‘december is a simple wish that brings spectacular moments.’
—
art credit Alissa Adams, Reindeer Games, gicllee print on art paper
quote credit: fillingthejars.com
Dec24
Dec23
wish I was here.
What do you get when you mix young adult nerd romance, suspense, mystery, humor, sci-fi, and action? You get ‘Wish I Was Here’ the first book in author, Ilsa Rey’s series, The Wish Trilogy.
High school is a time when everyone tries to find themselves, but as you follow Ana and Isaac throughout the novel, they quite literally disappear, each in a different way. In this adventure, Ana, who has never had much confidence at all, has to muster all her courage to find a way to save Isaac before it’s too late.
There are many ups and downs along the way, especially when an old flame enters the picture, along with their dysfunctional families, and things get even more complicated. The stakes get higher, there are secrets, hard decisions have to be made, and things get more dangerous. Who can be trusted? What to do next? Will Ana find her confidence and use her wit to outsmart everyone? Can things be solved in time? You’ll find yourself cheering her along, and even laughing at times, but there are no guarantees and everything is on the table. You won’t be able to put this down until the very end. It’s definitely a page-turner and a great escape!
Books go on sale today at the following locations:
Black Rose (Publisher) https://www.blackrosewriting.com/youngadult/p/wishiwashere
* About the Author: (blogging friend and martial arts master)
At age twenty-one, Ilsa Rey packed everything she owned into her little red Ford Focus and drove from Cleveland to California for good. She is now a recovering chicken owner and a martial artist with a black belt in Taekwondo and a blue belt in Jiu-Jitsu. Her favorite things are writing, training, and teaching self-defense to young women. She lives in southern California with her husband, four children, and the ghosts of chickens past.Find her online: X: @IlsaReyAuthor; Instagram: @Ilsa_Rey; Blog: IlsaRey.com
—
“Logic will get you from A to B. Imagination will take you everywhere.”
-Albert Einstein
—
Wish I Was Here: Even When Invisible, There’s No Place to Hide
(Book 1 of The Wish Trilogy) for Teens and Young Adults
- Publisher : Black Rose Writing
- Publication date : December 23, 2025
Dec22
the gift of nothing.
The Gift of Nothing considers two main subjects:
the concept of nothing and the value of friendship.
What do you give a friend who already has everything?
Why, you give them nothing at all.
One of my favorite books, now celebrating its 20th anniversary, ‘The Gift Of Nothing,’ explores the meaning of friendship and the meaning of gifts.
What is a friend and what is a gift? Things might not be what actually make people happy. Perhaps it is the people and our relationships with them that really make us happy.
Why do we give gifts? Is it to show that we care about the person and that we are happy to be with them? If so, is the gift truly important or could the real gift be spending time with them?
Originally written for children, but loved by all ages.
—
Author/Illustrator: Patrick McConnell, New York Times best selling author and Caldecott honor artist, creator of the popular comic strip Mutts.
Publisher: Little, Brown Books
—
“the greatest gift you can give someone is your time.
because when you give your time,
you are giving away a portion of your life that you will never get back.”
-author unknown
Dec21
on the solstice.
made a solstice crown
to teach the tiny ones
in my old school
the ancient stories
still hold true
the light, the dark
seasons, nature, circles
words, dance, music
children twirling with snow
earth tilts
sun goes down early
light is short
on solstice day
earth rests
next day awakens
the light returns
each day longer.
—
‘the shortest day and the longest night
a reminder that dark times give birth to astonishing light”
-tanya markul
Dec20
if fairies may.
heading to our longtime friends’ fairy castle house
for an early christmas celebration
on a cold, snowy night
lots of warmth inside
food, drink, cheer, stories,
meetings, memories
singing with the piano
twelve days of christmas
part of each room
sang a different number
everyone tried
some got lost
some forgot
some sang lots
some sang little
piano played on
all were laughing.
—
“Lady, dear, if Fairies may / For a moment lay aside /
Cunning tricks and elfish play, / ‘Tis at happy Christmas-tide.”
-Lewis Carroll, capturing fairies joining the Christmas spirit.
Dec19
the doing.
oh, the joy of looking through the christmas catalog
asking santa and opening up
exactly what i’d hoped for on christmas morning
I was going to make my own candy!
eat as much as I wanted
start selling it
make my fortune
I was just ten
the world was my oyster
while it didn’t work out exactly as planned
i had a blast creating my incredible edibles
they didn’t taste great
a cross between sugar and rubber
forgot I needed an income
to buy more of the stuff to make the goo
similar to my ill-fated earlier business plans:
1. my bakery plan when I got my easy bake oven
with no funding for more cake mixes
and it took a long time to bake a cake with a light bulb
2. my spider breeding in my garage plan
when no one wanted to buy them
after seeing lots of webs in the corners there
but I didn’t actually
know how to breed spiders
3. my stamp collection plan
where I licked them to put them in my book
because they were pretty
and they immediately lost all value
4. my taking things from my big sister’s’ room to sell to my neighbors plan
except that my sister saw them for sale on the table in our driveway
the stand quickly got shut down after my mom was alerted
and I got in trouble.
–
all of this has not dampened my entrepreneurial spirit however.
perhaps
I have just not hit upon quite the right business model as of yet
and it was probably good that I got a job as a teacher.
—
‘the gratification comes in the doing, not in the results.’
-james dean
Dec18
snow worries.
on a warmish sunny winter day in the park
down by the water’s edge
looking at the snowman’s face
seeing his arms askew
wondering if he has
read the sign and is considering
taking a quick dip in the river
hoping he might be rethinking it.
—
‘old snowmen never die, they just melt.’
-author unknown
—
dexter-huron metropark, dexter, michigan, usa, december 2025
Dec17
hostess takes the cake.
an unexpected choice popped up
when I typed in
‘holiday gift treats that can be shipped’
right in the middle
of the mix of suggestions
was a box of
hostess cupcakes
the family pack
on sale
you have 30 days to return them
not exactly the special gift
I was seeking
but someone might really love them
something for everyone
those elves are open minded…
—
‘the best way to celebrate the holidays
is with great food and even better company.’
-author unknown
Dec16
“To exist in this vast universe for a speck of time is the great gift of life.” Author Unknown
How to send your name to space on NASA’s next moon mission
———–
NASA loves a public-participation moment,
but this one is pretty cool, especially if you’re a space nerd.
The agency is giving anyone on Earth
a chance to send their name to the Moon on Artemis II,
the first crewed lunar mission in more than fifty years.
It’s free, fast, and takes about as much effort as signing up for yet another streaming trial you’ll forget to cancel. Will anything “special” happen? No. But it is a fun way to be a part of history.
Artemis II is scheduled to launch no later than April 2026 with four astronauts on board: Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch, and Canadian astronaut Jeremy Hansen. Their ten-day journey will push about 4,600 miles beyond the Moon, loop them back toward Earth, and give NASA a real-time test of its deep-space systems before future missions that aim even farther out.
If you want your name along for the ride, NASA says it only takes three steps.
1. VISIT THE REGISTRATION PAGE
NASA’s Send Your Name with Artemis portal is where the whole thing starts. Click, open, done.
2. ENTER YOUR NAME AND A PIN
You submit your first and last name, then choose a 4- to 7-digit PIN. NASA warns that it cannot recover a lost PIN later, which might be the most on-brand government sentence ever written.
3. DOWNLOAD YOUR DIGITAL BOARDING PASS
Once you hit submit, NASA generates a personalized boarding pass that looks fancier than anything handed out at an actual airport. Save it, screenshot it, cherish it.
Every submitted name will be stored on an SD card mounted inside the Orion spacecraft. As Orion heads into deep space, the crew will spend the first two days testing systems near Earth before firing the service module engine to break out of orbit. The translunar injection burn will send them on a four-day figure-eight path around the far side of the Moon. Along the way, scientists will collect data on radiation, human performance, and communication tech that will support future missions to Mars.
After the lunar swing, the spacecraft will return for a high-speed reentry and splashdown in the Pacific Ocean, where NASA and the Department of Defense will recover the crew and capsule.
Sending your name obviously doesn’t make you part of the mission crew, but it does give you a tiny foothold in a milestone flight humans have been trying to reach again for half a century. As far as free souvenirs from space go, it beats a fridge magnet. And, hey. It’s wholesome fun. We need more of that.
—
“The cosmos is within us. We are made of star-stuff.
We are a way for the universe to know itself.”
– Carl Sagan
—
Source credit: Vice Magazine, Ashley Fike
Dec15
when things go missing.
Deborah J. Brasket’s moving novel When Things Go Missing, may cause you to reflect on your life in ways that you didn’t expect, as you follow her characters in this very human tale of a family.
Throughout the book, each family member will be challenged to take stock of their own lives in response to an unexpected change in their family dynamic when their always reliable mother chooses to disappear. While they all love each other, they do have very real issues, and there are times when it’s best to let people resolve things on their own, yet only the people involved can make that decision.
As a parent, a sibling, a child, a friend, perhaps we’ve all had those moments when we’ve felt the push/pull of wanting to take a break from it all, but how many of us would do it, and what would happen to those we would have to leave behind, even though we love them dearly, while also loving ourselves? Are we helping, are we hurting, by staying or leaving? What happens next?
This book tells this family’s story with compassion, love, humor, and caring, and shows you how people can find a way to find a way, with love and a strong will. I highly recommend it.
—
‘some things are best mended by a break.’
– edith wharton
—
In ‘real life’ Deborah is a very interesting person –
She spent six years sailing around the world with her husband and children before returning to California where she earned her MA in English. She taught literature courses to college students, organized a union for adjunct instructors, and fought for affordable housing as the leader of a nonprofit in Santa Barbara County.
Now she lives with her husband among the rolling hills and vineyards of California’s central coast where she writes the kinds of novels she loves to read. “When Things Go Missing” is her debut novel.
She writes about art, literature, and the creative process on her author website/blog at “Deborah J. Brasket, Author – Writing from the Edge of the Wild,” where she also shares her poetry and short stories.
“When Things Go Missing” is available for sale in the following places:
Amazon, Amazon UK, Amazon AUS, Bookshop, Barnes & Noble, along with all major retailers
Deborah’s blog can be found here: deborahjbasket.com
I didn't have my glasses on.... 