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Getting Back To It

3/30/2021

March started out with the release of Domino and five awards in the 2021 Author Shout Reader Ready Awards, and ended with completing a cross-stitch project. But in between, I was diagnosed with an ulcer caused by a bacterial infection, got hit with car maintenance, got sent back to the office full time, had my first COVID vaccine, and life generally exploded into “COVID is over” mode.

In like a lion, indeed. March has been about getting back to it. The question is, how is the muse handling the transition?

The pandemic was a boon for my writing, obviously, but I heard other writers complain that the lockdown made it more difficult to write. I can’t explain why it was easier for some of us, while others struggled. I was already working on Domino with plans to expand it into The Sentience Series when we went into lockdown, so the flow was already going. Calls from people doing lockdown anthologies got the short stories rolling again as well, and the extra time from everything being closed and not getting dressed and commuting because of work from home gave me extra time and energy to keep the inspiration flowing and the muse busy to fill the gaps. My struggle is continuing with the writing now that we’ve gone back to “normal.” But here again, where I’m at with my writing is a factor. I just published Domino, and Phantasm (Book Two) is with beta readers and a reviewer right now, so I can’t do anything with it until all of that feedback comes in. Writer’s block is common for me after I publish. It’s not surprising after the work I put into The Sentience Series in January and February.

So I turned to finishing my cross stitch, which I completed yesterday and will take to the framer this weekend. I planned well, but now what? I’m adjusting to the “getting on with it” faster than my muse is. Such is the way of being a writer. As with people, sometimes you and your muse are out of sync.

I’d like to get on writing flash fiction and short stories again. They’re fun to write, and it’s good to do something different in between novella/novel drafts. The problem is that the muse is still reeling from the lion of March, and I can’t force the inspiration to come back. Heck, writing this blog has been a challenge.

All I can do is get back to it, and roll with the muse when it’s ready. Maybe it’s divine timing for me to take life as it comes for a while as I continue to adjust. I’ve discovered that some things are different, some are the same, and I’m reconciling it all into life today. We all are. Eventually, the muse will catch up and form it into fiction however he sees fit.

That’s all today. Take care, and have a great week.

Bye!

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Tips to Adapt to Post Pandemic Reality

3/22/2021

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After my last entry, I thought it would be a good idea to tell you about strategies I’m using to adapt to post-pandemic life. It is a struggle, but now is the time to take advantage of opportunities that are available in this strange new world.

Be intentional about your habits and routines. Habits and routines are handy, because they save us mental power on mundane, repetitive tasks. It’s easy to fall back on the same old ways you did things before the world locked down last year, but do you need to? It’s possible that you’ve found better ways to do things that can be implemented in your daily routine. For example, I switched my laundry days to Mondays and Thursdays, and have decided to continue this routine because it frees up some time on weekends. I know it’s hard to remember and implement this stuff after a year, and now I’m talking about changing things – but now is the time if you want to do it. Set your routines based on what works for you now, not on what worked before because it’s less mental work. Believe me, it will become habit soon, and hopefully give you a better daily routine than you had before.

You’ll probably need to set reminders for yourself to stay on track, until you get used to things over the next few weeks. That’s ok. Make use of the reminder, calendar, and note apps on your phone, or use sticky notes and lists to keep you on track. If you prefer to write things down by hand, I suggest getting a Rocketbook to help you keep track of your notes and lists. These are great, because you can scan the files to save in an email or cloud storage drive, and you can wipe off and reuse the pages.

Address issues now, while you’re settling back into a different “normal.” This piggybacks on the previous suggestion, because now is a great time to address things that were a problem for you before. For example, I was bad about running 5 – 10 minutes late getting in to work because I’d overestimate what I could do in the mornings. I decided the return to the office is the time to address this problem, so part of my “new morning routine” is segment my mornings with benchmarks to keep me on track (Bible reading done by a certain time, hair and makeup done by a certain time, dressed and settling in the birds at a certain time, and out of the door by a certain time to allow me 5 minutes to settle in at my desk and start my day). So far, it’s working.

We all have issues we struggle with during the day that tend to throw us off track, so address them as part of your new routine. Whether you need to get a handle on your health, start a diet and exercise routine, get more organized, get more sleep, learn how to handle stress better, be on time, or get a handle on your schedule, now is the time to do it. Take advantage of this opportunity to make sure you’re embarking on post-pandemic life as the best “you” that you can be.

Create new personal standards. I’m not talking about being a radical rule breaker. What I mean is that rules have wiggle room, and there may be ways for you to incorporate some of your pandemic preferences into post-pandemic life. For example, if you quit wearing high heeled shoes during the past year and the thought of putting them back on makes your feet hurt – don’t! You can still look professional and meet your company dress code in flats, so don’t tear up the tendons in your foot for the sake of looking like everybody else in the office. Believe me, I know. I quit wearing heels after I broke my foot in 2015.

Of course, you can’t wear jeans and t-shirts every day, but maybe you can convert to wearing pants and nice shirts instead of dresses and skirts. Or if you quit with nail polish, don’t go back (I haven’t polished my nails in years – I don’t have the time or patience for that). It’s ok to experiment with new ways to dress and do hair and makeup now that you’ve discovered your true style and comfort levels. I joked last Friday that they were seeing my “pandemic hair” because I chose to wear it pulled back in a headwrap that day due to windy weather. Be creative. You can be comfortable (mostly) and still meet your dress code without a problem.

Keep pursuing personal goals and pursuits. Getting back to normal is exhausting, but that doesn’t mean that your personal life has gone down the drain. Were you working on that novel that you always wanted to write, but didn’t quite finish it? Were you taking an online class that you didn’t finish yet? Were you working on an art project that you were so close to finishing (this is my situation). Keep doing it! They can’t take your lunch hours or weekends away, so carve out time in those new routines to incorporate writing time into your schedule. You may have to settle for slower progress, but that’s alright. Any progress is good, so keep at it and don’t give up. Keep your eye on the prize of completing the task, and you’ll feel fabulous for meeting those goals despite the fact that work-from-home time ran out before you were able to finish it. It’s not failure unless you quit, so stick with whatever you were doing and see it through to completion, even if it takes a bit longer than you expected. Which leads me to my final suggestion –

Be patient and kind with yourself, and others. Transitions are always difficult, and we’re all going through it at the same time. Not only that, but life went on during the pandemic, so you don’t know what issues people are bringing back with them. You’re going to stumble and falter sometimes, so don’t despair when you do. For example, last Friday was a schedule nightmare for me. Another reason I had ‘pandemic hair’ that day was because I couldn’t stay on schedule or get things going smoothly. The day went ok, but it was harder than I felt it should be. These things happen. So whether you’re having an ‘off’ day or you hear somebody locked in the restroom stall sobbing, don’t panic. It’s hard for us all, and we’re doing the best we can. It’s going to take some time to settle back into this post-pandemic life and find our way to what works best for us again. Be kind to yourself and others. Listen, and talk to trusted people, if you need to. You aren’t a pathetic person. You’re whole life is turned upside down. It takes a while to adjust.

We’re changed people coming back to a world fighting to go back to what it was before the pandemic, so that clash has us all struggling. Fortunately, we have a choice on how we come back to this world. It’s ok to be different and to see things in a new way – in fact, I think that’s a good thing. Perhaps if enough of us are true to ourselves and stick to what works, then we’ll carve out a post-pandemic reality that can be better than the one we had before.

That’s all today. I hope these suggestions from how I’m handling post-pandemic life are helpful in your own journey into this brave, strange world. Take care, and have a great week.

Bye!

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Lockdown Realizations in a Post Pandemic World

3/18/2021

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The world is trying to transition back to normal now; having proclaimed the COVID pandemic over since a vaccine is available. People are re-entering workplaces, restrictions are lifted, social events are resuming, and people are flocking to travel once again (I know, travel is how COVID became a pandemic, but logic doesn't win against the desires of the heart).

But can we really go back? We’re pushing hard to return to “normal,” but should that be everything that was before? What are the consequences of returning to 2019, a reality that spawned the pandemic, when you live in 2021, and are trying to make a way post-pandemic.

I do hope we’ve learned some things. I certainly don’t think or feel the same way about life and the world that I did a year ago. Some things shift your paradigm and cause permanent changes within you that cause a jolt when you try to go back to the way things were. It’s hard enough to transition to working from home to returning to the office; even harder when you aren’t the same person who left last year. We may talk a good game, but the truth is that this past year has traumatized us, and we’re all struggling to figure out the reality we have now. Say you’re excited to “get back to it” all you want, but the truth is that nobody knows what comes next. We don’t know what the post-pandemic world looks like yet. We’re taking it a step at a time and watching it unfold as we go. That’s often how life goes.

One thing I learned about myself is that I’m more of an introvert than I realized. I’ve always been in that awkward place where I teeter between being withdrawn and wanting to talk to people, but as the world shut down, I found that I was becoming more comfortable with myself. That, in turn, caused me to become more comfortable with others, so when I was out and about, I was more willing and able to talk to them. But only to a point. I still need to pull in to process it all; in fact, maybe a bit more than I did before. It was nice to have that time and space during the pandemic to deal with life and all of the changes happening in the past year.

I wonder if more of you have discovered this about yourself. The reason I say this is because I’ve heard several readers say that they loved Domino, Book One of The Sentience Series, perhaps more than my other works to date. I’m happy that readers like the novella and it resonates with them, but one thing about Domino is that it’s more confined that my other novels. Most of my other works have my characters thrust out into the big, bad world, fighting it along with their personal demons. Domino (and the rest of The Sentience Series) breaks from this with fewer characters and a limited setting. While The Earthside Box Set had a worldwide scope and characters joining or conflicting with one another from various outside interests trying to manipulate them, The Sentience Series is limited to the research team and the lab they work in. The conflict in The Sentience Series has a worldwide impact, but the focus is almost exclusively on the research team who developed the technology in question, and a couple of parties from the outside that were drawn in by the conflict. The world is mentioned, but they are in a situation where they almost have to shut it out in order to resolve the problem. It’s a bit of a reversal from the scope of my normal work.

And yet, people seem to like it. My reviewer and beta readers have reacted positively to Phantasm, Book Two of The Sentience Series, to date. While readers are more introspective and introverted as a group, it makes me wonder if the events of the past year have drawn you to realizations about yourself that are similar to my own. It’s good to connect, and interesting to see how this change is resonating with readers more than my previous works.

The good thing about fiction is that readers draw their own meaning and message from the work. As writers, we hope that we’re offering something that resonates with you, and helps you to feel less alone in this world that’s gone crazier than usual in the past year.

I think the truth is that we’re all different now than we were a year ago, and that’s ok. Things do change you – that’s how you grow. Let’s just hope that we, both as individuals and as a society, continue to grow in a right way and a good direction.

That’s all today. Take care. Have a Happy Friday tomorrow and a wonderful weekend.

Bye!

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Another List of Recommended Reads

3/3/2021

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It's been an exciting week for me. Domino released on Monday, and already has a 5 star review on Goodreads and Amazon.uk. I also got word that I won five silver medal "recommended read" awards in the 2021 Author Shout Reader Ready Awards.

It's nice to have my writing going well, but authors need to support one another. I usually do a blog about once a year on books I've particularly enjoyed, and realized that I haven't done that in nearly 14 months. Well, why not now? Today, I'd like to give you an update on my list of recommended reads that I couldn't put down over the past year. Get your Kindle ready. Here are some titles that are guaranteed to keep you up late reading:

The Fossil, by Joshua T. Calvert. An impossible discovery in Antarctica in 2018 connects with another impossible discovery on the first manned mission to Mars 24 years later. I reviewed this novel for Reader's Favorite last weekend, and couldn't put it down! An amazing science fiction tale about turning the origins of man on it's head. This book comes out on March 15, 2021.

Goldenears, The Whispering Mountain and Goldenears:The Pale Skulls, by Jane H. Wood. This young adult series about the unique bond between a teenager and a wolf he saves on vacation with his Dad. Both are excellent tales, but I liked The Pale Skulls more because it has more of a paranormal element and more intriguing characters.

Murder on Tyneside, by Eileen Thorton. Recently widowed Agnes Lockwood decides to visit her old hometown in Northeast England when a jewel thief strikes at the hotel where she's staying. The detective on the case turns out to be an old school friend, and she finds herself in the middle of a theft and murder investigation. If you like British mysteries, then this tale is just right for you.

Quantum, by Patricia Cornwall. Captain Calli Chase detects an alarm deep below a NASA research center on the eve of a blizzard. She rushes to investigate what happened, only to find it's connected with a complex scientific plot that involves her twin sister, who recently went missing. The race is on not only to unravel the mystery, but to clear her sister's name - and the weather is the least of her problems. Scifi fans will love this fast paced thriller.

Top Producer, by Laura Wolf. Mara finally has a lucky break when she lands a job with one of Chicago's top realtors. It doesn't take her long to learn that success in the business comes with a price - especially with this boss who is willing to sell her soul for success, and has no loyalties. Will Mara break free, or will she become a victim of a monster fighting to become the city's top producer? This is a fast paced, intriguing tale that mystery/suspense fans will love.

These are top picks, but I've read a lot of great books over the past year. Feel free to friend/follow me on Goodreads if you want to see more on the books that enrich my life.

That's all today. Take care, and have a great week.

Bye!

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Getting Back To It

Tips to Adapt to Post Pandemic Reality

Lockdown Realizations in a Post Pandemic World

Another List of Recommended Reads

Escape Reality

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