Thanks so much for your wonderful responses to my last blog entry. So many of you contacted me via Facebook or email to express your heartfelt support, many of you talking about ways in which you need to change your own lives. If we can support one another and make 2012 a year of unprecedented personal change, I’m all for it.

Yes, Project: Happiness is underway and has already brought change. Simply declaring my intention has helped to harness my energies in a positive way.

Since posting last Tuesday, I’ve chosen a gym that I’m going to join together with Benjamin, who is gearing up to apply for Officer Candidate School with the U.S. Coast Guard. We visited health clubs today and decided to join the city-owned rec center. They have several facilities and are dirt cheap, which fits my budget. I need to get back into shape. Benjamin needs to get into the best shape of his life. And unlike other times when I’ve joined a gym, the purpose isn’t going to be to work out as hard as I can, as if I were still the woman who could run 6.5- to 7-minute miles. I’m going to take care of myself and not injure myself.

Some of you asked to see some of my artwork from back in the day. It’s been a long time since I painted or drew with oils and charcoal and chalk. Most of my artwork was destroyed, so I have very little. But I have photographs of a few things, and I actually have what is perhaps my most priceless drawing.

Up at the top, you can see a photo of Pedersborg Kirke (Pedersborg Church) in Pedersborg, Denmark, a tiny town just on the edge of Sorø, where I lived. An enormous lake surrounds the town, and I used to run around that lake every morning six days a week at 6 a.m. The church stands up on the hillside above the lake, and one afternoon I headed over with a sketchpad and a set of oils and drew what I saw. The photo and sketch are from slightly different angles, and the drawing doesn’t have all the detail from the cemetery. But you get the gist...

I was 17 when I drew it.

This drawing still exists (I think). I gave it to my host parents, who still had it when I visited DK in 1999. It’s not Da Vinci, but it does show how I used to spend a couple of spare hours when I had them.



I dug through my old photo albums looking for anything I could find and was surprised to find this.  This painting was a joint effort and was put together for a Christmas choir concert when I was in 9th grade. I didn’t paint the outer corners or the star. As “Most Artistic” student, I was asked to paint the rose in the center. The rose was supposed to represent Jesus and was put in a spotlight during a Christmas choral piece titled “The Rose.” Other students painted the rest of it.

And now for what my sister and I might jokingly call The Piece of Resistance, poorly translating the French expression “la pièce de résistance.”

I drew this portrait of a crying Jesus when I was 14. I drew it with an ordinary pencil on a cheap sketch pad. I figured if Jesus knew everything that people did in his name, he’d cry. So here he is, hanging his head in grief.

I am not a religious person, but rather a spiritual one. I don’t go to church largely because organized religion leaves me unimpressed, and the last thing I want to do on Sunday morning is get out of freaking bed. I mean really! Whatever I feel with regard to God is between me and God, not me and everyone else on this planet. I don’t want the art here to create an erroneous impression.

This isn’t a great photograph of the piece. I had to take it off my bedroom wall to photograph it, and the light was reflecting off the glass. There’s a reflection of the wooden canopy from my bed on the glass, too.

I gave this to my maternal grandmother when we learned she had lymphoma, and she had it on the wall in her house. (She was religious.) After she passed, I took the drawing back because it meant so much to me.

Among the pieces of artwork that are missing include a charcoal and chalk drawing of a mother eagle with her chick that won first place in an adult art show when I was 15. I really wish I had that! There were some other drawings, as well as a couple of paintings and some prints.

I hope to ease my way back into this by getting some art supplies for my birthday and taking some classes through the recreation center, which offers them for $25. That’s just a way to get my feet wet after decades of not drawing or painting. It’s another reason we joined the rec center and not just an athletic club. They have lots of classes, including some that cover other interests of mine, such as organic veggie gardening. And they have a climbing wall. YES!


Fiction news:

I have an outline for a novella about Megan. It was going to be a Christmas novella way back when. Now it’s just a novella. I hope to start writing it next week and have it up and available for $2.99 through Amazon, B&N and Smashwords by the end of the month.

We’ll see what’s become of Megan since the end of Unlawful Contact. For those who have forgotten, she’s his little sister, and her life has involved serious trauma. She needs a lot of love and a lot of healing to have a real relationship with a man. We’ll see Emily, who is now 4. And, yes, we’ll see Marc and Julian, too. Marc will be in full-blown “protective big brother” mode, as you can imagine.

I haven’t heard from my editor about Defiant yet, but I’m certain I’ll hear soon. When I have any news, I’ll share it.

Have a great week, everyone! I plan to spend all of Sunday reading. We’ll be starting at the gym this week, and I hope to be writing again soon.