Joy and Pain!

Whoa!

I am in the middle of a new novel that I really like. I anticipate having the first draft of it complete real soon. The working title is woefully uninspiring, so I won't even mention it, but the premise and the thrust are deep! I keep revisiting the character chart of my female protagonist though because she is very evasive right now, not at all forthcoming, and I'm having to earn her trust for her to really, really open up and let me see what's going on! She seemed almost transparent at first, but the more I discovered about the male protagonist the more uncertain her transparency became. In fact, her transparency was an illusion! They've got me walking the floor!

I'm also moving forward with the first book in my mystery series, (The Cari Pompey Mysteries), How Deep Is Your Love, and anticipate that book being available near the end of the year. Plus, all things being equal, The Knoll Frames, will finally see the light of day in early 2005.

Coming up for air in 2004 has been beyond difficult. It has been a year filled with all manner of challenges, some that at times looked impossible to surmount. In June I experienced an unbelivable stroke of good luck that looked almost too good to be true. One of the big five greeting card companies had taken an interest in my greeting card line, Nudgies http://www.nudgies.com/page4.html, and moved at lightening speed to enter into contract negotiations with me. One of their acquisitions managers advised me that they were going to bypass the proposal stage and he forwarded me a contract with instructions that I just look over it and we'd work out whatever needed to be resolved before it went to both our legal teams for finalization. I was floating on air! Then, a few days later my contact called me and said without prelude or any explanation, that he'd been advised that "the company no longer wanted to pursue my line." And, ladies and gentlemen, that was it! To this day I do not know why. A letter that I received shortly thereafter included this heart-wrenching message: "Even though a lot of us in the company love your work and find it very unique, we have decided that we cannot pursue your work any longer. My apologies for this error. Some of us as XXXX jumped the gun on this project. Unfortunately, our company cannot use your work in our lines." This seemed extremely late in the game for them to make that discovery! They had been reviewing my work for months and it had gone through layers and layers of people internally before they approached me about acquisition. I'm still trying to figure that one.

But, that was that, and life went on, and I'm a thousand times a better person as a result of it. One thing I learned beyond a doubt is that the cliche 'if it sounds too good to be true it probably is' is true.