My, how time flies

I'd originally planned to make this blog a daily thing, then I decided weekly might be better. Then life happened. In the course of a month, I nearly lost my father-in-law, ended up taking over his place in the family business, moved from a sedentary life to one of hard physical labor, and lost almost all my writing time. I also took a bad fall but managed not to break anything.

Went to a local writer's conference this weekend and got some much needed validation about my writing. An agent read the first two pages of one of my mss in a workshop, along with a number of others. Mine was one of only two that she asked to read more. So now I have to polish, print, and get it in the mail tomorrow.

Two sad things this week. The deaths of Terry Schiavo and the Pope. Both received a lot of press, one because it shouldn't have happened, was morally wrong and amounted to murder; the other because it was a loss of a much loved man whose time was up. He got to die with dignity, something Terry was denied. But I'm a great believer in what goes around comes around, and I'm thinking Michael Schiavo will find himself under a microscope, his past, present, and future under intense scrutiny. His children will forever be known as the children of the man who starved his wife to death. His live in will always live with the stigma. Michael will find it difficult to live under this spotlight and to live with the constant censure of the people of America and the world. He may get a lot more than he ever bargained for. Now we wait for the autopsy results. And even if the rulers of this world never find out for sure what part he played in Terry's condition, there is still the final judgment by the One from whom no sins are hidden--and His justice is without end.

Oh, and one other sad thing that hits closer to home for me. Much beloved author, Jamie Denton, has recently been diagnosed with cancer. The doctors have given her a 50/50 chance of survival. Being a writer, Jamie is like most of us--uninsured. Very few writers can afford the exhorbitant cost of insurance coverage and so end up not receiving timely care, trying to push nagging aches and pains aside because they know if it's nothing they'll have wasted money their family needs and if it's something bad, they can't afford to get it fixed anyway.

Jamie writes for Temptation, Blaze, Duets, and several other Harlequin/Silhouette lines, as well as Kensington Brava. If you'd like to help in some way as her friends try to raise money for medical care, pop over to http://www.duetsauthors.com and click on a link to donate, buy raffle tickets, or just stop for a moment and offer up a prayer for a lovely woman who has brought much joy to her corner of the world.