Thanks for reading the February 2026 issue of This Awful Awesome Life. I hope you try Teff and the recipe for Spicy Chocolate Pudding in our “Twelve Months of Grain.”
Previous issues of This Awful Awesome Life are available to read on our website. Go to www.thisawfulawesomelife.com and start scrolling or you can enter specific search criteria.
Our March 2026 issue will focus on spring and writing.
We’ll be featuring a writing prompt, and I hope to persuade the members of my writing group to share their interpretations of the prompt.
Orlando Bartro, Tony Valerino, and I will be back with more interesting articles for you.
Our featured author with a March birthday will be Ralph Ellison.
We’re moving some of our regular features around to shake things up a bit and keep you on your toes. I’m also hoping to expand our Artist Page to feature more talented creatives. Some people manage to elevate their work to the level of an artform, and we want to support their efforts.
I’ll have more streaming and reading recommendations. “What’s in a Word?” will be back but we’ll be alternating some of our content. We’ll continue the monthly quizzes to exercise our brains, and we’ll continue reviewing books.
For the time being, I’m holding off on a new subscription-based Patreon account featuring short stories and chapter installments of my books as I write them. I also hoped to provide opportunities for book discussions and narrations of short stories. It’s something I want to do, but pesky life keeps getting in the way. When and if this happens, it will remain separated from our online magazine which will always be free and available to everyone. I’m considering the Patreon option because traditional and Indy publishing have changed so drastically in recent years. Now that AI has entered the equation, more changes are coming.
Stay safe. Stay well. You are important, and you are loved.
All my best,
Fran
Answers to the February 2026 Two Word Titles About Love Quiz:
“All my heart is yours, sir: it belongs to you: And with you it would remain, were fate to exile the rest of me from your presence forever.” Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë
“’What the hell makes you so smart?’ I asked. ‘I wouldn’t go to coffee with you,’ she answered. ‘Listen – I wouldn’t ask you.’ ‘That,’ she replied, ‘is what makes you stupid.’” Love Story by Erich Segal
“You are the answer to every prayer I’ve offered. You are a song, a dream, a whisper, and I don’t know how I could have lived without you for as long as I have.” The Notebook by Nicholas Sparks
“Beware how you give your heart.” Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen
“But that’s what taking risks was, right? Learning how to deal with it if you weren’t completely sure of the outcome.” Flirting Lessons by Jasmine Guillory
“I loved her against reason, against promise, against peace, against hope, against happiness, against all discouragement that could be.” Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
“My heart made its choice, and it chose you.” Maybe Someday by Colleen Hoover
“I think… if it is true that there are as many minds as there are heads, then there are as many kinds of love as there are hearts.” Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
“Maybe love shouldn’t be built on a foundation of compromises, but maybe it can’t exist without them either. Not the kind the forces two people into shapes they don’t fit in, but the kind that loosens their grips, always leaves room to grow.” Book Lovers by Emily Henry
“If he loved you with all the powers of his puny being, he couldn’t love you as much in eighty years as I could in a day.” Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë
“Of all human sins, the only one Anabel really found unforgiveable was unkindness.” Princess Daisy by Judith Krantz
“An infinity of passion can be contained in one minute, like a crowd in a small space.” Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert
“Every moment has its pleasures and its hope.” Mansfield Park by Jane Austen
“I have nothing to give but my heart so full and these empty hands.” Little Women by Louisa May Alcott