Life is like a giant jig saw puzzle. It takes years to find out who you are. You get a few pieces at a time. Those pieces do not go together, sometimes for many years. You also have no idea what the picture looks like that you are putting together. Learning about yourself and staying true to yourself and who you are is a struggle.

We had a medium talk to us at our writers group. Books on paranormal are what is selling right now. We wanted to be able to write with some authority on the subject. Oma, the medium who talked to us, was very approachable. She was a pleasure to listen to. Quite a few of the authors in the group are romance novelists.

I worked with my mentor for a few minutes this week. One of my customers has an older donkey that has foot problems. The owners had the veterinarian out to do radiographs. The veterinarian wanted a more radical trim done. I have been working on this little guy for two years now and have worked hard to keep his feet as short as possible. A different veterinarian said I should be a little more cautious since the coffin bone was rotating toward the sole.

This was confusing, so the owners and I called Bob in. He didn’t take very much foot off at all, so apparently I was doing right by the donkey. I considered the stop a training day. Bob knew I was out there about 4 weeks earlier so he said he would not charge anything. I think we did the best we could for this customer. I was glad to see I was doing the right kind of trim. It is difficult to resolve within yourself that you cannot make some horses feet better. The best you can do is maintain or minimize pain and damage.

Bike Across Kansas

Hubby decided he wants to enter the Bike Across Kansas ride in 2010. I tend to think in terms of my schedule and not other people’s schedule. Because this is important to him, I have made a point to get Hubby and his bike in the car a couple of times a week to go to a trail so he can ride. Sometimes I shop and eat my way through downtown Lawrence and have him meet me at Starbucks. Sometimes I drop him off on the bike trail and drive to the other end and wait for him. He needs to be doing twenty miles regularly this year and 30-40 miles next year. To ride Bike Across Kansas he has to be comfortable riding 60-70 miles a day.


When autumn came around, which is my favorite time of the year, I got tired of watching him have all the fun or waiting for him. So I bought a bike of my own. I am up to ten miles now. That is where I can still make it back to the car and am not sore the next day. Tom will have to go with his cousin on the Bike Across Kansas tour, though. I will happily stay in the air conditioned Subaru with the spare bike parts and repair kit and follow them. We are checking out a Katy Trail vacation next spring. The Katy Trail is a rail trail across Missouri. We can take the car to the train station in Kansas City. From there we can get on an Amtrack train where we will travel 60 miles east. We will depart the train and ride the bikes back. There are Bed and Breakfasts all along the trail. I love going out on the trails to ride bikes. Tom named my bike Helen because I am hell-on-wheels on my bike.

I am still working on the Smokey Westford novel. It is excruciating and slow! I have to figure out how to add the chunks of the books that create the mystery. I am confused about putting in the technical stuff. I love books with technical information. I can’t put them down until they are done. When peers edit my work, they keep asking me to take out the technical stuff. They are usually romance novelists and their books are supposed to be light in substance. I don’t know if I should put my tech stuff in or not. I call myself a Chick Lit novelist, but that is because I don’t think I can pull of the larger technical aspects of a thriller.


I am signed up and ready for the November National Novel Writing month. I plan to ditch all the technique issues and just get some writing done. It is so much fun creating characters and making them come alive. My character, Lena, is the person I would love to be. She has more guts to live life to the fullest than I will ever have.



The Shawnee County and Topeka Library Friends of the Library had its' annual book sale in mid September. The sale raised over $55,000 during the 16 hour three day sale. Even though I sort books once a week all year long, I still brought five bags of books home.