Duty Called -- Had to Answer

   Life often deals a strange hand.  We don't always know what is going on until things play out.

   Some of my plans this past week have interrupted the flow of my life as an author and I have had to rise to a rather unpleasant occasion that, if it goes the direction it is likely to, it will just take up more time for no good reason. Thus the lateness of this blog.

   But on to more pleasant things.  This week a wonderful video was posted on Facebook by an old friend from high school.  Just recently I saw her for the first time in years at our high school reunion.  Then when she posted the video and said it was by her cousins, I discovered that her cousins are also mine because the music was by my cousin's family up on Lancaster.  Yes, life is pleasantly peculiar.

   My new book, The After School Murders, is finally beginning to sell, and I am very pleased.  Not only am I looking forward to a serious career as an author, I am looking for people with whom I can really share my imaginary world with in a more detailed fashion.  When an old friend read an earlier version of the trilogy (it was one book then) she used to call me up and ask all kinds of questions which I was delighted to answer.  She, too, fell in love with my characters and wanted to know more about them.  That's what I want, only multiplied.  I've written something that can be a happy escape to which readers will return again and again.

   But I do have ideas for other books apart from The War This Side of Heaven series.  One idea I am toying with would be a non-fiction book designed to help writers and other creative types with their blockage of creativity.  I never get writer's block and I know why.  If this is something you'd be interested in reading about, please let me know.  

   The other idea I'm kicking around is a Gothic romance novel set in California just after the turn of the last century or in the 1920's.  Lots of fun and scandalous history here in politics and entertainment, and lots of historians whose brains I can pick, not to mention the people who are old enough to remember some of those days and/or knew the people.  One friend of mine started his film career in silent films!  Another has worked at Paramount Studios since 1928.  It's nice to know people who know where the bodies are buried.  Would you like to read such a story?

   Well, duty yet demands my attention and I must comply . . . or must I?