I'm back! Again.

I'm back. This is my first posting since October and I plan to get back to it on a regular basis. But first let me update you on what's been happening since October.




First and foremost, my Winter Project -- battling prostate cancer -- is nearly over. Thank the Lord!

I have had 41 daily radiation treatments and only two remain. Thursday's will be the last and after that I should be cured. At least that is the hope and prayer. I won't know anything for about a month, not until doctors draw blood and check my PSA levels. They should be near zero. The side effects are quite tiring but they should also start to diminish and then completely go away after treatment ends. I should be back to normal -- and with me, who really knows what that is -- within a couple of weeks. Thankfully, everything still works (and that's my last word on that!).

I entered National Novel Writing Month back in November and won. I reached the 50,000-word mark on Nov. 15, and finished the novel at 54,000 words four days later. I met a number of writers, both online and in person, and try to stay in contact with new friends.

AN UNTIDY AFFAIR is a murder mystery about a struggling private eye in Philadelphia in May 1985 who is asked by a pretentious socialite to investigate whether her husband is having an affair. He is having the affair but what the detective also finds is murder. And the victim is the socialite's lover, whose badly burned body is found amidst the ruins on the city block police destroyed when they bombed the house of the radical group MOVE.

Now five drafts later, AFFAIR is just under 70,000 words, a little short for the mystery genre -- the target is at least 75,000 -- but it is what it is.

I have started querying agents but no bites yet. I will keep you posted.

Members of my critique group loved it, which was a welcome surprise. It is in first person, and marks my first venture out of a third-person narrative.

At the moment, I am concentrating on AFFAIR and querying agents, but soon I will have to move on. I haven't decided whether to return to THE DEATH OF ART, a murder mystery set in the art world. I love the story and the characters. I was half way through the novel last summer and fall when, first, I had to deal of the knowledge of my cancer and, then, I entered NaNoWriMo. I haven't decided whether to return to DOA or to let it sit for a while and start a new project. More on that later.

I am still an officer in the Speed City chapter of Sisters in Crime and our anthology, BEDLAM AT THE BRICKYARD, has an early May publication date. I am looking forward to that for a variety of reasons, not the least of which being that once it is published I will no longer merely be an aspiring author. I will be a published -- though still struggling -- author. (One step at a time.) My short story, THE MISSING CD, is the 12th of the 15 stories in the anthology. We are still working on the marketing and don't have a date yet for the launch party. Unfortunately, The Mystery Company closed its doors in February so we are looking at a Barnes and Noble in Carmel. (I worked for Jim Huang at The Mystery Company for several months before its closing and truly enjoyed it. I learned a lot about how the industry works from Jim, who is tremendously knowledgeable. He will be missed in Indy.)

I have several friends entered in ABNA this year -- the semi-finalists are being named today -- and I continue to root for them. Plus my friend Gae Polisner's book is slowly moving toward publication next year, the wonderful Milton McGriff had a successful book signing and discussion of his novel, 2236, last month, and the delightfully talented Hank Phillippi Ryan last month published DRIVE TIME, the latest novel in her Charlotte McNally series.

I will try to touch on many of the above topics in the weeks to come. But for now, I am glad it is spring and I look forward to a productive year of writing.

Thanks for reading and keep writing.