IWSG: To Grandma Dragon: Celebrating the Blogging and Life of an incredible Woman - Josephine Wake!

 

 Jo on Food, Life and the Scent of Chocolate 

 

It's been a while, friends. I wish you all a Happy New Year and hopes of some sense of normalcy as we humans keep our wits up against this pandemic. I had to pull away from social media in all forms for a time, and I'm compelled back to tell you about a dear friend and a compelling woman who is, sadly, no longer with us this year. You may know her as "Jo", who always had something flavorful to share on her blog, as well as sharing her life story for all to see. I also know her as Grandma Dragon, a special member in a group of bloggers and writers who've helped each other through this journey we call life.

I'm blessed to have know her, and I'm ever so grateful to her amazing eye for detail, a proofreader second to none who has left her mark in all my published works to date (and a couple still to come). For that and her friendship over the years, in honor of her legacy, I'm going to be dedicating my next book to none other than Grandma Dragon.

You are missed, but you're also flying high. Adieu, my dear friend.

Click here to learn more about Jo, and here to visit her beloved blog.

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Update: This might be a bit of an understatement, but it's been a hard year. Several things personal, medical, and so on has kept me away from writing, but I am happy to report that I'm getting back into it, even finished a first chapter for something new last week.

More to come later. I do not wish to take away from this special IWSG tribute. As always, thank you for visiting my edge of the interwebs.

How are you feeling now that 2021 is here? What is your favorite memory of Jo Wake? What are you making for dinner?

I'm David, and Jo is the Grandmother of Dragons!

IWSG: Bad Fairy Release, Marketing Webinars, and A Call For Unity As We Watch History Repeating Itself

Welcome back, my friends. Seems like more now than ever, our new motto stay safe has taken extra meaning. And before we knew it, June has arrived! Maybe this is a good thing, but before getting into that, I have news: a book release and a marketing opportunity!

Bad Fairy by Elaine Kaye

Thistle Greenbud is not a bad fairy. She simply doesn't like rules, and it's just her luck that her homework is to create a new rule for the fairy handbook. But first, she has more important things to do. Like figure out how to get back at Dusty and Moss for playing tricks on her.

Before she can carry out her plan, though, disaster strikes and she finds herself working alongside the very fairies she wanted revenge on. Can they work together and trust each other, or will things go from bad to worse?

3 Paperback Book Giveaway - Enter HERE!

Amazon / Barnes & Noble

Elaine Kaye is the author of A Gregory Green Adventure series. She first created Gregory Green after her son, who loved her homemade pea soup, thus inspiring the story Pea Soup Disaster. Bad Fairy is her middle grade debut and the first of A Bad Fairy Adventure series.

Kaye has worked as a library assistant and teacher’s assistant in elementary schools in the Sunshine State. She currently lives in Florida, but she has called Michigan; Honolulu, Hawaii; and Okinawa, Japan home. She is a grandmother of three boys.

Amazon / Goodreads / BookBub / Instagram / Twitter / Blog

 L. Diane Wolfe is offering a promotion webinar (click to enlarge)!

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I'll skip the optional question this month and get right to what's on my mind. I think most of us can agree on one thing: 2020 just isn't our year. Around the world we're dealing with Covid-19, the USA is facing devastating riots after the wrongful death of George Floyd, and in all of this, we witnessed the first private rocket launch of astronauts into space. It was pointed out to me that, in its own way, 1968 was not too different: a flu epidemic with a high death toll among the elderly population (known as Hong Kong Flu), the Chicago riots after the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Apollo 7 and Apollo 8 missions (not to the moon).

Big differences back then were no shutdowns and no cell phones ...

I've made it a point not to get political on social media, and I won't start now, but it seems that history can repeat itself, and whatever lessons we didn't learn in 1968, maybe we can learn, heal and grow from what we are going through now. We could use some unity here folks, not false narratives and misinformation, coming from all sides. No one else's life needs to be ruined by this. Stay safer, my friends.

Update: to be honest, it's pretty tough writing an end-of-the-world scenario when the world looks like it's ending, so I took a short break to focus on life, help my kids understand what's going on, planted a garden (a first), and doing my best to keep a cool head while staying busy, helping people at work and where I can in the community.

Hopefully we'll see a brighter month come July. I'll see you then!

How has 2020 been treating you so far this year? What are you doing to stay active and busy? What plans do you have for summer?