Blogger has been seriously misbehaving for the last five minutes... or else I've suddenly developed a very bad case of advanced idiocy. At any rate, now that I've finally been permitted to log in, I thought I'd drop a line or two and let all the crickets know what's been going on.

I'm still working on Knight of Sorrows, and I'm in the middle of chapter ten. The story is steaming along, but it has yet to bear much resemblance to the actual legend of Tristan and Iseult. All in good time.

My webmistress has been working like a fiend, putting together a new look for the website. It's beautiful, and it encompasses the feel of my work as a whole, not just the vampires. I don't want to be a "one-note Johnny", as they say, and my writing isn't all about fangs and blood. The new look of the site reflects that, I think.

Well, Crickets, that's all for now.

I'm back!

After a long enforced hiatus, I am now once again voluntarily ensnared in the interwebs. I'm hoping to finally get moving forward again, if my day job would condescend to allow it.

At last!

At long last, and with great thanks to my truly fabulous sister, I am once again among the cyber-enabled. I'm so excited to be able to return to work on Sacrifice and A Trick of the Mist, a collection of poetry culled from volumes I've filled over the years. Yesterday was the first day of spring, and I feel truly renewed. Even better, the snow is melted, the robins are hopping in the yard in their search for worms, and I saw a pair of swans performing a beautiful pas de deux on my pond. It's a time for new beginnings, and not a moment too soon.

Frustration

My back-up PC is misbehaving, and my laptop is now well and truly among the departed. I'm sitting in the public library, surrounded by over a dozen chatty denizens of the greater South Lyon metropolitan area, trying not to pity myself for my lack of cyberability. All things change in time, I know.

I got derailed in the middle of chapter 12 of Sacrifice, with 12 more chapters to go. I hate this, because it's like I got interrupted in the middle of a thought, and I'm afraid to start another sentence for fear of losing the one I was in. I only have so many mental fingers to mark the virtual pages in my head, and most of those are currently consigned to my "day job", the curse of every aspiring writer.

I have vivid dreams and wake full of inspiration, but my stupid superstitions and my fear of losing the Sacrifice thread keep me from starting anything new. I don't know why my mind is so broken.

the creative soul's plague

I'm convinced that everyone with a creative soul is also plagued by insecurity. I don't mean the garden-variety self-doubt that couches questions like, "Do these pants make my butt look big?" I mean the nagging, heart-aching, chewing-on-your-will-like-an-evil-rodent insecurity that makes the creative soul want to wither up in the darkness and throw in the towel. I've spent more than my share of time in that darkness, and it's something that I'll always struggle against. Now, as I'm trying to get Irish Horse Productions up and running in the face of technical difficulties and financial restrictions, the light is dimming. I hope I come out of this with my will to write more or less intact.

See you on the other side...

Success at last

My computer booted up this morning and I was actually able to save the files for Sacrifice to a CD. Hopefully I'll be able to get my other writing saved, as well.

Computer! Argh!

Thank God for internet access at my "day job". Writing is so difficult when your computer dies in the middle of a chapter. Thankfully, I saved the first eleven chapters of the Sacrifice re-write, so I only lost chapter twelve. It was enough.



My laptop, which is the only computer I have with enough brain power to be internet-friendly, started making a sound like a meat grinder filled with gravel, then everything just...stopped. To say that I'm alarmed is a drastic understatement. It's a terrible pity that my writing has become so dependent upon digitized monsters. I wrote the first book in long hand, filling up two college-ruled, five-subject notebooks that I carted with me literally everywhere. Now it seems I've forgotten how to write without a keyboard. Based upon the self-mastication of my laptop and my currently woeful finances, I think I'm going to have to relearn.