New Releases and Summer Plans…

Date: May 28, 2026

Author: Bobbi Holmes

I am sitting at my desk in my home office, looking out the window and admiring the flowers planted along the fence line—on Scott and SeAnne’s side of the property. I think of them as my daughter-in-law’s flowers and appreciate that SeAnne planted them in a place where I can enjoy them while I work. Scott probably helped with the planting. They also planted the blueberry bushes along the fence, on our side of the yard. Young, ripening blueberries already fill the bushes.

We’ve made a lot of changes to this property since we moved to Oregon almost five years ago. (It will be five years in September.) One of those changes, we installed a larger window over my desk, and I think it’s probably one of my favorite home improvements.

They told us it rains a lot in Oregon. They were right. Surprisingly, I don’t mind those rainy days because I have a cozy place to write, and even a rainy view is beautiful here. And when I hear about water shortages—especially now with data centers popping up around the country—I am grateful for the rain, and even more grateful for what it does to our landscape.

This morning we woke up to sunshine, not rain clouds. I spent the morning opening the greenhouse, watering the garden and plants in the greenhouse, and pruning the rose on the arch in our backyard. The roses went insane this year. Don and I call them Doris’s roses. Don’s mother, Doris, absolutely loved roses.

Don just finished mowing the front yard, and I can hear him driving the riding mower back to the shop. Next door, Scott and SeAnne are working on projects in their yard—they have the week off.

But now I am back at my desk, checking off items from my to-do list regarding my most recent release, The Ghost and Family Secrets, which comes out Saturday in eBook and print formats.

Earlier this week, I sent the document file off to my agent, who will send it to Tantor Media, so they can proceed with making the audiobook. I don’t have that release date yet, but when I do, I’ll pass it on. But for now, I am finishing up what I need to do on my end with The Ghost and Family Secrets, and when June arrives, I will turn my attention to new projects.

One publishing project for 2026 involves releasing all 38 books (and future books) in the Haunting Danielle series in hardback format. We’ve already finished Book 1 in the series, The Ghost of Marlow House, although we haven’t yet offered it for sale. It was basically a trial run to see how we liked the printer. It will be a couple of months before we can complete that project.

One reason we won’t be working on the hardback books in June—my cover designer will be making a major move—from California to Alaska, during this time. As many know, my daughter, Elizabeth, who is a talented professional cover designer, does all my book covers. Her husband is in the Coast Guard, and they are being sent back to Alaska. This will be their third tour in Alaska. When she is settled in their new home, we can proceed with the project.

We have a busy June scheduled. My daughter’s family will stay with us for a little over a week, as they stop for a visit on their way up to Alaska. June is also Don’s and my 50th wedding anniversary. For the last couple of years, Don and I tossed around ideas about what we should do for our 50th anniversary—once considering a party, and another time a Hawaiian cruise. But life had other ideas, so for now, we will enjoy a quiet dinner with just the two of us and do something special later when things settle down.

One thing I plan to do in June is enjoy the sunshine and work in the garden. I will also wrap up Write On, An Author’s Journey, which I started writing in December. It’s a memoir of sorts—both an autobiography and reflections on my writing journey, while sharing with aspiring authors lessons I’ve learned along the way.

It’s tentatively scheduled to be released late summer, and it will be available in eBook, print, and audiobook. No, I won’t be narrating it myself. I’ve had a chronic cough I’ve been dealing with for almost five years, and narrating a book is not in my wheelhouse.

Come fall, I will work on the next Haunting Danielle book, The Ghost and Déjà Vu, Book 39, which is slated for release in late December 2026.

I suppose I’d better get back to my to-do-list. When I’m finished at the computer, I’m heading to the kitchen. Time for some baking.

Microsoft Word: You suck!

Date: March 16, 2026

Author: Bobbi Holmes

Categories: Bobbi Ann Johnson Holmes

Comments: 4 Replies

Today I’m using Pages to write my blog post. Normally, I would use Word. But Word is pissing me off, so I thought I’d give Pages a try. After all, it’s already on my Mac.

Why is Word pissing me off? A little over a year ago, Word introduced a new feature called Copilot, which Google describes as: “an AI-powered assistant integrated into Microsoft 365, designed to draft, rewrite, summarize, and edit documents using natural language prompts…”

Umm, no thanks. While other people might welcome this addition, I didn’t want nor ask for it. Unfortunately, I couldn’t just ignore Copilot because the new feature includes an annoying cursor that appears to the left of whatever paragraph I am working on.

Like an annoying stalker, it follows me around the page. As many of you already know, writing is a creative process. For some writers they need to listen to certain music when creating—while some of us need total silence. Some people enjoy writing in a coffee shop, while others (like me) can’t write if someone is in the room with them.

While some authors might enjoy the company of the Copilot stalker, I find it distracting, annoying, and I’m certain it raised my blood pressure. I started checking with my author friends, who, like me, were just discovering Copilot had infiltrated their Word, and like me, they were NOT happy.

Finally, we were given an option to disable Copilot under Word’s Preferences. When I first heard about this option, I didn’t yet have it. But after a week or so, it suddenly appeared in my menu, and I got rid of the obnoxious cursor.

Now fast forward some 14 months….and HE’S BACK!

After a recent update the stalker came back this morning, but I think he looks a little different now. (See photo of the document above.) I figured I could hide him like before. Nope. That option I used before to disable Copilot disappeared when the cursor appeared.

Today I spent over four hours with Microsoft support. I ended up being shuffled from one support person to another (at least six people)—and once, after being on a phone call for 48 minutes, hung up on.

One of my author friends told me that she got rid of Copilot several months ago by downgrading her subscription. (Please note, Microsoft had added Copilot to our subscriptions, we never signed up for it.) However, when I suggested this option when talking to tech people this morning, I was told by one that a downgrade would not resolve my issue.

I was assured (repeatedly) there was a way to hide the Copilot cursor, and they could help me—but none of their solutions worked. Finally, one of the last support people I spoke to admitted this was an issue many Word users were experiencing, and the option to disable Copilot wasn’t there for everyone—something about how Microsoft rolled out changes.

Of course, no one told me that when I first called this morning. Instead, they had me jumping through hoops for hours while my blood pressure spiked.

Hopefully Microsoft will decide to stop tormenting its users and give us the option to hide the stalker.

There was a time I recommended Microsoft Office. Me, the loyal customer, around for decades, beginning when I had a PC and had to download the software on my computer, and then paid for a subscription when I switched to a MAC, even though MAC came with similar software.

And now…well, the company is so big they don’t care. Frankly, I suspect members of their team who decided to roll out Copilot this way, knew it would drive some of us crazy, pushing us to spend hours on support like a dog chasing its tail.

Frankly, it wouldn’t surprise me if members of their Copilot team—the ones who thought it was a brilliant idea to throw in an annoying cursor without being able to disable it—would get some perverse pleasure reading this, knowing they damaged a necessary tool some of us use daily, while understanding it’s not so easy for disgruntled customers to disentangle from Office.

And the cherry on top? I decided to click that Copilot icon and see what it actually does, and it told me there was a problem with the licensing so I couldn’t use it!

So, to summarize…Microsoft added a feature to my subscription, but it doesn’t work. They also added a distracting icon that goes to the feature that doesn’t work, and its purpose? To annoy me.

Time flies—faster with each year…

Date: March 10, 2026

Author: Bobbi Holmes

Categories: Bobbi Ann Johnson Holmes

Comments: 10 Replies

I graduated from high school almost fifty-four years ago. Like many Boomers, I keep in touch with some of my high school friends through Facebook, yet even Boomers seem to be using that platform less and less these day. Some of my closer friends from high school I’ve stayed in touch with beyond Facebook—periodic visits, letters, emails, a rare phone call.

I’ve one friend who I was especially close with during my senior year of high school. He was part of our journalism group. When Don and I had our restaurant, this friend would stop by for dinner when he was in town visiting his dad. Later, when Don and I were in real estate, we’d meet for dinner or lunch when he was in Havasu and would exchange an occasional message through Facebook.

But then time does what time does, and the years slipped away and we lost touch. It had been about ten years since we talked, and he didn’t seem to be using Facebook anymore. I eventually made an assertive effort to reconnect. Finally, I located his new email address, sent him a long email, and he returned in kind, catching me up on his life over the last decade.

I intended to write him back, but a few weeks later our life was turned upside down when the care facility mom had been living at was abruptly closed by the state, and she was moved to another facility in Oregon City. With my attention focused on Mom, I didn’t get around to writing that letter.

Time slipped by, and I would periodically think of my friend, reminding myself I needed to write back. Each time I thought about writing my brain seemed to be telling me it had been about five months since I’d receive his email.

I sat down the other day to write that email, and before doing so, pulled up the email he had sent me, planning to respond to it. When I did, I realized, it had been far more than six months since I had heard from him—it had been a little over two years…two years.

That’s the thing about time when you reach my age. That conveyer belt of life starts going faster and faster the longer we live, until finally it’s going so fast you know you might fall off at any moment.

I did write that letter. While I was initially shocked it had been two years since I received his email, I wasn’t particularly surprised. One reason, I have been giving life a great deal of thought over the last few months. Part of it was turning seventy-one in November, and part of it was dealing with recent losses; while understanding I was entering the last leg in my journey.

My last Haunting Danielle book came out the end of November, and I fully intended to take the next few months off from writing, while knowing I would be starting my next Haunting Danielle book in March 2026. But that writing hiatus didn’t quite happen.

On December 5^th, 2025, I started writing a new book. This one wasn’t fiction, but an autobiography of sorts, while speaking primarily to aspiring authors. Since our daughter’s family wouldn’t be coming up for Christmas, and we’d be spending a quiet Christmas with just our son and daughter-in-law, it wasn’t like I had an extensive Christmas to-do list.

I wrote every day, and when done, I sent it off to an author friend, asking if I should publish the book. She read the book, told me I should publish it, and then made some constructive criticisms. I took her criticisms to heart, did some re-writing, and sent it off to another group of beta readers.

I don’t have a publishing date set yet. When it comes back from the beta readers, there will be more rewriting, editing, and then it will go off to the editor before publishing. But I won’t be working on the project again until after The Ghost and Family Secrets is released at the end of May.

But I do have a title and a cover I wanted to share. My photograph used in the cover (above) of Write On: An Author’s Journey, was taken the summer between my junior and senior year of college, during a road trip my sister, Lynn, and I took up to Oregon. The next summer, days after graduating from California State University of Fullerton, with a BA in Communications, I married Don. We celebrate our 50th wedding anniversary in June of this year.