Stuff

Hi Guys!

Jim, so glad you got to finish and liked it! Yolanda, the online stuff SO counts. Once upon a time, when I was a young single mom I caught crap from a relative because "You never finish anything." (I'd been trying to write the great American novel [hell even a mediocre American novel] for years but life kept getting in the way!) I got... shall we say... annoyed. VERY annoyed. So I wrote POETRY and very short prose. I still have it in a drawer somewhere. A complete collection of things I could actually FINISH. Sent one off to a competition. Won an award and got invited to accept it at a convention. Which was VERY encouraging and kept me at trying to write even though the time just wasn't there. (James was NOT a child who slept. Heck, he's not an ADULT who sleeps much. He came by it honestly too. Until I got a fatiguing illness I never slept more than 4 hours a night in my life unless I was deathly ill.)

ANYWAY, what I'm trying to say with this ridiculous rambling post is IT ALL COUNTS. Use every bit of it as encouragement and fuel for the fire. Never give up. Never, ever, ever give up. (I think Churchill said that, but I may be paraphrasing).

I chose to have James and raise him. In making that choice I decided for once and for all that he, my family, came before the career. He's grown into a man I love as both my child and a person. There's a reason he's in every dedication to every book (except one anthology where there was a group dedication and nobody got the personal stuff in). Now that he's grown, everything I postponed is bearing fruit. I feel very blessed on both counts.


Cie