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

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