Book releases, deadlines and the creeping crud

Hello, everybody! The Fresh Pioneer is back and I'm going to stand way back while I type this so I don't get anybody sick.
    Everybody gets sick. It's a fact of life. Seasons of life and all that. But you know what makes it worse? When someone rolls their eyes and utters the words "man flu". THEN they get REALLY sick. See, my husband had a cold. After making him tea, soup, and giving lots of sympathy I may just possibly have mentioned how men act like they're dying when they get sick.
  Oooooh. Fatal error. Just like Lady MacBeth. Oh, wait, that was ambition. Hamlet? No, that was his inability to act. Hmmm... not sure who tempted the fates by mocking a sick man, but if there wasn't one, then Shakespeare missed a good morality play.

Now, a bad cold that keeps me huddling under the covers might not matter except I've been waiting impatiently for this coming week because The Pepper in the Gumbo is going free with a Bookbub ad on the 26th!

Just in time because I've been working really hard on a special book called These Sheltering Walls and it's finally ready to be released, so everything is coming together nicely...

... even as the third book, Only Through Love,  emerges as a preorder, too! The only problem is... this COLD. So, while I had plans to make a trifle that I saw on Pinterest (isn't that where all good recipes reside?) I've mostly been in bed. My sweet friend Mindy brought me a honey and cinnamon mix that I added to hot milk and that was lovely. Then she brought wild rice chicken soup and that probably kept me from wasting away to nothingness... but other than that, I've just been huddling under my quilts, clutching the heating pad until today.
  The kids had a great week off from school. We won't talk about the time they had chocolate cake for breakfast (not even kidding), or the time the little guys went to bed without a bath, or how many movies they watched in the past seven days. We'll just be happy we all survived!

Since I have no food to share (except for the recipes in the books), I'll share the poem that I used for the title for the second book.

It's called A Prayer For This House by Louis Untermeyer.

May nothing evil cross this door,
And may ill-fortune never pry
About these windows; may the roar
And rains go by.

Strengthened by faith, the rafters will
Withstand the battering of the storm.
This hearth, though all the world grow chill,
Will keep you warm.

Peace shall walk softly through these rooms,
Touching your lips with holy wine,
Till every casual corner blooms
Into a shrine.

Laughter shall drown the raucous shout
And, though the sheltering walls are thin,
May they be strong to keep hate out
And hold love in.

--Louis Untermeyer

Until next time, friends!