I’m going to be honest with you, this year has been the bomb. From sickness to the deaths in family, to writing interruptions, because of the traumatic situations, this 2025 passage was extremely dark and rough. I kept waiting for another shoe to drop, and it always did, and they kept coming in bits and pieces. This threw me into a process of learning how to deal with the tragedies occurring in my life.
The first thing I learned is that you don’t control trauma. There is no way to run from it or to beat it over the head and be victorious over it without having faith in someone who is bigger than yourself. In my case, that someone was and still is God.
Thinking that the tide was over, on the Second Christmas Day, December 26, I received a phone call informing me that my nephew had been killed on Christmas Day. I thought to myself if anyone had told me at the beginning of 2025, I would receive notices of five deaths sprinkled out over 2025, that would pinch me in my heart, I wouldn’t have believed them. But it happened, and I am thankful that I was able to work through it and keep slowly moving forward.
As traumatic as things were in my 2025, I am thankful that gratitude permeates my life. It is now January 1, 2026, and I woke up this morning thankful to see a New Year and no snow in the area where I live. The sun is even showing itself every now and then. 🙂 I’m thankful to have that first cup of coffee, to hear my voice as I sang the first song that rose up in my heart, and to look out of my patio windows and see squirrels climbing in my trees and birds flying low between the green leaves.
Now that I have taken my first steps into 2026, let me say that I hope all my readers and friends crossed into 2026 and are looking forward to a great year.
Getting back to the title of my New Year’s article, One of my favorite passages in the Bible is the title of this blog article:
My Beloved spoke, and said to me,
Rise up, my love, my fair one,
And come away.
For lo, the winter is past,
The rain is over and gone.
(Song of Solomon 2:10-12, NKJV)
Let us hope that this is so in our individual passages in 2026.
The Stars and Stripes Forever’s first impatient blast sounded. Boteè jumped off her sofa. She got her jacket and grabbed her tiny case. Then she departed her third-floor apartment. She left a note for her best girlfriend, Peggy,
On the road with my friend.
Don’t know how long, but I’ll be back whenever my friend brings me back to earth.
Boteè called him the Strain Man. His shiny metallic skin tone, high cheekbones, and pointed fingers had drawn her to him. He was different from the people on earth, and she liked that about him. She danced down the steps of her apartment building, not wanting to keep him waiting. He promised to take her beyond the clouds to see another part of the universe.
Excited at the opportunity to see him again, Boteè stepped outside. She closed her eyes and hit the Deep C with her contralto voice. It was two octaves down from Middle C of the primary scale. She sang Amen note by note while holding her breath. As she slid up the scale, she accented the rise in a syncopated rhythm until she reached Middle C. She stopped, took a deep breath, and waited for his response.
At their secret spot, Strain Man was surrounded by trees hiding the white, invisible lights of his futuristic jet. He raised the trumpet to his lips and blew the first notes of The Stars and Stripes Forever. He felt the tug of his notes lifting her off the ground to bring her to him. He smiled.
Here is another snippet from LABEL. ME. MAN, a work in progress that will be available for pre-order in June 2025.
Cover by 4WILLS
Blurb:
Born a savant with Autism Spectrum Disorders and labeled as unusually bright, Gioacchino Tarinni lacked any social, emotional, or spiritual graces. The scientific world labeled him a Robot. Peddled between medical offices and laboratories, doctors and scientists examined whether he could be considered human. He has failed in every experiment except for his friendship with his manservant and chauffeur, Ferro. But no one knows how it happened. Sitting in a cafe with Ferro, Gioacchino’s eyes are drawn to a woman working on her tablet. She has a head full of braids, and he attempts to count them. But the woman keeps moving her head, foiling his efforts to get an accurate count. Annoyed, he approaches her table, intending to ask her to be still. However, in a moment of impulsive audacity, he proposes marriage instead.
EXCERPT
Gioacchino took the stairs slowly to their bedroom as he pondered why she’d gone to his office. He entered their bedroom quietly. Even though he’d agreed to her returning home, he didn’t understand why. Her early morning escape from their home had cost him his ability to concentrate on his negotiations. After receiving the text message from Ferro that Jediah had disappeared somewhere in the house, he rescheduled the talks for the next day and gave Ferro strict instructions to keep his eyes open.
The door that led out to the spacious balcony adjoining their bedroom stood open. The venetian blinds were hanging loosely down, with the panels slightly opened, letting through rays of sunlight.
Gioacchino grinned to himself. Jediah’s clothing lay scattered in a pattern on the floor. He picked them up as he reached them, piece by piece, and headed to the closet to hang them up.
Your disorderliness coincides very well with my need to organise and order things.
He looked at the motionless figure lying on her stomach in their bed, and his eyes widened in shock.
He blinked to ensure he was seeing correctly. A series of numbers shaped into a curvaceous body lay on their bed. Until today, he’d seen Jediah as scrap pieces of brown, velvety cloth he couldn’t put together. It astounded him that the outer layer of her skin was comprised of integers.
He stared at the bed, expecting the numbers to disappear; instead, two large, marbled threes looked back at him and laughed silently.
Discombobulated, Gioacchino turned to the closet to dispose of her clothing, shaken by what he saw. He had long calculated the function of picking her clothes up every day, and getting to the closet, variable a, to getting to variable b, which was landing in their bed at night to create order among the velvety brown pieces he assumed were who she was.
“You’re home. No one told me you’d be home early,” Jediah said, not moving.
“I couldn’t think in the office,” he answered, putting her dress on a hanger.
“Why not? I told you I wouldn’t run away again.”
“How are you?” Gio asked, ignoring her response and asking a question of his own.
“Fine. Are you all right?”
“I’m okay.”
“Just okay?”
“At the moment, just okay,” he repeated, turning toward her, frowning, hoping the numbers hadn’t disappeared.
“Something happened after you brought me home and returned to work.”
“What?” She was still a cluster of numbers but had now transformed into a curvaceous one stretched out on the bed, and that stirred his libido.
“I went to write in your office and didn’t think to tell Ferro. I was so happy to find a hiding place where I could write without people watching me that I didn’t think about telling him or anyone else where I was,” Jediah said, gazing at him. “I didn’t mean to upset you after what I experienced with you in the car on the way home this morning. Does that make sense to you?”
“So it wasn’t intentional?”
“No, although I’m sure Ferro thinks it was.”
The frown on Gioacchino’s face faded. The harshness in his voice vanished, and he addressed her softly in a soft, deep whisper.
“Stop worrying. Ferro told me he didn’t think you meant to cause a furore. But he was concerned because no one knew where you were.”
This is another snippet from LABEL. ME. MAN., which will be available for preorder on June 1, 2025.
I hope you enjoy it as much as I do, revealing the characters.
Blurb:
Born a savant with Autism Spectrum Disorders and labeled as unusually bright, Gioacchino Tarinni lacked any social, emotional, or spiritual graces. The scientific world labeled him a Robot. Peddled between medical offices and laboratories, doctors and scientists examined whether he could be considered human. He has failed in every experiment except for his friendship with his manservant and chauffeur, Ferro. But no one knows how it happened. Sitting in a cafe with Ferro, Gioacchino’s eyes are drawn to a woman working on her tablet. She has a head full of braids, and he attempts to count them. But the woman keeps moving her head, foiling his efforts to get an accurate count. Annoyed, he approaches her table, intending to ask her to be still. However, in a moment of impulsive audacity, he proposes marriage instead.
Excerpt:
Gioacchino waited until they had stepped outside into the morning air to look sideways at her again. Her brown lips looked like a sweet treat. He liked covering her full lips with his own and tasting them. Precious and priceless, her plump lips awakened his manhood and gave his life meaning and normalcy. Having never dated an African American woman, Gio found Jediah, with her full lips, curvy hips, and big breasts with pointed nipples, fascinating from the first time he saw her sitting in the café. Even though his mathematical intelligence and photographic memory had catapulted him to become one of the top five major players in mergers and acquisitions for hotels, it was nothing compared to his first meeting with Jediah. With her, he was human and not a robot. He felt genuine compassion, and more naturally than ever, his blood pressure sank to normal; he could interact with Kay, his secretary, and his migraines vanished. The medical specialist in charge of tracking his developmental changes was astonished. Only yesterday evening, he had wished to tell Jediah how making love to her caused his blood pressure problem to vanish and helped him to deal with the torturous beliefs that he was some spectacular idiot savant or robot that was born on the earth once in a million years, but she had fallen asleep after their lovemaking.
I woke up this morning and looked at the frost covering my window to the sky. Yes, it was and still is cold, but I slept in a warm bed. Sleeping in a warm bed is one of the simple things in life that stirs up gratitude in my heart. It helps me realize that I live, breathe, and get everything I need from somebody much bigger than I, as Paul states in Acts, Chapter 17, verse 24, New International Version (NIV).
Over 2024, I sometimes forgot Him. Due to various problems that confronted me, I saw these problems as impossible to solve. My vision had to be corrected so that I could see Him working in my life for my good. He showed me what I didn’t see.
My faith is what keeps me walking out my journey. I trust in God who has given me purpose, even when I sometimes don’t understand what He’s doing. He’s always working all things out for my good.
As I look back over this year, I thank all of you who have read my short stories, especially my latest, THE POWER OF TOUCH. Thank you for your reviews and, most of all, for being readers who appreciate multicultural stories that present the different perspectives of living among the varied cultures we have in the world.
Truly, I am thankful.
Have a safe crossover into 2025, be safe, and rejoice because life is worth living.
Would you ever accept a dinner invitation to meet a stranger who never spoke one word to you during your time together? Would you accept that you could not even sit at the same table with them? How about, you don’t even know their name and you continue this “game” for months? Meet Della Cartwright. A superstar at what she does professionally, but when the tall, mysterious, Italian stranger, Alessio Terracina, enters her world, she begins to question her judgment and everything about her. In this short story which takes place over the course of one day, this otherwise savvy businesswoman is led into making decisions that could jeopardize her professional life and maybe even cost her her freedom. But the greatest danger…just might be to her fragile heart.
Excerpt
Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil; For you are with me. Psalm 23:4 (NKJV)
Della Cartwright sat in Macey Bergstein’s office in Frankfurt, Germany. She balled her hands into fists, flexing them, waiting for Macey, her boss, to express her opinion about the unexplained money transfers in Della’s private bank account. A plane flew over their building, and Della’s eyes followed its path as she gazed out of the window behind Macey. How she could have gotten involved with a man in a counter-terrorist group was puzzling. Downright despicable. Until now, she had made a name for herself as the Foreign Exchange Settlements department’s queen. Everyone in the department acknowledged her magical abilities. Her intuitiveness and her strong sense of discernment had caught errors and even settled deals, which would have cost dealers their jobs if she had not noticed the mistakes. Yet, she had managed to let a man whose name she didn’t even know wrap her in his web.
The RRBC’s Annual Writers’ Conference & Book Expo starts today, and I invite you to visit my booth and the booths of the other authors. The event is free and open to anyone who would like to attend.
Each author’s booth has prizes, so please leave a comment as you visit. You might be a winner of one, two, or maybe even three Amazon gift cards or 4WILLS gift cards.
Step into our reading lounge, where you can listen to authors reading short excerpts from their books. If you’re looking to add to your reading collection, we have a wide range of books for sale, including eBooks, paperbacks, and hardbound editions.
All of yours truly books (That’s Me) are being featured in my booth, Pat Garcia, and are available as eBooks. My newest release, THE POWER OF TOUCH, which is also now available as an eBook, will be available in Paperback over Amazon on August 30th.
If you love to read a good romance book, that is Multicultural, Interracial, and Realistic, please check out:
TURN THE LIGHT ON – Meet Della Cartwright. A superstar at what she does professionally, but when the tall, mysterious, Italian stranger, Alessio Terracina, enters her world, she begins to question her judgment and everything about her.
LET HIS BANNER OVER ME BE LOVE – It didn’t take Chance Mancini long to accept that she had allowed herself to fall in love with Gavino Mancini, a man much younger than she. To make matters worse, after their marriage, he’d led her into a lifestyle that she did not know of, but she had come to love. He was her, Sir.
CONTEMPLATIONS OF A WOMAN TURNING SIXTY-FIVE – Moving toward her Sixty-fifth birthday, Tessie Blount contemplates the next stage of her life. Not married and with no purpose, she questions the validity of living further until love is offered to her most unexpectedly. But will she accept it?
JANIE B. – This is a contemporary multicultural romance about a woman who encounters a sexually starved necrophiliac as she walks up a mountainside. As she yearns for death, a stranger bursts into the cabin and saves her, and becomes the love of her life.
LATE BLOOMER– This delightful short story is a comical yet earnest tale of a woman who thought her life dream would never come true.
THE POWER OF TOUCH – At a train station, he is waiting for a train to come to end it all and is so involved in what he is about to carry out that he doesn’t see the woman running toward him who is about to change the trajectory of his destiny, forever.
We are all waiting for you, and especially me, my friends. The RRBC’s Writers’ Conference and Book Expo is open 24/7 so grab your favorite drink and click the link below.
Stationed within an International Explosive Ordinance Team (EOD) in Germany for six years, Gianluca Abate has never anticipated that unexpected incidences could throw his life off balance. He didn’t think there was a situation that could touch him so closely until the day he experienced an explosive blast underwater. His life spirals downward, and he loses all hope of ever being normal again. At a train station, he is waiting for a train to come to end it all and is so involved in what he is about to carry out that he doesn’t see the woman running toward him who is about to change the trajectory of his destiny forever.
Good Morning, Everyone, I received the official notice today about winning the 2nd RRBC “A DAY IN MY LIFE” 30-Day Blogging Challenge. I send all of you a heartfelt thanks for following me during March and cheering me on. By the way, here is a picture of Hadessah. She has a beautiful green glow and has a baby shoot at the top of her head.
Give thanks in all circumstances, for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you. 1Thessalonians 5:17, English Standard Version
I am in a dilemma at the moment. Things are happening around me that I don’t understand. It could be that I am just coming off of a 30-Day Blogging Challenge with the Rave Reviews Book Club, and I have become sensitive, or I am tired.
It is at times when I have gone beyond my energy supply and I am running on reserved strength that gratitude is not an easy path for me to walk. It means taking my anger, frustration, disappointment, annoyance, or whatever I might be feeling and taking a stroll down memory lane to look at some of the good things I have experienced, like the successful completion of the RRBC 30-Day Blogging Challenge. Or it might be just peering at my garden and noticing that Daniel and Joshua, my cherry trees, have blossomed since yesterday.
I cannot stop the things that bring upheaval into my life. Most of the time, such incidents catch me on my blindside. But I can choose how I react to them. The choice is always mine. I have learned that this is how I reinforce my vision. As one of my favorite mentors, Viktor Frankel, said in Man In Search Of Meaning, at the beginning of his book, “detachment is granted to the outsider, but he is too far removed to make any statements of real value. (Frankel was writing about his time in the concentration camp.) Only the man inside knows. His judgments may not be objective; his evaluations may be out of proportion. This is inevitable. But an attempt must be made to avoid any personal bias.”
Therefore, the strength within me gives me the willpower to detach myself from my emotions and see anything coming at me differently. Thus, as I beheld Daniel and Joshua, my sentiments slowly turned to a deep sense of thankfulness, and my heart was amazed again at God’s faithfulness to me. Truly, I am thankful.
