FOR WANT OF A TITLE

I have trouble with titles. If I can write a novel, why can't I compose a clever title? Sometimes I can't even think of a title for a post. But March is behind us, and I got through April Fool's Day without being made one, as far as I know.

Allow me one more toot of the horn. Author and fellow blogger, Judy Croome posted a lovely review of NOTES FROM UNDERGROUND on Amazon and Goodreads. Her review gives you a brief snapshot of what's under the cover. Speaking of, we were all enticed by the front cover, I, so much, it took me a week to notice the back. Make sure you check out the back cover. No, I don't have an image of that to share, but it's sheer genius from the folks at the Literary Lab.

From the flip side.....I don't know a damn thing about my illness. I am not even sure what it is that hurts....


Michelle from the L.L. recently wrote an interesting post titled Where Have All The Bloggers Gone? Maybe we're just all bogged down. I don't know how some of you find the time to be as prolific as you are. And of course, the more you comment on others, the more comments you will receive, but keep in mind for every comment you receive, ten or more have visited, read, absorbed and moved on. I myself read a lot more than I comment. Sorry. I just don't have the time. The writing comes first.

I write before the sun comes up, make coffee, feel guilty, and write some more. I move my laptop to the couch to escape the blinding rays coming through the kitchen window. I drink coffee and read what I've written and pencil edit and drink more coffee. I feel guilty. I look at my blog roll, dream of agents and editors and what it would be to have a deadline (which I would never fail to meet, I might add). Lord, give me deadlines and a contract and a book of my own. Give me give me give me give me. Selfish little writer. Self-centered, obsessed little writer.

Just don't ask me how that novel is coming. Don't ask me what the current one is about. Oh, the questions people ask us….. Are you still writing that novel????? But what do you really do? Elspeth Antonelli at The Blood-Red Pencil says, “the best answer I’ve ever given to this question is, I kill people."

OK. It's true. I kill them and I bury them in the compost pile, but you can't talk about a work in progress. It would jinx it. The work would dissipate like chaff on a breeze. Talking about it contaminates it, like plutonium in the jet stream from failed nuclear power plants. Radioactivity in the milk and in the vegetables? Oh Lord, save us from ourselves. Man is the beast, as Deon Meyer poignantly shows us in his novel (my current read), BLOOD SAFARI, an adventurous journey through South Africa.

Money controls everything. People are not truly capable of conservation though they make all the right noises. It's just not in our nature. Whether we're talking about pumping oil or chopping down trees for firewood, the environment will be the loser. Nothing can stand in the path of man.


We do what we can. We plant crops and grow vegetables without chemicals and raise happy chickens that can scratch in the dirt and cattle that are free to graze under the open sky, but we can't control what's in the air that we breathe and in the water that comes from the well. No farm is an island, no city dweller alone in their condo, no country in control of their borders. The Earth is a circle of one. What happened in Japan happened to you and it happened to me.

It'll bog you down, if you let it, and there is no title for that.