(click on image to enlarge)

I can die a happy woman now. What ever horrors may come my way be damned, for at this moment in time I am deliriously happy. My favorite author responded to my email and sent me (lil ol me) a personal response. Oh happy day! The joy of it! Only a true book lover could possibly understand the joy and utter thrill of getting a personal email from Marilyn Sachs. My daughter could understand the thrill of it because she was weaned on Marilyn Sachs books. And my granddaughter can understand the joy as well because for her eighth birthday in June I passed one of my sets of Marilyn Sach’s books down to her. (A Gwanma has to keep a set for herself after all).

I find when I am in a writing mood I tend to read a great deal. Hey, I need all the inspiration I can get these days. So I have been spending my crappy summer reading under my eyes go blurry. I’ve even been reading in the middle of the night with my special book light. And yes, I’ve been writing. And writing. And writing. I am afraid to say that my writers block is gone because it might come back. But I have the wonderful problem of not having enough hours in the day because I have so much I want to write but not enough time to write it. Every writer should have that problem.


(click on image to enlarge)

I am working on the project that is near and dear to my heart; The Night Watchman. Any of you who have known me long enough know that the Night Watchman is a glorious tale of a woman who moves to Wilmington NC and meets the night watchman for the Battleship North Carolina. They become friends, and perhaps much more. And yes, they do fall in love. A true fact is that there are two ghosts on the Battleship NC. The real night watchman, Danny Bradshaw, claims that one of the ghosts is a playful, harmless blonde haired young man. The other ghost emits evil and is not a nice guy at all. Or maybe he is just ticked off at being offed when he was in the middle of taking a shower (when the torpedo hit in WWII). Both of these ghosts make their way into my book and play a major role in the novel. I have a mere 98,000 words written at this point of which probably 80,000 are sheer crap.


(click on image to enlarge)

One of the problems I have been having with the book (for over a year now) is an important scene in gun turret II. That is one area of the ship that I never toured. I toured everything else which was open to the public, but never turret II. So a visit to Wilmington NC is in order very soon. Don’t be surprised if I post some pictures of the hubster and I on the Battleship NC in the next couple of weeks.