Hello

I'm back! The trip was absolutely amazing. More than I could hope for. I won't bog down this email with too many pictures, but I will share a few of my favorites below.

Have you been to England before? Or back to the/a country of your ancestors? Again, I've never done a DNA test so I'm going off of my paternal grandpa and what his last name is (CALDWELL) and assuming I have a bit of English in me. Plus, I can't forget my maternal grandfather's last name is HIATT. Sounds English, right?

What I love about going to Europe is how history really comes alive. Take this picture for instance.

Can you believe we don't know what Stonehenge is for? And that the rocks are even bigger than you see because one third of them are buried in the ground? I mean, wow!

It was an absolute dream come true to clog through sheep fields in the rain to get to Stonehenge. For me, anyway. My children let me know they would have been happy with a picture from the car. Ha!

I won't document everything, I say again, just before giving you another picture, but probably my favorite place after Stonehenge was Bath. As well as learning about the ancient Roman history there in the southwest of England. Sitting in my desk in history class way back in high school, it was so hard for me to imagine the ancient world. Which is why I love going to ruins and ancient sites. To walk where they walked, to try and see what they saw. To learn about how they lived. I find it amazing.

They weren't fools, our ancient ancestors. They might have believed differently than us, but I love being amazed over and over by their ingenuity.

On a sadder note, just yesterday there was news that Madeleine Albright, the first Madame Secretary, passed away. I have no opinion on her political career, but I admire her for being formidable woman, for getting what she wanted in life and for doing what she thought was best. I can't help but admire people like that.

She wrote several books in her lifetime, but the only one I've read is Prague Winter, which is a bit of a shocking book, to say the least. If you're interested in history, especially WWII history, I would look this memoir up. She writes in a very academic way, but her writing is isn't boring. Helped by the fact that her parents were not boring and the story of Czechoslovakia is not boring.

But talk about human nature! What she documents about Prague AFTER the war is something I've only ever read about in Beneath the Scarlett Sky, by Mark Sullivan. Both books account for the atrocities in the aftermath of peace, when governments and sometimes just people, killed others because of who they assume they were associated with during the war. And sometimes with terrible consequences.

Anyway, Rest in Peace, Madeleine Albright.

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In book news, I'm still plodding along in my new novel, in which I've completely rethought how I'm going to do it, which I think is going to make it better. No, I KNOW it will be better!

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Looking for something to read?

This week I have one indie book for you to check out.

Feather of Blood by Alice Ivinya. Find it here.

Rejected by her betrothed and banished into the wilderness, Brianna finds herself broken-hearted with nowhere to turn. She wants nothing more than to be left alone.

But greater threats loom across the Border, and there are whispers of war on the breeze. The Spirit-Beasts are coming and Brianna might be the only thing that can stand in their way and stop the massacre of a nation.

But to do this she will have to face her worst enemy, who wants nothing more than to see her dead, and, worse, the man she once loved who let her down.

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For Madeleine Albright's Prague Winter you can click here.

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Cheerio until next time!

Keep reading,

Kat