The challenges of living apart... 💌

Hello, lovely reader!

I hope you and those you love are happy, safe, and well. I'm praying for God's peace and love to rest on the world, and on you, too, especially in these troubled times.

This week, the challenges of hubby and I essentially living apart as we switch places between our UK home and our Bulgarian retirement home have been made far too obvious! Hubby became ill with a virus the night he got back to the UK house. And because he has a lifelong auto-immune condition, he doesn’t just get Man Flu, he gets very unwell indeed, with scary high fevers. I’m so glad and grateful that he’s recovering now, because it’s horrible being sick with no one there to help.

Meanwhile, here in Bulgaria, I’ve been kept busy. Not just cat care, but all the usual old house maintenance stuff, plus working towards getting it ready to live in. It’s been a very wet spring, and the weeds are growing fast, a challenge to keep on top of, especially as I’m trying to stop the most pesky weeds (the ones with nasty spiky seeds) dropping their seeds in the soil by plucking them before I weed whack. Unfortunately, there’s a lot of that grass, and that’s just the front garden. And inside the house, the kitchen is still work in progress with shelves to hang and rearranging to do to make best use of the space. It’s a way bigger kitchen than our UK one, but still on the smaller side. I’m also attempting some patch up work on the back bedroom. A section of the ceiling is damaged due to the leaky roof and has dropped an inch or so in the middle of the section, leaving a gap between it and the rest of the ceiling. It looks ready to fall down, but despite looking awful, it actually seems very solid and doesn’t appear to have moved in the over three years I’ve owned this house. Getting the ceiling replaced with a new lowered ceiling is an option, but a messy and complicated one, involving removing a huge heavy wardrobe I’d like to keep. So I’m doing a patch-up job on it first. I can watch over the next month or two to see what happens. If my repair cracks more than a hairline or falls down, the wise choice is obvious!

And on to the book news! Not so much this week, but there are a few f-r-e-e books you may be interested in.

This week’s f-r-e-e recommendation!

Here are the new f-r-e-e additions for my to-be-read library this week! No-cost this morning on Amazon but prices do change so be sure to check before hitting the buy button! All should be clean and faith-friendly, but as I haven’t read any of these stories yet, I hope I haven’t missed anything I wouldn’t normally choose to share!

• Ask You Later by Jan Thompson is a sweet Christian romance set in Savannah;

• Dangerous Past by Roxanne Rust and is clean romantic suspense;

• Unlikely Praise by Carla Rossi is an opposites attract / forced colleagues romance;

• Clues, Crushes, and Second Chances by Lisa Buffaloe is a small-town Christian rom com;

• Secrets and Charades by Cindy Ervin Huff is Christian Western historical romance.

This week’s group book promos!

CLEAN SINGLE DAD ROMANCES

This group promo showcases a selection of sweet and clean romances, all featuring single parents, especially single dads. If these are stories you love to read, there are over twenty here to choose from. Includes my books Colt: Her Reunion (romance with suspense as a scientist’s missing wife returns to him and their twins), and His Radiant Bride (single dad marriage of convenience in small-town Oregon). Though the organiser specified that all books should be genuinely clean (kisses only), I can’t say for sure they all are, so please choose carefully!

Pet news

The kittens are adorable and growing well. I’m amazed that the tiniest one I was concerned about at 2 weeks old is now the same weight as the biggest one! But have hit the hyperactive stage, all teeth and claws and high-speed racing around, including limbing up legs. Just about tolerable with jeans on, not so good when I’m wearing a dress because its too hot for jeans! I’ve taken them outside for a short supervised explores, but they’re far from ready to be allowed out unsupervised. There are just too many other cats around who are aggressive towards these new babies, especially when the kittens haven’t learned yet that it’s not polite to pounce on someone else's tail! So hubby and I may need to keep the switching places thing going a month or so longer, to keep the little ones safe until hey’re big enough and wise enough to survive. Hmm, kittens and wisdom? We may have a loooooong wait for that one!

And in other critter news, it’s been fun watching the hedgehogs. Unlike British hedgehogs, Bulgarian hedgehogs come out while it’s still light in the evenings and stay out after dawn in the morning, so are much easier to see. They’re regular visitors to the cat food bowl, and have even worked out when I refill the bowl in the morning, so as soon as the cats are finished they go in to get their share. So comical watching them bustle around on their skinny legs! They're not called hogs for nothing — they’re extremely noisy eaters.

This week's randomly chosen ebook winners are Kay, colorad0, Gail, Lori, and Sandy. If your first name or the name in your email address matches one of the winners' names in the list above, reply letting me know which of my solo ebooks (sorry, sets are not included) you'd like as a free Bookfunnel download. You can see them all here. His Tender Mercy and Heart in Hiding aren't yet released, so if you opt for one of these, you'll be added to a wait list and get a copy when your choice is finally reader-ready. This week's give.away — five subscribers who click any link in this email by Sunday, June 14, 2026 will be randomly chosen to win their choice of my ebooks and will be named in next week's newsletter.

Until next week, I'm praying you and those you love are happy and healthy, with many precious moments of peace and joy to brighten your days.

Blessings, and happy reading,

His love for us truly is constant and unchanging. No matter what mistakes we make or what issues the fallen world throws at us, His love, support, and guidance for us remains. But we may only feel it and be reminded of it when we call out to Him in prayer.