Life has a way of making the unimaginable happen. Enter Rheumatoid Arthritis. Nasty fellow Arthur! Guess he figured that it would be poetic injustice to first attack the hands and wrists of a writer. Needless to say, the past couple of years I was forced to put my writing on the back burner while I struggled to get Arthur under control and do everything in my power to keep my day job…as a secretary no less. Arthur might have won that particular battle, but not the war.
It had always been my dream to be able to retire one day and write full time. Forcing me into early retirement, Arthur virtually handed me my dream on a somewhat tarnished silver platter. I just hadn’t expected it to happen this way or this soon.
So where do I go from here? Give up and settle in to “Oh Woe is me?” or Follow the dream to the best of my newly limited ability. I’ll take the dream thank you!!!! I’ve found that without being forced to push myself forty hours a week with a full time job, Arthur has become somewhat manageable. I can still type. Not fast. Not as accurately. But for now, I can type, and I now have 24/7 to write at my new pace. I can take a break whenever needed without an employer to let down. Now, the only person I have to answer to is myself, and my muse Cybill who has returned with a vengeance, along with my sense of humor. When Arthur gets out of line, I’ll simply sic Cybill on him and let them battle it out.
The plan:
Get some new work finished! I’m happy to say, I’ve been working on that one and hope to have Yours To Command finished in the next couple of weeks. Next will come Empath, the first novella in a four book paranormal series. This one is more than half way there with the other three roughly plotted.
I have the rights back to my novella, I’ll Be Seeing You. I’m working on getting that reformatted and ready to go up on Amazon Kindle and Smashwords (New cover by yours truly, on my new Blog Website). Being out of the loop for so long, Indie publishing is a totally new venue for me but I’m slowly trying to figure out how it all works. I also have the rights back for the eight stories in my Tempting Fate Holiday Fantasies collection. The goal is to get those up as Kindle and Smashword ebooks as well. From what I’ve seen, this seems to be an excellent venue for backlist work and for many authors, new books as well. Which makes this a good possibility for Yours To Command, Empath and the other three novellas in the series as well.
First and foremost, I have to be realistic. Being forced into early retirement, my finances are about as tight as they can get. If I can get enough work up on Kindle and Smashwords to generate a bit of supplemental income, I can then focus entirely on new work. But that’s getting ahead of myself. After many good years of writing and epublishing, then so much time out of the loop, so much has changed that I feel like I’m starting all over again, one step at a time.
That’s pretty much where I am at this point. The important thing is that I’M BACK. I have been blessed with so many loyal readers and author friends who have hung in there with me through the rough patch, who have been so supportive that no matter how many times I say “Thank You” the words don’t begin to express how much I appreciate each and every one of you. If that isn’t incentive to resurrect the dream and make it work, I don’t know what is. I’ll do my best not to let you down.
So now we begin… again. I’ll keep you updated…one step at a time.
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