Sorry for my lengthy absence, rumors of my abandonment of the blogging world have been highly exaggerated. Instead, I’ve been lost in another year, another century, in fact. 1849. I’m sure you’ve gathered by now that the historical romance I’m writing revolves around a pivotal event in September/October of that year. On September 27th, 1849, Edgar Allan Poe stepped off a boat in Baltimore Harbor. On October 3rd, he was discovered, ill, disheveled and disoriented, at Ryan’s Tavern by J.W. Walker of The Baltimore Sun. What happened over those fateful five days remains a mystery, even today. In Nevermore, my solution is sinister, horrific, and involves voodoo and a zombie or two…

The first two drafts of Nevermore have been completed. I’m thrilled with the way the story evolved and am doing the last bits of historical research and the really hard grunt work of tightening and editing…for example, just removing extraneous thats took 1.5 HOURS today. I then ran the document through Autocrit to grab all the repeated words and phrases as well as overused words. I’ll be using the printout to polish Nevermore to within an inch of it’s life and I have to be quick about it. I only have the rest of this week and half of next before school is out (groan).

Thank goodness I’ll have the kids home for only 1 full week before our park district begins Summer Day Camp. I’ve signed me the boys up for 5 weeks of freedom activities. Even better, I’ve convinced Drama Teen to apply for a volunteer position helping at said summer camp. Here’s hoping she gets a job (fingers crossed). Then I could be rid of ALL my children for many hours a day (insert evil laugh) and get lots of writing done ~ important as I have two erotic novellas to pound out in those five weeks and get started on the plot of another full-length novel, which may or may not be a follow-on to Nevermore.

I *hope* to regain my regular blogging schedule next week…