Been Busy

Autumn is in the air, the days are shorter by an increment, the sun slants with just a hint of summer gone by, and students mull about schoolyards during recess. Summer passed way too quickly for me—whether it’s my mindset or global warming, I can’t tell. My internal thermostat from growing up in the Midwest tells me that winter is just around the corner. Forty years in California has not yet re-calibrated my sensors. I can feel the pull to store food in my cupboards, pull out the flannel sheets, see if my winter clothes still fit. It’s eighty-five degrees outside today.

I am busy at work this month compiling three novellas into a collection, working title Best Laid Plans. That’s my excuse for not having a blog entry for you this week. I’ve also been working on two new songs—a bluesy piece about taking charge of your life, and a song for my twin grandsons about being an individual—and polishing another song, Sundowner, for performance in October at the Center For Spiritual Living in Santa Rosa.

Here is what I hope you can anticipate in the near future: Best Laid Plans: A Collection of Stories

The First Step: Jenny and Shalese, unlikely players on the stage of life, become victims of circumstance, pawns embroiled in a mission masterminded by an underground society of the wealthy and privileged led by Florence, a sociopath oldster. Shalese’s life dream begins to unravel as Mab, a three-hundred pound lesbian bartender by night, P.I. by day, uncovers the society’s sinister plot. (cozy mystery category)

Grapevine: A California Family Tree: follows the twists and turns of relationships between members of the Harding and Flynn families. May Harding clings with a death grip to her dream of a “normal” life as she is catapulted into a future she hadn’t imagined. May battles her internalized homophobia as well as an abusive, alcoholic husband, a run away teen age daughter, a gay son, and her best friend Etta who knows things about May that even May doesn’t know. (family saga category)

Sojourner: is love story with a reincarnation twist. Claire and Andrea, ahead of their time in Victorian England, are kept apart by Claire’s brutally controlling brother, and die of unrequited love. In alternating chapters, we fast forward to current day California where Calle and her lover Ande are compelled to complete the relationship that was begun centuries earlier. (timeless love story category)