Linda K Sienkiewicz

Writing life, line by line

Stash: you aren’t alone in hiding those special snacks

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My mother's hidden Hershey's bars In the refrigerator meat drawer, way in the back under the cheese and lunch meat, I found my mother’s stash of Hershey bars. Three of them. I was probably ten years old, innocently looking for a snack. I gasped. Chocolate—a rare treat in our house. We had chocolate chip cookies sometimes, Oreos if my mother bought them, and she baked cakes, but never solid … [Read more...]

To our favorite UPS guy: It’s the giving that matters

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Small gestures and kind words go a long way We give a Christmas gift card to our regular mailman, and this year decided to give one to our regular UPS delivery guy. He delivered boxes of my first book in 2015. When I told him what the boxes held, he seemed so genuinely excited that I gave him a copy. He smiled as if I’d handed him a hundred bucks and asked if I was going to be famous writer … [Read more...]

The Finnish Sauna

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What it's not I laughed when I saw this photo in a catalog. How is that even comfortable? Where is she, in her living room? And what happens if she drops the book she's supposedly reading? It couldn't have been easy to hold the book and zip this contraption up. It's so far from the esthetic of an actual Finnish sauna I just can't deal with it. My sauna experience I grew up hearing about … [Read more...]

Social Media and Selling Books

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It's about building relationships! If you are a published writer, you undoubtedly have Twitter, Instagram, a Facebook page and/or other social media accounts. If you have books on consignment in bookstores, or have sold books wholesale to bookstores, do you use your social media accounts to help promote those bookstores? You definitely should. Using social media effectively doesn't mean … [Read more...]

Pirates’ Halloween for Landlubbers

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A Pirate Jamboree Our "over-board" Halloween decor began after Don and I stumbled upon the Pirate Jamboree on Ocracoake Island, North Carolina in 2018, which just happened to be the 300-year anniversary of the death of Blackbeard the Pirate. His final battle took place near Ocracoke. The jamboree was a rollicking party filled with attendees in full pirate costume, musical entertainment, … [Read more...]