Television writing and raising the best kid in the world proved to be more than I could handle for a while, so my writing went on the back burner for a while.   The ting about wring is that if you are a writer, you are a writer even when you aren’t writing.  Everything a writer sees, does, feels and experiences goes into their writing.  You build the reference library of your mind even when changing a diaper.  I hate to admit to this, but some of my best writing has been done while washing dishes.

When the demands of parenting began to lighten, I got a domain name for Mother’s Day and began fiddling with the Internet, blogging, learning xhtml and building web pages.   That was when it occurred to me that if I was going to get back to writing professionally, what better way than through NaNoWriMo.  My wonderful sister-in-law, Nienke Hinton, had been telling me about NaNoWriMo for the years of my parenting hiatus.  It was October, and I decided at the last minute to give it a whirl.  Even with virtually no overt preparation, an idea that had been steeping in the back of my mind for decades came together with incredible ease.

Writing novels is very different than writing screenplays, which are almost entirely dialogue,  but I did it.  The goal of NaNoWriMo is to write 50,000 words within the month of November.  That turned out to be about half a novel, for me.  But the end result was the first half of my debut novel, Inconstant Moon.    It took rather more time to get the rest of it written, and then to edit it onto shape. 

When I decided to resume writing, format shifting to novels, it never occurred to me to even approach a publisher, because I’d heard enough about self publishing to know that it was becoming a very real alternative to traditional publishing.  And when I began looking into it, that seemed the way to go.  So that’s where I am now, in the process of working out how to self publish the way that I want to do it.   I am an independent writer, and mainstream publishing is simply not where I want to be.

So my first novel, my debut novel was begun during the 2009 NaNoWriMo and finished in 2011.  One of the biggest thrills was holding the very first copy of my very first novel in my hand; thanks to Create Space, a fabulous POD (Print On Demand) company.

The next best thing was serializing Inconstant Moon online. 

where it’s at now

Although Inconstant Moon it can be got from Smashwords as an ebook, or Amazon as a trade paperback sized print book right now, I am putting together new versions that will be available shortly. 

One of the most important things I have learned is that once the text is set, editing to make it lay nicely on the page is a bad idea.  So, especially for those who fund typos objectionable,  please don’t rush off and buy a copy in either format until the new edition is out.  When it is ready, I will  announce it here.