April 27, 2024 – Wow. It’s been a long, long time. Sorry about that, but I got caught up in researching and writing other projects and in the grand scheme of things blog posts are a low priority to me. I suspect they shouldn’t be but there it is.
When last we tuned in Death At The Devil’s Elbow was just seeing the light of day. The sales have been ‘meh’. We were also struggling to find someone, anyone, hello? Is there anyone there? to do some work on our house. We were in desperate need of a new garage roof, a new front porch roof, hell – a new porch floor and posts while you’re at it, please! That was a fiasco. Small claims court papers were filed. Money was returned far too late in the year to find anyone else to do the job. To say I was stressed out about the whole thing is an understatement.
I spent 15 months researching & writing the next novel, a labor of love I’ve been wanting to explore for decades – a story inspired by Bram Stoker’s DRACULA. I first read Dracula when I was about twelve. Loved it and would go on to read it at least another ten times over the past 40 years, but most of all I loved the of character Quincey Morris for reasons that should be obvious. On Thanksgiving Day (Nov. 28th, 2024) I wrote ‘The End” on the final page of HUNTING QUINCEY then another 3 months or so working on edits. It was released May 3, 2025 and has been doing strikingly well by my normal expectations & standards.
While working on it, I knew it would be my last novel for a while. I have had two collections of short stories in the works for far too long and knew I wanted to focus on that format of writing instead. Novels are time consuming, not just in the actual act of writing, but mentally they really can take over every waking moment, wondering what’s going to happen next, how to get from Point A to Point B, did I portray this or that person accurately and to the best of my ability? Short stories don’t do that to me. It may take me a while to finish one, but I don’t dwell on the matter as I do with novels.
The older of the two collections is another one involving twisted fairy tales, a follow-up to Not Your Grandma’s Fairy Tales. The work currently does not have a title and unfortunately, half the stories in it are only partially written. The other collection features stories inspired by songs and is, as my husband put it, “very bi-polar”. There is not specific music genre. They cover a very diverse range of musical stylings, from John Denver to Metallica, Kenny Chesney to Drowning Pool, an 80s hair band to a 1920s Appalachian folk song, and more. I’m not looking for the songs and the stories, just letting them come to me as they will, and they have been coming pretty steadily and I’m loving the process & progress of putting this thing together. Titled “Soothe The Savage Breast”, the collection is only 2 in-progress and 1 unknown work away from completion. I suspect it will be my 2026 release.
In between all that, we’ve managed a trip to Doylestown PA in April for a two-fold purpose: to meet up with one of my oldest and dearest friend whom I haven’t seen in 30 years!!! & to finally meet his wife, Ellen – while in the process of visiting the Vampa – Vampire & Paranormal Museum. The weather was cold and rainy, and it would have been nice to have been able to explore the outdoor spaces more, but … hugging Ian again was worth the 4 hour drive in any weather! And – Jim got the contractor we’ve been searching for to do that roof and porch work at long last! We can now sit on the front porch during a downpour (and boy have we have A LOT of them this spring) and not get rained on, and the indoor waterfall feature in the garage is no longer an issue. In three weeks we are heading down to Texas to visit family and friends and I get my first visit to Houston. And, oh, the weird place I have found to visit while we are there!
I really must try to write here more often. I’ll try!
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