It's brutal times trying to stay up to date and keep followers these days!
The three day trip of trains planes and automobiles with the puppy was a success. All of the anxiety planning worked out fairly smoothly. I spent a week helping him feel settled at dad's house, but it being such a big space, with big windows, and a big yard with squirrel and rabbit habitats hidden in trees and vines, he found a lot to distract himself. He's been more barky and vocal, something dad wants to work on with him, but also probably requires time to settle in and get over the extreme stress of such a big move. I visited the vet to make sure they had his full history, and knew that he spoke three languages. They loved him. He's full of energy and lots of personality.
On the personal front, coming out of the past few months of so much stress, I have all of the rest of my life to catch up on, and prioritise. I came back to start back into my first few weeks on the new job post training, and I'm bristling being in a corporate environment with a lot of different levels of competence/ personalities. I've had to contend with a myriad of dating options: ex-boyfriend who wanted to connect, younger man I met, and then a guy friend from uni who created some chaos previously (was one of the trifecta of 'perfect storm' factors that inspired my novel). In addition, I had a zoom date with the older woman undergoing grief who has been a muse, and connected with a younger woman through a dating app while home. The last one has been the easiest to connect with, despite the distance and not being able to meet in person. We had our first zoom date last night that went four hours and we barely realised the time had passed. I planned one activity where we could each share a virtual experience from our life experience to help us get to know each other - it resulted in us finding a lot of art interests in common, and her kind of being very similar to my dad. She lost her dog in the spring, and I've seriously considered connecting her with my dad to help give the puppy more snuggles and exercise, and she's interested. Since she's travelling for the holidays, it's a matter of the right time for her to actually meet my dad, I expect. That seems like it will move in a really positive direction.
And I have wanted it to be a priority this year to stop dating and to focus on a relationship, and this might be that situation that I can settle into and cease the stress and frustrations of the single dating life.
That's a lot of news already! Advent started at the end of my trip. I ended up in a pedicure salon for some serious care help needed, but listening to canned Christmas music. Since it is the season, however, I would rather select music I actually want to listen to, and I can share that with you:
One reason I've been slow to write a new blog post is that I have some really great material but just haven't had the time to put together the blog post yet. That is something you can look forward to! I have several of my novels which I have sketched out on my website. However, you might be aware I had a first novel I worked on in my 20s, but had lost any trace of any manuscript. Now that I am into figuring out how a novel works with my current WIP, I have wanted to look back and see if I could rework that novel to make it work. The story is that during my first gen writing life, which consisted of a lot of poetry, I started sketching out these characters. I did find that I wrote about twenty pages of that iteration. However, after the abusive toxic relationship situation of my late 20s, I found a new launching off point and dove into a much more significant novel based on some similar characters as the first iteration, but a very different book. In graduate school, I described it to my Vic lit prof as a modern Middlemarch style translation for conservative cultures of certain discussions, and he was excited about it. I had lost all digital copies with the hard drive problems I had with my laptop, and knew of one hard copy I had printed out which might be somewhere in my father's house. He had even looked in a specific archival box for me where I thought it might be, and not located it. I had a horrible discovery that he had thrown out a lot of important life stage memorabilia since I had been home last, but I did find one crate which had the archival folder with all of the iterative notes and full manuscript of this effort. It does appear I actually have two different books in the contents. I am not quite sure what to do with them now, given the state of the writing, but the first step is to digitize the large partial manuscript.
I have videos of this discovery on my new Instagram account. You can see them here!
https://www.instagram.com/sylvia.woodham/saved/writing/18258436048112524/
I could also mention that based on my professional work, I also feel elligible to write a Non-fiction book that would be more specifically in one English speaking market, and would require a different agent than those I've been considering, so definitely something to keep in mind when submitting. As well as it would be under my non-pen name, and I am sure that is something a qualified agency could assist and support me in understanding those marketing decisions.
You can look forward when I get to that effort to hearing more about these works that were lost and now found!
Happy Third Advent of Joy!