Moon, Stars and Beyond   A Chronicle of Fact, Fiction and Fantasy

Gretchen Weerheim and sister Gwen Jones with some familiar friends made entirely of Legos

Lord, it’s been hard to keep up with this blog when I’ve had so much going on in my personal life.

Summers, on the whole, are meant for enjoyment.  Mine, however, consists of closing chapters and starting new ones.  On the brink of Summer 2014, my mother passed away.  My father, who has Alzheimer’s, deeply grieves her loss.  After 60 years of marriage, that’s not hard to grasp.  He refuses to leave his bed, and when he does, it’s for brief spells only.  My sister and I have been taking care of him in a tag-team fashion.  We’ve had to face some ugly realities, such as selling his house and placing him in smaller quarters.  We refuse to place him in organized, institutional housing and evaluating alternatives comes at a cost – financially and otherwise.

All this stress really shut down my creative mind to the point where even pondering what to put down in both a novel I’m working on plus this blog made me feel guilty.  I’d sit down, armed with coffee and good intentions, only to stare at the screen and wind up reading anything from The New York Times  to The Comics Curmudgeon.

Last week, after a long day tending to my father and his house, I sat down at my desk and once again, grew despondent.  Nothing.  The sound of crickets outside reflected the activity in my brain.  Seeking inspiration, I read through my older blogs, trolling for ideas, thoughts, encouragement.

I found it – from two fellow bloggers who comment regularly on what I manage to write.

Among my archives I reread “The Plot Thickens,” in which I describe an exoplanet first thought to exist and then suddenly, it vanished.  D.R. Sylvester positively commented on a description I gave regarding an astrophysicist (“red-headed ball of fire”).  Then Hugh Roberts of Hugh’s News and Views commented on how another brief posting of mine, “A Gorgeous View of the Universe” inspired him.  Feeling somewhat more encouraged, my mind took a right turn back into my family and how they shaped me into the writer I’ve become.

An earlier blog, “Mom, Up With The Stars”, described my mother’s influence on my love for sci-fi.  My father, the middle child out of eleven, born shortly before the stock market crash of 1929 and whose family fell victim to the Dust Bowl of the 1930s, had inspirations for writing.  Dad had a way with words and loved good stories, especially history.  Both parents encouraged my sister and I to express our artistic ways, no matter what form they took.  Gwen Jones, a best-selling author whose titles appear on the Woman’s Fiction and Romance listings, encouraged me to move my writing talents from technical/educational to science fiction.  Thanks to her, I belong to Liberty States Fiction Writers Group,  a highly-regarded group consisting of many best-selling published writers in all genres, plus those who are well on their way.  Andrew, my husband, is probably the biggest fanboy ever.  His multitudes of sci-fi novels fill many of our shelves and I deeply value his input and opinions.  He’s a great plotter, too.

With this basket of goodies at my table, I chose to take another approach to writing.  With one novel finished and another underway, I’d thought I’d create a side project, if you will.  You might notice it listed at the top of my blog – a new page called “Incurable Mistakes – A Serial Story.”  Using D.R. Sylvester’s suggestion that the red-headed ball of fire astrophysicist plot line might actually work, I bore that in mind as I sat in my father’s home and began telling a tale.  I invite anyone out there to come and join me.  Read along and if you have a great suggestion, send it on and I’ll work it in.  Call it a group novel.  The only thing I haven’t figured out (haven’t tried, actually) is how to make subpages for new chapters, although I’m sure it’s easy.

I’m not making promises, but I will try to slap together 500-1000 words a week.  Anything readers of this blog can add to the pot might make this stew tastier!

Bring it on, folks!  What say you?