‘Tis the Season to be Thankful

Thanksgiving is upon us, and I always try to take the time this time of year to reflect on events over the past year and discover all I have to be thankful for. Although my life has been crazy busy in the most recent past, I want to share here all that I am thankful for, because you shoud never take your blessings for granted. So, the first thing I am thankful for is my Writing to be Read platform, because it allows me to share what’s on my mind.

You may have noticed that the posts on Writing to be Read have tapered off of late, and of course, you would be correct in saying so. The fact is, Writing to be Read, has gone through many changes over the past year or so, and it looks like there may be more in store in the near future. Both Robin Conley and Jeff Bowles have had to step away due to life issues. Life happens to the best of us, so we can’t fault either of them, only hope that their life issues turn out to be the good kind, the kind that takes them both onward and upward to bigger and better life experiences, so we can be thankful for them. And I’m thankful for the time we were blessed with their talent and their content.

I’ve had my own life issues, of the good kind. At least, they’ve been good for me and I am thankful for them in this season which is for the giving of thanks. When I went back to school for my Master’s degree, I never would have guessed that my next career move would bring me back to Western State Colorado University on the teaching end of the system. By a stroke of luck, that’s just what happened, and things have been moving pretty fast for me. I didn’t realize how much time I’d need to grade papers, but it’s a lot. As a result, my posts here, on Writing to be Read has suffered. I haven’t had the time I need to write, let alone read books for review from an already backlogged que. It was fortunate that I had sent out the interviews for the Book Marketing series before I morphed into Professor Booth. I already had a lot of that series in place, so you maybe didn’t notice my absence quite so much while it ran, even as my regular book reviews began to taper.

Over the past few weeks since the series ended, I’m sure you’ve noticed a lack of content, (one week there wasn’t even one post), which is unusual, since over the past couple of years my content has run fairly steady. And now you know why it hasn’t been lately. But I’m thankful for the wonderful opportunity which has taken my time away from Writing to be Read, even if I’m not so thankful for the lack of content and the drops in the number of visitors to the blog.

And, I am thankful that even as I dig myself out from beneath a mountain of essays, life on the writing front continues, almost without me, but not every endeavor can be a success. The Halloween release of my short “A Turn of the Tables” in the HallowErotica anthology was a bust. The publisher of the anthology got cold feet and backed out at the last minute. I didn’t mind that things didn’t work out, so much as I minded the fact that all the contributors had already been pounding on the promotion pretty hard. As short on time as I’ve been, I ran the Excerpt, and did social media promotion for the blog and the release event on Facebook, and I really felt like it had all been time wasted. But, you know what they say, “S**t happens”. I’d already had a few doubts about the quality of the publication, so it’s probably all for the best. I am thankful for the learning experience it provided, and it’s prompted me to consider more seriously doing a short story collection of my own. I think I’m going to go for it. At least that way, I will have control of the publication and promotion details.

I’m also thankful that the above mentioned experience is so unlike my foray with Zombie Pirates Publishing, which I can only say has been a pleasure all the way. You may remember that my short science fiction story, “If You’re Happy and You Know It”’ appeared in their Collapsar Directive anthology last August? No? Well, it did and they did a bang up job on the publication and promotion of the anthology. It was a class A piece of work, featuring stories by some very talented authors.

But now, I have another story, “The Devil Made Her Do It”, coming out in December in their next anthology, Relationship Add Vice, now available for preorder, and I’m really excited about it. The story is about a straight laced home town girl who finds herself unexplainably drawn to a strangely magnetizing man. I just finished with my part of the edits, because all contributors take part in the editing and promotion processes with ZPP, and once again, there are some really excellent stories in this collection. It makes me proud to know my work will be featured in a quality anthology. ***Warning: Shameless plug ahead*** The release date is in December, right before Christmas, and they’d make great Christmas gifts for all your literary friends.

In the more distant past, I am thankful for finding a publisher for Delilah. It’s been an interesting experience and I learned a lot from it.  The book is now available in both ebook and paperback. I’m also thankful for the wonderful reviews the book has received. In September, I got a royalty check. It wasn’t a lot, but it made me smile. People are reading my book. That’s so cool. I am definitely thankful for that.

I started to get the sequel to Delilah down on the page, getting only a short way into the second chapter before professordom took its toll. I’ve been working on it, writing a sentence at a time if it’s all the time I can find to write. I am always thankful for every spare minute I can find to write. Although I haven’t had a lot of time to actually work on it, the plot line has been simmering in my head, and is close to being ready to emerge, so stay tuned for updates. I do have the first three chapters. And as always, I’m thankful that I’m able to put words to page in a meaningful and entertaining way.

And of course, I’m thankful for my readers. That’s why I’m offering a free promotion of my short story, Last Call to coincide with the Cyber-Monday 2017 promotional event on November 27, which Sonoran Dawn Studios is hosting on Facebook. One more thing I am thankful for is my friend, D.L. Mullen, who runs Sonora Dawn Studios and acts as my P.A. and cover designer, helping me with a lot of my marketing needs. Her help has proved invaluable. I don’t know how I would do it wothout her.

Of course, this was only a reprieve to jot this blog post down. There’s always more grading to do, and I need to get to it, so I need to get this posted. Academic writing is historically a pretty stiff and rigid class, nothing a student would label as fun. I have tried to incorporate interesting material into my course with the help of Dr. Mark Todd, English professor, author, and paranormal investigator, and from the looks of my students’ most recent drafts, I think I may have captured the attention of many. Although the course is pretty structured, I’m finding that academic writing has more in common with writing fiction than I had previously believed. No matter the inkwell your writing springs from, the rules of good writing always apply. Maybe I’ll talk about that in my next blog post. I hope you’ll join me.

Until then, Happy Thanksgiving! What are you thankful for?

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