And more traumas on the email front...

After finally getting things working (or so I thought) on the laptop, I started the Great Office Cleanup Project. I have been merrily emptying out several years' worth of ... stuff... from my little office (details and pix over on the publisher blog... follow link to the left), not worrying that my main computer was unplugged (after all, it was out of the way, my desk was slowly emerging from under the debris, and I could check my email). Hah! Turns out the messages that were arriving on the laptop represented only a random selection of messages that had been sent my way.

This, I discovered, when I set up my desktop in what was formerly my dining room (nothing like starting on a new room when an old one just gets too full!), fired up my email program, and was promply buried in a deluge of 450 emails dating back to February 1st!!!!!!!!! What gives? How is it even possible that certain emails (and quite a few of them, at that) slipped through the ethers quite happily while others stalled out... somewhere...

Egads. My friend, Richard from Chilliwack, your note was one of those caught up in this dreadful state of affairs... Please accept this, my public apology. I shall sign off here and write to you forthwith.

Oh the frustrations of technology.... more email gone missing! The server in Japan where my mail resides has been awfully flakey since January 1. Today, once again, mail has gone astray, never arriving at my inbox. So, if you happen to be a person who a) reads this blog and b) wrote to me this afternoon, please resend...

On a happier note, keyed in changes to the first 68 pages or so of the second draft of TI-3 earlier today. Some of the progress on this novel is being tracked over at the other blog (Journal of a Publisher and Children's Author - link over to the left). Since I am getting heartily sick of calling this book TI-3, or Tarragon Threee, or The War in the Tarragon Woods Except My Publisher Doesn't Like This Title So it Will Probably Change, if you are good at titles, please send me a few suggestions! Thanks in advance, oh wonderful titlers out there!

Oh man, what have I done? Started another blog???? However, as I thought might happen, with Diane's goading, posts are appearing! Not only that, with Diane's encouragement, my office is slowly being excavated. After a very long time nursing my mother, I have returned home and ever since have been digging through piles and piles and piles of papers, folders, sticky notes, stacks of books, heaps of bills (many not even opened - sorry about that people who are waiting for money!)

It is pretty amazing how life just stopped there for a while. If anyone from CWILL pops by, the cheque is going into the mail... I promise. That is, right after I find my chequebook. Who writes cheques any more these days? I do humbly apologize for being such a delinquent member... If it is any consolation, at least half a dozen other organizations (SCBWI, Women Writing the West, the National Pony Express Association, the International Reading Association among them) also lapsed last year... 2005 promises to be much better. My dear mother is now in residence at a nursing home close by and this means I am finally getting back to normal - not that normal was ever highly efficient, but last year was quite extraoridinary in terms of its complete and utter chaos.

Writing from Paradise - Literally!

There really is no excuse not to write - I am being completely indulged at the moment. Diane of Sono Nis Press graciously invited me up to the Slocan Valley to stay in the writer's retreat at the most glorious spot in the valley - on Paradise Valley Road.

So, I'm writing, working busily away on the first set of revisions to the third Tarragon Island book (thanks, Laura and Diane, for preliminary feedback!). Even more exciting (revisions could not exactly be called fun) is the early work we are doing on a new historical novel set in the Slocan Valley. For more information about this new project, click on the link over to the left that will lead you to a blog Diane and I will be keeping as we work our way from initial idea to arrival of book. Since Diane is far better organized than I am, there may actually be a chance that the publishing blog we do together will be updated on a regular basis (if only for Diane to say, "Nikki? It's your turn... again... still..."