Thank goodness that's over

"That" meaning either the Kavanaugh confirmation circus, the 5 weeks of feeling too sick to write, or the 6 weeks of cloudy-and-rainy... all together left me with nothing to say that anybody would want to hear.

On the bright side, all that rain has inspired the basil to burst forth gloriously; I'm feeling well enough to take advantage of it and fix pesto for dinner; and an exhaustive (and exhausting) series of medical tests, while failing to account for the long miserable spell, have found that I am clinically perfectly healthy. And now I actually feel well enough to take advantage of that theoretical health!

So: pesto, as I mentioned; walking up and down the house to remind my muscles that they're not retired yet; and getting back to the unfortunate characters whom I abandoned at a particularly difficult moment (one of them just caught fire.)

And having read and/or rejected a vast number of lightweight genre novels (constant reading was a way not to think about the unpleasant aspects of illness) I'm in dire need of more fluff. And, in general, I need to discover some new writers. Anybody have any recommendations?

Two years later

It has been almost exactly two years since part of my spine collapsed and with it, much of my life. There's nothing so boring as other people's back problems, so here's the executive overview: months flat on my back because I could neither stand not sit without excruciating pain; trying every remedy suggested until my last hope was surgery; months looking for a surgeon who would tackle the problem; more months in bed recovering from surgery; physical therapy; pneumonia setting me back months in the recovery process.

No, not a fun time. But I am extremely grateful for the miracle that is modern American surgery, without which I would have been a permanent invalid. Now, thanks to the insertion of a new spine segment composed of titanium and cadaver bones, I'm just a grouchy old lady who ought to get back to doing the PT exercises regularly. (Yes, the corpse bones thing is kind of creepy. But just imagine how much creepier it must feel to get a heart transplant!)

A funny thing happened on the way to recovery. For some years I had felt burned out as a writer and was doing nothing but fiber arts and other craftsy stuff. Now the stories are starting to bubble up in my head again.

And the world of publishing has changed since I drifted away. The Kindle was just a gleam in Jeff Bezos' eye back then; now e-books are everywhere and my bookmarks list overfloweth with advice for writers who want to try indie publishing. I've always been a little bit curious about how my books would sell if they weren't printed and distributed by somebody who had decided in advance something like "midlist, not worth pushing." Not that I have any gripes with any of my former publishers; I'd just like to try this indie thing and see how it works out. This seems like an auspicious time to start.

This is, of course, assuming that I can not only write the books but also deal with cover art, blurb, formatting and all the other details that a publisher handles for you. I think I can. But that may be a degree of optimism bordering on hubris, given that I've been fiddling with Blogger for over an hour and have not yet persuaded it to show a blogroll in the sidebar.

Whoops... Preview shows text and blogroll; when I hit publish, neither appears. Time to save this draft and try again tomorrow, I guess. t