I think I’ve been spending too much time holed up in my cave with my computer. This morning I learned that the power company was going to maneuver one of its massive trucks into our yard, around behind our old barn, and back into the yard on the other side (all to avoid potentially crushing our leech bed—thank you West Penn) so they could work on the electric pole just across the property line. In order to successfully pull this off, Hubby had to take down a small section of fence and remove one fence post. The fence was no problem. We haven’t owned any livestock in over a decade. Hurricane Ivan took out the bulk of our fence back in 2004. This was just a little piece that had survived and served no good purpose except to hold up the poison ivy vines. Note to self: add calamine lotion and Benadryl to the grocery list. The massive truck arrived. Hubby made them use it to pull the fence post. Or, to be more accurate, to snap it off at its rotted base. Meanwhile, having been coope...

I'm at Working Stiffs today inviting everyone to join me in a round of the What If game. Don't know what that is? Come on over and find out.

For the last four weeks, all I’ve been doing is A.) writing like mad and B.) driving back and forth to our camp in Confluence. As I’ve mentioned before, I’m taking part in a critique boot camp . We’re three weeks into it, and the experience has been amazing. What I THOUGHT was a nearly ready-to-go manuscript has undergone a huge transformation. Week #1 was what I’d call “the rude awakening.” Like me, all of the participants went in thinking we didn’t have all that much work to do. Ha! WRONG. Week #2, we presented our attempts at correcting the problems we’d found out about in week #1. Let’s just say, I stopped at the store on the way home to buy some conciliatory chocolate. Afterwards, I had something of an epiphany… a way to possibly fix the pesky problems that just weren’t going away. It was one of those head-slap moments. Why didn’t I think of that before? Like six years ago??? Week #3 found some of us still scratching for a toe hold, while others were succeeding in climbi...

I usually love to retreat to my cave away from home, our camp in Confluence. On most of our trips, I get a lot of work done. And the cats enjoy looking out the windows at the rabbits, squirrels, wrens, moles, and chipmunks that frequent the underbrush behind our trailer. However, the last two times we’ve been here, my peaceful work environment has been shattered by—NEIGHBORS. Part of my problem with people living in close proximity is the fact that I grew up on a farm. Our neighbors were cows. The human variety lived at a comfortable distance. I could walk to visit my friends. But they couldn’t look in my kitchen window. Even now, at home I only have human neighbors on one side of our house, and they’re as reclusive as I am. We wave at each other when we’re out in our yards. But that’s about it. My mom lives nearby. I can walk there in under two minutes. But I can’t hear her talking to her lady friends on her phone. Here in Confluence, we’re squeezed in between two other camps....

Yes, I've been AWOL around here quite a bit lately. And it will probably continue for a few more weeks. I'm doing revisions. But not just revisions. Revisions on steroids. It's called critique boot camp and I'm blogging about it over at Working Stiffs today.

I've been holed up in my cave working on revisions to my Thoroughbred racetrack mystery. There is very little interesting about this part of the writer's life. Sitting at a computer for long hours while the rest of the world goes on around you doesn't produce much fodder for a blog. So I'll simply post this photo of Kensi, who takes comfort in her other "friends" while her mom is busy writing.