Welcome to the Sunday Dish!

Spring Break has officially begun! And thankfully, it’s looking like this year’s spring break will look different than last year’s. Last year, we’d planned to go to Highlands, NC, and stay in a cute little cabin complete with a treehouse and a creek in the backyard, but due to Covid, we canceled the trip. In hindsight, it probably would have been fine to take the trip, especially considering how much worse everything got in the ensuing months, but in those first couple weeks of March of 2020, we just didn’t know. Would we get there and find everything locked up tight? Would we be able to find food? Would we be able to cross state lines and get home? (Sounds extreme, but everything was so extreme!)

In short, we spent our spring break right here at home, wrapping our minds around at-home school for the next two months, juggling schedules, calming the girls’ concerns about the virus, and generally trying to keep it all together. Oh, and I was finishing the first draft of what would become THE ONE YOU’RE WITH. No big deal.

This year, we’re mostly having a stay-cation. Not necessarily because of the virus, but because our usual spot at the beach is still dealing with hurricane damage from late last summer, and though we’re seeing light at the end of the tunnel as far as Covid numbers declining and vaccinations rising, we still weren’t too excited about planning a trip many hours away from home. Next year, it’s on, but this year, we’re sticking around here though we are adding some fun things into the mix. Things we as a family haven’t done in a while, or ever. Activities, day trips, seeing some friends, maybe a jaunt to a rooftop bar downtown. And again, I’m trying to write a book, but I’ll squeeze that into the margins at the beginning of the day and slivers here and there. I’m fairly used to that by now 😉

What I fell asleep reading last night…

I’ve had my eye on Susan Meissner’s The Nature of Fragile Things since before it came out, and I’ve finally started it. I’m only a few dozen pages in, but oh boy, I’m along for the ride.

Book releasing next week I have my eye on…

I’ve read several of Jillian Cantor’s novels and I’ve really enjoyed them. This one has Marie Curie and science and Poland and an alternate life if she’d made different choices. Can’t wait to read it.

A link or two…

A peek back at the Sears catalog–remember those?

Neat article about a woman who reads books out loud on the air at a tiny radio station serving areas north of San Fransisco. Makes me think of slower, quieter times.

Little Auburn, AL, home of Auburn University (where I graduated), is also home two two new(ish) bookstores I will for sure visit next time I go. Well Red is a bookstore by day and wine bar by night. Genius, right?! The second is Auburn Oil Co.  Booksellers, which opened in 2019.

Last things…

Here’s where you can preorder my next novel, THE ONE YOU’RE WITH. Preorders do help! That’s all I’ll say about that.

Here’s hoping for sunshine, spring flowers, and fresh air for all of us. See you next Sunday!

Lauren