It's Good To Be Back After Such A Long Hiatus

It's been a long time since I've posted to this blog. Been busy. I released two novels: CRAZY and Cooper's Grove. I've been writing for a political blog - two actually - and I'm currently editing a non-fiction book my daughter is writing on women's issues and the importance of voting. Plus I have my Pay The Bills job as a wine consultant. Doesn't leave a lot of time for much else!

Today I got an email from someone who read one of my older entrees on this blog and it came as a pleasant surprise. I didn't think anyone still looked at it and he must have done a search under my name to get here because, to be honest, this isn't one of those wildly popular blogs that everyone shares with everyone they know! So it was cool.

I've been toying with the idea of starting a new novel. Actually, I still have one that I need to rework in a big way if I want to get it released. It's a thriller with a dash of science fiction. I like the story a lot, particularly a character named Henrietta Dowd. Isn't that a great name? She's a little old lady who drives a humungous Cadillac, circa 1960 something. And one of these days, I know I'll get to it. Henrietta isn't the main character, by the way, but she does play a big and important part in the story.

Newsflash: some woman just posted on Facebook that she has a lady boner for my daughter, writer Kimberley A. Johnson. Not that it has anything to do with what I'm writing now, but I thought it was funny and felt compelled to share it with you.

Back to my new novel idea. As much as I like Henrietta and the strange set of circumstances I created in Magic Man, a title that is certain to be changed, should I ever get around to the rewrite, I am drawn to an idea that has been percolating for several years now. It would be based on my mother and father. She was the daughter of Lithuanian immigrants and he the son of a drunk and a mother who deserted him and his sister to run off with some Englishman named Malcolm. My father and his sister were raised by their three well-to-do maiden aunts. Back in the day they were called Old Maids. I can only guess at the misery that was my father's childhood in that house of oh so proper ladies.

I don't know if it will ever get written. But I hope I find the time because I think it will make a great story. It will be a quiet story because my parents were quiet people, but they were salt of the earth people and best friends to each other.

Both of my parents are gone now. My father died a long time ago, when he was 23 days shy of 46 years old. My mother passed away seven years ago, on July 12, 2007. She was 92. I still miss them and I guess I always will.

If I do write the story, it will be titled Mary and Duke.