Yearning for spring

Only sixty five days until the Equinox, but that is too far away.  I did a survey of our food stores and found out that I am on the last bag of dried tomatoes and the last quart of frozen green beans from my garden.  There's only a pint left of the leeks and a quart of the okra I scored at the Seymour farmers' market in August.  The Stellick family gave us brussels sprouts from their garden but we'll be eating the last frozen pint of those today.

In less than a week, summer will be over, at least in my freezer.  I yearn for the end of April when I can go out scavenging for wild asparagus again.  Meanwhile, I look over the seed catalogs and plan a much bigger vegetable garden.  

Places to go.

I thought I had all the performances for the summer trip, then two more showed up, bringing my total to 25. As of today,  I am not working that hard on arranging more.  I want to have some time to look around and see the United States.  Some of the places I haven't seen before and intend to take a look at this summer:

Teddy Roosevelt National Park in North Dakota.  I've had to pass by it so many times.  I have two days to camp there this summer.

Devil's Tower in Wyoming.  I've been close to it during my South Dakota performances, but never quite made it that far.  Will there be any close encounters there?

Zion and Bryce National Parks in Utah.  Everyone I know who has visited them tells me I must go and see them.

The redwood forests of California.  In his last days, my father told us his one regret was never seeing the redwoods.  I won't die with that regret.

The Pacific coast line in northern California and Oregon.  I lived in Los Angeles for a year, but never got to taken Highway 101 along the ocean.  I plan on going across the mountains from Reno, Nevada, then going from Eureka to Gold Beach.

Oh, the places I'll go and the things that I'll see!

A Newly Published Author

I am entering a new world of technology.   As of this morning, my e-novel was published on Amazon.com.   It took me two weeks of tinkering, but it's done.   Some things of note:

1.  I've learned that nothing is easy.  I never did figure out how to justify the right margin, but I will.  There were two points of view in the story, separated by spacing in my manuscript.  Most of the time that worked out but once in a while the paragraphs run together.  I'll have to figure out how to correct that the next time I try an e-book. There were, as expected, some words I should have corrected despite all my proofreading.

2.  I like running the show.  There were no agents, editors, or publishers involved, and that meant no rejection letters.  Neither will there be autograph sessions at book stores.  I learned to hate those when my first book was published.

3.  I like the immediate feedback of comments and sales reports.  When my children's book was published, I got  very little back from the publisher in the way of readers thoughts, and royalties were reported quarterly.   Now I will find out about the book sales every day.  I've already sold three on day one.

After taking a day off, I will begin the task of deciding which of my many unpublished projects will next go to the Internet.  Will it be the story of my amazing Jake Dog, the best dog ever?  Will it be tales from my trip to China?   Will be it be the novelized story based on adventures I had in Scotland?  Or the collection of extremely depressing Christmas stories?  The year stretches before me filled with opportunities.  

My back yard in Winter

Self-publishing

This morning, I finally managed to self-publish an e-book on Amazon.com, at least I think I did.  I won't know for sure until tomorrow when it becomes available for download to the public.  At that point, I will find out whether I did the thing properly and will reveal all to readers.  It took me two full days just to figure out how to indent a paragraph so at this point, it's wait and see. 


I've been working on this project for years.  It was the first novel I wrote, a romance that reached its final draft status around 1985.  It was rejected by the publishers because I was "too funny". They asked me to re-write the thing to make the hero "stronger".  That's the way the genre was back then, with heroes who were perilously close to be abusive.  I couldn't do a re-write like that and put it aside.  


I've written several collections of essays, a couple of novels, and more since then.  If this e-project works out, I'll take another look at them.  I like the idea of avoiding editors and agents and working things out on my own. 

Last Snickerdoodle

I ate the last Christmas snickerdoodle yesterday.  I think there may be some fudge hidden in the depths of the freezer but I can ignore that and throw it out come spring.

It is time to be serious about losing the holiday weight.  Today, I will swim in the morning, take yoga class in the afternoon, and work out at the fitness center tonight.   For lunch, I thought salmon would be a good choice with homemade vegetable soup for supper.

I feel virtuous already but that will wear off by the end of the week.

China memories

In 2007, I taught English to Chinese middle school students in a summer school in Nanjing and that  included a tour of Inner Mongolia and various places around northern China.   It was the first organized tour I've been on and will probably be the last.  I like traveling on my own, getting off the beaten track, getting to know folks. That tour was endless miles on a bus, endless shopping, and many unintelligible lectures.  The mantra was "Stay with the group."   Not my thing at all.

I yearned to tramp around the countryside, talk to farmers and merchants in small towns to see what they had to say, do some birdwatching, and find places of solitude to gather my thoughts. Instead, we went from city to city.  The noise level was intolerable.  Much of the time, I was sick from air pollution.  

As usual, I kept a daily journal of the trip and wound up with 30,000 words and many photos on CDs.  Armando, from Houston, Texas, who was on that tour, found this  Storytelling Trails and Tales blog and contacted me to see if I could send him that journal.  He has photos,too, and would like to combine them with my words. As I re-read my journal entries, I realized there is something there.   I think that once I have figured out how to publish my e-book novel, I will put our words and photos together for a non-fiction travelogue.

Someday, I intend to go back to China and wander on my own terms.