Arising from the Near-Dead?

I did not realize how long it has been. Turns out I have taken a much longer sabbatical than I planned or anticipated. I was going to do a short break in my usual down time from around December 1 until that midway point between the winter solstice and the spring equinox which falls in early February. As the Scots poet Burns put it, "The best laid plann of mice and men gang aft aglee." Mine sure did!

Right after the first of January, we had to have our oldest dog put down. She was really my brother's but we share a home and she'd been part of my clan for quite awhile since I moved in with them on April 1, 2009! We think Beebee had some kind of internal cancer but she had been failing for awhile and attempted  treatments were not doing much good. When she stopped eating and got 'that look' in her eyes, we knew it was time. The other four moped and missed her for a bit but soon closed ranks and moved on.

Our next issue was a really nasty case of the flu. Despite having had the shots--they finally admitted the vaccine was less than 40% effective!--we got sick, majorly sick. Never had to go to the hospital but took every home remedy in the book and drank lots of hot lemonade and rum toddies to dampen the awful croupy cough enough to sleep some. It hung around for a good month and left us feeling totally trashed. Then as a follow up, I got some kind of a digestive problem and ate little to nothing for about three weeks and did not dare get too far from the facilities. Peppermint oil finally calmed my innards and I've used it ever since as it also keeps my intermittent IBS at bay quite well.

So now it is March and I go for my belated annual eye exam. Yes, I am still battling the dry eye and allergy eye issues but I also learned that I was ripe for cataract surgery! My doctor tried valiantly to ease the dry eyes as much as possible with a variety of ideas--more time passed--but the surgeon finally decided to go ahead so I had the two eyes done on May 3 and May 17. That was an adventure also. My right eye did fine and is now 20-20 except for close up, the normal cataract removal 'cure' for myopia ,but the left one was worse on both myopia and astigmatism so I find I still have to have correction there. Actually I do not mind--trying to keep track of readers and get used to no close vision was driving me nuts! I got my new glasses in mid June and then had a really bad allergic conjunctivitis spell. Finally as the summer rainy season started with an increases in humidty, I can actually see clearly most of the time!

That being the case I have crawled out of  my den like the groundhog and looked around. What, it's summer? You mean 2018 is over half gone? Yikes! Anyway, despite my semi-absence, things have been moving along.

My wonderful new publisher, JMS Books, has been steadily reissuing my favorite stories from the old Amber Quill library. Loose Id, which had begun to reissue my popular Canine Cupid tales in groups of two republished with one new story announced their closure early this year and my rights were returned in late spring so those also will now be at JMS. I've got lots of new covers to share and I'll be doing that shortly.

One more installment in my "Perils of Pauline" year was the total crash of my computer about three weeks ago. With all the other issues I had failed to do the backups, even had not copied a lot of things to my flash drives, so I lost a lot. We're shopping around some of the data recovery firms to see if we can find one that I can afford and maybe send the old hard drive away and hope I can get a bunch of photos and writing projects back in a usable form but no guarantees. Among them were the first scenes for two new canine cupid stories, one historical and one contemporary. I am trying to reconstruct them in my mind and then get some words down again but it is like pulling hen's teeth.

Anyway, more than enough whines. Actually I am not whining as I know the old hippie saying is true. Yes, shit does happen! Sometimes it just comes in bunches like grapes and you have to deal with it, meanwhile hoping the current run of catastrophes has finally reached the end!  Please join me in a fervent prayer to whatever Deities you trust and put faith in that this will prove true!

However you cannot keep an ornery and feisty old Welsh-Irish tale-weaver down so stay tuned and I will do my best to provide regular installments on the creative endeavors of me and my alter ego. Yes, Gwynn Morgan is still around too and trying to resurrect the idea to getting her novels out in new forms via Smashwords and bringing  her long-delayed Copper Stars of Cochise trilogy to an end with the third never completed tale!

What, no pictures? Hmm. Okay--my two canines deserve a view since they are part of the inspiration for future Canine Cupid stories. Behold, Rojito and Ginger in repose. And the late Beebee, about a year ago before her decline was too serious
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