The Numbers Game

Math was my weakest subject in high school. Starting when I was fifteen -- though I'd always been a doodler, a scribbler, a daydreamer -- the right side of my brain got the better of me, and it has, thank the stars, resulted in a happy creative life. Still, I use just enough basic arithmetic to get by.

2016 was one of my most productive years ever -- my second best in term of number of words written, totaling some 478,000 and change. Add to that number at least another 30,000 in the form of a novel started in November, three short stories, and a screenplay all waiting to be completed in 2017. I finished 75 individual fiction projects -- 1 novel in July, 14 novellas, and the rest a mix of short stories and 1 flash weighing in at 100 words ("Catching Snowflakes" is presently on a very short list at a major publication project, waiting to learn if it's going to the dance). Last year, I sold 50 short stories and 4 of those novellas. In early October, on a warm, bright afternoon spent writing on my sun porch, I penned The End on my 1,200th work of fiction. All of my big numbers, dating back to my teen years, have been Space:1999 stories -- 1, 50, 100, 500, and 1,000. 1,200 was no different, thanks to my novella, "The Tomorrows", a powerfully personal, emotional experience that I was fortunate enough to share with the members of my writers' group over several weeks of meetings.

I went on 8 adventures in 2016 to destinations far and wide. Starting last February, I spent a wonderful weekend in Massachusetts, taking in the gala book launch of Murder Ink (which contains my short mystery, "Exhuming Secrets on a Hot August Day") in Boston, where the publisher treated us like royalty during a luncheon, reading, and signing. A month later, I was off to the first of 2 5-day trips to When Words Count, a luxury retreat center for writers in Vermont, where I split time between the Hemingway Room and Mark Twain Suite, and banged out a total of 6 first drafts (and much of that aforementioned screenplay). In May, I jetted off to Hollywood to attend the Roswell Awards, where my short story "Mandered" won Honorable Mention. In June, I enjoyed the wonderful retreat/workshop Writing From Nature. In September, I was off to not 1 but 2 writing adventures -- to the annual Writelines conference and workshop held on Star Island in the Isles of Shoals, and a return to the Waterfall House with members of my stellar writers' group. That same month, on September 18, I also got married to my longtime partner Bruce on the front lawn of our beautiful old house on the hill, Xanadu. The ceremony was attended by 37 friends and family members, who somehow all squeezed into our downstairs for the reception.

(arrival to the Twain Suite in mid-October)

As the autumn progressed, I was writing with a kind of tireless fire, and knew I was in for excellent numbers come the end of the year. But I also sensed a kink in my health, which I noticed (and foolishly ignored) on the first day of my Star Island adventure. The day after a marvelous Thanksgiving, I started to shiver, and over the course of the next two days, it grew worse. I also found myself unable to stand upright for long. On November 28, I went to our local hospital and was admitted. It would be 24 days before I was released to come home to family, Xanadu, and muse. During that time, I had surgery to remove a deep bone infection, suffered a severe allergic reaction to IV antibiotics, and, spurred on by the overwhelming desire to be home (and to attend the second Murder Ink gala launch in Boston at the end of February -- Ink 2 contains my sports-themed mystery "Murder at Channel Ten"), dove into a fierce commitment to physical therapy -- if the wonderful therapists suggested I do 5 minutes of reps on a machine in the gym, I did 8. If they wanted me to do 20 leg lifts, I did 30. During my hospital stay, I wrote 3 short stories based upon hallucinations I suffered the night following surgery. I jotted notes on a 4th (which I wrote upon my return home days before Christmas). Back at Xanadu, I was able to walk again -- for every 1 day spent bedridden in the hospital, according to the nursing staff, it takes 3 to get back on steady legs, a mathematical figure that terrified me...and one I was determined to best.

Healthy (and down some 13 pounds), I found my way back to my desk and loved every second of being in my home once more, my own bed, and, especially, my home office, where I got into my old groove and completed several more stories before 2016 ran out. So many, in fact, that for the first time since I was in my middle-20s, my list of as-yet-unwritten story ideas dropped below 100. January 1, 2017 kicked off with 99!

And I have 1 last number to report about. As I type this post, this small, beloved blog is just 53 reads shy of earning it's 100,000th. Thank you to all the readers from across the globe who've taken time to follow my writing adventures -- here's to a million more!

BEHOLD -- IN A CAT'S EYE!

We love our cats. All were rescues from neglect or abuse. All are, we often say, like a million bucks that nobody else wanted, and we were lucky enough to claim as our own. We presently have two cats, Ozzie and Wheezer. Ozzie came to us circuitously eight years ago from a far-away land, a survivor of an infamous cat hoarding case. Wheezer found her way to Xanadu from just down the road -- her elderly human caretaker had passed away, and she'd gone to live with the woman's sons, who didn't exactly care for her. When she showed up three autumns ago, yowling in her cat carrier as she was walked up our driveway, the sound broke our hearts, and we knew we'd offer her the best home possible. It didn't matter that we were told she was three years old and it turned out she was fourteen; she soon took charge of the house as rightful queen (with Ozzie, ever, as pampered princess) and our home was made complete following the loss of our previous female feline monarch, the famous Chicken, who once saved our entire family from obliteration (it's true -- she woke the house when the Mother's Day Nor'Easter of 2007 filled our basement and flooded our furnace while we slept, and the pipes quaked. Had she not roused the house awake, a bomb crater would have been all that was left, according to our gas company. Chicken won the Feline Hero Pet Award from the MSPCA, where we adopted her, later that autumn).

In May on the morning I readied to fly to Hollywood to attend the star-studded The Roswell Awards (my short story "Mandered" won Honorable Mention in this year's contest), I saw that a neighbor's new cat was perched outside our sun porch door, harassing Ozzie. I've traveled far and wide in 2016, to numerous writing retreats located on islands, mountaintops, and waterfalls. Hollywood was my third of eight adventures, and by the time I landed I missed our little family and the Muse had already turned the incident with the neighbors' cat into a new story. In my hotel room, I sat down and began the tale of a neighbor delivered an ominous warning by his crazy neighbors' cat, and had penned half of it by the time I took to the stage to accept my Roswell Award. Soon after completing "The Neigthbors' Cat", I read about Pole to Pole Publishing's new project, In a Cat's Eye, and hastened through edits on the computer. I received a rewrite offer, and made my few changes while a new roof was being put on Xanadu. Sparse days later, the official acceptance arrived. I'm proud to be part of this amazing release, which also features a reprint of "The Brazilian Cat" by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Many of my talented co-authors shared the back-stories behind their stories in In a Cat's Eye.

Gail Z. Martin on "Catspaw": "When Vonnie and Kelly [the publishers] asked me for a cat story, I knew I wanted to write it in my Deadly Curiosities dark urban fantasy universe, set in Charleston, SC. My main character, Cassidy Kincaide, is a psychometric. Cassidy runs Trifles and Folly, an antique store that is a front for an Alliance of mortals and immortals who get haunted and cursed objects out of the wrong hands and fight supernatural threats. So I had the ‘where’ and the ‘who’, and now I needed the ‘what’. The gist of the story came to me, and that got me started -- a necromancer’s cat. The title sprang to mind from the Star Trek: TOS episode of the same name. The cat had to play an essential role in the story, and since the piece was short, we had to get to the action quickly. I had decisions to make. Was the cat good or evil? Did the cat itself possess supernatural powers or was it a pawn, a victim, a familiar or a co-conspirator? Read ‘Catspaw’ and find out!"

Oliver Smith on "Grimmun": "Most of the characters are thinly veiled Norse gods, except for Sweet who is a bunch of wild herbs and snails. ‘Grimmun’ conflates the metaphor of the clockwork universe with the physical universe and mixes up human custom with natural law. Cutting across this implausible world of authorial confusion and scientific ignorance strides Ratter the Cat, a tribute to every vicious farm kitten ever adopted into my family. How excited I was as small child to wake in the morning and find a new dissection spread across the lawn by our own ‘Ratter’. The cats procured a fantastic variety of wildlife: frogs, toads, rats, mice, birds, slowworms, and even a bat (rescued alive). I blame these daily scenes of slaughter for my abidingly morbid imagination. Without those cats I would probably write uplifting stories of noble heroes doing whatever thing they do. I would dream of pretty flowers, not the horrors presented in ‘Grimmun’. I would be good. I would be happy.  I now own a house cat who will tackle nothing bigger than a woodlouse -- if you care to, you can read about her in ‘The Sulphur Remedy’ in my collection Basilisk Soup."

Steven R. Southard on "The Cats of Nerio-3": "What? A call for submissions for a cat anthology? I’ll pass; I don’t own a cat, or even like them. (Mysterious voice): Hello, Steve. Who’s that? I’m your muse. You will write a cat story, a story about cats in an abandoned space station who’ve mutated into panther-sized monsters, now adapted to weightlessness. Really? I’m going to write that? Well, I’ll help. A little. In fact, I’ve given you the seed of an idea, so my job here is done. Bye. Wait, Muse, is that all I get? Muse? Sheesh. She does this every stinkin’ time. Leaves the hard part to me. Giant mutant cats in space, huh…"

(Queen Wheezer)

K. I Borrowman on "Kings of the Concrete Jungle": "Baker is a domestic shorthair cat from Al Khor, Qatar. One of his distinctive features is his central heterochromatic eyes. He came from a large family and had six brothers and sisters. An avid adventurer, Baker left home at the young age of nine weeks to pursue a life of banditry. Currently, Baker’s favourite hiding places include: under the sofa, his laundry duckie, and any box or bag, no matter the size. Baker came up with the idea for “Kings of the Concrete Jungle” when he demonstrated to his human, K.I. Borrowman, how his unique feline traits would help ensure his survival during any upcoming zombie apocalypses. To learn more about Baker, please visit his website, www.spotthekitty.com. Be sure to check out his advice column for other cats under the ‘Latest Mews” tab and download his game, Spot the Kitty, for your Android or Apple device."

Christine Lucas on "A Pinch of Chaos": "‘A Pinch of Chaos’ was the first story I wrote after a three-year break from writing. It's a story that opens with gut-wrenching loss, much like the loss I felt often throughout these three years. But in its heart it's also a Hero's Journey, mapping in some level my own journey during that time against seemingly impossible obstacles to regain all that I had lost. In this journey, both in the story and in life, the Wise Sage never came. Only cats came, with all the joy and – sometimes -- heartbreak this entails. Perhaps there's no Wise Sage at all in this Journey we call Life, only a crone with a wicked sense of humor, and her head is a cat's head. As one of my characters often says, ‘Cats are Bast's ongoing prank on mankind.’ He should know -- he's a High Priest. As for the Journey, in fiction as in life, it has closure, but no End. Ithaka will always lie beyond the horizon, and Circles have no ends."

Doug C. Souza on "Tenth Life": "Doug C. Souza began his story ‘Tenth Life’ when the first line, ‘I found Mr. Gary confessing to the cat one evening,’ popped into his head. It was a random image that seemed to have the makings of a fun story. He had no idea where the characters would end up, but one thing was certain: the cat would be a gray tabby. A couple years earlier, Doug C. Souza had to say goodbye for the final time to the greatest cat that ever walked the face of the Earth. He’s glad his pal Remy found a home in one of his stories. Recently, Doug won first place in the Writers of the Future Contest, and has a story featured in The Young Explorer’s Adventure Guide due out later this year. His story “Mountain Screamers”--a novelette about cougars--appeared in Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine. Doug C. Souza hopes you enjoy ‘Tenth Life,’ a story where a cat gets into (and out of) trouble the way only a cat can."

A. L. Sirois on "Three Wizards and a Cat": "Regarding ‘Three Wizards and a Cat’, I wrote an earlier story with the protagonist, Rali Ribhu, in the same far-future setting, using that same Jack Vance type of sardonic voice. This story is a follow-up to that tale, ‘The Comet Doom’, but not a direct sequel. I loved writing this, and people have responded well to it. Perhaps Rali will ride again one of these days. It would be fun to put him into a novel-length story."

(The Princess Ozzie, days before our move to Xanadu)

Joanna Hoyt on "Another Man's Cure": "The submissions call for In A Cat’s Eye gave me an excuse to complete an odd little half-story which had been prowling around the back of my mind for a few years. Dr. Marcus Leeds, the world’s foremost -- indeed, the world’s only -- cryptoethnogastronomist, with his pride in his objectivity, his defensiveness around his unusual discipline, his basic decency and his occasional difficulty in treating his research subjects as people, was already clear in my mind. So was the dangerous sweetness of the kopiat and the dangerous otherness of the wicked little cat known as the stiss. I wasn’t quite sure what they were all going to do together, but I enjoyed finding out. Marcus, of course, bears no resemblance whatsoever to any of the human-studying experts I have encountered. None whatsoever. Well, not very much… I am grateful that the anthology editors liked him well enough to advocate (successfully) for a somewhat happier ending."

A. L. Kaplan on "Mark of the Goddess": "‘Hi, Maya. Tell me about your role in 'Mark of the Goddess'.’

‘Sure, but first, where did you get the idea for this story?’

‘I’ve always been drawn to mythology, and this call for submissions screamed for the Mayan jaguar goddess. Writing a story with no canines was a challenge. I’m a dog person and a major wolf fanatic.’

‘Is that why you made my jungle so dangerous?’

‘Realism is important, especially for fantasy stories. I did a lot of research to create the right kinds of wildlife.’

‘Yeah. Thanks a lot for all the carnivorous plants and animals.’

‘No apologies there. Changing subjects, I love the bright colors in your dress.’

‘My mom is a wiz with dyes. She did all the beadwork with colored seeds. We can’t afford stone beads.’

‘Well, it’s lovely.  Speaking of dyes, what’s with the brown stain in your eyes? Be proud of who you are.’

‘Are you trying to get me killed? No one can know my true eye color. Why are authors so cruel to their characters? I don’t know how I’m going to survive this story.’

‘You’ll have to read it and find out if you do.’"

The Roswell Awards

(Me with Fringe star Jasika Nicole at the Roswell
Awards)

Last September, during a rare afternoon nap, I dreamed about a planet in the late stages of terraformation. Most of Hawthorne's Planet belonged to its human colonists -- all save a lush area, the Valley of the Falls, where indigenous giants drowsed. These gentle salamander-like behemoths, seven in all, had been sedentary for so long that forests had grown upon their spines, and the courses of certain waterfalls diverted around them. In the dream, school children in a nearby colony had named the giants after the dwarfs in a classic cartoon.

At center stage in this odd dream was a military man tasked with carrying out the destruction of the giants, so that human interests in the valley could attend to claiming that last vestige of territory. I sensed the war being waged within this man -- what he and his forces were about to carry out was wrong. Just how wrong soon revealed itself as soon as the first shot was fired, with devastating results. Then I roused from sleep, the story but not the ending clear. I ambled down to my writing room and jotted down the bones of the idea, along with its title -- "Mandered", which had also come to me in the dream. I wasn't even sure 'mandered' was a word (turns out, it is -- an old world term meaning to command or summon). As 2015 ran into the fall and then late fall and I went on an end-of-the-year tear, writing twelve short stories over the course of fourteen days, I pulled out the note card for "Mandered" and wrote it fairly as the dream played out, hitting what seemed the perfect note for the ending -- after destroying the world, the military man would have to dream and help fix it. Once done, I judged this story as good, put the next draft onto the computer, edited it through three more drafts, and happily submitted it to the Roswell Awards in Short SF Writing. On April 7, five days after returning from my writing retreat to When Words Count in Vermont, I woke to learn that "Mandered" had won Honorable Mention in the prestigious award for excellence in short Science Fiction writing.

(With Dee Wallace)

Please understand that this was, to me, like winning the Oscar, Emmy, and Golden Globe all wrapped up in one, and I had to reread the wonderful email from award organizer Rosalind Helfand numerous times. In fact, as I recall, I spent that entire Thursday levitating above the floor! I'd been saying since hitting the 'send' button last December that if one of the four stories I submitted placed, I would recant my stand on flying and travel back to Tinseltown to attend the awards. The universe listened, and some six weeks later, I was on my way west. I booked a flight from Manchester, New Hampshire to LAX, via a long layover in Charlotte, North Carolina. How long wouldn't manifest until a pop-up thunderstorm with spectacular lightning shut down flights, and backed everything up by hours. After eleven p.m. EST, I finally boarded my flight to Los Angeles. I'd packed ridiculously light -- my Italian leather valise with stories to work on (which got me through the bulk of my layover), a tote with clothes and my toiletry bag, which made boarding and deplaning far easier. Almost six hours later, I stepped off the plane and into the first taxi waiting in line outside the famous airport. My driver, a delightful Russian chap named Yuri, asked me which route I wanted to take to my hotel in Hollywood. Following my long day of travel, I answered, "Whichever's fastest." At one point, my bleary eyes glanced at the speedometer to see we were traveling at 92 miles-per-hour down the freeway.

I arrived in Hollywood super early and checked into the same hotel where I stayed during an eleven-day visit to the set covering the finale of Star Trek: Voyager for numerous national publications. The place was as decent as I recalled, the room beyond clean and inviting (if a tad outdated -- I thought I'd stepped into the funkadelic 1970s, given all the burnt orange and somber brown). Despite my exhaustion, I woke at six, L.A. time, showered, and spent a few hours writing on the oddly fabulous desk and bench in a corner of my room. Brunch with a writer friend at a Grub Restaurant, a visit to Xanadu, and then I returned to get ready for the event.

(On stage at the awards ceremony, with a shining constellation of stars)

The Roswells, an extension of Sci-Fest L.A., in which plays by such greats as Ray Bradbury, Clive Barker, and Neil Gaiman are staged, is doubly amazing in that classic SF actors perform the winning entries. I was beyond blown away by this year's luminaries, which included Dee Wallace who, in addition to her celebrated film career, had performed last summer as "Pat Spencer" -- Luke's sister -- on my beloved, sole remaining soap, General Hospital. At the pre-ceremony mixer held at Amalfi's Restaurant next door to the Acme Theater, venue of the awards, we were introduced. "It's Pat Spencer!" I exclaimed. A fan boy? Guilty. And speaking of which, my husband-to-be and I were huge fans of Fringe and never missed an episode, so when I met the lovely Jasika Nichole, "Astrid" on the series, I forgot that I no longer get star struck after having interviewed, met, and interacted with so many of my favorite actors. On stage, we hugged and kissed -- and after telling her about Bruce's and my fondness for the show, she sent me home with a hug and a kiss for him as well. The ceremony was incredible, with brilliant performances (Dee Wallace, the epitome of class, nearly pushed me to tears). After, the winner was announced and all of the recipients present were welcomed onto the stage for photographs and to mingle with the stars.

When I began making my plans for a West Coast trip, I invited my dear friend (and celebrity!), Marianna Cooper to join me as my plus-one at the ceremony. I met Mari in 2013 at When Words Count and wanted to see her following her move to the land of sunshine. Bumper to bumper traffic made our reunion before the show brief, but we caught up on the cab ride to Amalfi's, and it is to my dear friend that I owe all of these wonderful photographs. We enjoyed the ceremony, and then Mari joined me on stage with the actors, and I remember thinking, exhausted and excited as I was, that every writer should know this level of recognition for their work. One of the judges told me that they were inundated with submissions, and that it truly was a job of separating wheat from chafe. "Thank you for being wheat," she said. I loved that.

I bid Mari goodnight, returned to my room, and crawled into bed. A few hours later, worried over missing my early flight home, I tore back the covers and gathered my few things.

(The odd bench and desk in my hotel room -- I loved it!)

LAX before sunrise. Chicago in the afternoon. By dinner time, EST, I was back in New Hampshire, and traveling the three hours north by car toward home. I returned exhausted -- while traveling to Hollywood and back, I managed some six hours of sleep in my hotel, spread over two nights. Somewhere over the contiguous United States, my tailbone evaporated, and it took me the better part of a week's worth of naps to catch up so that I no longer felt like a zombie. But I reminded myself what that nap in September of 2015 earned me, and any time I found myself feeling depleted, I only needed to mosey into my Writing Room to see the beautiful new writing award in its silver frame to re-energize. I am so proud of what my little cautionary short story has accomplished! This was an adventure of a lifetime!

Xanadu...Xanadu...Now We Are Here!

(Me, at 7600 Beverly Boulevard, before the famous
art deco spire)

In the summer of 1980, perhaps when I needed some sort of divine intervention most, my life turned in the best direction possible thanks to a song, a soundtrack, and a movie that not only opened a door on a far vaster universe than the one I knew, but emboldened me to enter it. Because of Xanadu, I have gotten to live my fondest dreams, and continue to.

My name is Gregory L. Norris, and I am a writer. I take that sobriquet quite seriously, and with the perfect balance of pride and humility, I hope. I grew up without a lot on the surface. I didn't have many friends and wore my father's ill-fitting hand-me-downs until I was eighteen. I was likely the least popular kid in school. I didn't have the looks or, at first, much in terms of savvy. But I had an imagination that didn't understand it was supposed to have limitations and so, in a way, I had everything. You see, I grew up on a healthy diet of creature double features and classic Science Fiction TV, in a small, enchanted cottage on Cobbett's Pond in the then-mystical town of Windham, New Hampshire, surrounded by deep, dark pine woods that still haunt my dreams and inspire my pen. By the summer I was fifteen, we had moved out of Windham for one town over, to a house that haunts my dreams for other reasons. I was bullied at school (who wasn't in those days?), not making the smartest choices, tortured over the truth about my sexuality, and feeling lost, truly lost. What I remember most about those days was the vibrancy in which my imagination flourished. I'd dabbled in writing short stories, had even started a novel. But the Eureka! moment in which lightning flashed, unable to be ignored, didn't happen until a humid July night on a sleepover at a friend's house, in which I took a first nervous step into that breathtaking universe.

(me, below the spire)

That summer, I began writing a short novel that featured my small circle of friends as the main characters. As the summer progressed, said friends grew anxious to read the pages as I put them down, and even began work on their own stories. Most abandoned their efforts after a couple of paragraphs, while my tale surged past Page 100 (it would conclude somewhere in the neighborhood of 200). On that July night, as my cramping fingers wrote toward THE END, my entire body filled with a sensation that still strikes me as resembling eight-pointed tiny stars. It was a surge of sunlight, like every cell inside me was smiling. Inspiration, yes. And more. The cosmic light of creation. At the sleepover, I pulled out a fresh stack of lined paper and began to work on another story, not an hour later. I had tasted a kind of euphoria and was addicted. My good friend slept with the radio playing, and as I pondered what I had experienced and its farther-reaching possibilities, the anthem Xanadu by Olivia Newton-John and ELO came on. The emotion surged back as I listened to the words about destiny and a place where dreams come true.

Earlier that spring, I'd been smitten with ONJ's dreamy release, "Magic", also from the same movie, though I didn't know that at the time -- this was 1980, long before the Information Superhighway. So I kept writing, and waiting on the radio to play both songs.

In August, the weekend the movie premiered at our town's local cinema, I hosted a back-to-school/end of summer party for my friends at my family's house. We cooked out on the grill, swam in the pool, and then packed up for the movie in numerous parental-driven cars. From the instant the movie started, with failed artist Michael Beck tearing up his dreams and tossing the pieces out the window, only to awaken the Nine Muses of Greek Mythology, my body crackled with energy, and my spirit seemed to glow. Xanadu, with its roller disco vibe and dance routines, is often criticized, but I've never been one to pay much heed to critics and like to form my own opinions about people, life, and pop culture. I fell madly in love with the message -- that we should pursue our dreams despite the world's many challenges -- and in the film's climax, when Olivia and the other muses soar up from the stage in an effulgence of light, I had an image to attach to that feeling of divine euphoria and inspiration I experienced on the sleepover. Every day of my life since, I've equated writing and completing projects and reading acceptance letters and winning awards to that moment -- extending my arms and soaring aloft into the heavens on a surge of light and cosmic energy. I walked out of that cinema with my friends into a glorious summer night set beneath a massive full moon and, on our mosey around the building and toward the parking lot, said aloud that I would be a published writer. Some 4,000 credits in short fiction, nonfiction articles, novellas, novels, a smattering of TV episodes, and one feature film later...

In April, I learned that my short story "Mandered" won Honorable Mention in the prestigious Roswell Awards in Short Science Fiction Writing. The Roswells are doubly fabulous in that winners get to enjoy their stories read aloud by classic SF TV and Film actors on stage at the award ceremony, held in Hollywood. I planned to take in the ceremony, pick up my HM certificate -- me, a writer from a small town in New Hampshire, headed to TinselTown to collect my writing award! While there, I decided to visit 7600 Beverly Boulevard, where Xanadu's exteriors were filmed. The original venue burned down in a spectacular fire in 1989 but was rebuilt in 2002 to feature one of those beautiful art deco spires so identifiable with the film. Six hours before the award ceremony commenced, I walked onto Xanadu, where Olivia Newton-John, Gene Kelly, and the rest of the cast once stood, once upon a time.

I love my muse. Writing has made all of my dreams come true, and that movie not only saved my life, but gave me the best life possible. May you embrace your dreams and never allow them to die.

Adventure: 2016

You might have noticed the decline in frequency of my blog updates in 2016. When the year began, my list of upcoming events seemed perfect for new postings -- I haven't traveled or planned this many literary adventures since 2012, before we bought Xanadu, when I spent a grand total of three-plus months attending retreats, conferences, and readings coast to coast. 2016 has been a whirlwind. It's also been filled with a rapid-fire succession of fresh pages and completed projects and, as such, my days have been devoted to putting down the words, hitting deadlines, and carpe diem-ing. But I love keeping this blog active (I often used to wonder about why bloggers abandon their blogs, even wrote a story about it that's gotten plenty of love for the brilliant Suzanne Robb's Read the End First, 'The Midnight Moon'.). So, without further delay, a report from my 2016 adventures thus far.

In late February, I enjoyed the year's first big highlight -- the official launch of the anthology of New England newsroom-based mysteries containing my tale, 'Exhuming Secrets on a Hot August Day', Murder Ink. What was so fantastic about this particular book party was the grandeur in which it was celebrated -- a lunch hosted by the publisher at M. J. O'Connor's, an upscale restaurant beside Boston's famous Park Plaza Hotel. Along with dear friends Judi Calhoun and Sisters Dent, also fellow co-authors, we drove into the city and were treated like royalty at the venue, our luncheon capped off by tray passes of delicious pastries. The day before, Judi and I traveled three hours south to luxuriate at Karen Dent's wonderful and inviting home, and were welcomed by the most fantastic greeting (as seen in the photograph above), courtesy of Karen's husband. Over the course of that weekend, we dined, wrote, and read together. At the signing, I autographed copies of Ink and got to enjoy the company of the anthology's amazing editor, Dan Szcezesny, who brought me up to the microphone with one of the best intros ever. Later while seated at Karen's big dinner table, I flew through fresh pages of a zombie-themed romance that had me writing like a dervish.

(Reading from Murder Ink in Boston)

I've signed up for three writing retreats in 2016 -- a second trip to The Waterfall House in late September following my wedding, a nature writing-themed retreat to Mount Monadnock in June, and a return visit to When Words Count in Vermont. My time at WWC, March 30 - April 2, couldn't have been more enjoyable or productive. On a bright Wednesday morning, I set out for Vermont with a handful of projects to work on and was borderline giddy when the familiar main house appeared at the left of the road. This time, I stayed in the Hemingway Room (both times before, I was in Arthur Miller -- all the rooms at WWC are named after famous writers). Framed photos of Pappa stared down from three walls, The Hemingway Room desk boasts a glass revolver as part of the decor -- fitting! During that time, I worked on a screenplay, completed three short stories, wrote part of a fourth, and outlined a story assignment (which I later wrote upon my return). My laptop chose to not connect with the center's wifi, so for most of my visit I wrote off the grid. On that Friday, I checked emails on WWC's system and discovered I'd been invited to write for an editor's new project -- horror stories set along desolate highway stretches, had been shortlisted for an anthology I very much wanted to be part of (the story, 'The Night Stalker', has since been contracted for at Blood, Sweat, and Fears: Horror Inspired by the 1970s), and I was invited to write a SF novel for a new imprint out of San Francisco. The food, as expected, was beyond fabulous and included homemade sorbet palate cleansers between courses (coconut one night, lemon rosemary another, orange basil the last night), mussel stew, Cornish game hen, and one of the best cheeseburgers on the planet, the meat, cheese, and bacon all locally sourced. On Friday, I savored homemade tomato soup and grilled cheese with avocado sandwiches for lunch.

(With Pappa in the Hemingway Room at When Words Count)

This coming Saturday, May 21, I depart on the next adventure, one I hadn't anticipated. Last month, I learned that my short story, 'Mandered', won Honorable Mention in the Roswell Awards in Short SF. I'm flying out to Hollywood to attend the ceremony. The Roswells are particularly prestigious -- and doubly cool -- in that winners get to see their stories read/performed on stage by a number of classic TV and film Science Fiction actors. This year's roster includes Dee Wallace (E.T.) and Jasika Nicole (Fringe). At the ceremony on the 22nd, I'll receive my HM certificate, get to rub elbows with some pretty big names, and celebrate another career milestone. Earlier that same day, I'm planning to make a pilgrimage to 7800 Beverly Boulevard in Hollywood, where my beloved movie Xanadu was filmed. And the year isn't even half done yet. To be continued...