Back in the saddle again—

  —and determined to stay here this time.

I want to thank everyone who responded to my post about my dad's death; I appreciate hearing from each of you.

My prolonged absence from the blog this time (sigh) has been due in part to my having come down a week ago with a wicked cold, the sort that makes you sleep eighteen hours a day and wish you could sleep twenty-four. But there's another, more cheerful reason: I've started another blog, which has been taking most of my writing time: writinglandscapes.com.

Landscapes is the name of a novel I've been working on intermittently for a couple of decades now. (Okay, over a decade.) You know how I disappear from the blog for weeks, even months? Well, that's nothing. I've dropped the novel for years at a time. As far as I could tell, when I started working on it last fall again, the most recent additions had been made in the summer of 2007, over three years earlier. (Sigh.)

But thanks once again to husband Steve, the entire first book is now up online, and anyone who wants to can comment on any line or piece or chapter or on the whole dang thing. Then there's the blog, which started as a mere record of the research, writiing, and thinking that goes on, but which has already morphed into a hot zone of postmodern poetics. (All right, a warm zone.) In either case, feel free to check it out if you're feeling both brave and curious.

But before you do, there's one thing you should know about this novel: it's in verse. (Come back, come back!) It's still easy to read! Honest! (Or so I've been told.)

At any rate, I've been going great guns on both novel and blog, so that's where my writing time has gone. I do wonder, sometimes, if I'm out of my mind, starting another blog, but hey! now I've got two to neglect!