For a number of years now, I have enjoyed doing a little writing. It’s nothing profound, but it entertains me. Sometimes, I’ll end up publishing it, but a lot of it heads directly to the trash can. Truth be known, unless Sweetie has something else on my schedule, writing now occupies a good portion of nearly every single day. Especially, since the Corona virus hit us and we started living in our little cocoon. From day one of the pandemic, I’ve spent even more of my time at my computer,,,, writing….
I’ve now written or partnered in writing over 20 books, but I don’t call myself an author. I’m guessing that those first few books may have contained close to 500 original poems that I had written, but I don’t call myself a poet either. Fact is, most of those poems are very amateurish, but writing is something that I do to pass the time. I find it more enjoyable than playing solitaire or some of those other stupid computer games. (Even though I probably spend a half hour or more of each day playing those games.)
Even though I consider my stuff to be amateurish, I find writing to be very therapeutic. In its own way, I find it to be very rewarding, though not financially, it seems. I must say, I got a tremendous feeling of accomplishment when I held that first published book in my hand for the very first time, let alone the twentieth one.
As mentioned, now days, most of my writing is a collaborative project. One of the first projects that Sweetie and I collaborated on was the book that we eventually named, THE HINTS BOOK ALMANAC. At the time, we hadn’t been together all that long and we were still learning about each other. One of us said something about a helpful hint we had read recently, which eventually led to us realizing that, for years, we had both been saving all these little scraps of paper with little tips and suggestions on them. As we talked, we convinced ourselves that these little items would be so much more useful, if only they were organized so that you’d be able to find the one you wanted, when you wanted it. That led to us spending the next year or so doing just that, organizing, categorizing and alphabetizing them. Before we finished that, we began to seek out additional hints from multiple sources. We wound up with around 1700 hints which eventually led to the book we titled THE HINTS BOOK ALMANAC. Before long, we realized that we had only scratched the surface, there were still more hints to be found. Soon there was a second book with the same title, book II, containing an additional 1000 hints.
Now our collaboration juices were flowing and, well before the pandemic, we had written our first fictional book about imaginary characters. That first fictional book was a children’s book, titled Adventures of Gizzy. It was about our cat. We felt that it worked out so well that we wrote another fictional book titled, The Crow’s Nest. As we assume is the case with most writers, we just made it up as we went along, but by the time that project was over with, we had come to know the characters quite well. That being the case, we decided that they had more to say, which resulted in book two of the series, (which has now reached 7 books and counting.)
One day I was sitting there at my computer trying to figure out just what I wanted to write about next when I got to wondering about what life would have been like in the early life of one of those characters. I imagined him as an 18-year-old, out on his first solo adventure, seeking to make his way in the world. The timing would have put him in the mid to late 1890’s so I tried to imagine the world in which he would have lived. And I began to write.
That resulted in book three of what Sweetie and I now call THE CROW’S LAKE SERIES. Before that book was ready to go to the printer, book four was nearing completion. Then book five, book six, book seven and now we’re better than half way through book eight. I attribute all, but the first two books, to the pandemic. If we hadn’t confined ourselves to our home in our efforts to stay safe from the virus, it’s very unlikely that those books would have ever been written.
That said, however, although the Corona Virus is still a concern, life has gotten back to some semblance of normal and we once again are able to get out into the world. Even so, on a lesser scale, we’ve continued to write and delve into the lives of the characters from Crow’s Lake. The book we are now working on, tentatively titled LAST RIDE, is likely to be the last in that series, although that’s not cast in stone. There is always the possibility that we’ll find that some of those characters still have more to say.
However, we also have written a couple of books titled CLOSED CASES. They are about a private investigator by the name of Stony Johnson and we’re anxious to see what’s been happening in his life. My current expectations are that we’ll be hearing more from Stony in the future.
Gramps use’ta say
©R.L.King2012 #503
About: Character
“You often get more information
from a man’s reaction,
than you do from his response.”
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http://www.amazon.com/author/richard-lee-king/
Amazon.com: Donna Hale Chandler: Books, Biography, Blog, Audiobooks, Kindle
Am I The Only One 