The best laid plans…

I meant to start blogging on a regular basis, but my plans conflicted with my reality. Life, work and other priorities have gotten in the way. Not all of it is bad though. In fact, I’ve accomplished quite a bit as far as the writing is concerned; earlier this year I published my first novel, Somerset Grove. It’s a family saga about three generations of women from a small Jamaican town. The story takes them on a journey between Jamaica and Canada as each woman struggles with family conflicts and personal challenges that keep them from living the lives that they want. Check me out on Amazon: http://amzn.to/14H7BaA or Barnes and Noble: http://bit.ly/XfZf5s and Kobo for my fellow Canadians: http://bit.ly/15EYkfC.

As far as my other novel is concerned (the one that I lost – see my last blog entry, “Back again…”), I had every intention of getting back to work on it, but it was slow going. I think I was struggling with trying to remember what I wrote word-for-word or at least scene-by-scene, but it didn’t work. I finally had to admit to myself that I wasn’t really ready to get back to it yet, so I let it rest and started a new novel.  It turned out to be a good strategy.  I’m about two-thirds of the way through the rough draft of this third book and equally important, I’m actually getting excited about returning to the second story. Now that I’ve let go of what it was supposed to be, I’m able to think about where else I could go with it.

In the meantime, the book promotion for Somerset Grove is going well (yay!) and I was finally able to take a much needed vacation to the Dominican Republic this summer. I can’t say enough about taking time to rest and rejuvenate, so more on that later. Most importantly, I’m learning to enjoy the journey.  There will always be bumps along the road. Being able to navigate them and move beyond them is the key, so off I go…again.

Of course, I’m not going to leave you without letting you know what’s on my iTunes today – it’s Positive Vibrations by Bob Marley and the Wailers. I’m in a good place and enjoying life, so I’m following the advice of the first line of that song.  “Live if you want to live!”