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If you have a desire to garden and tend plants this year, this is the time to start. Nothing screams accomplishment than a variety of herbs for cooking or that sprig fresh mint in your sweet tea (or crushed at the bottom of your mint julep.) Uh, oh! Maybe you don’t have the outdoor area? Here are some helpful tips to get you started planning your indoor garden. 1. What is your purpose for the garden?  A project with the little ones? Growing herbs for cooking? Meditation and/or a calming activity? 2. How much space do you have? Your garden can be in a closet, the basement, corner of your bedroom – any space is a space for plants. A windowsill garden does very well for herbs and smaller veggies. 3. What kind of garden do you want? Snake plants, herbs, ferns, orchids, ivies? Depending on the light and the… Continued

So, some of you may be sitting there RIGHT NOW wondering….what the heck does Dahlia do when she’s not writing up those great stories of hers?  Well, dear readers of this blog, I’ll tell ya….in pictures. I’m a crochet fanatic.  I like to knit, but crochet is my thing, if you know what I’m saying.  It’s faster, to me, and you can get a lot of projects done quickly.  I do like the smooth lay of knitting, but….I sacrifice style for speed.   So whenever I’m trying to work out some plot twists or am simply taking a break from the keyboard, this is what I’m usually doing. If I’m quick, I can whip out a hat in 30 minutes. The scrunchie takes longer because I’m using a smaller needle. All in all, it’s fun, mindless,and the family gets a lot of warm stuff out of it to boot. Till

Do Sexual Harassment and Racism Belong in Fiction? Sexual harassment and racism…pretty taboo topics, right? That’s why I chose to tackle them. I don’t like to read, nor do I like to write mindless entertainment. Most readers nowadays want a fluffy romance with minor complications and a HEA. While I do concede to Happy Ever Afters, I make sure it’s a rocky road to get there. You will find sexual harassment and racism both in Afterburn. Having been an aircraft mechanic for eleven years, I was dying to write about a woman grease monkey. Nobody else is! And let me tell you something about harassment…it’s ugly, but it’s there. Sexual harassment happens to women in male-dominated professions on an everyday basis. So, it’s an issue in Afterburn. It’s a fact of life and fiction isn’t real if it doesn’t portray real life. Racism: Another ugly, but sadly, real life issue. Even in

I decided to try something different for my blog, focus less on the specific craft of writing and spend some time talking about the entire creative process.  I realized that creativity doesn’t start and stop when I type up my stories.   It’s no accident that crafting, writing, singing and other creative arts are often found in one person.  I grew up on a steady diet of broomstick crochet, macramé, knitting, crocheting, tatting, embroidery, piano lessons, vocal lessons and the like.  I love to read and I do love to write.  The only thing that I didn’t do much with was drawing/painting.  I can draw a tree and that’s about it.   Sparking creativity is a must if one wants to write and write well.  In former blog posts, you’ll see that I don’t believe in writer’s block.  Why should I believe in something that blocks my creative flow?  Why