Housecleaning

My apologies to anyone who left comments on my recently departed blog post about first-person viewpoint. When I stopped by the blog this morning, there were 38 comments attached to that post. All but five or six of them were from spambots. I could have sat here and laboriously deleted all those spam posts one by one, but I'd rather tear out an eyeball and eat it for lunch. Besides, there would be 38 new ads for Viagra and online sex sites and fake Rolexes to take their place within a couple of days. So I decided that the best solution for all involved would be to delete the entire blog post. If the bots return, I may be forced to either shut off comments or take down the blog and reopen it under a new URL. Grrr!

With that little chore out of the way, I'm here to say that summer has arrived! It's June, the birdies are chirping and the flowers are blooming. My yard is so beautiful at this time of year, with lupine, irises, and rhododendron all in bloom. The wild roses are just starting to blossom, and the peonies will be right behind them. I love, love, love summer, at least in part because here in Maine, winter is so long, and summer is so very short. This year, as I do every year, I swear to take advantage of every moment of summer. And this year, as I do every year, I swear that THIS TIME, I really mean it, and won't blink my eyes one day and discover that summer has come and gone. Last year, we had three months of rain. Three frickin' months. We didn't even get summer until early August, and then before we had time to realize it was here, it was gone again. I did manage to get to the beach three or four times, all within the same two-week period. And then it was fall. Fingers crossed that this year will be different!

I also have a confession to make. Remember the promise I made a year ago (blush) about writing with the new netbook? Yeah, that one. Well...I still haven't written anything. Okay, that's a slight exaggeration. I have written, and rewritten, and rewritten yet again the prologue to what may or may not be my next book (assuming I ever actually write another book). But that's been the full extent of my writing for the past couple of years. I keep pulling out partially-finished or just-begun manuscripts and reading them, and thinking, Wow. I should really finish this one! Story ideas--or should I say story beginnings--still come to me. Not frequently, but they do arrive on occasion. Right now, there are at least four conceivable stories I could be writing. Several of those caused enough initial excitement to start me plotting in my head. But that's as far as it went. The excitement hasn't yet lasted long enough to involve actually putting pen to paper (or fingers to keyboard). Like Little Bo Peep and her sheep, I seem to have lost my mojo, and I don't know where to find it.

I believe it will come back. I'm just not sure when. Aside from several torturous months this winter when I took two college courses in addition to working the Dreaded Day Job and barely had time to bathe (I was studying, literally, in the bath tub), I've been keeping my creative juices flowing with my painting and photography. I believe that creativity feeds on creativity (did I already say this in my post from last year?), and eventually the writing will return. The frigid tundra that is my brain will be reborn as rich, green rain forest, and the voices in my head will start talking again.

She said hopefully.

Starting Over

Time for a fresh start. A new beginning.

There have been several times in my fifty-four years on this planet when I hit a low and had to pull myself by the bootstraps out of the muck and into a better place. After being ditched by my publisher, followed by a lengthy dry spell of no writing and the subsequent implosion of my long-time critique group, I realized that I had reached one of those bootstrap moments. The time had arrived to revamp and jump-start my writing life.

With that in mind, I've taken a few steps. First, I'm in the process of totally redoing my website, which for the past year had been nonexistent (my domain URL was pointing to my MySpace page). Second, I've decided to clean out the Blogger dust bunnies, give this page a new look, and start blogging again as a way of keeping in touch with readers until (I'm determined it will be until, not if) I get something new published and on the bookstore shelves. Third, after eighteen months of not writing, I've finally started a new book. And, as incentive to get that book finished and keep the forward momentum going, I bought myself a new toy...er, writing tool : A Dell Inspiron Mini netbook computer that's small enough to tuck into my purse and carry with me everywhere. It has a cherry red cover, a 160-gig hard drive, a keyboard that's big enough to be workable, and it weighs less than three pounds. I'm waiting for the external CD drive that I ordered from Amazon so I can install my MS Word program on it (it came with MS Works). Then I can use it to write from anywhere. Nirvana in a tiny package! Now, it's time to apply the seat of the pants to the seat of the chair, and keep moving forward on the new book. Wish me luck! Although I suspect it's true that, as my Tupperware distributor used to tell us (yes, I was once a Tupperware lady), luck is really spelled W-O-R-K.

I currently have two books available: Die Before I Wake and Black Widow. Most of my older books can be found secondhand at Amazon, eBay, and other online venues.