It has been three long years that I have let my website wither. My excuse? Life got in the way. A car accident buggered my already fragile back; my mother died; my husband and I bought, ran, and then closed a small fair trade gift store; I wrote a horror novel and started on a paranormal historical novel; I published my first collection of poetry; we travelled to Ireland, Scotland, Spain, Morocco, and of course, our second home–Sicily, and we were in 68 days of lockdown in Italy during the first wave of COVID-19.

I had been writing intermittently, but other than the horror novel (which I’m hoping may be out next year), I hadn’t really focused on any one project. Then, a few weeks ago I began a vampire novel. Not something I ever thought I would do, but here I am, probably 1/2 way into my first draft and I am loving this toothy girl! She is one tough cookie who has no idea how tough she is. And voodoo! I am learning so much about voodoo. The novel takes place in New Orleans so I have been researching my butt off because it is very important to me to represent it in a respectful and accurate manner.

One of the things you have to do when you are writing a vampire novel is to establish the R.O.V. or Rules of Vampire-ness. Wikipedia has a truly exhaustive list of all the possible characteristics of being a vampire. Does your vampire burn in the daylight? Does your vampire fly? Or shapeshift? Is she repelled by garlic, holy Christian objects, or running water? So many things to decide! It’s what we call world building. World building got me thinking, and I realized how, in each writer, there is at least a part of them that has an ENORMOUS ego. How can we believe that we can create anything that could rival this world we live in? And, once created, share it with the rest of our world, confident that everyone else will love it too? No, you can recognize the writers walking down the street by their massive craniums!

But seriously, there is an aspect of this in all writers and as I thought about this yesterday, I wrote down the following:

So I will close this little post here as I am off to a different file on my computer in which I can be as goddam godlike as I please.

TTFN