Hello After a Long Silence

Hello out there. I’ve been totally neglecting my blog for so long that it’s probably pointless to begin using it again. But in fact, there’s so much going on, that I want to. So here I am.

In the good news column: The first nice piece of news is that my new novel, The Appassionata, which is just a little over halfway there, has garnered its first recognition out in the world. I entered the opening pages in a Ficiton Contest at the Mendocino Coast Writers Conference and I just learned this morning that my manuscript took 2nd place. I’m very pleased. This means I’ll get to read at the conference and get the piece published in the Todd Point Review. That’s great news and goes with the thrust of my emotional energy these days, which is really full-on engaged in the new story I’m telling.

Second piece of good news: I’ve been invited to be a presenter/facilitator at the Big Sur Writers Conference next March.

Third piece of good news: I’ve been invited to give a reading and a workshop for “Soundings,” a Mendocino Coast Writers Conference bi-yearly event. This is also for next March. Fortunately, there wasn’t a conflict in dates, so I get to do both, almost back-to-back.

Further good news: I’ve been teaching writing and really enjoying it. I have an ongoing class at the Gallery Bookstore in Mendocino, which we’re about halfway through. It’s a critique group and really a very good class. I’m enjoying it immensely. I also taught a daylong workshop on historical fiction in Ukiah a few weeks back and that was a great success too. My students gave me a standing ovation at the end. I loved teaching it.

I’ve picked up work editing as well. I have two authors right now who have entrusted me with their fiction manuscripts and I just got asked to serve on a very interesting dissertation committee at my old alma mater, California Institute of Integral Studies in San Francisco. I’m very pleased about that, it gives me the status of adjunct faculty at CIIS and helps, I think, with the energies I’m directing toward getting to teach a class there.

There’s a TON of stuff to say about Paris. I’m leaving Sept. 12 for a three month stay. I’ll write about in my next entry.