Have you ever stepped off a roller coaster and been amazed to be on solid ground once more? That\u2019s me this week\u2014back on solid ground.<\/p>\n
Once upon a time, I wrote a book in six weeks. The book in question was Beaumont #11, Failure to Appear, and I performed that literary feat out of necessity rather than choice. I had been writing a Brady book when the powers that be in New York changed their minds and said they wanted a Beaumont instead. They changed their minds about the book. Unfortunately, they did NOT change their minds on the book deadline, so I buckled down and wrote like crazy. Bill claimed that I never slept the whole time I was writing that book because I was still up working when he went to bed, and I was up working again by the time he crawled out of bed the next morning. It was one of those books that just came together.<\/p>\n
Blessing of the Lost Girls turned out to be the same thing. I\u2019m not ready to tell you the story about the inspiration for that book. I\u2019ll do that closer to pub date so you\u2019ll remember it, but the idea for that book had been cooking away in the far, dark reaches of my \u201cWaring Blender\u201d mind for about a year and a half. Even so I didn\u2019t actually start writing it until June 16\u2014of this year! I finished it this past Sunday evening\u2014August 21st! (Also this year!). Then I put in three full days until 1 or 2 a.m. doing an in-depth grammar\/spellcheck review\/rewrite. Only now am I back on solid ground.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s usually what happens when I hit the banana peel. Time doesn\u2019t matter. Sleep doesn\u2019t matter. My only priority at that point is getting to the end of the story. And that\u2019s one of the reasons I find being called \u2018prolific’ so annoying. Putting in that many hours with that kind of total concentration isn\u2019t a walk in the park. It\u2019s work. I love writing books, but it\u2019s STILL work! I put in countless hours of thinking and typing both before and after I hit the banana peel.<\/p>\n
Today someone wrote to me saying that she had read a Goodreads Review of Kiss of the Bees, the second Walker Family book in which the reviewer apparently objected to the unnecessary “italicized stories and legends” in the book. She\u2019s not the only reader to feel that way. In fact, when my first hardback editor read the manuscript for Hour of the Hunter, Walker Family #1, she told me on the phone, and this is a direct quote, \u201cWhat you need to do is get rid of all that Indian stuff.\u201d Excuse me??? As far as I was concerned, the \u201cIndian stuff\u201d was the whole point. My purpose in writing the Walkers was to make reservation life understandable to people who would never go there.<\/p>\n
The five years I spent on the Tohono O\u2019odham as a K-12 librarian were life-changing for me. I learned far more than I ever managed to teach. The Desert People were kind to me. In fact, when I left to go elsewhere, one of my Tohono O’odham friends gifted me with an owl basket, one I still treasure, and told me, \u201cJudy, if you can\u2019t make it with your own tribe, you can always come back here.\u201d<\/p>\n
Writing Blessing of the Lost Girls was a way of sending my heart back to that very special time. I loved being back in touch with the Walker Family clan\u2014and with Joanna Brady\u2019s too. I loved immersing myself once more in the Desert People\u2019s origin stories and revisiting both the language and the gentle humor of the Tohono O\u2019odham people. And somehow, in the process of telling that story, a number of things happened that I simply can\u2019t explain. One moment I was telling how four quarrelsome brothers were responsible for Spring, Summer, Autumn, and Winter. The next moment, in fact, the very next paragraph, I found myself writing about the four Jos\u00e9 brothers who, in a previous book, had fallen victim to a band of drug smugglers. It was as though the separate parts of a French braid had suddenly blended together. That kind of experience is nothing short of magical.<\/p>\n
But here\u2019s the deal. I\u2019ve written that book, but I\u2019m not done with it by any means, There\u2019s still a lot of editing to do, but soon\u2014probably only a few weeks from now, it\u2019ll be time for me to saddle up and do it again\u2014time to figure out a new plot and write another book. And be prolific!<\/p>\n
Right now, though, I\u2019m out of that fictional world and back in the real one. For two months plus my head was stuck in April 2022, while the summer of 2022 not only came but is also on its way out. Other than writing the blog and answering e-mail, I\u2019m officially on VACATION!<\/p>\n
While I\u2019ve been working, typing has become much more problematic because my fingernails have grown too long. According to my calendar app, my last manicure appointment at Andy\u2019s Nails in Bellevue happened on June 6, and one of my Big Apple Red Gel nails is about to go south. For the last two weeks, I\u2019ve been saying that as soon as I finished writing the book, I\u2019d reward myself with a mani-pedi. Unfortunately this week when I called, Andy was totally booked up until 6:30 Friday evening. So today, when not using my keyboard, I\u2019ve been wearing a band-aid on that finger\u2014not because it\u2019s injured but to protect that one loosey-goosey nail.<\/p>\n
For several days, from Saturday to Wednesday, I barely checked my emails to say nothing of replying to them. By Wednesday morning there were 85 of them stacked up and waiting. That\u2019s why I try to answer emails immediately after receiving them. If I don\u2019t, they turn into a mountain.<\/p>\n
Yesterday I went to lunch with a friend. That may sound like a very small thing, but in the aftermath of Covid opportunities to be \u201cladies who lunch\u201d have been very few and far between. It was wonderful. I also brought home take-out for us to have for dinner\u2014no cooking for Vacation Lady that day!<\/p>\n
One made Wednesday of this week very special. On August 24, 1936, three days after my father turned twenty and six days before may mother turned 22, Norman Busk married Evelyn Anderson. For those few days Evie was only one year older than Norm and she could no longer be labeled a \u201ccradle robber.\u201d Their anniversary sparked a flurry of among me and my surviving siblings in which we shared memories of growing up in that very full house on Yuma Trail in Bisbee, Arizona.<\/p>\n
Although our parents were barely out of their teens when they married, the \u201cI do\u2019s\u201d they exchanged that day were good for a sixty-eight year run, and the seven children they raised together were and are incredibly lucky to have had Norm and Evie Busk as parents.<\/p>\n
So today in every way has been a time for counting my many blessings.<\/p>\n
I hope you don\u2019t mind if I pass them along to you.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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