Since I’m hoping to buy a house in the next few months and since I got rid of a lot of my stuff before moving, so I’ll be starting with a clean slate, I’ve been checking books on home decor/interior design out of the library to get ideas. I’ve found a couple of books about decor for a cozy home. That’s what I want to create, so I checked them out.

Given what I’m currently writing, it’s no surprise that the idea of cozy appeals to me. I have a sense of how I want my home to feel, but not a great visual for what that should look like. Thus the decor books. I want to see pictures to see if any of them fit what I have in mind. What does cozy look like to me?

And it seems I’m on a very different wavelength from these authors. Both books turned out to be by “influencers” (I really hate that concept) who had blogs about their homes, so the books were only about their homes. There weren’t a lot of pictures of a variety of homes to show how design principles work. There were just pictures of their homes.

Weirdly, their idea of “cozy” involves lots of white. White slipcovers on the furniture, white walls, exposed brick painted white, white wood, etc. I do like white walls, and my comforter cover on my bed is white with blue embroidery around the edges, but the amount of white in those homes was anything but cozy to me. It looked cold. They both talked about having a lot of natural light, but I tend to think of cozy in dark terms, with candles and lamps to create a glow. Some sunlight during the day is okay, but I don’t like a lot of harsh direct light.

One of the books had some good advice about starting a room with a blank slate, then getting the sofa in the position you want it first. After that, position any other seating, then the horizontal surfaces (tables). Then choose and position rugs, then drapes, lamps, and then art and accessories. That made sense. However, in all her pictures, I liked the “don’t” pictures better than the “do” pictures. She said that it’s better to have one big statement piece than a bunch of smaller pieces, and while I agree in not liking a cluttered look with a ton of stuff, it all depends on what the big piece is.

Over her sofa, the “don’t” picture (I guess it was a “before” from before she came up with her new design philosophy) had a gallery wall of a number of smaller prints. The “do” was a giant rack of antlers looming over the sofa. If you were sitting on the sofa and looked up, the prongs of the antlers would be right over your head. The “don’t” for the fireplace mantel was a couple of botanic prints, some small baskets, and some candlesticks. Not entirely my taste, but it didn’t look too busy to be restful. The “do” picture had a big, black sign with the word “Relax” on it in white, scrolling script (what I think of as the “live, laugh, love” font). This was on a white brick (or painted white) fireplace.

Between the giant rack of antlers and the huge black sign ordering me to relax, I’d have to flee that room. Nothing about it was what I’d consider cozy. It was oppressive, especially the “Relax” sign, which would have the effect on me of someone telling me to calm down during a fight. I wouldn’t be able to relax in that room. The antlers might have worked in a more rustic setting with darker colors, and possibly over the fireplace rather than over the sofa, but in a stark white room the look was like something out of Scandinavian horror.

I don’t have a ton of decorative accessories. Most of what I have is stuff I either got as a gift or bought as a souvenir when I traveled. I have a lot of interesting candle-related things, like lanterns, candlesticks, or a candle garden. I have framed pictures of family or places I’ve visited. I mostly fill my walls with bookcases, but the artwork I have is watercolor prints of places I’ve visited. Everything I have means something to me.

I’ll have to see what other books the library has, especially if I drive to the library. I usually walk, and I have to go up a steep hill to get home, so I’ve been choosing the smaller books. A lot of the interior design books are too big for my backpack or for the small collapsible shopping bag I carry with me if I’m running errands around downtown before going to the library. I’ll want to drive up the hill with some of the decor books. I hope they have something written by a real interior decorator with training rather than by self-taught bloggers, especially those who think huge racks of antlers on stark white walls are “cozy.”

My decorating style would probably best be described as “eccentric professor’s study.” I like cushy chairs with soft upholstery, lots of books, dark wood, plenty of soft throws, pillows, and blankets on the chairs/sofa, an antique-looking rug on wood floors. I even have a mini suit of armor. I’ll need to get a rug and a sofa, and I’ll eventually want to replace my wood furniture. Everything except the big bookcases was Bombay Company stuff that I put together myself. I’ll be starting from scratch for my office. I’ve got a chair that I may or may not end up keeping, but I need a desk, bookcases, and any other office furniture, and I have no idea what look I want, whether bright and airy with light-colored furniture and white bookcases that blend with the walls or keeping with the eccentric professor’s study in a castle look from my living room.

But first I have to find a house. There’s nothing on the market right now. I have to hope something will come up between now and May.

I’m still snowed in. School here has been cancelled all week. We’re supposed to get more snow tonight, but then it’ll get above freezing over the weekend, so I may be able to get rid of the wall of ice surrounding my car, and I might be able to venture out. I don’t really need anything, but I might need some groceries next week.

Apparently, this is unusual here. It’s been interesting reading the town Facebook group to see how people are reacting. Half are acting like it’s all an overreaction and half are freaking out because the roads are icy. The hills in this town are really steep, so I can see why they wouldn’t want to run school buses full of kids on possibly icy hills.

Meanwhile, they got ice and snow back in Texas, so it’s not as though I’d have avoided this if I hadn’t moved. And I haven’t lost power.

It’s been a good week for work since there wasn’t much else to do. I re-read all of the book I just finished writing, made a revision plan, and did the major surgery revisions. I did the major rewriting midway through when I realized something was wrong and went back to fix it. That meant I didn’t have a lot to rewrite. Mostly, it involved deleting a couple of paragraphs so that a piece of information got revealed later. I didn’t have to add that info later because it turned out it was discussed a couple of times. I then had to fix who knew it later in the book.

Next up, I’ll do the fixing the words edit. That’s the nitpicky part when I read out loud to make sure the words flow well and the character voices sound right. I also find where I use the same words too frequently.

I’m not going to try to put a release date on this book until I get with the cover designer and see how this round of edits goes, but February seems doable unless the designer is really backed up.

In other news, if you like the idea of an all-you-can-read subscription service but aren’t keen on giving Amazon money for Kindle Unlimited, Kobo has a similar service called Kobo Plus. This one’s a bit more author-friendly, in that they don’t require exclusivity. Amazon doesn’t let authors sell their e-books anywhere else if they’re in Kindle Unlimited, but with Kobo Plus you can sell your books wherever you want. I put all my independently published books in Kobo Plus. Here’s a group of cozy mysteries that are available in Kobo Plus, including mine. (And it would help me get credit for this promo if you click on the link, even if you aren’t interested in Kobo Plus.)

I had grand plans to get off to a serious start to the year on Monday — and then we got hit with about 6 inches of snow Sunday night.

This really shouldn’t make any difference to me. I work at home. But there’s something about a snow day that takes over the brain. It’s a mental state that says normal operations have ceased. I’ve actually managed to hit my work quotas, but it’s been a struggle because all I want to do is bake and curl up under a blanket with a book.

I’m glad I went out for groceries on Sunday because otherwise I’d have been in trouble. As much as people in more northern states tease Texans about shutting down at a hint of ice or snow, I can’t tell that it’s much better here. The entire area shut down on Monday. City offices and some businesses opened part of the day on Tuesday. Schools have been out all week. They do plow the streets. My street is cleared of snow, but I bet it’s icy today because we got a lot of sun and were around 30 degrees yesterday, and now today it’s really cold, so there was probably melting and re-freezing. The thing about the snowplow is that it cleared the street, but it left a wall of ice and snow on the sides of the street, so my car is pretty much walled-up. I tried clearing out some of it yesterday, but my plastic snow shovel wasn’t up to the task. I may need a jackhammer. So, I could drive on the roads to get somewhere, especially since I have all-wheel drive and even a special setting for driving on snow, but I can’t get to the road.

One thing that’s better than in Texas, aside from snowplows, is that I haven’t lost power. The last time I was in weather this cold, I had no electricity — and no heat. I’m nice and warm inside, and it didn’t even feel all that cold when I went out yesterday to shovel.

The original forecast, up until Friday evening, was that we’d get a light snow and then it would be above freezing later Monday and on Tuesday, so it would all melt. So I didn’t go grocery shopping since I wasn’t close to running out of anything. Tuesday would be a good day to go shopping. Then they changed the forecast to say it could be bad, and I decided to head out Sunday morning, just in case. That was when I bought the snow shovel and I stocked up on milk, bread, and some things I could eat in case we lost power, like cheese and crackers. I’d have run out of milk today, and we haven’t made it above freezing, so the snow and ice aren’t going anywhere. We might make it above freezing on Sunday. Then I may be able to dig my car out.

I’ve learned that off-street parking would be really nice when I get a permanent house, so I might have to clear a driveway but my car won’t be buried by the snowplow. I need some boots that will work in snow (my waterproof hiking boots do okay, but aren’t tall enough to do much good in deep snow — fortunately there’s a crust of ice on top of the snow, and I’ve managed to walk on top of the snow, only sinking in a little). I need a metal snow shovel. And if they forecast any kind of winter weather, go to the grocery store, even if they’re saying it’s no big deal.

I’m home again after more than a week away and after two long days of driving. I can’t make that drive too often, but I enjoy the thinking time along the way.

Something occurred to me as I got closer to home: I’ve now made that drive three times. The first time, I was on a vacation/recon mission to a place I’d been reading about but that I’d never visited to see if I liked it. The second time, I’d uprooted my whole life and was moving to an apartment I’d only seen online on a street I’d only seen online. This time, I was coming home, and it really felt like home, even though I was coming from a place I’ve considered home (though I’ve never actually lived in the house where my parents live now). I missed my mountains.

With Christmas coming so soon after Thanksgiving this year, it’s a good thing I got my fill of fall. We started getting fall-like weather and color in mid-August, and there were still a lot of pockets of red and gold leaves along the journey. But on the way back I got a real transition to Christmas mode, since it started snowing soon after I stopped for the night outside Nashville on day 1. It was a light snow, mostly just flakes dancing in the air, and the ground was warm, so it wasn’t sticking. The roads were clear the next morning, but there was a light dusting of snow on the hills facing the road. In spots, it was a heavier dusting, while in others there was just snow in the nooks and crannies. I’d made a playlist for the trip that mixed Christmas music in with other music, and the occasional Christmas song made a nice accompaniment to the scenery. It seems to have been a narrow band across northern Tennessee and southern Kentucky, reaching into southern Virginia. I dipped below it when the road went south to Knoxville, then came back into the snow when I turned north in far eastern Tennessee and headed for Virginia. There were some flurries there, but the roads were still clear and I never had to use my windshield wipers because the flakes were so light and my car is apparently so aerodynamic that the flakes just went up and over my car instead of hitting the windshield. It was a best-case scenario for snowy driving, just enough to make it pretty without affecting the roads or visibility. As I got farther north, I made it above the band of snow, and it was just green around my area. We’re supposed to get some snow tomorrow morning, though.

I’ve done my holiday travel for the year, and I already got my shopping done, gifts wrapped and left with my parents, so now I get to have a no-pressure holiday season. I’m not in a choir now, so there are no rehearsals or performances. I don’t have any parties I have to attend. There are a lot of local events that I can do, so I won’t be bored or lonely, but there’s nothing I must do. I can choose the things I want, or I can stay home in my pajamas, drink cocoa, and watch Christmas movies.

Among the activities are multiple Christmas markets, a group getting together to do caroling in the downtown shopping district on Saturdays, a couple of holiday teas in historic homes, a tour of historic homes, multiple church services and concerts, and a Christmas dinner at a church for anyone who might be alone (I plan to help out and eat with them). I could probably fill up all the weekend days and nights between now and Christmas, plus the week of Christmas, but I imagine there will be a few quiet days or nights at home, especially depending on the weather. It doesn’t feel as cold here for the temperature as it does back in Texas — I felt colder in the 40s in Texas than I did in the 30s in Virginia — but we’re going to have some days that are really cold. Right now, I’m waiting for it to go above freezing before I run some errands. One errand in the next couple of weeks may involve buying a new winter coat. I’m not sure my Texas “heavy” coats will be heavy enough for the weather here.

I’ve loved the autumn here, but we got our first taste of winter yesterday. I was making dinner, looked out the kitchen window, and I thought I saw snow. A moment later, it was snowing so hard that I couldn’t see the houses a block away. It only lasted about five minutes and it was still above freezing, so we only got a light dusting and it didn’t stick for long.

The term they used on the TV weather report was “flurry squall,” which is apparently what you get when it snows hard enough to create limited visibility, but it’s for a very short time. It’s like a mini blizzard. To be a true blizzard, it has to snow long enough for there to be accumulation on the ground. If you’re caught in one of these while driving, it can be dangerous, but you’ll be out of it very quickly. If you’re not driving, it’s just pretty to look at for a few minutes.

We’re supposed to get more of those this afternoon. I already have bread rising to bake because it’s definitely the kind of day for that sort of thing. I hope to get some good writing done, if I’m not spending all day looking out the window for snow. My inner child definitely comes out the first moment I see a flake in the sky. From what I understand from people who’ve lived here a long time, they do get snow here, but it doesn’t stay around all winter. Most winter days it gets above freezing during the daytime, aside from occasional cold spells, so anything that falls only lasts a day or two. I’ll need to get a snow shovel to clear off my walk and dig out my car if I need to go anywhere, but I should be able to stock up on supplies based on the forecast and wait it out or else walk to get anything I need. I’ll have to see if I need to get snow boots or if my waterproof hiking boots will suffice. So far, I haven’t needed a heavier winter coat. I haven’t even used my existing winter coats, just lighter lined jackets or sweatshirts. It seems to feel warmer here than I’d expect based on the thermometer. I’ve walked downtown to go to church in just a light sweater with a lined suit coat over it when it was 39 degrees. I went out to look at the snow yesterday while wearing a sweater over a sweatshirt.

It’s supposed to warm up tomorrow and be windy enough that anything that falls today will be gone by tomorrow night. Which is good because I’m heading out for my Thanksgiving travel on Sunday. I’ll be heading over several rivers, through a lot of woods and over a couple of mountain ranges. I won’t be posting my blog next week, as I will be enjoying time with my family. I might post updates on social media, if you follow me on Facebook or BlueSky.

It turns out that the house isn’t to be mine, after all, and I’m okay with that.

The inspection was Saturday afternoon, and my Realtor and I both went so we could see what the inspector found. I also wanted to take pictures and measurements. This meant that I was spending nearly two hours in the place. While I was seeing things I liked about it, I was also seeing some things I found a little unsettling. One of those was the house next door. When I looked out one of the upstairs windows that faced that house, I could see that it was in really bad shape, with holes in the outside walls, including one up under the eaves. My inspector even glanced over there and commented on it. They probably have a colony of either squirrels, raccoons, or bats living in that attic.

I also started noticing how narrow the doors were. In my online furniture shopping, I’d seen that they had a note about how the doorway had to be at least 32 inches for them to deliver a sofa, and when I measured I found that the front door and the living room door were only 31 inches wide. They must have had to deliver everything through the back door, which was wider, but which required going up some pretty steep steps from the deck. I noticed that the section of fence between the side yard and back yard by that part of the deck had been removed and was leaning against the side fence.

The inspection report wasn’t utterly alarming. The biggest worry for me was the fact that the roof was original to the house, which was built in 1900. It’s a tin roof, so I guess it doesn’t wear out like modern shingles do, but a number of the tin panels are bent, so wind and water can get up under them. The inspector recommended getting a tin roof expert to look at it and see what needed to be repaired. The basement was just a crawl space, not an actual basement, though it did have things like the water heater and interior unit for the air conditioner and heater in there. The floor was dirt, and the dirt from when it was excavated was piled up against one of the walls. The inspector suggested getting the basement sealed to prevent mold, bugs, etc., from getting in. He also said the house needed new rain gutters. He thought the basement stairs and back stairs to the deck needed to be replaced and were too steep, so they were unsafe.

The thing that I found a bit concerning that I hadn’t even considered was that there’s a big tree on the neighbor’s side of the property line that’s too close to both houses. It’s just about at the back end of the houses, barely five feet from both houses. A lot of that tree’s branches hang over what would have been my house’s roof, and he said a tree that tall would have a root system that could encroach on my basement or undermine my foundation, and if that tree fell in a windstorm, depending on how it fell it would either fall between the houses, so the branches would hit what would have been my bedroom; it would fall away from both houses, so the roots would come up under the rear corner of my house; it would fall on the neighbor’s house so the roots would dig up my basement; or it would fall on my house. He suggested getting together with the neighbor to have the tree removed because a tree that size shouldn’t be within ten feet of a house.

Once the inspector left, my Realtor and I were walking around, looking at the things he pointed out. Her husband’s a contractor, so she knows a lot about how to get stuff like that done, and we were trying to figure out what we might be able to ask the seller to fix and how much it would cost to fix the other stuff. The tree was a big question mark because it’s on the neighbor’s property, and given the condition of that building, we weren’t sure I could get the neighbor to do anything. While we were standing outside, I smelled smoke and commented that someone had their fireplace going. Then my Realtor noticed smoke coming from near the house next door.

She looked and saw that the leaves on the ground in front of that house were burning, and there was a kid nearby. She went into Mom mode and ran over to make sure the kid was okay. He just looked at her, shrugged, and said, “I like starting fires.”

My Realtor looked at me and mouthed, “Oh, no.” We noted then that the house next door had been divided into apartments. That meant there was probably a non-resident landlord, and he clearly didn’t care for maintaining the place, so tracking him down to get the tree dealt with wouldn’t be easy. I might not even be able to get anything done if the tree actually fell on my place. I’d have to find out who the owner was and find a way to contact him. Beyond that, I wasn’t super keen on living next door to a poorly maintained apartment building that houses a kid who likes to start fires. Even aside from the fires, those houses have street parking (since they were built before cars were common), and if there are three families in one building, that means they take up a lot of parking. They were parked in front of what would have been my house, so I might not always have been able to park at my house.

The Realtor apologized for not having noticed all this before I paid for the inspection. She said I couldn’t cancel the contract based on the neighbors, but there was enough in the inspection report to give me grounds to back out. That was what I decided to do because the roof plus the gutters plus the basement, plus the steps, plus the tree added to the neighboring house and the kid who likes to start fires was all too much.

Oddly, this came as a huge relief. I did like a lot about the house. I’ve loved the idea of living in a Victorian home since I was a kid. But I think I was trying to force it. I was so eager about finding a place and getting that worry out of the way (since the market is pretty tight) that I jumped at something that would kind of work and ignored the vague sense of disappointment underlying it because it never felt right. I have this sense of my home in my head, and no matter how much I tried mentally arranging my furniture in this house and no matter how much online shopping I did for furnishings, I never managed to make this house the house in my head. The head house refused to be replaced, and I felt a sense of loss for not having the head house, if that makes any sense. The moment I had a good reason not to take this house, I felt so much better.

I learned so much from that inspection, though. I have a really good checklist of things to look for before I go so far as to make an offer. I know I need to spend a lot more time in the house before I decide. I need to walk the block and around to the block behind to get a sense of the neighborhood. I did drive down that street, but it’s a narrow street on a hill, so I didn’t notice the three mailboxes on the front of that house next door while I had my eyes on the road. I need to walk it to get a good sense of what’s there and what the neighborhood feels like. I’ve been driving around the neighborhoods I like at various times and had never considered this one, so I need to explore it a bit more.

This means I won’t be having to move right away, so I need to buckle down and work on my writing in the meantime. I’ll probably start the serious house hunting after Thanksgiving. I have until May to move out of this apartment, and I can always go month-to-month if I have to after that.

I’ve been pretty distracted the past few days, not by the big national stuff, but by a house.

My plan upon moving here was to rent an apartment for a year while I decided if I like it here, and then sometime after the holidays start house hunting to buy a new place. The weekend before last, I took my first step in preparing for that by going to an open house just to meet the Realtor. The plan was to do that several times and then pick a Realtor. But I really hit it off with this one, and last week she was already sending me listings based on what I said I was looking for. Friday morning, she sent me one that I couldn’t pass up. She arranged to show it to me on Sunday afternoon, and it was eerily close to perfect. There are a few things about it that I would prefer to be different, but it has other features I hadn’t considered.

It’s basically a Victorian dollhouse cottage, built in 1900, but the interior has been remodeled fairly recently. It still has the original wood floors, a lot of the woodwork, the stairs, and the interior doors, but it looks like they’ve pretty much gutted it and redone the wiring and plumbing and created new closets in the bedrooms. They took out the wall between the dining room and kitchen, so it’s a nice open space. It has a modern kitchen and bathrooms, plus central air and heat, which is rare in a house that old. It’s the best of both worlds, with modern functionality and vintage aesthetic. It’s in a neighborhood near downtown and near a small park. The neighborhood looks kind of like San Francisco, with rows of Victorian homes on steep hills. As a plus, the back deck and back upstairs windows have a view of mountains. And it was less expensive than I’d budgeted for.

It seems weird to buy the first house I’ve looked at, but I felt like I couldn’t pass it up, so I put in an offer. I’ve spent the last couple of days waiting to hear if they accepted it. My Realtor said today that we should have all the signatures tomorrow. Then we’ll schedule an inspection because I don’t want to buy a house that old without knowing what I’m getting into. I’m cautiously optimistic that it’s going to happen. I’d be closing in early December, so I may be able to move in by Christmas — or at least start moving in. Since I’m just moving across town and I have time on my lease, what I may do is see if I can have the furniture and major stuff moved so I can start living there, and then I can gradually move the other stuff over, putting it away exactly where I want it as I go. That’s a bit less overwhelming than having to have everything packed all at once and then having a stack of boxes to deal with.

But this means I may have to delay the release of Rydding Village book 3. I hope to have a draft done before I close on the house and start moving, but then life will be chaos for about a month before I have a chance to revise and edit it. Even if it falls through, either because someone swooped in and outbid me or they find something scary in the inspection, I’m not sure when I’d be ready to publish because I need to let it rest a bit before I can revise and edit. I’m making a more realistic publishing/work schedule for next year. It will help that I shouldn’t have any major moves popping in.

While the move happening a few months earlier than I planned is a bit stressful, in a way, it’ll be nice to have it over with. I’ve been living on the verge of maybe moving soon for nearly a decade. It was about eight or nine years ago that I first decided that I wanted a different house, but at first I was thinking it would be in my same neighborhood. I started living with the idea of moving, saving as much money as possible and not buying stuff I would have to move, living with things that were wearing out with the idea that I’d get rid of them when I moved and replace them in the new home. It was about five years ago that I started thinking of moving to a different part of the country, and about three years ago that I started researching this area. Then there was the actual move this year, and I’ve been living where I am now with the idea that it was temporary, so buying as little as possible, not really getting set up in an optimized way because what’s the point when I’d be moving again. I just put things away to get them out of the way. It’ll be nice to get somewhere where I can truly settle. I’ll have to get some furniture and I’ll gradually figure out how I’m going to decorate, but at least I’ll be home

Assuming it all comes through. I’ve decided I’d be okay if the deal falls apart, but I’ll be glad if it doesn’t. It’s rare to find an older home in this price range that’s already been updated. It’s not exactly what I’ve been imagining, not the neighborhood I’ve been researching, but it may actually be more convenient to downtown. I guess I just hadn’t considered it because I didn’t walk around there when I visited last year, but when a friend drove me around town to orient me, she took me through that neighborhood and said it would be a good place to look. Apparently, it’s where a lot of the artsy types live. The people across the street have pink and purple hair and are really nice (I met them when I was looking at the house and asked them questions about the neighborhood).

Now I’m going to try to focus on writing instead of doing online searches for rugs and sofas and furniture for the front porch.