Warmest felicitations to my sisters and brothers in Blood, Fangs, and Big Bushy Tales,  

    So, B.F.D., a werewolf ate my cat ... welcome to my world! Just kidding, but sometimes it feels like my life does have a very persistent knack for clawing the "q" out of quirky and embedding it deeply into the quixotic. I thought when I grew up life would be totally organized and efficient. I really believed that when you hit a certain age the genetic "grown-up traits" inherent to all the adults in my family, at least, would kick in and make life turn into a framed glued puzzle of middle class contentment and compliance. Don't get me wrong, yes, there is contentment in my life, but there is so much more mystery, surprise, love, and  bliss. Its good to know I was wrong about my probable dull future as an adult woman. Both my deisgn and path have turned out to be wonderful, but busy. So my blogging got a little bit buried for a while under my eclectic life, but no worries, I will always come back to you. I missed chatting with you all and wanted to thank you so much for the supportive comments...and the nutty ones too. In case you haven't noticed by now, this paragraph is my round-about way of tell'in ya'll that I apologize for not blogging in forever. Forgive me? Good- 'cause  have I got some crazy news for you.   
    
    I finished writing the first book! I know, how did that happen, right? It just did it. I made the time in my life for my dream and I didn't let anything stop me. So, If you want to write you will hear over and over that the best way to become a better writer than you are is to actually WRITE. After I finished the first rendition of my 300 page, 30 chapter story, I felt like a proud Black Widow mommy who'd just given birth to hundreds of little lethal baby spiders and hadn't even eaten a single one myself... yet!  But really, the best advice I can give about writing stories is don't ever forget that it is the STORY that is your actual baby. The characters whom you love, that plot that is too ingenious to miraculously have come out of 'lil ol you, and the hero whom you take to bed with you each night in your dreams, are all just parts of your hard work. I believe seeing the story as a whole and keeping the big picture, the main idea, of your story in focus is imperative.Guiding those subplots and techniques that you know how to implement and taking a specific path drawn of your own design will help you so much in making sure your novel, short story, poem, term paper is as wonderful as you can make it. Was that soap boxy enough for ya? 

    After the initial rush of nirvana I got after completing my first novel I started researching publication. I mean, I-wrote-a-book after all, who wouldn't want to publish it? Right? I quickly discovered that, thought my having written a novel made for great conversation at get-togethers, nobody really cared or cares that I wrote a book. Then I worried about that for, ooh, about 5 minutes, and then earnestly started doing some research about how to get my little 300 pg. miracle published. My take on actuall getting published is so a story for another day, but the point is that after hunkering down and making a sincere effort to learn about the world of book publication,
I decided that my strategy was going to have to change. What I learned was that even though I want my first book in print worse that I want to eat carbs again, I also want to bring the most attractive offer to the table that I could when the day comes for me to start sending queries.
     
    After having had several nice high-stress-low-appreciation careers, I am more than motivated to form a successful plan for my career and then endlessly adapt, rewrite, and/or recreate my existing work as long as I can create new tales. So my nefarious plan to get in every book store near you became about writing a sequel. I began a few months ago with the sequel and am about 150 pgs, into it. I'm such a writing monster that the first book is up to 460 pages. I couldn't stop writing. God help me, I love the escape and I love the world I've created in this series even more! Ah, don't worry about my blogs turning into the rampant ravings of a lonely bi-polar schizophrenic. Can scitzophrenics BE lonely? Anyway, I have a good balance in my life of every day reality vs. the fantasy of my stories, and I shall try to maintain my sanity as well as ever. When the sequel to the first book is.completed (yea, for the first time at least) and then I'll have my loyal and not-punctuation-challenged-coven read it for me, and after it has been rewritten and reworded and regurgitated at least twenty-five times, I will begin queries to agents whom I think might be a good match for my skill set and who, if interested, will assist me in half of my novel again anyway. 

    I'm not sweating publication, I just want to write for now and am willing to let some of the stress of selling my wares stay in stasis until I have my proverbial planets in order. For now, I am enjoying being the creator. I already have at least a few chapters worth of ideas for the third book. So I wait, and write, knowing that even long after the cosmos are all aligned for good luck with my moon in Mars, or when the Aztec calendar has long run out of time and the world implodes, or if ever there comes the day when I stop shopping for clothes off of sale racks, then maybe that will be the day I run out of stories to tell! You see, even if radiation fries us all like yesterdays chicken wings, at the end of the world there will be cockroaches and Anne trying to get published while writing her next book as furiously as a space ship flaming through the atmosphere on re-entry. See, I can write Sci-Fi.

    See how much we've missed each other. This has been fun. As long as you go through each day and discover something new, life shall always be wonderful for you. So if, in the mean time, that Werewolf goes for my other cat, I'll be ready to threaten him with my own pack of loyal writers and aspiring Masters and Mistresses of the Supernatural. Then see how fast he drops the bone in his mouth and scampers off with his tail in between his hairy legs. 

    Warmest Blood Curdling Thanks, (WBCT),
    Talk w ya soon, Anne Patricia Roberts