My 150th Blog!

Actually I would have passed this milestone months ago had I remained as active as I once was but so many things seem to get in the way.
I’ve decided that it’s time to start again.
A quick update on my books is probably the best place to begin. After much messing around and a long learning curve I have claimed my first book “White Wolf Moon” back from the vanity press that originally published it and it is now re-published under my name. My second book “Barking at Yesterday’s Moon” has been under my name since creation and, with the republish of the first book, I feel a bit more in control of both of them.
The interesting part about republishing is that it gave me an opportunity to sit down with the original manuscript and correct some of the little flaws that had been nagging at me since it was first released. A missed capital letter here and a small spelling mistake there haunted me every time I thought about it but they’ve all been corrected now and I can put that book behind me. It seemed to take as long to go through it again as it did when I first wrote it.
I have three fairly interesting ideas for another book but only one has reached an ‘almost ready’ stage. I have devoted a good deal of time developing the storyline but it is so different from anything I have ever written that those second thoughts keep popping into my head.
My first two books were based on people and incidents in my life and required little or no research but this one is bobbing around in uncharted waters. I’ve had to research everything from brain-injuries to small engine repair and forensics. The storyline continually drifts into a mystery/horror theme and my comfort level in that area is pretty low. I have written scenes that, upon re-reading, I toss aside only to open them again a month later. I find myself reworking them and feeling good about what I had written yet, for whatever reason, the whole story didn’t sit well with me.
In July I gave up on it entirely and put the whole manuscript aside. I began a more comfortable storyline, this one lighter and quite humorous if I do say so myself. I’ve been working on it periodically while re-editing ‘White Wolf Moon’.
This morning (after uploading the revised White Wolf Moon) I decided to open that cast off untitled manuscript and read it from the beginning. I’m not sure I have ever been so pleasantly surprised. Parts of it I thoroughly enjoy, some parts I like and a few parts will remain cast off…or at least held in trust for possible inclusion later on. Maybe I just needed to get away from it for a while but I find myself digging in with more enthusiasm than I have had in recent times.
Taking back my rights to my first book had contributed to the mind clutter I seem to be experiencing lately but now that it’s done I have a little more space up there for other things.
Ah mind clutter. Sounds like a good topic for next time.BTW: The photograph has nothing to do with this blog…it was taken in the early 50s in Monlochy, Scotland. The ice-cream mooch is Mitzi, my first pet. I just felt a little nostalgic today…

My books thus far….