It’s JUNE, peeps! SUMMER HAS ARRIVED!!! Time for ice cream, swimming, reading on the beach, cookouts with burgers and hotdogs and chips and potato salad, long walks in the golden evenings, wildflower bouquets, and tomatoes everywhere!!! Summer is my...

Hi guys! Katja here with the second-place winner of our 1st Quarter contest, “Melody & Harmony,” ©2026 Ann Weaver. Please enjoy it with me! Emilia  Congratulations, you have been accepted into The Julliard School Music Program. Please see below f...

“Sumer is icumen in” and in its honour, I decided to do this blog tag which I picked up a few months ago, by Julie @ Moonlight Wanderer, whom I don’t know. Rules: Questions: 1. What’s a book you read with summer vibes? My first thought was The Torch...

Hi folks! Brief note from Katja here. I’ve asked the lovely Kate @ Once Upon an Ordinary to share about her writing process for her newly released WWII novel, Letters for Victory. Take it away, Kate! I grew up steeped in vintage stories—family storie...

I almost never do devotionals anymore (they get written into my books, I think, lol) but today I was mind-blown by a passage I’ve read five quintillion times and had to share. I don’t know about you, but I’ve struggled with prayer my whole life. It’s...

I found this on Martha Abilene’s blog, Beyond the Literary Horizon, but apparently she got it from Once Upon an Ordinary’s Kate Willis, who tried to find the creator and failed 😉 1. How Many Books is Too Many in a Series? No number. I wrote this dow...

It is May 1/May 2 as I write this, which is the closest I’ve gotten to the month I recapped for the last couple years. I’d like to get the wrap-up down throughout the month, in the future. But anyhow, today my memory is fresh, so let’s see what April...

Hi guys! Katja here with the second of the two first-place winners of our 1st Quarter contest, “Unexpected,” ©2026 Angie Thompson. Please enjoy it with me! Who on earth had decided I needed an aunt in the first place?  I kicked at a rock on the path...

I was tagged for this a while ago by sweet Kate @ Once Upon an Ordinary, and I am so excited to finally do it!! Apparently she found this tag on YouTube through Danielle from Bookburger, and it was originally created by RobertG: Reader of Books (I kn...

This email will be a little different, because I just sent off a newsletter a little while ago and don’t have much new stuff to put in the categories, but I had to send this new one out right now due to the contents of this letter. There’s a lot of e...

First of all, thank you so much, Katja, for letting me be a guest on the blog!  For those of you who don’t know me, I’m a writer of primarily historical fiction.  My most recent book, We Gave Our Tomorrows (which I abbreviate WGOT), is about a squad...

There is a reason why I haven’t picked a set date to send my newsletters out on. Maybe I should. I have not forgotten you, dear cupcakes. Quite the opposite; I’ve been haunted by the knowledge that I needed to get this newsletter written. But April h...

I started out this morning planning to write—it’s the King’s Daughters’ Writing Camp March camp, and I'm determined to finish 4 WIPs this month—but as I tried to figure out what this new story was, I began writing something that I knew was actually f...

If you're here for the gift, scroll to the end of the News section :) I came across a Thread (on Threads, naturally) earlier this year that said they bought themselves an ice-cream cake just because they were an adult and had the money, and instantly...

Okay, that may be a bit of a stretch for the title, but it's the first thing that came to mind. Sue me for knowing Anne of Green Gables too well. This is not the regular monthly newsletter, which is incoming, but merely an announcement that my debut...