Category: Life and/or Cats
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A Year in Reading: 2025
How did I do this year? Let’s look at the stats! Total Books Read: 224 Note: Includes novels, novellas, and graphic novels Of those… Books Read for the First Time: 179Books Read for the Second (Or More) Time: 46Advanced Review Copies (ARCs) Read: 57Total Books Reviewed: 73 Now for the…
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Holiday Letter 2025
Happy Cottage Eve!! (IYKYK) The spouse and I leave for the airport in a few hours for the annual family holiday cruise. I’ll be spending my birthday this year in Puerto Rico, where my goal is to eat mofongo and drink mojitos, which sounds like the best way to celebrate…
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A Year in Reading: 2024
How did I do this year? Not bad, according to Goodreads! 311 Titles Read in 2024* *Includes novels, novellas, and graphic novels What’s the monthly breakdown? January: 29 | February: 26 | March: 31April: 25 | May: 29 | June: 23July: 28 | August: 26 | September: 19October: 18 |…
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Creation as an act of defiance
Or, I Picked a Hell of a Year to Start Writing Queer Romance I’ve caved to “doom scrolling” on social media a couple of times today, and so far I’ve seen two posts by author friends announcing that they will be taking an indefinite hiatus from writing. One is a…
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A Year in Reading: 2023
Once again, I set my Goodreads annual reading challenge goal at 50 books. And once again, I blew past that number sometime in March. Here’s the final total: A slight decline from last year, and definitely not the insanity that was 2021, but that’s because I’m back to hitting a…
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Holiday Letter 2023
Casa SiameseEllicott City, MarylandDecember 2023 Dear Family & Friends, Hanna, Erik, and the cats had a wonderful and successful 2023, closing out the year both happy and healthy. As has become tradition, we’ll once again be spending this Christmas on the high seas with a Caribbean cruise, followed immediately by…
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[out of office]
![[out of office]](https://jlgribble.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/out-of-office-1568x941.png)
Book reviews are on hiatus for a week, and my next monthly wrap-up & goals post will be a few days later than usual. Because I’m going on vacation! The spouse and I are hitting the high seas, accompanied by our Atlanta friends. Funny story: close to 15 years of…
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Destination Research: Israel
In the past few years, I have participated in virtual panels on multiple topics for Con-Tinual: The Con That Never Ends. Yesterday, I also contributed to their weekly #DestinationResearch about my visit to Israel in October 2022. The content of those posts is included below, but if you’re interested in…
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A Year in Reading: 2022
Every year, Goodreads invites me to its annual reading challenge with a helpfully suggested goal of 12 books. Every year, I bump that goal up to 50, because I figure that’s always doable unless the apocalypse occurs. In the last few years, I’ve more than blown that number out of…
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Holiday Letter 2022
Welcome to my final* post of 2022! The blog will be quiet for the rest of the year because the spouse and I are once again hitting the high seas for a tropical holiday cruise with my extended family. We’re spending Christmas zip-lining in Honduras, and we’ll return to Maryland…
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Dissent Anthology Charity Auction
The romance community is fighting to protect reproductive freedom with multiple fundraisers. The largest anthology, Dissent, includes brand new and exclusive works from 150+ romance authors, as well as a paired auction. 100% of proceeds from both the anthology and the auction will be donated to Planned Parenthood, the Center…
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A Year in Reading: 2021
Hey, remember I was totally shocked by how much I read last year? A whopping 258 books? 2021 was apparently my time to shine. And by shine, I mean completely immerse myself in fictional worlds. How did I pull this off? A few reasons come to mind. My day job…
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Holiday Letter 2021
It will be quiet around here for the last week of the year because the spouse and I are currently on a large ship, enjoying warm weather and time away from the internet. Thank you so much to everyone who supports me in my little corner of the internet, whether…
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Steel Justice Available Now!
Happy Wednesday to everyone, and happy book birthday to me! Steel Justice (Steel Empires #6) is officially live and available for your reading pleasure in hardcopy and ebook form. Learn about the book below, including some fun graphics. I hope you enjoy the penultimate book to the Steel Empires series,…
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A Year in Reading: 2020
As usual, I set my Goodreads Reading Challenge for the year to 50 books. That’s about a book a week, and combined with novellas and graphic novels, I usually end up with a final tally of around 100 books. Not bad. Makes me feel like something in my life is…
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Holiday Letter 2020
December 2020 Dear Family & Friends, Hanna, Erik, and the three cats have successfully managed to stay healthy throughout the shenanigans brought by 2020. We are fortunate that both of our jobs ensured continued employment, and while Erik continues to work in-person on his military base, Hanna has been working…
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Cleveland ConCoction 2020 Cancelled
Based on guidance I received from my employer last week, I had already (with great sadness) withdrawn from attending this year’s Cleveland ConCoction. Later that same day, the announcement came out that the convention was being cancelled. I know this is a stressful and scary time for everyone, for a…
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2019: A Year in Reading
This year, I wrote one (1) novel, wrote one (1) short story, revised most of (like, 80%) of another novel, and according to Goodreads, read 147 books. This means I won my Goodreads Challenge goal of 50 books. Pretty cool, right? Except Goodreads is weird, so it’s not quite 147…
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Build Report: BTL-A4 Y-Wing Starfighter
Just because I’m behind schedule with all of my writing projects doesn’t mean I will deprive myself of a reward when I do get something done! To celebrate submitting my fifth novel to my editor, I built this year’s special Star Wars set, the Y-Wing Starfighter. The Y-Wing is not…