My WW2 Christmas Novella ‘A Soldier’s Italian Christmas’ was inspired by a special Christmas Eve in Italy and me getting kicked out of the convent by Jina Bacarr
December 11, 2025 by Jina Bacarr in category Jina’s Book Chat, Writing tagged as Christmas eve, comics, Italy, World War 2, writing
‘I regret to inform you, but your daughter is no longer enrolled here,’ the Mother Superior announced to my parents on a cold, winter day in Bethlehem, PA. I was thirteen.
I hung my head, sad for my parents, but still not understanding what the hullabaloo was all about. It wasn’t like I was a longtime student at the convent school. I’d only been there a short time. Very short.
When my poor father asked why I wasn’t staying, the stern nun said in a crisp, clear voice: ‘She reads comics.’
Really?
True, the Sisters of Mercy catered to young girls thinking about joining the Order and with my sassy poetry writing and short skirts I was borderline — below borderline — but comics stashed under my hard pillow with my missal and rosary beads was the last straw for the pious woman. She knew I wasn’t nun material. I wanted to travel, meet cute guys, dance, eat chocolates at Ladurée in Paris…
And so I did. I had wild adventures up and down the Continent and spent Christmas with the troops in Italy. Yes, that’s me in the photo reading comics — I was with US Army Special Services on a trip with soldiers and their families to Abetone in the Italian Alps for a skiing trip. I found an Uncle Scrooge comic book in Italian and devoured it. I often read comics in different languages to learn the vernacular, slang, everyday expressions.
Not the catechism required at the convent.
But the good Sisters taught me about humility, giving, discipline. Traits that kept me out of trouble and helped me become a writer. So even though I wasn’t a good ‘fit’ to take the veil, I will always be grateful to the Sisters behind the revolving door of parochial and convent schools I attended. Sometimes the nuns uttered a sigh of relief when I left, others hugged me and cried over me leaving. They ‘got’ me with one nun giving me time during study hall to write my ‘Paris mystery novel’ when I was fourteen.
I often wondered if I should have entered a life of religious service since I have a strong need for detail and strict discipline to finish what I started, along with my fanatical dive into deep research mode for my stories, and my love of teaching children. Qualities needed to take that path and I just didn’t see it. That question prompted me to write a WW2 Christmas novella about a young woman who hides from the Nazis by becoming ‘Sister Angelina’ in charge of a motely group of orphan boys… then she meets Captain Mack O’Casey, an American Army captain who tests her faith…
Add to it a Christmas Eve memory at the service club where I worked in Livorno, Italy (we hosted a Christmas party for orphan boys and the nuns and how the EMs Enlisted Men helped me locate a lost little orphan named Daniele), and you have ‘A Soldier’s Italian Christmas’.
I hope you enjoy my video posted below near the end of this post! Merry Christmas!!
Jina xx
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My time travel back to WW2:
HER LOST LOVE:
Enjoy a trip back to Posey Creek, PA during WW 2 on the home front as Kate Arden prepares for the holidays… until her world comes crashing down when her fiancé ships overseas in ‘Her Lost Love’.
Available at e-tailers everywhere… print and audio book, too.
Find out more in HER LOST LOVE E-book links:
US Amazon https://amzn.to/2pcz2eN
UK Amazon https://amzn.to/31rF4pZ
Follow me on BookBub for new releases and promo deals!
Time travel back to Christmas 1943 on the home front with my holiday Women’s Fiction novel HER LOST LOVE
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On a cold December day in 1955, Kate Arden got on a train to go home for Christmas. This is the story of what happened when she got off that train. In 1943. In 1943 Kate Arden was engaged to the man she loved, Jeffrey Rushbrooke. She was devastated and heartbroken when he was called up for wartime duty and later killed on a secret mission in France.
But what if Kate could change that? What if she could warn him and save his life before Christmas? Or will fate have a bigger surprise in store for her?
Her Lost Love is a sweeping, heartbreakingly romantic novel – it’s one woman’s chance to follow a different path and mend her broken heart…
———–
HER LOST LOVE
Thank you for stopping by! If you like WW 2 romance, check out my holiday novella that takes place in Italy on the road to Rome on Christmas Eve during the cold winter of 1943: A Soldier’s Italian Christmas.
December 1943 Italy
He is a US Army captain, a battle-weary soldier who has lost his faith.
She is a nun, her life dedicated to God.
Together they are going to commit an act the civilized world will not tolerate.
They are about to fall in love.
Winner in the Novella Category in the I Heart Indie contest A Soldier’s Italian Christmas is available on Kindle ~Jina
Also, my Civil War medical drama: LOVE ME FOREVER is available on Kindle and Kindle Unlimited Liberty Jordan travels back to 1862 as an re-enactor– I love the Christmas scene with Liberty tending to the wounded from both the North and the South…
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If you love Civil War romance and time travel and TWO hunky military heroes, check out my Kindle Scout winner: LOVE ME FOREVER
She wore gray.
He wore blue.
But their love defied the boundaries of war. And time.
0 1 Read morePlanning for Peace by Kitty Bucholtz
December 9, 2025 by Kitty Bucholtz in category It's Worth It by Kitty Bucholtz, Writing tagged as It's Worth It, Kitty Bucholtz, menopause, organization, Perimenopause, Planning, writing
Everyone who knows me knows I’m big on planning. That’s because my brain gets all stressed out if I don’t know what’s going on, whether I have time to say yes to something, or when I’m afraid I’m missing out on something. That’s why I already know where we’re spending Christmas (with friends a few minutes away), what I’m bringing for dinner (a homemade chocolate pie, homemade cornbread, and drinks), and what I’ll be wearing (embroidered jeans, a lightweight knit shirt, and taking both a sweater and sweatpants for warmth and comfort later). All that in the first week of December! Woohooo!! And now I’m not stressed at all about Christmas. (Yup, Christmas shopping already done!)
But when it comes to still trying to balance the changes menopause is having on my brain and my energy with the goals I want to achieve in 2026…well, planning in a way that will bring me the most peace is critical. One of the things I learned is that cortisol, the stress hormone, can make menopause symptoms worse. So if I’m feeling stressed by how I’m feeling (or by how it’s keeping me from achieving my goals!), the stress actually makes the symptoms worse.
Not to mention the fact that unused cortisol (if there are no tigers to run from or I don’t walk it off quickly) gets stored as fat. Great. Talk about insults and injuries.
I bought a one-year subscription to MasterClass.com last Christmas because Halle Berry hosted a 90-minute “class” with interviews with several doctors and women going through menopause. Here I am two weeks before my subscription expires and I finally finished watching it and taking notes. There was a lot of good information in the class, but let me give you a few bullet points that fit with my topic of planning for peace.
- Decluttering — I knew this was not a time-waster or procrastination technique!! But I’d let people convince me it was, and my mess has been stressing me out all year. It’s gotten to the point, I don’t even like to spend much time in my office. Several items on my to-do list now have to do with sorting papers that are currently piled everywhere, filing the important must-keep stuff in boxes I just bought, and throwing out as much as I can. I need to let go of all the old plays I wrote a million years ago…even though I don’t really want to. I never look at them, won’t use them again, and don’t have room in our small apartment to keep writing only for nostalgia’s sake. (And no, for those about to leave a comment about scanning them or taking photos, it would take me weeks to do that! I have a lot of old writing!)
- Have a “launchpad” where you keep your keys, your wallet, your purse, your phone/charger, etc. I’ve never called it a launchpad, but I get the idea. I have a bowl I made in pottery class in college where I put all those things. It is so stressful when I’m rushing out the door for the train and realize one of those items did not make it to the bowl and now I have to look “everywhere” for it…because right now my brain can’t remember.
- Prioritizing tasks on your list before you begin. Many days I only have a few hours of functioning brain time, so I need to be sure that if I can only get one thing done today, it’s the right thing. And if I can get 2 or 3 things done, they are things I’ll be happy or relieved got done. Much as I want to watch the last episode of The Beast in Me on Netflix to find out how it ends, that is not the best use of my limited brain-time right now! And because limited brain-time has made me perpetually behind in all my goals, when I have a good day (like today!) and can get a dozen things done, I want them to be the things I desperately needed to have done last week and the week before.
- Organizational Skills Therapy — one of the doctors mentioned this and I have no idea what it is, but it sounds awesome!! I’m totally Googling it later!
So those four items are now on my list of tools I want to use to plan for peace in 2026. I have no idea what to expect next year. My brain seems to maybe be working better, but I’ve thought that in the past right before a new wave of menopause hell bowled me over. At least with these tools, I can get a few of the most important items done and choose to be satisfied with it, not stressing about what I can’t control.
I hope this is helpful for you as well! Whether you’re in need of this information or know someone you can share it with, it’s always good to have some reliable tools in your author — and life — toolkit. I hope you plan for a peaceful and joyful end of 2025 and that it spills over into all of 2026. God bless you! And Merry Christmas!
0 1 Read moreNary a Clue
November 30, 2025 by Dianna Sinovic in category Quill and Moss by Dianna Sinovic tagged as short fiction, Thanksgiving, writing
Thanksgiving was three days ago, and I’m still reeling at what I witnessed. My sister hosted, as she has for the last twenty years. That was the only thing predictable about the holiday, though. I was there, of course. She assigns me a dessert every year, and as the dutiful sibling, I oblige, although it’s always store bought. Me, bake a pie? For the sixteen others in attendance, it was more or less potluck. By that I mean both the dishes shared and the personalities that came with them.
Will, my brother-in-law, made a mistake by suggesting we try a team effort at cooking. Sister Steph wasn’t buying it. “Out,” she said, when the horde attempted to breach the kitchen walls. Instead, she selected four of us (yes, me, always) to run the prep, allowing Will in only to check on the turkey. The rest dispersed to the family room for football or the basement for games.
That’s when the screaming started. I was the first to react, given that the only thing I was busy with just then was peeling potatoes. The scream pierced the holiday music that Alexa was playing in the kitchen, and I dropped the peeler and sprinted for the door.
There was confusion among the football crowd, most seeming reluctant to abandon the game underway to locate the screamer. I passed them by and pulled open the basement door.
“Auntie Rhea, you’ve got to help.” That was my nephew Shawn, eyes wide as dinner plates. Behind him on the stairs crowded another nephew and a second cousin.
Expecting to mediate a fight over who was winning at a board game, I had to blink several times to take in the scene at the bottom of the stairs: Instead of just a small knot of preteens, the room now included several adults, none of whom I’d seen before.
I walked up to the nearest person, a middle-aged man dressed in clothing straight out of a Victorian era film. “Who are you?” I couldn’t let the children know how alarmed I was. “What are you doing here?”
The man had the look of a vulture—his six-foot-plus stature to my smidge-over-five-feet height. “We have a crime to solve, madam.” His brow furrowed. “We suspect that one of these scamps is the culprit.”
The narrow basement had somehow expanded to include several new doorways, a brick fireplace in which flames crackled, and picture windows that overlooked … a broad, wooded valley. On a suburban street in Doylestown?
“What crime would that be?” I kept up my no-nonsense demeanor even as I struggled to understand what was going on.
He pulled out a small notebook and flipped several pages. “A murder.”
Quickly I counted the youngsters in the room: eight. That seemed correct. “One of the children is dead?” I said, my legs suddenly wobbly.
The man grimaced. “Hardly. It’s someone related to the Colonel. Mustard’s cousin.”
Mustard? The other adults in the now-sumptuous room also wore period clothing, one of them in a khaki military uniform complete with a few medals pinned to his chest.
“Are we talking about the game Clue?”
Shawn tugged at the sleeve of my cardigan. “Auntie?” His lower lip trembled. “We were playing, and Amanda sprinkled what she said was stardust over the board.” He pointed at the adults. “And then they all appeared.”
Miss Scarlett, Mr. Green, Mrs. Peacock, and Chef White nodded curtly at me. Each carried a weapon in their hands.
“As you can see, we are in a dreadful predicament,” the tall man with the small notebook said. He had to be Professor Plum. “They’ve elected me to find out who—”
He was interrupted by the loud clanging of a bell from upstairs, my sister’s way of calling everyone to the table. I’d missed out on the rest of the dinner prep. Too bad.
I patted the professor’s arm, impressed with the high-quality tweed of his sleeve. “The kids and I aren’t going to be able to help you right now. Thanksgiving meal is waiting.” All eyes were on me. “You all are welcome to join us. Cranberry sauce, stuffing, roast turkey—and pumpkin pie.”
The entire group, kids and interloper adults, followed me up the stairs. We added another leaf to Steph’s table and made do with several folding chairs Will found in his garage workshop. The kids sat at their own table, in the kitchen, where they could argue over who got the drumsticks.
The newcomers introduced themselves as everyone settled in at their places.
Will raised an eyebrow at them. “Aren’t you all from—?”
“Shush,” I said, putting a finger to my lips. “Let’s eat.”
More of Dianna’s Books
Do You Have Time to Write? by Kitty Bucholtz
November 9, 2025 by Kitty Bucholtz in category It's Worth It by Kitty Bucholtz, Writing tagged as It's Worth It, Kitty Bucholtz, Perimenopause, time management, writing
I’ve always been one of those people who’s trying to get more done, looking for ways to be more efficient so I can do more in the same amount of time. I even taught a time management class for writers for over ten years, sharing everything I learned so people could try new ways to get more writing done. It worked delightfully well for me for years.
Until it didn’t.
Stress and burnout and perimenopause collided a few years ago, and it felt like I got hit by a train. I struggled to get writing work done while I tried to realign my health. Now on a good day, I’m working for 4-6 hours (down from 10-14 five years ago); a bad day might give me 30 minutes. It can be depressing, and that adds to the stress, which messes with my hormones, which clouds my brain even more.
But I’m still the same Kitty, wanting to share what I learn so that I can help others. So I’m writing two nonfiction books right now. One is on perimenopause and menopause for writers. I’m taking everything I’ve learned and all my resources and compiling it all, aimed at writers. I’d love to add more stories from other women writers who have gone through mental and physical health issues, especially related to menopause. Please contact me if you’d like to share your story (kitty at kittybucholtz dot com, and put “Menopause for Writers” in the subject line).
The other book is called Going the Distance: Time and Project Management for Writers. I’ve taken ten years’ worth of my lectures and broken them down into the core elements, and then I’m updating all of the material as well as adding new tips. I’ll start blogging about it soon, but I just finished the outline and I wanted to share it with you.
The 10-chapter book will include the following topics:
- Chapter 1: Your Story — Looking at the successes in your past, how does your brain create the best environment for writing?
- Chapter 2: Mastering Self-Talk and Cultivating Joy — Creating attitude habits that increase your creativity.
- Chapter 3: Dreams, Goals, and the SMART System — Turning goals into dreams is more than just will power; it requires systems to make it happen.
- Chapter 4: Prioritizing to Conquer Fear — What to do first and what to do next seems easy at the beginning of the day, but how do we keep working on what’s truly important to us while living in the real world?
- Chapter 5: Finding Your Available Days — One aspect of reality is that for most of us the answer to “How many days do I have to write this year?” is not 365. So how many days do you have?
- Chapter 6: Translating Goals into Word Counts — This is where we take the real number of writing days and figure out how much we can write or, vice-versa, figure out how much we need to write to hit our goal for the year.
- Chapter 7: Habits and Rhythms — All of us have our good days; it’s the rest of the time that gets us down. So how can we create an environment for more good days?
- Chapter 8: Flow and Energy Management — So many things can help us get more done in a shorter amount of time! We’ll look at commitment, daydreaming and white space, physical and mental health, distractions, prewriting, and more.
- Chapter 9: Organizing Your Writing and Your Workspace — The crucial organization needed to avoid stress and wasted time.
- Chapter 10: Progress, Rewards, and Reassessment — Sustainability is the name of the game here! What’s the perfect amount of writing work that keeps you moving forward long-term without burning you out?
If this sounds interesting and helpful to you, let me know! In my post here in December, I’ll start sharing some of my tips and ideas so you can plan for a good writing year in 2026. It’ll be worth it!
0 0 Read moreMidnight Snack
October 30, 2025 by Dianna Sinovic in category Quill and Moss by Dianna Sinovic, Writing tagged as dark fiction, Halloween, short fiction, writing
At the chiming of eleven bells, the retreat’s evening session began. Squeezed around the table, six people scooted chairs until no one brushed up against anyone else. The room’s reddish glow came from a candelabra on a nearby shelf, and the air hung thick with cedar incense.
Jana coughed into her hand and took side glances at the five others. Duvan, whose laughter burst out at the oddest moments; Metrie, whose face was as pale as the ivory cloth that covered the table; Tartas, who kept shifting among her multiple forms so that Jana wasn’t exactly sure who she was at any moment, and two others, whose names and peculiarities she couldn’t recall.
“This meeting, on Allhallows Eve, marks the time of year when we can at last show our true faces,” Metrie intoned, her voice just above a whisper. Somewhere in the darkened room came the slow ticking of a clock. “Place both your hands on the table, and please remain silent.”
Palms down, Jana let her gaze rove, careful not to engage with anyone. She had heard that one of the five—four, if she didn’t count Metrie, the leader—was a transformed cryptid. More precisely, the Pocono Polecat. Research had pointed her to this Pennsylvania gathering, on this night, when transformers slipped however briefly into their original shape.
A tiny camera, attached as a bead to her necklace, would capture the change when it happened. She hoped. Then she’d have the proof needed for the article she was writing for The Cryptozoologist.
Metrie recited a prayer in an ancient language filled with hard glottal stops and velar clicks. A breath exhaled through the room, bringing with it a rank smell that wrinkled Jana’s nose.
Polecat.
The seat where the black-haired woman wrapped in a white shawl had been sitting was now filled with a human-sized black-furred mammal, a thin white stripe down its nose. It laid its two long, sharp claws on the table.
“Welcome, Shkak,” Metrie said, in English. Duvan exploded in laughter, and Tartas blinked through three form changes in as many seconds. The sixth person at the table, the one with close-cropped hair the color of burnt leaves, collapsed off their chair with a moan.
Jana felt her necklace, rubbing a finger next to the embedded camera, hoping it had recorded what she needed. In response, Shkak bared her teeth at Jana, who gasped. The stomach-turning stench overwhelmed the smoke of the cedar incense.
“You’re real,” Jana croaked, trying and failing to hold her breath. Duvan and Tartas fled the room.
“Of course, she’s real,” Metrie scoffed. She held a lace handkerchief over her nose. “Be careful what you ask for.”
A low-pitched rumble vibrated the table as Shkak stared at Jana. It had to be a growl. The polecat’s claws tore through the table covering, making long slashes.
Covering her mouth and nose with her hands, Jana dropped her gaze. “I’m so glad to meet you … as yourself.” Taking a breath and holding it, she dug out her cell phone, opened her camera app, and turned to Metrie. “Can you snap a photo of the two of us?”
Shkak rose to her full height.
Metrie smiled and put her hand out to take the phone. “Be glad to.” She added, “You do realize that polecats are omnivores, not herbivores, right?”
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