Why Blog? Last week Mary and I got the word from our editor Barbara Peters at Poisoned Pen Press -- Five for Silver is DONE! The revisions we sent in worked. Barbara always seems to spot a few ways to improve the books far out of proportion to the actual word count of the changes and additions. Nothing between us and a shiny new book next winter but looking over some galleys. Time to catch our breath before...well..before deciding what's next. I guess we've written five books in the last six years. That's the trouble with writing. You spend most of your life trying to write a salable book, you finally climb the mountain, then you have to climb it again, this time in a year, and next...you repeat the process. Mind you, I'm not complaining. We're fortunate to have the chance. Now, though, between projects, however briefly, seems a good time to start a blog.

Why I should start a blog, I don't know. I never thought about it until Robert Rosenwald decided to start one for PPP authors and then, the process was so simple...It seemed like something I had to do, because it was so easy. I'm not sure there's a good reason, or any reason. Blogging contradicts two writing principles I try to adhere to -- making sure I polish my words sufficiently and always writing with the audience in mind. Spontaneously (and easily, let's not forget) posting random thoughts to a blog hardly allows for much polishing. As far as audience goes...well, who's the audience? Is there an audience? The cat's on my lap right now and it doesn't seem to care. It's only concern is that my typing is disturbing it because my sleeve brushes its ears every time I hit the space bar. This will likely be the main impact of these words, to annoy my cat.