new books as they get closer to publication.

I hope everyone is staying safe and sane. Be excellent to each other!

It's my birthday month!

Just in time for my birthday month - my award-winning novel, Superstitions, has a new low ebook price! So much has happened in the world the past couple of years that it's nice to have the company of books, isn't it? I don't know about you, but books saved my and my husband's sanity during these trying times. We're both avid readers. In fact, we met and started dating while working in Waldenbooks back in the day. For those of you not old enough to remember, Waldenbooks was a popular mall bookstore. There was no internet back then so paperbacks were our favorite go-to reads and we had a LOT of books when we finally got our first place together. We still read paperbacks and have them on our bookshelves, but we tend to read more ebooks these days. I love having multitudes of worlds on one device and my Kindle Paperwhite is my best friend. Besides hubby, of course. 

                                        https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B077ZM16DM/

Happy St Paddy's month!

I just realized I haven't posted in 2 months. We're still doing much-needed repairs on our new home and trying to get them all finished before summer so we can get back to a normal life again. With all the crazy stuff going on in the world, normal is something we crave. I'm still plugging away at the next 2 novels, which is always a challenge with the house stuff going on.

That said, it's March, which means spring will be showing off very soon and flowers are already starting to bloom around us. Plus, as a descendant of Irish immigrants, and here are a lot of us, the wearing o' the green is always a fun day! We make a fun veg version of a traditional Irish dish or dessert on St Paddy's Day. And the entire month, I focus my genealogy research on my Irish ancestors, as well as my Scottish lines, since the two intermingled quite a bit in the past. 

As a young child, my great-grandmother convinced me that a leprechaun lived in the bushes outside her house and I would spend hours looking for the little guy. I think the adults just wanted time to themselves but I loved exploring the bushes, flowers and trees on her property. She had fruit and nut trees that I could climb and I would pretend I was in a forest and make up stories in my head. A precursor to my eventual writing career, I suppose. 

Stay safe! Happy March and Happy St Paddy's Day!

http://www.danadaviswriting.com/

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year! I hope everyone had a safe celebration. We stayed in and ate popcorn, watched a movie, and played games. We are all settled in the new home now and are very happy to have warmer winters again. We're looking forward to the time when it's safe to travel abroad again. We read, stream movies, play games, and have a dedicated workout room to help us ride out these crazy times, but our last vacation was 10 years ago to The Netherlands, so we are more than ready to go someplace.

I'm plugging away at my next 2 novels and we've been doing much-needed repairs to our new home. This house is over 20 years old and we bought it in original condition so it needs some work. We love having nature trails outside our door, which helps us stay sane. Nature is the best soother, especially during stressful times, so I highly recommend getting out in nature or even a nearby park.

Living in historic times is never easy but we'll get through this eventually. Stay safe out there!

http://www.danadaviswriting.com/