Its funny, I can't quite bring myself to abandon this blog, but I've clearly lost my enthusiasm for it. I actually have a blog now that people read--about Girl Scouts.
Still, this is where I got my start, and sometimes I like writing about non-Girl Scout things. I can read old posts here and they are like looking at my past--those summer evenings at the pool reading while my baby (now a junior in high school) played with other kids, or those days when I ran a link up for Catholic bloggers, and of course those days when the mail brought package after package of review copies. Now what review copies I get come via NetGalley and are read on my tablet.
Back in the day, I "met" another Catholic blogger, Kathleen Basi, who is an author and a composer. I reviewed several of her books, and you can read about them by clicking her name in the tags under this post. I've been following her on Facebook and watching her beautiful children grow up. I've read a bunch of Facebook posts about pouring herself into a novel she was writing, with no guarantee it would be published.
I've always been a reader but one thing book blogging taught me (or shall we say started to teach me because there is still so much I don't know) is the process by which an author's ideas make it to my Fire tablet. I had some vague idea of what happened up until the book was published, but no idea about what happened thereafter--how books ended up in my libarary or bookstore or what publicity was involved.
Well, Kathleen's book was accepted by a publisher and will be available for purchase in May. I've been along for the ride (as in hanging on the back of the car, practically out of sight) since she announced she found a publisher, has been working on edits and is now working on publicity. Her book was recently given a cover--isn't it pretty?
The book is about a mother who loses her whole family in an instant, and then as part of the healing process goes on a cross-country road trip. Kathleen is a musician so I guess we shouldn't be surprised that she works music into the plot. A long road trip has always been one of those back of the mind goals for me. When I was a kid we lived in Mississippi and every summer we'd pile into the station wagon and head to Wisconsin to visit Grandma and Grandpa and all the rest of my mom's family. We'd spend two long hard days in the car going 55 mph through corn fields, corn fields and more corn fields, but several time a day we'd pass billboards advertising nearby attractions. Of course we never stopped, and honestly I doubt most of these attractions were worth more than thirty minutes of time, but I've always wanted to get in the car and go where the road takes me, stopping to explore small town museums, old churches, and state parks.
I've done a couple of short versions of that dream. I had a week off between jobs back in the late '80s and a reasonably new car, so I took off by myself toward Arkansas to see where the road took me--which ended up being Hot Springs, Mountain Home and a few other places. I found that hitting the road alone (and for some reason my dreams of these road trips never involve other people) really wasn't as much fun as I dreamed it would be. About ten years ago I flew to Minneapolis and rented a car to head to a family reunion in Wisconsin. Instead of getting in the interstate and driving straight over, I got on an old state highway and meandered around, as I had a couple of hours to kill before my hosts would be home from work. I purposefully scheduled my flight out for late afternoon to give me time to explore on Monday morning, when I drove out to the church where my grandparents were married, and then through Pepin where I saw the Laura Ingalls Wilder Museum as well as the headwaters of the Mississippi River.
In a lot of ways, Kathleen is on a road trip now. She is trying to virtually cross the country promoting her book, and so I'm giving her a shout-out here, for the dozen or so people who actually still read what I write here. I keep telling myself I'm going to get "back into" book blogging, writing regularly, joining weekly link-ups and so on, but honestly, I'm probably not going to do so. If you are one of those dozen or so folks, who still have me in your feeds or who check in regularly, thank you. I guess in some ways life is like a road trip--there are so many places to go and you miss the fun of what's beyond the bend in the road if you are staying where you are--but on the other hand, its nice to come home to the familiar, so who knows, maybe you'll find your next favorite read here.
Awww, thanks! It took me forever to find this, but thank you! Going to give it a shout-out on the author Facebook page. :)
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