Writers, Health, and a Writers Imagination

I believe writers are either the best at handling illness or the worst. Of course anytime any illness occurs in ourselves or families, we start researching. What could it be? What is the best treatment? Is this something that I can treat without a doctor? Sometimes this works out, and other times it just adds terror to our lives.

At one time I actually wondered if I had the Plague. Hey, quit laughing. Doctors were seeing cases showing back up at the time and the symptoms fit. I went to doctor after doctor trying to find out what was wrong, and they were baffled. I took many rounds of antibiotics the various doctors prescribed which caused even more problems, went to several specialists, and had an MRI of my brain. It was through my research that I discovered that many of my symptoms could be caused by nasty food allergies. I went in for a food allergy test, of course that doctor messed up and just did an environment allergy test which I didn’t want. I had already paid for the test, so I just lost that money. I went to a different doctor and had the test I wanted done. Sure enough I was allergic to legumes, and soy was making my life miserable since it is hidden in a lot of foods. Changes to my diet made a world of difference. This took care of at least half my symptoms. If I hadn’t researched, would the doctors have finally stumbled on this? I don’t know, but I would have suffered even longer waiting for the right doctor to discover it. The rest of my symptoms still baffle the doctor. All I know is it isn’t Lupus, even though it fits the symptoms . . .

This week my father started telling me that he could no longer take his blood sugar test on his right hand because it tested wrong. When questioned it turned out his blood from his right hand was testing higher. Now I will admit, I thought he was delusional. Blood flowing through the body should be the same, right? Well, doing what a writer does, I hit the search engines. What do you know, the dominant hand can have a different reading, but it’s the one he should be testing on. People have reported getting numbers 30-40 points higher in their dominant hands. Your dominant hand is more likely to reflect the more recent changes in your blood sugar because of increased blood flow. He’s not going to like it when I tell him the higher number is the one he should have recorded.

My Bios Are Mind-numbing

My editors often ask me to write new bios for books, websites, newsletters, etc. Since I’m a fiction writer who sits at a desk many hours, and a daughter who cares for her elderly parents, my life is pretty boring. I’m not a detective, doctor, or lawyer who writes as a fun hobby. I sit, type, research, copy-edit, and type some more. I’ve been married to the same good man for more than 30 years and have two sweet grown daughters who are teachers like my mom was. I have four dogs, two of which are young pups and are driving me crazy trying to housebreak them. I’m too soft. I can’t just crate them all the time and listen to them cry.

I cook when I have time and have fun coming up with my own recipes, usually by accident because I didn’t have time to go shopping and didn’t have what the recipe calls for.

Today I worked for a few hours on the computer, went out to pick tomatoes so I could take some to my parents, then drove to their house to check on them. I have to bathe my mom. She has Alzheimer’s and has forgotten how to even shower by herself. I know it disturbs her when I help her bathe, it disturbs me, too, but it’s the only way it’ll get done. My dad is in his 80’s, hard of hearing, and life confuses him. My mom took care of all the extra things in life for him for 50 years and now she can’t. My brother and I try to handle all that we can for them, because it’s just too much for my dad. Today his dryer quit working. I helped him hang the wet clothes around in the house. Luckily my brother can fix appliances. On my way home I stopped by his house to see if I should get a new dryer. He is going to go out there to check and see if the old one is worth fixing. If not, I’ll be shopping for a new dryer. It’s four in the afternoon before I realize I haven’t had breakfast yet. Where has the time gone?

This life isn’t something that makes an entertaining bio. The only thing entertaining in my life at this time is within the fiction I write. Why couldn’t I have been a rocket scientist who writes as a hobby? With that I could write an entertaining bio.

I won’t even mention trying to come up with a new publicity photo. SIGH!

Huckleberry Finished

ISBN: 0758225687
Format: Hardcover, 304pp
Publisher: Kensington Publishing Corporation
Pub. Date: November 01, 2009

I really like this cover. It's fun and really fits the book. I'll be writing more about this book closer to November.

Mighty Big Ears You Have

My daughter told Nicki and Nora at six weeks that they were going to need to start doing ear exercises to get them to stand up properly. Honestly I thought they would have ears that hung down as dogs, but they’ve been doing their exercises. As you can see at ten weeks later their ears are up. I swear if there’s a good wind little Nicki will blow away.

Hit By the Japanese Spammer

スパム My blog was finally hit by Sexy the Japanese spammer that has already hit everyone else’s blog. I truly do not understand the purpose of this. It took me an hour to delete it off all the pages. Translation at Google didn’t clear up the purpose of this. It translated into random words. It did give me a chance to respond to some of the bloggers that I hadn’t gotten around to. Seems like I run around lately like a chicken with its head cut off. Do people say that anymore? It was one of my grandmother’s sayings.

Hope everyone is having a great summer.

Rereading Overload

Lately we’ve had a sudden influx of books that need editing. I barely finish one when another comes in. The last couple days we’ve had three novels arrive FedEx that are in the page proof stage. For those of you who don’t know what page proofs are, they are preliminary versions of publications. They are unbound, and in some cases electronic. They are created as part of the proofreading and copyediting processes, but can be used for promotional and review purposes also. At this stage most of the mistakes should be already corrected. Usually mistakes we find are from what was corrected in copy edit stage and entered incorrectly. At this point I’ve read the book so many times that it is sometimes hard to catch mistakes. This would be my last chance to catch a mistake. It really bothers me when something stupid doesn't get fixed. For example in Frankly My Dear, I’m Dead I did not catch that I had Margaret Mitchell’s husband down as John Walsh. His name is John Marsh. I knew this, but for some reason my brain didn’t catch it. That still bugs me. Let’s hope my brain is sharper this week. I'd better eat some fish.

Killer Crab Cakes

Publisher: NAL Trade (September 29, 2009)
ISBN-10: 0451228367
ISBN-13: 978-0451228369

I wasn't sure what to expect for a cover with the title Killer Crab Cakes. I visualized a crab waving around a gun or knife. No crabs, but it is a nice colorful cover. The book is set in Rockport, Texas where James and I spent a month researching and working. He actually wrote a book and a half while were were down there while I researched, plotted, and cooked seafood. I'm much, much slower at this process than he is. It took a second trip down there to finish writing the book. Unfortunately we couldn't spend a second month down there. The second trip was just for a week, but the last touches were put on the book in Rockport.