New Beginnings

Well, here I am, cracking open the "cellar door" of my blog, which hasn't seen a post in over a year.

Oops.

At the last writers' conference which I couldn't attend, one of the speakers said you must have a blog if you are a writer, and every writer needs to post at least once a week.

Oops again.

Well, the truth is, I'm on a new threshold. The cellar in my fantasy novel, Beyond the Red Door, has just been transported back in time. Joyce Magnin, my writing mentor and friend, recommended I shelve Red Door and start an historical novel about a slave boy who runs away on the Underground Railroad. When I did that, my writing went up a notch. It flowed. I knew it was the right thing to do.

I have noticed that before novelists get that first contract, most of them write one or two books that don't get published. I spent fifteen years writing and rewriting one book. For years I called it my learn-how-to-write book. Now I know the pain and freedom of letting a pet project go. It is time to move on.

Maybe I will be able to incorporate the first book into a sequel.These two books have some things in common. They both involve a cellar that was once used to hide saves on the Underground Railroad, and they have the same theme: freedom from slavery.

Will I blog next week? Will the theme of my blog change? Tune in next week to find out.