March On!

Hi Everyone, I've missed you. The blog has suffered due to an extreme push to get Rainbow Risingout in print. This, I've discovered, is harder than it looks. When I first decided to try publishing on my own instead of going the traditional publishing route, I asked for advice and listened to a lot of sages who had published successfully and soon I was riding high on things like, 'It's a snap!' 'No problem!' 'Follow the instructions - easy as pie.' And the one I really liked, 'You'll have your book up and running like clockwork in a couple of days' YESSSS! Not so fast. It's about three months since I started down this road. I must have really irritated the computer gods. Which doesn't surprise me. I don't speak their language for one thing and you cannot get along in a foreign country if you don't have a rudimentary grasp of the language. We know that. And forget 'RUDIMENTARY' in France. I you spoke it with the same fluency as Racine or Voltaire, or Napoleon for than matter - they still wouldn't understand you. However - I digress. What pray, is a hash tag? Smash Mouth (or is that a punk rock group?)Doesn't matter - no comprendez! So, I took my dilemma to a bunch of fellow writers who had gone this route, and got a variety of well-developed answers from well-developed writers who are as right-brained as I am - all of us trying to be techies! Not only did I get a variety of answers, we all had a variety of different computers which didn't agree with each other. What worked on one was smartly rejected by another. My poor computer which has served me faithfully in composing three books finely snapped under the strain. It's a snap! The mother board went up in a puff of smoke. Huge problem. So then I had to get the new computer up and running like clockwork. This isn't going to happen in a thousand years!! Whole new set of temprementalities embedded this baby. And last week it became so stressed out and infected with virus's and unmentionables, all of them according to my computer fixer, multiplying like rabbits - Trojans?? I thought they were supposed to stop that kind of thing ... but no - in computerville they spread the multiplying diseases like with an intensity never seen before. But as you can see, I'm using the new computer, typing very gently and speaking encouraging words to it as we go. I hope it learns my language very quickly so I'm doing everything I can not to aggravate it. Rainbow Rising is going through the proofing stage and if all proves to be well and not in violation of anyone's codes etc... I will be very happy to be able to present you with this new book - very soon. In the meantime, Miss Kitty has been under my bed for two days - a complete wreck. Her nerves are shot. More on that and the owls tomorrow. Happy March, everyone. I'll see you soon.