Life is getting back to normal. Translation: things are just about as hectic as always. On Friday, I drove to Bastrop to talk to the Ladies' Reading Club. On Saturday, Bill and I drove down to San Antonio to Remember the Alibi, for a book signing. Tomorrow night, it's the Marble Falls library for a book talk. The end of the week, Victoria: the library on Friday and an herb fair on Saturday.
Today, I drove down to Texas State University in San Marcos to meet with a group of Story Circle gals (Paula, Susan, Nancy, and Patricia) at the TSU library, where we're holding the conference that will celebrate the launch of our book, currently called A LAND FULL OF STORIES. The book--an anthology of nature writing by women--comes out in April 2007 with the University of Texas Press. The conference (to be held June 8-9, 2007) will be co-sponsored by Story Circle and the Southwestern Writers Collection at TSU, which is also planning an exhibit featuring the book and its contributors. We'll be posting details to the book's webpage, so bookmark it and check back for updates.
In between these events, I've been cleaning up the garden, pulling that pesky Johnson grass and dead-
heading roses. The summer bloom isn't here yet (except for a few eager lantanas) and the spring bloom is mostly over. But there are still some Japanese iris blooming down by the creek, and some columbines and the fairy roses--gorgeous. I missed most of the rose bloom, though, and will have to content myself with the rebloomers as they come along. Here's the Japanese iris, lovely and delicate among the creekside ferns.
Somebody asked whether I managed to do any writing while I was gone. No, that's just impossible. To tell the truth, I'm doing well to get my face washed and fall into bed at the end of one of those tour days! I'm planning to get back to work tomorrow. Since I've been away from it for such a long time, the book (the fourth of the Cottage Tales) will be cold. I've got some plot problems (just too much material in it!), and hope that I now have enough perspective on it so that I can clean out the "extras" and stow them away for another book. And even though I wasn't actually writing while I was gone, I was thinking. I've come up with a slightly different plot angle, so I'm going to play with that, turn it around, tease it, tickle it, see what happens. Talking about the books is fun, yeah. But it will be good to get back to the real work again. That's what makes me feel alive.
Reading note. A lot of writing is readjusting your perspective: deciding what is worth keeping, finding the spot that has energy, or the one that is deadly dull and going back to make more of it.--Bonni Goldberg