Every once in a while, I receive an email from a reader that goes something like, "I read all of Living Next Door to Heaven straight through in one sitting!"
My first thought is usually along the lines of, "Good grief, man! Get a life!"
At the same time, I remember when I first came across Jay Cantrell's Daze in the Valley and set about reading his entire body of work straight through. I didn't write for three weeks. I just read.
April is supposed to be a major writing month for me, being Camp NaNoWriMo. National Novel Writing Month in November became so popular a few years ago that they began adding writing events at other times. There is now a Camp NaNoWriMo in April and in July. I currently have three stories I'm in the process of writing and I planned to finish one of them this month.
It's a sequel to Wayzgoose's For Money or Mayhem and I figured what better way to get into it than to reread that work. Wayzgoose plans to post that cyber mystery here on SOL when City Limits is finished. So I read it. But as I read it I got to thinking about what the difference was between my more mainstream writing and what I put on SOL. So, I thought I'd take a peek at Living Next Door to Heaven. I read it straight through. Sorry for all the typos!
I was so upset by the typos that I decided to check out Model Student. Yep. Right through all three books.
So far this month, I've written 22,000 words. I've read almost three million. I need a life.
After reading those two series, I am amazed that I have any emotions left. They drained me that thoroughly when I wrote them. And still, I read them (all three of these) with tears running down my cheeks half the time. Even through the mystery.
I've made it as far as Chappell, Nebraska as I'm trying to wend my way back to Idaho where they had snow last night again. I plan to stay here for a week while I wait for the winds to die down and temps to improve in Wyoming. But this afternoon, the wind has picked up again so much that I hooked the trailer back up to the truck for added stability. We got such a heavy and ominous cloud cover this afternoon as the wind picked up that it started getting dark at 4:30.
What I'm doing is sitting in my trailer rocking back and forth and trying to decide if I should read the Strange Art series or the Hero Lincoln Trilogy. Decisions, decisions.