New year of blogging? Well, we're way past my making a New Year's resolution, now aren't we?
Aw well. Since my last post of December 8th, I worked like a fiend on finishing my beer book, while being present for my family for Christmas and having a crazy great time, meeting my January 2d deadline for said beer book, and getting my sick husband on a plane to Italy with 17 college kids. Happy to report he was no longer contagious by that time, he just needed my presence in Boston to see him gleefully board a plane and leave his cares and woes behind in Waterville for an entire month.
What cares? What woes? Today, on my way home from a lunch date in Brunswick, the car blew up (pretty much literally) and I managed to pull over where an 18-wheeler wouldn't ride up over me and crush me to death, wait for AAA to change a tire down the highway and finally get to me before darkness came. Silver lining? I could start a new novel with that imagery. If I throw in darkness, a snowstorm and a serial killer truck driver who stops to "help," I've even got Steven King beat (not really, but I can dream).
Being home alone for a month is an opportunity to be or become comfortable being in your own skin. I wear yoga clothes most of the time, unless I absolutely have to go out and wear what I call "grown-up clothes:" jeans, sweater, clogs. I have a loose schedule for meditating, journaling, writing, and tying up loose ends with the beer book. For instance, this weekend, I will be naming/renaming over 100 or 200 images so the editor knows whose in the photo or to what brewery the logo belongs. It's a bit boring and tedious, but it will get the book DONE.
In the mystery realm, I have been working on a book proposal for a cozy mystery series. These books can often be sold based on a proposal and three sample chapters. It's not as easy as it might sound. And you usually must have an agent on board to guide you through the process. But I've got that and I've been "playing" with my fiction for the first time in a very long time. Maybe for the first time, in fact.
And I'm back to reading voraciously. I finished South of Broad by Pat Conroy, a great novel. He's such a good writer. I learned a lot about taking my time and lingering just long enough to get the sense of place so important to this book. It takes place in Charleston, SC, one of my favorite cities.
The other book I finally finished, because I gave myself permission to read, was Maisie Dobbs. Set in post WWI London, Maisie is an educated former front line nurse who sets up a detective agency after the war. The writing is very good, the sense of London at that time is great and her tragedy, which unwinds til the last page, is well handled. Just the right amount of tension til the end. This is a series and I'll be reading more.
I'll end here. More later, as they say. Happy New Year to all, and I'm hoping for a book deal in the coming months.
