My holiday hangover evolved into a vacation week cold/flu/virus thing. I've been dealing with body aches and a runny nose since Tuesday night. So I'm putting off any attempt to write something entertaining until next week. With any luck, I'll have a new post up on Monday. Until then, have a safe and very Happy New Year!

I imagine a lot of folks are suffering from holiday hangover today and the amount of eggnog imbibed has nothing to do with it. We spent months shopping, wrapping, decorating, baking, mailing Christmas cards, and now it’s over. Thank goodness! The last few years I haven’t gone overboard with Christmas. I used to do the Martha Stewart thing, bringing in fresh pine, making potpourri, baking dozens of cookies, and making handmade gifts. But the stress of getting everything ready for Christmas resulted in me not enjoying the day. One year, after all the gifts were opened my niece commented “Only 364 days until next Christmas.” I became homicidal. But I was too exhausted to act on it. Lucky for her. For the last two years, I haven’t even decorated the house. The dust on the decorations stored in the basement make my eyes water and my nose run. I haven’t baked because my mid-forties metabolism (okay, LATE forties metabolism) has suddenly made me gain weight by simply looking at the pictures i...

I learned a valuable lesson this week. If you really want to enjoy the holidays, don’t contact your agent a week before Christmas and ask how things are going with the manuscript. She didn’t want to tell me until after the holidays, but, darn it, I asked. In a nutshell, things are not going well. Here’s the problem: no one is buying original amateur sleuth mysteries right now. The current hot item that New York is hungering for are hard boiled, hard edged police procedurals. (Joyce, are you out there??? Perfect timing for you…not so good for me.) Sigh. Murder She Wrote is out. Bones , CSI , House , Shark , and Dexter are all in. So where does that leave me and my race track veterinarian? I have no idea. Having already received more information than I really wanted to know before the holidays, I’m waiting until after the New Year to delve into my options. To finish the current work in progress or not to finish, that is the question. Whether ‘tis nobler to suffer through to the bloody ...

Writers tend to make use of all our life experiences, especially the bad ones, to make our stories and our characters more authentic, more believable. That being the case, I should be able to write about terror quite effectively after yesterday. I took my mom Christmas shopping. Inside the stores wasn’t too bad. I was surprised. But then again, we chose the prime time of the week to go shopping in our area…during the Steelers game. (We won even without me jumping up and down and screaming at the television.) No, the terror was not in the stores. I found it in the parking lots. People lose their minds this time of year. I’ve always found this to be true. A few years back, a little old lady ran a red light outside the mall and smashed into my husband’s pick up truck as he came home from his annual hunting trip. The lady never saw the light. She was in a post-shopping coma. I’ve seen this over and over. I recently watched a girl run a stop sign (left-hand turn in front of an oncoming vehi...

Yes, I am now moved into what is officially my office. I love it. I haven’t had to close the door yet, but it’s there. Just having that wall separating me and my computer from the rest of the house insulates me and keeps me focused on the task at hand. Which is writing. It would have happened anyway, but yesterday I reached the milestone of 200 pages written of my shitty first draft of Death Bet . I’ve been in a writing slump for the last few weeks. Not writer’s block, but a slump. I wasn’t entirely sure where the next few scenes were going. So I allowed myself to get distracted by an assortment of events. All of them were legitimate. Doctor’s appointments, emergency trips to the vet, holiday preparations and parties, blog posts… And of course, getting ready for the big move . If you want to see what this corner looked like before the big move , click here . Okay, I’m never done with doctor’s appointments it seems. I have my annual check up today. I’m due to see the eye doctor before t...

I’ve been dropping hints to my husband lately regarding my intention to move my work space into the spare room. If you’ve missed the earlier stages of this plan, click here to catch up. I feel that I’m getting close. You can now wander around in the spare room without tripping over anything. It wouldn’t take much to clear out the one corner that remains cluttered. So I wondered out-loud to Hubby, how in the world are we going to move my computer desk around the corner into the new office? I built my computer desk from one of those kits from K-Mart. It weighs a ton. I have visions of hernias and emergency trips to the emergency room with blown disks and smashed toes. I’d really like to avoid that scenario. Hubby comments, you’ve got a long way to go in that room yet. I gave him a very eloquent “nuh-uh!” He went on to say that this wasn’t something we would be getting to this winter anyhow. I assured him, we most certainly would get to it this winter. And soon. One afternoon, I boasted,...

Procrastination is a wonderful thing. I’ve been doing a bit of it myself this morning, mainly because I don’t know what to write about in this post. So I’ve been trawling the waters of the Internet for inspiration. For those of us writers who do our writing on a computer as opposed to on paper with pen, the Internet is all too enticing. And since I went wireless a year ago, it’s entirely too easy. It’s always on, so just click and there’s my email. Another click and I can check on the latest news and weather (although I tend to try to avoid that…too depressing). Click again and I can browse all my favorite blogs. Ah, blogs. The bane of anyone trying to get any work done. They are so much fun and there are so many of them. I could spent a full day just reading all my favorites and never get around to adding to the word count of my novel. But this morning, as my goal is to come up with a new post for my own contribution to writerly distraction everywhere, searching other blogs has offere...

I am now a published author. Yippee! My short story “A Signature in Blood” is now online in the Winter issue of Mysterical-e Magazine . So how does it feel to have a story you’ve written “out there” for everyone to read, you ask? Well, let me tell you. Pretty darned good. When I first opened the page and saw the title with my name in the byline, I jumped up and down and nearly broke my desk chair. Then I saw the artwork which perfectly reflect the story and I jumped some more. The artist obviously read the story. And when I took a look at the contents page and saw the company I was in, I felt humbled and honored. I hope you’ll pop over and read it. I wrote it quite a while ago and it’s been fun seeing it in print. I’ve also enjoyed hearing my reader’s comments on it. Feel free to post a comment. Unless you really hated it. Then I would request that you lie. Just kidding. Sort of.

I spent yesterday morning with my critique buddies working on our stories. I’ve heard of writers who don’t use a critique group. Personally, I can’t imagine NOT having one. Actually, I belong to two. My face-to-face group that I met with yesterday and an online group. There are pros and cons to each. But then, there are pros and cons to each individual critique group, too. They’re kind of like shoes. You have to try them on and walk around in them a while before you know if it’s a good fit. If you join a group that belittles you and slashes your work to bits, get out. If the other members try to re-write your work so that it sounds like their work, get out. There are good groups out there. You just have to shop around. My face-to-face group meets every three weeks. We are four women writing different genres. One writes sci-fi and some inspirational, another writes women’s fiction with mystery undertones, one writes children’s fiction and historical memoirs. I write murder mysteries. I’...

Last week was not a good week for me and my family. Monday, I got the biopsy results back on my cat, Samantha. A tumor found under her tongue during an otherwise routine dental cleaning turned out to be squamous cell carcinoma. At the time, I knew nothing about the feline version of this cancer, but two days of Internet research left me feeling drained and saddened. My vet thinks he got it all. So does the lab. I’m holding onto that hope because apparently it’s about all Sammie and I have. The prognosis is not good otherwise. I’m having a hard time grasping all this. She’s so pleasantly plump and shiny, how can she be that sick? By Wednesday I was getting a grip on my emotions, partly by allowing myself to be in a bit of denial. I kept chanting, “he got it all, he got it all.” We go back next week for a follow up exam. Then Wednesday night my phone rang. My sweet cousin, Flora Lee, who has been battling cancer of one type or another for well over twenty years and specifically breast ca...

Last Tuesday during my Thanksgiving gets no respect rant, I started my gratitude list as follows: I’m grateful for a wonderful husband, a comfortable home that we own outright, two sweet furry little cats to cuddle. And news that my friend Mary Alice came through surgery for breast cancer with good lab results. I’ve been working on adding to it. One thing I had hoped to add was good news regarding my kitty, Samantha who had a biopsy done on a growth removed from beneath her tongue during an otherwise routine dental cleaning. Unfortunately, that news wasn’t so good. We’re hoping that my vet got it all. He thinks he did. So I’m hanging on to that hope for now. So here goes with a continuation of what I’m grateful for in my life this year. A wonderful, compassionate veterinary staff, my 86 year old mom’s good health, the staff at the Health Center who give such excellent care to my Alzheimer’s ridden dad. I’m grateful for a working furnace on cold nights and for family and friends. I’m th...

After this weekend I feel like an archeologist. The past I dug into was my own and the site of the dig was my closets. I found clothes from the 80’s. Stuff that I actually used to think looked good. Ha! I found a garbage bag tied in a knot and inside I discovered my old show bridle that I used on my mare Jenny. The tenth anniversary of her passing is next month. The silver has turned green, but the leather is in good shape. It’s totally useless, but I can’t part with it. Like my wedding dress. It’s been preserved and boxed and takes up a huge chunk of storage space, but I can’t get rid of it. No one would want it anyway. The dress itself is quite small and looks like something from Gone with the Wind. So unless frill and ruffles and Chantilly lace come back in vogue, it stays. But I did succeed in tossing a lot of stuff. Some of it hasn’t made it out the door yet, but it’s well on its way. I’ll be loading up my car with stuff for Good Will later this afternoon. So, how much progress di...

One of the reoccurring themes in my fiction writing is “letting go.” Accepting change and moving on. That’s probably because it’s become a reoccurring theme in my own life. I tend to get stuck and want to hang on to things as they are, simply because they’re comfortable. The known is always safer than the unknown. But tomorrow I delve into letting go in a huge way. I’m cleaning out my bedroom closet. Actually, I started already. This morning I pulled all my clothes out that hang in there. It was like an archeological dig. I found several of those boxy, floral jackets with shoulder pads that were popular back in the ‘80’s. And to think I actually believed I looked good in those things! I also found a couple of cute dresses that I just don’t have the ambition to starve myself enough to get back into. I created quite a pile of stuff headed for the City Mission or Goodwill. Next, I have to get my husband AKA The Pack Rat to do the same. It could get ugly. Picture me in a tug of war with h...

As I was out and about yesterday, I saw it. A plastic Santa Claus in his sleigh pulled by plastic reindeer. It’s mid November, for Pete’s sake! The Halloween decorations haven’t been stored away long enough to collect dust yet. But here was a house already gearing up for a holiday that is six weeks away. What happened to Thanksgiving??? Okay, I did see one lonely inflatable turkey on that same road. But it seemed dwarfed in comparison to the jolly old elf and his entourage. Thanksgiving gets no respect. Why? I have some theories. The original Thanksgiving revolves around the Native Americans and the pilgrims giving thanks for the harvest. But in this country today, how many people understand the importance of harvest anymore? Being a farm girl, I remember the relief in a full hay mow and grain bin. The silo filled with silage. The corn crib bulging with yellow ears. That’s field corn, folks. Not the sweet stuff you buy at a farmer’s market or the grocery store. This stuff is hard and f...

I am forty-seven years old and I have imaginary friends. There, I’ve admitted it. I’ve always had imaginary friends, since I was a small child living a solitary farm life with one much older brother and no other kids around to play with. I had a “friend” who lived in one of our barns. In my mind the barn was a beautiful house. I had the floor plan and furnishings all laid out in my head. I could have become an interior designer. But instead, I write mysteries. I still create imaginary worlds in my head. And I get to put my imaginary friends down on paper. With luck, I’ll eventually start seeing some money coming in as a result and NOT the guys in white coats coming to take me away. Ha ha. My characters very often take over the scene. I try to keep them reined in to the general confines of the plot I have in mind, but they don’t always listen. And even when they play nice, they frequently throw in something I hadn’t expected. They’re always revealing things about themselves that I hadn’...

Yesterday my husband and I had a rare day off to spend together. So of course we couldn’t decide what to do. There weren’t any movies playing that I wanted to see. He said it was too cold to go bike riding (although we decided later that it would have been fine). We ended up at Lowe’s. We’ve been talking for a couple of years now about organizing our closets. We live in a small log house with only two closets in the entire house. And since we’re both “collectors,” also known as Pack Rats, we have more stuff than we have storage space. The result is clutter. We figure if we can organize our closets, we might be able to fit more stuff in there instead of piling it in the middle of the spare room floor. Our spare room has gone through several incarnations. It served as a large walk-in closet. Then we converted it to a sewing room/meditation room. Then it devolved back into a large walk-in closet again. Now I’m determined to transform it into my office. Right now my office space is in one ...

Wednesday, I played hooky from life and traveled a hundred miles each way to spend the day with an old friend. Let me clarify…she’s been a friend of mine for a long time. She isn’t old . We’re at an age where we can get a little touchy about certain terms of endearment. She used to live thirty-five minutes from my home and we would spend several days each week visiting and hanging out either at her house or mine. Now she lives two hours away and we see each other once or twice a year. But when we get together, it feels like time has stopped. She still has horses including an adorable little Paint filly. We trudged through the mud with her dog running laps around our feet to give the horses “cookies.” Actually horse treats, but they know the word “cookies” when they hear it. We went out to lunch and caught up on all the gossip. We commiserated about our roles as caregivers to our elderly parents. And we laughed. A lot. Everyone needs an “old” friend or two. The kind that knows your deep...

Being from the Pittsburgh area, even though I’m out in farm country, I’m in a funk this morning. Most of us are. Our beloved Steelers lost yet again . I mentioned over on Working Stiffs that I think Ben Roethlisberger needs to take a week off and come to me for some Restorative Yoga and I’m renewing my plea here and now. Dear Bill Cowher, Let Charlie Batch play and give me Ben for one afternoon. He’ll be so relaxed and refreshed after a few hours of restorative yoga poses that he’ll come back and win every game the rest of the season. Maybe we could fill Ben’s helmet with bubble wrap, too. I mean, good grief, the guy bounced his face off a car this summer. Okay, I realize most of you didn’t come here to hear me whine about my Steelers, so I’ve leave it at that. On to the Word Watchers Challenge. Tomorrow is our self imposed deadline for our latest goals. Once again, I’m not going to meet mine. I have rewritten chapters two through eight. And I’ve finished Chapter Nine, although, I now ...

I really need to pay closer attention to my incoming emails. First, I mistook the acceptance notice from Mysterical-E for spam and nearly deleted it. Then, just two days ago, I glanced at another email with something about “Submissions” in the subject line and assumed it was something more to do with the previous acceptance. Wrong. It was another acceptance of another short story by another magazine. So in addition to having “A Signature in Blood” in Mysterical-E’s Winter issue, another of my short stories, “Sanctuary” will be in Spinetingler ’s Winter issue. This one is entered in their cozy-noir contest. “Sanctuary” is a quirky piece. Dark, but with an uplifting ending. Too dark for cozy, too uplifting for noir. So I’d had a hard time finding a home for it. When I heard about the contest, I remember thinking, “Hmm. Yeah. Cozy-noir. That’s what it is.” In publishing everything has to fit in a category. I think I’ve found mine. At least for short stories. Anyhow, I’m pretty excited abo...

There are many paths to publication. That discussion could go on for days. And does. If you’ve been to any writing conference, you’ve witnessed it. But there is only one surefire method to NOT get published. Very simply, don’t submit. Many of us are terrified of having our work actually read. Many more of us are mortified at the prospect of rejection. Get over it. If you have dreams of publication, you are going to have few nightmares involving rejection. It is going to happen. Accept it and move on. The next stumbling block is the fear of multiple rejections. Okay, you sent that short story out and it got an impersonal form rejection letter. Don’t run the story through the shredder while wailing and gnashing your teeth. Find another potential market and send it back out. If you get a rejection from that one, send it out again. In the meantime, write something new to send to the first market on your list. Write/submit/write/submit… We’ve got about a week left to our October Word Watche...