The third Thursday of every month my critique group meets. We’ve been doing this for five years. As we settled in with our coffee and scones, one of our members announced her husband is pressuring her to quit writing. He claims ten years of writing a series was enough. It was time to throw in the towel, because he felt she was wasting her time because she’s not published yet.Enough was enough.When is it time to give up on something you love?I have in the past experimented with self-imposed deadlines to achieve publication. It usually came after a series of several stinging rejections and lost contests. During those periods, I’ve come close to throwing in the towel and walking away. Usually my deadline comes and goes and I’m still writing. I’m still hoping.  What holds me back is the call back to the chair and the blank screen. It’s the pure love for story telling.When Virna approached me to join Chasing Heroes, I had recently gone through one of those moments. The rejections flowed into my mail box with the abundance of junk mail. At first I didn’t open the growing stack of SASE. I just let them gather dust, as they reminded me of the big f-word…failure. I allowed myself a short little pity party. Then I accepted Virna’s invitation to be apart of this fun blog. What it did was keep me writing. It kept me wanting to write. I still hadn’t had enough. I wanted more. I needed more.  What I did with all the SASE, after Poppy tackled me to the ground as I fired up the shredder, I read them. I let my heart get hurt as my feelings cried out with the pure injustice of it all. I didn’t beat my chest with my fists and curse the heavens like a heroine who has been abandoned by her lover, but close. I got all pitiful…for a second or two. It was all very dramatic. Poppy has the patience of a saint during these periods in my life. He’ll tolerate it for a day, then tell me to cowgirl up, face the music and move ahead. In the end, after gathering up all my rejections, all my contest loses, I reread them like a soul looking for more torture. I pushed past the actual rejection part to study what was said. I started to see through the haze of disappointment to find the commonality in each rejection. The issues glared at me like a big exclamation mark. Stepping outside my story, which meant outside of myself, I studied it with a critical eye. I marched back into my den, settled into my chair, pulled up the screen filled with my words and went to work. My determination gave me another layer of thick skin. Spending 20yrs working in a jail has given me really thick skin and hardened emotions, but this is personal. It hurt. It was time to be a big girl to get past it and learn some valuable lessons. I think I have and am moving ahead with my writing. The rejections and comments actually have made me better at my craft.The publishing world is tough. It’s fickle. What is hot, changes as frequently as the price of gas. One year Vampires are the IT thing.  Just as we all settle in to write that great American Vamp trilogy, it changes. No more vamps. Now it’s shape shifters. There is a thunderous run for the computer. Vamps are edited into shape shifters. A little fix here and there, and off it goes to the agent. Now we chew our nails down hoping that by the time she gets around to reading your manuscript, witches aren’t the next big thing.Personally, I’m still holding out for cowboys.  I’m watching the market with an open minded cautious eye to see what is getting the deals, and what is being sent away with a tail between the legs. I won’t change what I’m working on for the market. For I’ve decided all my stories are the book of my heart and soul, since they all end with a little piece of me inside.  What did my friend decide? She told her husband to go pound salt, because Oprah’s recent book pick was from a author who took ten years to write ONE BOOK!  She’s written several in just as many years, and isn’t ready to throw in the towel, just yet.Question of the Day: Do you think a time comes to give up? How many years is that, if ever?  

One of the first symbols of fall for me is the Canadian Geese heading wherever it is they go when the air cools in Nor Cali. As they move over head, in the V-formation, they drag on the tips of their feathers, fall. This morning I watched four such noisy formations travel across the sky as I took my walk.This is without a doubt my favorite time of year. In our neck of the California, the only leaves to change color are local grapevines and the apricot orchards. But that doesn’t happen until November. It is a beautiful sight to see the acres and hillsides turning yellow and orange right before Thanksgiving. Sadly, the rest of our trees don’t change. Our summers are far too hot and dry to give the moisture leaves need to paint themselves with brilliance. Our trees suddenly just turn brown and drop their shade. It’s rather unceremonious.My roses have given me a last heart felt bloom before I trim them back hard. Although HGTV says here in Cali, we don’t need to trim our roses back, I still do. A habit passed on to me by my great-grandmother, grandmother and mother. I’ve clipped away those last flowers, cleaning up the beds as I ready them for the up coming winter.It’s as if summer suddenly stops and the cool air of the north sweeps over the golden oak dotted hills of our region. It was a hot dirty summer for us, with all the fires. Now they are over, and we wait for rain to turn those tall grasses that fuel flames into a emerald green carpet.As I’ve mentioned in another blog, I’m training for a marathon and my morning walks now include the noise of the geese. I’ll stop and watch them move over the sky, wondering how long it will be before it will turn cold. The mornings are nice now with the promise of a warm comfortable day that will allow me to have my house wide open, without the benefit of air conditioning.  After I do this marathon, my walking will continue, but I won’t be so determined, and can take my camera with me to record what I see.The path I take along a small creek, teams with wild life especially on these late summer mornings. Today, along with the geese, I saw two White Egrets, with the whitest feathers I’ve ever seen. They  look like velvet. A Blue Herring stood tall, as it gently picked its way through the creek, on thin fragile legs. It searched for the last bit of small fish. In a deep pool a turtle sat sunning itself on a rock, as it turned its head up to observe me.  Like the Egrets feathers the air is like velvet, as it wraps itself around the world, bringing with it the promise of children’s laughter at Halloween and the smell of cooking for Thanksgiving, as we move into winter.I look forward to pulling out my comfy worn sweats. There soft from a thousand washings, and may need replacing after this year. I can’t wait to curl up on the couch and listen to the rain as it drums out a rhythmic tune against my patio cover. And how desperately we need rain here in Cali.I usually give up my summer reads, that are light, short and fun this time of year. This is when I move into the heavy thick books that occupy me on those short dark days when the fog fills the scenery with gloom, and cold punches the skin on contact.  The first in the stack is Phillipa Gregory’s, The Other Queen, about Mary, Queen of Scots. Now there’s a heavy dark read, but I can’t help myself, I love history.Even with the promise of winter, I love fall, and what follows, the holidays, the joy in my grandchildren’s eyes as they look at the Christmas tree with wide eyed wonder.Question of the Day: What is your favorite time of year, and does your reading choices change with the seasons?

My first crush hit when I was ten, in the form of a young man who entered our lives as my brother George’s friend.Danny had brilliant blue eyes framed in deep sadness, with a smile that lit a room and could charm the birds out of the trees. His shaggy blond hair was always a mess, as he struggled with a rapidly growing lanky awkward fourteen year old body. Most nights he was at our dinner table. His mother had committed suicide when he was just a toddler, and his father was the town drunk.  My mother included him in everything we did, but she couldn’t save him from himself. As his teen years moved ahead, he’s life spun out of control. At sixteen he dropped out of school, had a pregnant girlfriend, and was showing the promise of following in his father’s footsteps.When he hit eighteen his life officially crashed, as he spent just as much time in jail as out. His friendship with George ended without explanation. My crush still breathed life, as we saw less of him. I had the unrealistic dreams of being the girl to save him. For me, his sudden absence from our life, was heartbreak of the purist form. Now fourteen, as much as I had experienced different crushes, Danny stood out as the one I compared all others to.Two years later Danny appeared on our doorstep. The fact he was in army, for me, perpetuated his hero status. What I didn’t know, he was given the choice of army or prison, by a local judge.He roared into our yard that Sunday on a brand new Harley-Davidson. I was home alone. We sat on the front porch and talked. He asked me to go for a ride with him into the mountains. Foolishly sixteen, and still carrying the awful crush, I accepted his invitation.We rode through the mountains on that glorious Sunday, stopping to take in the view, laughing and talking. It was a day that still makes me smile. If my parents knew what I was up to, I would have been locked up in a convent.I rode home, with my head resting on his board shoulders, taking in every moment in the aura of my crush. Leaving for Vietnam in two weeks, he gave me his address, so I could write.We wrote back and forth while he was overseas.  He made lonely promises to visit when he returned state-side and to take me for another ride into the mountains. He often mentioned it, giving me the impression that day meant as much to him as it did to me. His last letter was from Hawaii. Pressed between the pages was a pink flower. He’d be home soon, he wrote. It was the last letter I received from him.I wouldn’t see him for thirty-seven years.He stepped back into my life at my mother’s funeral as I stood in a numb haze at the enormity of my grief. Clad in the black leathers of his life style, he was with a woman who looked like she had ridden in on a hell hound.  His blue eyes looked the same, and just as sad. The brilliant smile was gone as he took my hand, thanking me for the letters when he was in Nam. He said they kept him going. He went on to say how much he appreciated my mother’s kindness. Quietly he kissed my cheek and left.That was my first kiss from him and it would be my last.All these memories sprung forth like confetti shot from a cannon to scatter around me, after a call from my brother. George thought I should know, Danny had been killed in a motorcycle accident, alone on a winding mountain road last week.I asked him what happened to end their friendship. He told me, I was the reason. When I hit my teens, Danny was interested in me. George ended the friendship, cutting Danny out of our lives. He also revealed he knew about the letters, information my mother passed on to him. He was stationed in Hawaii, when Danny returned from Nam, he looked him up, and asked him to stop writing me. Because of the war, Danny’s life had been pushed into a new personal brand of hell, and George didn’t want me to be apart of it. He felt I was too young to resist the power of my crush.I wanted to be angry at him, but knew he was right. He was only trying to protect me from a destructive relationship.  I didn’t tell my brother about the ride into the mountains. I kept the secret until now. I still smile at the feel of the wind in my hair. Whenever the scent of pine hits my senses on a hot sunny day, my memories burst to life. Danny bought me lunch at a diner in a small mountain town that day. I had a hamburger that tasted like heaven. I return to the diner on occasion, but the hamburgers just don’t taste the same.  Question of the Day: Who was your first crush, and do you know what happened to him?

I’m currently reading a book that features a gay FBI agent as one of two heroes.The character’s bravery, handsome features, masculinity and devotion to the FBI is clear. I loved the characterization, and the respect the author shows to the agent’s life style choice. It’s one of those situations where the character is near perfect, and every female in the room will sigh with disappointment when it’s revealed he’s gay. Who ever wins his heart is a lucky guy. (Sigh.)Admittedly, I sort of went, ooh, when I realized what I had picked up. I bought this book from the hospital gift shop, (not much of a selection) when my daughter had her baby recently. I desperately needed something to occupy me. After I got over the ‘ick’ factor, I fell in love with the character and became intrigued with his struggles with relationships. I really shouldn’t have felt that way, since over the years in law enforcement, I have had several excellent partners who happened to be gay. Still, it wasn’t what I was expecting, and I wasn’t completely sure I could continue. It didn’t take much or long, and I was hooked, and have been reading it in-between my other reads ever sense.What adds to the scenario is what a gay man goes through in the public eye to establish a relationship. The two love interests in the book really can’t come out. One is a Marine officer and another actor, who is on the edge of incredible fame. If they reveal their sexual orientation, they’ll be ruined; even in today’s more open society.It’s not that I ever avoided books featuring a gay hero. They just never fell into my lap like this one did. I haven’t finished the book yet, but hope by the end that he finds love.  Question of the Day: How do you feel about a gay leading man?