Skip to main content

News, Death and Taxes

The last couple of weeks have been such a roller coaster. Down, and up, and sideways... I've been going all the directions. As Les Schwab says repeatedly in his autobiography, "Life is hard."

First off, the insomnia is back with a vengeance which is a combination of helpful, hurtful and a fitting tribute to friendship. On the plus side, it's been giving me a lot of quiet time to write and I am tearing through the first draft of CTRL/ALT/DEL like there's no tomorrow. The downside, of course, is that I am so exhausted in the standard waking hours and it's getting harder to "keep it together" as a result. On the note of friendship...

Once upon a time in a land far away, I was up at all hours button-mashing away at my first novel Age/Sex/Location: Love is Just a Click Away. The writing of that novel was long. There were many hours spent in silent desperation as I battled the book on a small corner desk on an original all-in-one Sony Vaio. In between paragraphs, I developed a friendship with a wonderful woman I met online in a chatroom. We chatted, we played Bejewelled until the wee hours of the morning, and we shared our love of writing despite a distance of nearly 5,000 miles and the annoyance of a 5 hour time difference.

This wonderful friend, who was overflowing with kind words and understanding, passed away last week. As is fitting of our friendship the news came through an instant messenger window before daylight. Learning of her death has been devastating for me. As the days roll on without her, I find myself lost in a sea of insomnia without her companionship to guide me. It makes me weep.

The grieving has provided some time for reflection, and I am going to take my book writing on the road. I've decided I am going to have an author table at a small holiday bazaar during the holidays. I have gone back and forth about doing an author table at Wordstock as well, but I think I'm just not ready for something of that scale.

I've also been asked to do some guest blog spots and interviews. The first interview came out last month on Graeme Brown's New Voices blog. If you haven't already read it, check it out here and make sure to follow Graeme so that you can keep up to date with what's going on with the new authors in his neck of the woods.

Lost in a sea of insomnia... but compelled to write anyway.
Photo by: Unknown

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Don't Wait

I awoke Friday morning to a message from someone whose name was only vaguely familiar. Laying in bed, scrolling through Facebook on my cell phone, I opened the message. It was a quick note from a woman who was good friends with a woman who I have been close to for over a decade. I read it, and reeled with shock. My friend, a woman who had been with me through the best and worst of times, is gone. Taken from this life because of a driver who didn't stop at a stop sign on a country road. "Accidents happen," many say. It's true, but it isn't right. We never know when our time is going to be up. Today might be your last day, or mine. There's no way of predicting what will happen tomorrow... this evening... fifteen minutes from now. There are many tragedies stemming from this simple accident. First, a mother with fierce love of her two teenage children was stolen from them. A woman who was a pillar of support for so many has fallen from their list of who to cal...
2 comments
Read more

Proofing.

The first printed copy of A Giraffe in the Room has arrived in my office. The giant "Proof" stamp is wonderful to see, and I am looking forward to picking through the pages to make sure that the novelette is ready to be released commercially. Every time writing takes a step forward - whether it is the completion of a piece, reading through editing mark ups for the first time, or getting a print proof in the mail, it is a wonderful feeling. I hope that everyone who finds their passion gets the chance to feel the pride of taking a step forward.  I will say that at under 50 pages, I think A Giraffe in the Room looks a little bit like a pamphlet that someone would hand you through the open crack of your screen door as they try to tell you about the Good News. Other than the brevity of the thing (it is a novelette, after all), I'm very pleased with the little bit of it that I've had a chance to look over. I hope to comb over it this week, and estimate that copies ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Missing Deadlines

Life - not only is it the final frontier, but sometimes it is also a whirlwind. These days, I feel an awful lot like Toto in the Wizard of Oz. It is like I've been shoved in a basket and taken through the tornado to a land that looks like nothing I have ever seen before. My husband and I made the difficult decision to close down our retail store and move the whole business back home. That has translated into weeks (or months?) of sorting, selling, packing and storing everything that the business has owned. Right now, there is a mountain of inventory, paperclips, toddler-work-toys and extension cords rising up from the floor of my living room. I have rehomed a fraction of the mountain in the last two weeks, and I hope that eventually I will muster up the courage and energy I need to tackle the rest of it. Add to that weeks upon weeks of birthdays, holidays, the start of summer... and writing has gotten pushed far down the list of priorities. Not that I'd be able to writ...
Post a Comment
Read more