The reason I haven't written since Mother's Day is actually rather simple and completely boring: I've been busy. That isn't to say I've forgotten my readers; I think of you daily, and I even think of writing a post to you at least a couple times a week. This hasn't been the sort of busy that means, "You are no longer my top priority and therefore I am busy." This has been the sort of busy that comes from, "I'm so busy running all over taking care of small but urgent wildfires that I have no time left for the important things in my life like writing blog posts. Or books. Or anything, really."
The truth is that I've been involved in several life-changing situations that have kept me from doing what I want to do, writing books and interacting with my readers. One thing I've been working on is a major update to my website, which I finally uploaded this morning. It's such a big change though, that until the new pages have a chance to propagate (which means spread all over the internet) you may see strange and ugly pages. Keep hitting refresh or go back later to see the pretty pages that I spent six months working on.
I've been getting ready to retire from my day job, and that's taken a lot of time, because in between running around making sure all the financial elements were healthy and in place, my boss decided that in addition to my regular duties I should write a history of our workplace. I've worked there 18 years, and know the history and have lived through more of it than anyone else there, including my now ex-boss.
My writing association talked me into being in charge of their website in January, and they assured my that once the conference was over in February, I would only be doing things for a couple of hours a week. This was true until we had some major difficulties on the site which we are now finally getting on the outside of.
I've been taking some computer classes which have used up more time than expected.
I've got very sensitive lungs, and there was a large mulch fire about thirty miles from my home which burned for the better part of a week. The evening wind shift blew the smoke directly to my home, however, which has made breathing difficult. Although the fire is now out, or at least under control enough that the smoke no longer reaches my home, I'm still coughing and trying to recover from the lungfuls I inhaled. Additionally, two weeks ago I was at the hair salon for a trim, and the place was full of acetone fumes from the nail place next door, making my breathing more difficult. I'll be fine, but it will take a while to fully recover from the fire and the other fumes. Later this month I'm going on a four-day three-night writing retreat up in the clean mountain air. I'm hoping that it will be good for my lungs, as well as being calming for my nerves and a kick-start for my writing.
And finally, I've been working on some changes that will be unveiled here in the near future. Please note that by "near" I really mean "sometime before the end of the year, if all goes well". They're changes that will mean better times ahead for me, and hopefully giving me more time to write and publish books for you to read.
On the book front, progress is still slowly being made on the suspense novel Just a Name, the sci fi novel Mindtouch, and the romantic novella Meet me Midway, all three of which I hope to publish by year's end. At least, that's the plan.
~Marie
