- Life has not been treating me very fair lately. I discovered during a recent appointment that a medication I’ve been on for just over a year to treat my diabetes may have damaged my heart. I’ve been feeling off, drained, unwell for over a year. This is the same year during which I’ve been dragging myself along, unable to accomplish much more than to just sit and dream of things I wanted to get done but can’t seem to make any progress in. Not to say this is the reason Dorian 2 isn’t published. There are many reasons for that lack of publication success.
- In order to continue my experiment of publishing books such as Dorian 2 and then Rossyn 1, I’ll need to pay for then acquire Adobe Acrobat. My investigations state this is the program that Kindle is going with. And that’s a wise choice, really. It’s a well-established program which is easy to access if you have the yearly subscription fee which isn’t lightweight. But it has all the power and ability to be The Desktop Publishing Genius to get your book published.
- I’m pooling money to start university in under 3 weeks, and life. So … when I get the money together to add Adobe Acrobat to my life, then I’ll get Dorian 2 out. I’ve already got the book to tell me how to do all of this. One thing is settled even if it’s not purchased.
- As I’m sitting here on this Monday morning wondering why my 50s are so much more stark and confrontational than my 40s were, I’m staring at this bookcase which has set in my house for 50 years. It’s older than me by quite a bit and contains books my great-grandmother left behind as well as some that her daughter, my great aunt left. They all passed to their son and brother, my grandfather on my mother’s side. I found myself looking at this bookshelf yesterday and at a book I hadn’t read in the 50 years it’s sat there. I’d read the ancient copy of Jane Eyre several times, read the Mill on the Floss, Adam Bede, The Dairyman’s Daughter (some bit of religious drivel), and Hawthorne’s House of Seven Gables. For whatever reason this brightly colored book hasn’t been read so I pulled it out of the small wooden shelf of ambiguous age and decided to read it as my mind is being pulled this way and that with the horrors of being 50 and facing extended ill health just as I’m trying to move into a new chapter in my life with university and following a dream I’ve had since I was 13.
- The Amethyst Box written by Anna Katherine Green was printed in 1905 and has my great-grandmother’s name written in exquisite penmanship on the inside page. She wrote her married name because in 1905 women still only existed within a marriage. Her real name was Victoria. I know this because her Bible from 1897 is also on that shelf. Before God, she used her unmarried name.
- Anna Katherine Green is still considered by many to be the mother of detective fiction despite the fact someone else published a detective novel slightly before her. But she went on to write many of these from the late 1800s to the early 1900s and was a legend in the detective novel world. And her book is fabulous. Like the chain on a roller coaster that snatches at the undercarriage and drags the coaster up to the top of the big drop, the first page grabbed me and I can’t believe I haven’t read this before! It’s been wonderful to have this little bit of a distraction in a month where I’m not really writing because my mind is churning as I’m facing appointments and tests and realities I’m not sure I’m ready to confront. But the reality is, more time is going by where I can’t keep on with my experiments. I can’t even send in other works to be copyrighted so I can immediately follow up Dorian 2 with Rossyn 1 and 2. My money is tied up with university and day-to-day expenses. I’m at a stopping place for the moment. I’m uncertain what my future holds but I want it to include me writing more and more and turning this experiment into something else. Something more. What is a dream if you fulfill it and then no one notices?
- For anyone who would like to see what the first detective fiction looked like, many if not all of Anna Katherine Green’s books are available to read online at http://www.gutenberg.org.
1, 2, 3 … Breathe
Published
W. M. Tag Writes 