A thought for August: “I do not want to get to the end of my life … And find that I just lived the length of it…. I want to have lived the width of it as well.”    -Diane Ackerman

The summer is waning as August arrives, so find some time to get out of your normal routine and your sedentary ways to get outside more, to experience some adventures, to make some memories you will look back on with a smile as the fall settles in. August has warm days and long evenings before the dark falls, and it offers so many opportunities for living life to its fullest.

J.L. and I always call August our vacation month … and we try to get away to a special place, like the beach, in August to relax and have a quiet change of pace. We’ll also get around to visit pretty places near our home,and to explore places we’ve never seen before. August is a good month for adventures.

Our fall months are already spilling over with signing events, fall and holiday festivals and shows, all that you can check out on my website Appearances page, if you like, at: www.linstepp.com/appearances

One new Mountain Home novel for next year is finished and another is ready to begin. I hope to find time in the winter to write my first stand-alone novel in a new Lowcountry Book series I’ve planned, taking readers to different places up and down the Lowcountry along the Atlantic coast we visit so often. J.L. is at work researching and beginning to gather information, directions, and facts about Kentucky state parks and we are hoping to begin visits late next spring to create another parks guidebook.

Most of you know I’ve been writing “free” short stories to post on my Blog each month. However, not all my readers have discovered those free stories and clicked the FOLLOW PAGE on my website’s blog page to get a little email when a new blog story is posted … but you can easily do that so you won’t miss one. Readers, not only in the U.S. but abroad in multitudes of countries, are enjoying these little stories, which really pleases me. It has been interesting to write a short story every month with the new challenge of seeing that a complete story is finished in the word length of about one book chapter. It takes a different planning and writing skill, which has been a new challenge for me to try. Counting back to the first short story I tried in December 2025 I’ve written nine different stories now and they are archived in case you missed one. In my new August short story I had the fun of creating a fanciful myth, sort of like an old legend, set in the Victorian days of England. I’ve titled it THE JEWELS OF CHOICE and hope you will enjoy it. You can skip directly to it on my website at this link: www.linstepp.com/blog/

Enjoy the lazy days of August … and like the old song, “I’ll See You In September.”… Lin