Halfway Mark

I can’t believe it—mid-year 2026! As our friend’s daughter used to say, “Time flies by the seat of your pants!” LOL. I consider it time to reflect and report on all things from my couch. 😉 Yes, I have a home office, furnished with a desk and a comfy chair, surrounded by books. But somehow, I prefer to write and work from the left side of the couch. Bookshelves, yes, more, behind me and my piano to my right. Every once in a while, I sit there and play, warm up my voice, and sing—when my voice cooperates. Mostly, I spend my days in this little corner, handwriting poetry and then typing it into my laptop.

Happy 250^th Birthday, America! I remember birthday #200 in 1976. It was such a big deal. Our children’s choir put one the musical “I Like the Sound of America.” I sang part of it the other night for my hubby. Yeah, I still remember the lyrics. Such a great musical! What are you doing for the holiday? We need to find a place to watch the fireworks.

Report on my doings:

Church: Besides the aforementioned music at church, I am on the women’s ministry team and I’m preparing to lead the ladies in worship for our Gathering Table meeting for July. In the meantime, I am preparing to take over the lead of Prime Timers (our 55+ group).

Family: I’ll start with the hardest. My husband’s sister was killed in a biking accident June 9. We are devastated. Many of you have been praying for Ginny. She had terminal cancer, but earlier this year celebrated being in remission. Bike riding was her time with the Lord. She was married for almost 40 years to Tim and had seven children, three of which were still living at home. Please pray for our family. Kev and I could not make it back to Chicago for the memorial.
                On a brighter note, the following week (a prepaid vacay), our youngest daughter and her hubby came down from Oregon, and we all went to Southern California to see our oldest daughter, her hubby, and our six grandchildren. It was the first time we’d been together as a family in eight years. We had a wonderful time making sweet memories. We came home and spent Father’s Day and our 41^st wedding anniversary on the 22^nd in quiet reflection of time with family and comforting one another over the loss of Ginny.
               
 Health: My health hasn’t been the best, as I am fighting several issues including diabetes, myalgia, sciatica, hip and shoulder joint pain. And lately, dizziness and nausea. Ugh! Well, God is good, and I just ask for prayer. He is my healer.

After my vocal medicine allergy disaster in 2020, where I could hardly sing for two years, I’m slowly building my voice back, warming up two to three times a week. Getting out of the practice of daily warmups, after 40 years of warming up every day, didn’t help. Now I feel like I am starting all over again. I probably need a voice technician, but I am working toward adding warmups to my daily routine. I play and sing every other week for our prayer service at church, and I’m on the rotating schedule for the praise team. It’s a challenge, but it will eventually be a win.

Writing Process & Works in Progress

Poetry: As of today, June 29, 2026, I’ve penned over 400 poems for this calendar year. I aim to write one a day but have far exceeded my goal. Yay! Part of my daily routine is checking out various online poetry challenges. My website kacirigney.com features many of the answers to these prompts.

I’m quite pleased to report that several of my poems have been, or will be published in anthologies this year, including in The Stafford Challenge 2025-2026, Wild Poet Press; Dawn Horizons, Local Gems Press; E Pluribus Unum America 250, Local Gems Press; and Remember When, Local Gems Press. I am awaiting a hopeful “yes” for one more through Local Gems, where I belong to the Bard Community. Speaking of the Bard Community, this community allows me access to poetic tutorials and several writing challenges throughout the year. It’s worth the $25 monthly subscription.

With yeses, “not interested” emails come along—hard work and submissions for contests not panning out as I had hoped. I take the wins happily and try to take the losses in stride, knowing that God is working either way.

Poetry themes are ready to be placed within Canva to become ebooks. Finding time? That’s the kicker! I wish I could afford to pay someone to put them together for me. LOL. I have between twenty and thirty of these eBooks (chapbooks—about 40 pages) to put together. Each book is at least a two-week process for me, as I want the poems in a certain order, but before that, check all my poetry forms, syllable counts, word choices, spelling, grammar, punctuation, formatting, choose or create a book cover, decide whether to illustrate (this is a whole other process), and then have a few beta readers check it out before publishing. Whew! Following this process twenty to thirty times and the rest of the next year and a half would be completely full. If you haven’t checked out any of my beautifully illustrated poetry eBooks, here’s a link to my store. Just one purchase keeps me caffeinated through my day and is much appreciated.

Poetry Workbooks: I’m working on a how-to-write poetry series. Each of these workbooks includes thirty forms of poetry and/or poetic exercises. They have been a delight to compose. Ah, to find a publisher interested! In this process, it’s been fun to create my own forms. I have enough of my invented forms to fill two workbooks. I’ve created about twenty of these workbooks, many of which have the correct number of forms; though some have too many or not quite enough. You may think, “Can’t you do one at a time? Sheesh!” Well, as I come across a new form, I need to add it to the correct book. So, not really. The last part of May and early June, I went through a Welsh Bardic curriculum. Fascinating and difficult puzzles, these forms. To the poet out there: Let me know if you have an invented poetry form that you would like me to include. I will gladly do so. I will, of course, give you proper attribution, as well as links to your social media or website. 😊

Short Stories, Novellas, and Novels: I’ve just fallen in love with writing stories. I belong to Deadlines for Writers, and have a monthly deadline for prompted poetry, and short stories with exact word counts. It’s a lot of work, but a joyous venture. Some of these short stories become monthly scenes that will make for, I believe, lovely novels or novellas. One of these stories has thirteen scenes now. So exciting!

In the meantime, and when inspired, I’m trying to finish my manuscript Your Sweet Melody. I’m 95% there. I know! I just need to finish it. I have a chapter or two to complete, and then the beta readers before finding a publisher.

Flash fiction has also been a fun challenge. Why take on this challenge? I’m learning to condense narrative with concise language. Omitting needless words and just getting the story out.  

 If you’re still reading this, thank you. Thank you for your prayers, love, and encouragement. I have enough work for a lifetime and then some. God willing, I’ll be able to finish something! LOL. Drop me a note and let me know how you are doing and what your plans are to celebrate the holiday.

 With much love,

 Kaci