Colleen Vanderlinden's Blog

This year’s garden was a mixed bag. For the first time, our grapevine produced grapes! So many of them that we were never at a loss for snacks once they were ready to eat in early fall. We planted Concord grapes, and they only got better after a frost or two. We battled Japanese beetles...

There’s something about summer reading. Having a list to work through and a goal in mind paired with plenty of long, lazy, warm summer days that were just made for sitting in the shade and reading. Perfection. One of my favorite recent traditions (at least, recent to me) is the 20 Books of Summer challenge, … Continue reading 20 Books of Summer 2022

It’s been a minute since I’ve posted on here. The last year or so has been sort of a reset for me. To say that I burned myself out as an indie author would be putting it mildly. It was time for a change, and that came in the form of getting back into content … Continue reading May 2022: A New Beginning! (and Goals)

It was a week full of words and planning for me. Grab your favorite beverage and let’s talk about it! I’m a little over a month into my new job as the garden writer for Love to Know, and things are going wonderfully. After so many years of the chaos of a freelance life and … Continue reading Weekly Wrap-Up: Books, Notion, and Lilacs

I love a good reading challenge.  They take me back, I think, to my favorite part of elementary school, which entailed reading through a list of books and getting an award (remember those Pizza Hut free pizza coupons?) or getting to try out for the Battle of the Books team (which I made, and it … Continue reading Summer Reading Time!

Someone in my house has been sick every day since New Year’s Eve. I’ve been feeling like crud for the last two weeks, and those of you who are parents know how much fun it is to feel like crap, take care of kids who feel like crap, still kinda sorta keep the house running, … Continue reading Pestilential January

Fashion consultant Kiki Forbes is… not in a good place. Set up on a string of disastrous blind dates by her well-meaning best friend, suddenly unemployed, facing the prospect of working as a nanny for her sister (think Bridezilla crossed with a deranged version of Martha Stewart), she leaps at the chance to work as … Continue reading Review: Coffee Girl by Sophie Sinclair

It was a very good reading week for me. I read two novels and started two more. Both of those I finished were 5-star reads for me… Which leads me to a bit of a tangent. Looking through my GoodReads shelves, I have lots of four and five star ratings for the books I’ve read. … Continue reading Friday Reads: Contemporary Romance Obsession Edition

IT’S HAPPENING! Two of Swords is almost here, and the second it’s live on Amazon, I will be shouting it from the rooftops. This book had so many false starts, so many scrapped drafts… a year’s worth of them! But I have a book now that I’m proud of and I’m so excited to share … Continue reading Cover Reveal: Two of Swords

May was a whirlwind. But I’m trying to keep track of the things I enjoyed each month, both the big and the small, because it’s so easy to lose sight of those things when life is crazy. Which mine is. All the time… So in no particular order, here are the things that made me … Continue reading Things I Loved This Month