The Very Late Christmas Story

As a gift to myself for Christmas, I bought an expensive stationery advent box. I'd researched different advent options and this small business created the most beautiful items I saw when I looked at the previous year's boxes.

They went on sale Aug 2nd. I hesitated because it really is an expensive indulgence and did I really need this? But I talked myself into it because it would be my one gift to myself.

I clicked the buy button.

The description on their website said shipping by Nov 17th so it would arrive in plenty of time for the countdown to Christmas. Perfect. I put it to the back of my mind and went on with life.

And then November 17th came and went without a shipping email. I waited a week, thinking maybe they're just a little behind. Still no email, so I contacted them. I received an assurance that they were just a little behind and that the boxes would be mailed out shortly.

Cool. I can wait.

And then we're into December with no notification of anything being mailed. I join the shop's Facebook group, but there's no information there about the advent box. It takes days, but finally someone else asks about the box. No one from the shop answers. Then a few days later, the post disappears. The shop shares that order questions should go via email, not the group.

Within a few days, the shop sends out an email saying that they're far behind, but that advent boxes will go out in time for Christmas.

We get deeper into December. There's no chance this box is arriving before Christmas. I email the shop again, inquiring about my box. My expensive box. The response? We posted about this in our Facebook group.

Really? The same Facebook group where you said that you didn't want order issues mentioned?

She posted that day. My email had been sent three days earlier.

To shorten the story, the box finally arrived on January 2nd, well after the advent season. I decided to make it a New Year box and opened one package a day until they were all done.

The items are beautiful. The stress of spending that much money for a box and being met with sheer silence about the order were not worth it. If she had kept me up to date with the order, I would have been fine. If she'd said hey, we're dealing with a family emergency and I won't be able to keep on top of things. I would have been fine. But there were no explanations, no transparency, and no updates.

So while this shop has beautiful stuff, I doubt I'll order from them again because the experience was so unfun.

2026 Reading Challenges

I am hoping to finish two reading challenges this year. I have them all ready to go in my reading journal. These are challenges that I failed last year.

I'm giving myself grace because both are year-long challenges and I didn't discover them until well into the year. One of them in May, the other one much later than that.

There was never a chance to get caught up and I spent a lot of time writing in 2025.

This year, I have a plan. Um, I hope because I haven't actually done it yet and it's February. My idea is to slot books ahead of time into each category. That way I know I'm reading a book that fulfills a prompt.

I've started to follow my plan a few times by looking at other readers' choices and hoping to pick one of them to fulfill that prompt myself. This isn't working real well for me. I'm thinking I just need to make my own choices and not refer to anyone else's list.

We'll see how this goes. 

A Scathingly Brilliant Idea

Sometimes my scathingly brilliant ideas actually are brilliant. And sometimes I actually remember them, although in this case, the light bulb popped on while I was at my computer, so I was able to go right online and put in my order.

As you might know, I have a sticker cutting machine. My biggest issue is I'm not good enough with the software to use it to its full potential because I just do custom stuff for myself on occasion.

My second biggest problem is light.

The cutting machine has to be able to read the registration marks in order to cut the stickers correctly. That requires lots of bright light. If it's not a sunny day outside? If it's not mid day with lots of light streaming in my office windows? Forget about cutting stickers.

I can work around sort of by turning on my phone's flashlight and holding it over the machine so it will read the registration marks, but that doesn't always work.

It's one more annoyance in making stickers, something that is already annoying for me because of my lack of familiarity with the software. Since I'd rather spend my spare time writing rather than learning how to use the software, I don't see this problem improving any time soon.

And then I had a scathingly brilliant idea the other week. What if I bought under-cabinet lighting? I have two shelves directly over the cutting machine. I could buy one of those after market lighting wands, put it over the cutter, and not have to remember to hold my flashlight over it.

I found a set of two on sale. They attach magnetically as well as with sticky squares. Since one of my two shelves is metal, I was like, yes! Perfect!

Almost.

The position on the metal shelf wasn't over the cutter and so I had to stick it with the adhesive to the wood shelf that's above the metal one and juts out farther.

I am happy to report that it was a scathingly brilliant idea! I put the second one in my kitchen near my coffee maker and that was also brilliant. 

Strength in Disguise

There are people who think strong heroines have to be overtly kick‑butt right from page one. They kick down doors, wield weapons like a female James Bond, and stride into danger without blinking.

And yes, I’ve written heroines like that. But I also love exploring more nuanced strength. Sometimes strength is quiet--so quiet the heroine herself doesn’t even realize it until she’s forced to embrace the core of steel deep inside her. Sometimes strength is the quiet refusal to surrender when the world overwhelms.

Two Sisters, Two Kinds of Strength

I just finished writing one of my overtly kick‑butt heroines: Iona Desmond. Highly trained, capable of hand‑to‑hand combat, and able to keep up with her hero, Special Forces Sergeant (and estranged husband) Cal “Baggs” Baggnell. Iona strides into danger with skill and confidence. (Wicked Temptation, available for pre‑order now!)

But the previous book, Wicked Ambition, featured her sister Ayla--and Ayla’s strength looks very different. Ayla works in public relations. She’s not trained for combat, but when her twin was in trouble, she risked everything to save her.

Ayla is afraid of flying, yet she boarded a plane and flew nine hours to Puerto Jardin because she knew her sister needed her. Ignoring your deepest phobia and doing what needs to be done anyway? That seems pretty kick‑butt to me.

The Heart of It

Strength doesn’t always mean weapons and combat skills. Sometimes it’s the courage to face your fears, the determination to protect someone you love, or the resilience to keep going when the odds are stacked against you.

That’s why I love writing heroines who embody both kinds of strength--the ones who kick down doors, and the ones who discover their hidden steel when the world demands it.

 

Media Journal

Patti, what are you doing? Don't you have enough book journals that you're 1) not using or 2) haven't started?

Truth! But I started a media journal anyway. Everything but books will go in here and this will last forever. Or darn close to it. My reasoning was this: I'm getting farther and farther behind on my podcasts. I've been doing too much YouTube and not enough audio-only pods.

This is my plan to get caught up.

The picture to the left is the cover of my media journal. It's an A5 notebook with a really fun theme. I also had matching stickers and I used those on the cover page.

I actually haven't done very much yet. I used alphabet stickers to make a title for the journal and a title for the podcasts section, laid down a few decor stickers around the title, and then I put down the podcast tracker stickers I bought.

I'll put movies and TV shows in here, too, but the podcasts were what was important. I do well when I can check something off--a principle I used in my writing planner--and I'm hoping it helps me here, too.

 

 

This is the cover page of the journal, complete with the stickers that match the cover. I'm hoping that simple works better than shooting for Work of Art, but I might have used too many stars. 

This is the section title page for my list of Podcasts. I'll probably do some decoration around the title at some point, but for now, I'm going to leave it with just the title.

This is one of the podcast tracker stickers I bought. This particular podcast was easy to fill in because they break it down by season and there's usually somewhere between 23-25 episodes per season. I decided to limit this to just the podcasts I have on my phone (yes, there are a lot) because those are the ones I want to listen to and delete.

The pink splotches are from a dot marker. I'd like to claim that the media journal is working already and I powered through all these episodes, but that would be incorrect. I'd previously listened to them, and because I still had part of that season on my phone, I decided to put all the episodes in and check them off.

While I was able to get several podcasts in to track, I have a problem. A few of them do not have episode numbers and only have titles. I'm not sure how I can track those given the layout of the stickers I bought. I don't feel like writing all the episode names out, so I don't know. I'm not going to worry about it right now because I have plenty to get through first.

Note to self: Less YouTube while doing mindless tasks, more podcasts.