Dear World;

I'm reaching a milestone. In age and in writing.

I'm never sure if I should count those early years, I was just messing around, at first, and took a creative writing course in high school (you know the one where when I told my English teacher who taught it that I wanted to become a writer/author, and she said I should find something else since my spelling and grammar was so bad).

That was 1972. Which makes 44 years I've been messing around with words. As I've said, my first attempts were mostly childish poems (I still have them), and some really silly stories that became a marathon of words, since I had no idea how to plot, and that there was a "beginning, middle, and ending".

I often thought myself on some sort of stage, and I was an actor in a play. So much has happened to me in those years. I've touched on a few here. But like everyone, I've got baggage up the ying-yang. Some of it has managed to just go away (divorces and deaths tend to do that), but my main thing has been, throughout, WRITING.

I wrote through the worst of times, when my father passed--before and after--back in 1999. Oddly enough, I was writing the book I'm currently on (and re-writing still). This book has been with me since almost the beginning. And for the sake of writing and taking it seriously, and having my first piece published by ByLine in 1983, we'll say for argument's sake, I've been writing this same story since then, on and off (mostly off), since then. It was very different back then. The whole thing was a totally different take on vampires, and a young teenage girl becoming infatuated with an older man. (that was one of those baggage things I mentioned earlier, which I used, and have used in my stories from time to time.) And her father who becomes concerned because this man keeps odd hours, owns the old mansion nearby, etc. And, of course, this older man is a vampire.

In a way the basic story didn't actually change, but I've reworked it, many times, rewrote the hell out of it, went back and forth a number of times on what to do where. At one point it was actually so long, no one wanted it (800 pages). I believe that was the 1999 version.


In 2013, I dragged this story out again--I needed a bulldozer to move it around. I was determined this story would get published some day if it killed me doing it. I took all the pages from various versions, I know I had more than 1,000 pages strewn on the floor, bed, an 8 foot table, and worked for a month or so trying to put it into some sort of order. After which I chopped, rewrote, rewrote, and chopped again.

But, since I was so busy with the Sabrina Strong series (and trying to find a new publisher), I couldn't do too much with it at that time. But, I had time to write the story anew. However, I didn't put an ending on it. As it stands, I'm working along in it and will finish it at some point in September (unless I have an unseen delay).

But for now, everything is okay. I just don't usually have much time after my job, what with doing all sorts of things when I get home. But the weekends are mine.

Speaking of which I'm having another UN-Birthday!

I'm gonna need a bigger cake than this to get all the candles on it. However, I'm happy, healthy, and all is well over here at the old Afton Homestead.

Have a good weekend all!