I was not terrific about blogging in 2020. Will I do better in 2021? I don’t know.

Today I sat down and wrote my annual Christmas letter. It’s a tradition in our family, where we each sit down and write about the year just ending. We normally do it on Christmas night, but some years, like in 2020, I waited until today. The letters are then put in a Christmas scrapbook. Now that our kids are adults—one living in Alaska and the other in Portland, they no longer contribute pages to the book. I wish they would.

2020 was a rough year for our country and the world. For me it started off bringing my mother home from the hospital after a stroke. We spent the next two months dealing with her rehabilitation and nurses coming to our home to help her with therapy and showers.

Just weeks after her therapy ended, the country went into a lockdown because of Covid, and since then we have been sheltering in place.

I did venture out to YouTube, and started an Authortube channel. I put out 15 videos, and then stopped when I didn’t have anything new to add. If I think of something, I might add another video, but it was only done as a needed distraction during the early days of lockdown.

I then turned to cooking. I started making my own homemade pasta, and even splurged on an attachment for my Kitchenaid.

After I figured out pasta, I moved to sourdough bread. My sister, who was also faithfully sheltering in place, had been making sourdough bread, so she walked me through the sourdough starter process and shared her recipe.

When it comes to pasta noodles and sourdough bread, I will be sticking to homemade. I love them both.  

I also tried cheese making for the first time, a simple farm cheese. My next adventure in the kitchen is fermenting. I think I will start with fermenting salsa.

When I’m not in the kitchen, I am in front of my computer. In fact, I am doing another sort of fermenting right now, figuring out the plot to my next Haunting Danielle book, The Ghost and the Mountain Man.

Professionally it was a good year for me. I published three Haunting Danielle books, and all were well received. Dreamscape Media released my Coulson Family Saga in audiobook, and I was thrilled with what the narrator did with them. Plus, I had several audiobook releases in my Haunting Danielle series, and I always love what that narrator does.

In November I had to say goodbye to a dear friend–Spooky the Halloween Cat. We estimate he was about eighteen. While he was my cat, the last two years he had moved in with Mom and been wonderful company for her. Mom cried for days after he traveled the rainbow bridge. She misses her buddy, but I know he is now with Lady and free from pain.

Wishing all of us a much better new year.