Waiting and Waiting and besides It’s My Birthday

I am waiting for the printer to return my calls and emails; you would think they don’t want my business. The company merged earlier in the year, let go a great rep (mine), and now don’t respond. My guess is the execs are wondering why there’s a drop in business. Me, it may be my impatience at the moment to move the work to print (the novel Elk River – see last week’s blog) and they will respond soon, but I’m still waiting. I also have a very nice agent/rep working with me to find a printer who can handle paperbacks and hardcovers; I’m still waiting for her. Waiting, waiting, waiting.

We all go through professional and personal changes; it goes along with the getting older thing. No option. One day follows the next and then bam, you’re another year older and another year wiser (you hope). And yes I am now a writer - there’s no form to fill out, no blessing, no ointment on the forehead, you just look at the stack of four books, your books, and admit to yourself, I did those; but most writers are self-anointed anyway. There are the constant distractions of the day after day things that steal your time away from the story diagrams, the pencils and paper, and keyboard. They want to kidnap you from the story and the world you have created. In fact some nights you even dream about it, scary huh!

Another year, two more books (one Sharon O’Mara, Containers 4 Death, one finished novel, and 75% done on the next O’Mara chronicle), not bad. By the end of the year Toulouse 4 Death will be finished. We all set benchmarks for our lives, or at least should; it’s easier and more enjoyable to mark the passage time with accomplishments than failures. We reflect during our birthday week what we have done, did we earn another year? We have pensive musings about the future; what will one year from now be like?

I believe the next year will bring substantial rewards from the hard work of writing (not money that’s for sure, I think there are only five fiction writers living off their work) such as travel, acknowledgments, signings, and who knows what else. I believe that one year from now I will have at least half of another O’Mara story done. I believe that I will be into the research of my next major book (possibly non-fiction). I believe that I will spend a good amount of time in Michigan and the Mid-west. I believe I will also be a year older, wiser, twenty pounds lighter, and certainly more handsome. As Natalie Woods character says at the end of Miracle on 34^th Street, “I believe, I believe, I believe . . . ”

More later . . . .