The Silence: Has it Been a Month Already?

Part of the motivation in making this post is to avoid going a full month without making a post. Another part is to spread out the message a little bit.

As I've indicated, things have been going well in Autism World. Not perfect. But well. Last weekend we went down to Houston for a night. Kelly and Joy stayed at the Johnson Space Center as part of a Girl Scout outing. Robbie and I planned to stay at a friend's house. It didn't dawn on me until we were an hour away from home that I might have been making a bad mistake.

"Are we staying at a hotel in Houston?" Robbie asked.

He loves hotels. When we're on trips, he sometimes enjoys the hotel rooms more than the ultimate destinations. He was very upset to learn we weren't going to be staying at a hotel. His meltdown was muted. He managed his outburst pretty well and then he forgot about it - until we dropped Kelly and Joy off.

He protested a few more times on the drive over to my friend's house but recovered quickly. The stay was capped by my friend setting up his Wii the next morning and letting Robbie borrow his Mario Kart game. In some ways, it was a pretty uneventful night. In the most important way, it was a great night. Robbie and I had a blast. Thanks, Jon.

We're to the point where we need to set some new goals for Robbie. That's a good place to be.

Another reason for the silence (above and beyond a busy job, recovering from a trip to Asia, taking a trip to Europe and Thanksgiving since the last post), is that I'm focusing more on my fiction writing.

I posted about the Backspace Writer's Conference in May and how it energized me to refocus on writing fiction. While I haven't written as much since then as I would have liked, I have made strides on my work-in-progress (WIP), called Natural Born Citizen. I've also moved forward with querying my completed thriller, Slip Away, to prospective agents.

It's not enough just write more, you have to read more. After meeting Jason Pinter at the conference, I began to read his work and have really enjoyed it. I just finished The Fury. But if you're going to read some of Jason's stuff, I suggest you start with The Mark, then The Guilty, then The Stolen, and then The Fury. I also read David Morrell's first book, First Blood, and his latest, The Shimmer. Other thrillers that I've read since the conference include David Baldacci's The Collectors and Brad Meltzer's The Book of Fate. I just bought William Bernhardt's The Capitol Conspiracy. That's going to be my Christmas reading.

If you're thinking I should maybe do a little bit more writing than reading, you might be right. Nonetheless, reading good thrillers also helps me understand my market a little better and see where mine fit on the bookstore's bookshelves.

I've set up another blog for Slip Away. I haven't done much with it, yet. I'm curious if anyone reading this far is also interested in reading thrillers. If so, what would you like to see there? The first and only post there now is the short synopsis for the book - the kind you'd read on a book jacket. Check it out and let me know what you think.