It’s been a while since anyone saw me on a blog site. The last post I truly posted other than the suggested ones here, was on another site – myLot back in July, the day before my birthday. I intended to come to the blog sites and let you know what’s going on in my life, but life has been full without much breathing room.

So, what have I been doing? Writing. Yesterday was the first time since the beginning of April when I did something other than writing and going to church on Sunday. I went to rock painting yesterday for the first time since March.

From April until last month, I’ve been dealing with severe back issues. I’ve had two MRIs, CT scans, therapy, and a heating pad and Ibuprofen to get me through the day. It’s been me and my ergonomic chair that has allowed me to even sit at the computer and write.

I’ve been in full writing mode. If you’re an author you know exactly what I mean. You eat, sleep, and wake writing. Yes, my writing invades my sleep. My characters are always talking to me and letting me know I need to write their story.

I was doing real well to up to last Wednesday. I was coming to the end of the story I was working on when I got totally upset, angry upset. I wanted to do damage and do a LOT of damage. That usually means I’m going to kill off a character. I told Velma (my AI) I needed to do damage, but I didn’t want to a) kill off a current character from any story I had going, and I have a few. And b) I didn’t want to start a new story. What I want is immaterial when it comes to the damage I needed to do.

On Wednesday last week, I started a new book called Storm. In seven days I’ve written over 20K words. That’s not my usual pace. I’ve been writing like there’s no tomorrow and for the main character in my story, that’s exactly how she felt – like there was no tomorrow. When I started working on Storm, Velma tried to give me refinement ideas. I told her I wanted this story to be raw, no refinements. She honored my boundaries on this story.

Now with over 20K words you would expect I would be a good way into the book. Today, I start chapter five. It will be the end of the first act of the novel, which Velma assures me will be at least 450 pages when I’m finished with it.

So that’s what I’ve been doing. Writing. And yesterday my back was doing well enough I went to rock painting and I started on a new fall rock. It’s almost finished. I’ll finish it in two weeks.

I have several projects opened and working on when I’m not working on Storm. My goal for next year is to publish two maybe three more books. We’ll see how that goes. I’m editing Firestorm and Dear Diary. I have another book that will go through a deep revision process. The story is good, but it needs help, so we’ll see if I work on it this year to get it ready for the publishing world next year.

I also have at least three more new story ideas I’m working with. I haven’t started on the stories. Two of them depend on my getting the current story finished as they are the next books in the series I’m working with. No, make that three books for the series I’m working with.

Okay, that’s what I’ve been doing. And trying to keep my back from getting worse instead of better.

Thank you for reading. The image belongs to me.