Embark Once More on the Achille Lauro

For the life of me, I could not correct errors on the draft of this entry! So, I will try again to write it, error-free. Hmmm. It's time to embark again on the cruise of a lifetime. I took the last world cruise on the Achille Lauro several years ago as her massage therapist. Nine months on a cruise ship is a lifetime of adventure. This blog is related to a previous blog with the same name and was started several weeks ago. It is about massage therapy school (and techniques learned then about body work as well as since then), working on the Achille Lauro, family, writing, books, needlework, and other issues as they arise.

In the weeks between the past blog entries and today, I have finished writing the first in a planned series of mystery novels. The process of finding an agent and/or publisher has begun. It appears it will be a difficult and expensive task. Writing is such a solitary task. Waiting for a positive answer to query letters is a test of patience. One New York agent has already sent back the first effort. There was no rejection note, no form note, no nothing. Rude. One agent simply did not reply to my effort at all. I await the next reply, but I'm not holding my breath. Other writers tell me it can take months, if not years to find an agent, and perhaps never to find a publisher willing to take a chance on a first novel.

I have written lots of "stuff" over the years. As a former teacher I had lots of fodder from classrooms of kids who were fun, totally disinterested in learning, and always full of vitality. I miss those kids, but I don't missing grading papers. I don't miss the bureaucratic despotic processes. Schools today are mired in mediocrity, although in some cases there are little bits of light showing. Unfortunately those lights are buried under testing, testing, teaching to the tests.

So, while I wait to be published (and I know I will, someday again) I'll blog and keep writing e-mails to friends, and work at the bookstore, and read. In any time left, I'll dream of cruising.