In this Update

TimeBlink - Ouch! My first 1-star review
Contest - National Ampersand Day!
Tomato Soup - A 5-star recipe

Hi, ,

After the successful launch of Flight 444 in July, I believed my writing career was actually starting to take off. I was on top of the world.

Until my first 1-star review came in.

It was for my first novel, TimeBlink, which had had nothing but favorable reviews since its debut in 2020. To say I was shocked is an understatement. I was Devastated. With a capital D.

To find out how this 'lil indie author dealt with a terrible review, be sure to read the rest of the story here.

That said, when TimeBlink was on sale for 99 cents last month, it snagged the coveted #1 Bestseller badge for three days. Yay for small wins.

It's National Ampersand Day!

It's pretty, it's concise, & it means and...& if you live in the US, there's a whole day dedicated to it. Here in Canada, I don't think about borders when there's a quirky celebration going on.

Did you know an ampersand is a logogram, which is a symbol that represents an entire word? The earliest ampersand was said to have shown up on a Pompeiian wall in first-century Rome, & in more recent times (until the mid-1800s) it served as the 27th letter of the alphabet.

Word nerds can take a deeper dive into the ampersand's origin & how there came to be a day named after it in this National Today article.

GUESS & WIN!

Choose the NUMBER of ampersands that APPEAR TWICE in the above image, & reply to this email with your answer. If you're correct, your name will be entered into a draw to win a signed hardcover of one of my books. If your guess is incorrect, I'll send you the solution. 😜

Or watch for the solution in next month's newsletter.

It happens every spring: my husband and I go overboard at the nursery and end up with too many plants to cram into our modest garden. Sometimes it's flowers, sometimes it's herbs. This year it was an abundance of tomatoes. I'm not complaining. My hubby happily looks after all the garden maintenance while I just as happily sit back and enjoy the fruits of his labor.

Fortunately, I love to cook.

Eventually, I'll be making pasta sauce and salsa, but I kicked off this year's first harvest with this absolutely delicious Roasted Cherry Tomato Soup recipe from cooknourishbliss.com.

It was SO good, in fact, that you'd never know how healthy it is: dairy free, gluten free, and vegan! Roasting the tomatoes, onions, and garlic gives it a nice depth of flavor, and the addition of coconut milk imparts a creamy, bisque-like texture after a quick whirl in the blender. Five stars! ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Thanks for spending time with me today, . I appreciate your interest in my work.

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