Life has been good this week. I received an email from a reader telling me how much she liked my book. This made me very happy. It is a wonderful feeling to learn your work has found its way into the hands of an appreciative reader.
Other good things have happened. My print book gained a few corrections and additions and was approved for release. The deed is done, Hunt Club will be available soon as a printed novel, and I’m back to plotting and scribbling other projects.
Speaking of other projects, much of this week was spent gathering and collating the notes for a book I started over a decade ago. While assembling the material in a notebook, I realized there were only twenty chapters. Quite a bit of the story had never been typed.
This called for a journey to the archives, two enormous, heavy, and deep file cabinets which contained the sum of my literary achievements. Hidden behind a thicket of boxes, magazines, and a huge tangle of my nephew’s worldly possessions, they stood nearly as tall as I and were guarded by an old bicycle, a multitude of spiders, and mud dauber wasp nests which I could only hope were uninhabited.
(Yes, I know. I’m having entirely too much fun describing it, but believe me, sifting though files in a tight place, in which it is highly possible something small and evil could easily mess up your day is a nervous situation. I probably ought to clean out the garage.)
Despite the perils, I made the journey, located the desired material and put several hours into typing my old scribbles into nice, neat computer files. It was fun, actually. After so many years, I had forgotten half of what was written there and rather enjoyed reading my own manuscript. There is still much work to be done and more material to be located, but I believe with a bit of work these stories may eventually make more readers happy.
There was more fun to be had yesterday, when I stopped at the local bookstore to chat with one of the owners. Plans have begun for my first book signing. It’s a terribly exciting milestone for me, made doubly so by my fondness for this particular store. I used to play my harp there during the local art nights. A few years ago this very month, I played spooky tunes in one window while an author sat in the other autographing books. I remember thinking maybe some day I would have a book signing too.
Sometimes life brings things full circle. I’m smiling a lot lately as so much of my hard work is finally coming to fruition. It is a happy week for me.
I hope you are having a good one too.
ROW80 Goals
- Average ½ hour a day working on new novel. Done and then some.
- Average ½ hour a day on promotion and blogs. Done
- Finish reading a book and write a review. Nope
4) Outline the sequel for Hunt Club and be ready to write it by November. I gave it some thought, but didn’t write any of those thoughts down, so I won’t count those ideas yet. This is something I need to attend to this week—NaNoWriMo is slowly sneaking up on me. I need to put some detailed thought into this. Murder mysteries are really challenging to write.
5) Read Hunt Club proof, fix any final errors and approve for final release to print. Nailed it. 🙂