Catching Up

There's been a lot going on while my laptop journeyed to Texas for repairs after the touchpad went on it. It came home yesterday and life is slowly getting back tp normal after being without it for 10 days.

Tonight is the first night I've been using it since they installed a new hard drive and then reinstalled the operating system. John spent all of last night tinkering with that and then uploading all my story files and hot files from the external hard drive he'd stored them on prior to shipping my "baby" out for repair.

I'm trying to find everything that was previously in my favorites, catch up on blogs, and maybe, just maybe do some writing tonight!

The Hanging Man and Other Stories is back on Amazon after a few minor fixes. I've been kicking around the idea of revising my NaNo novel-finally. We'll see what comes of that over the weekend.

Meanwhile, I've been reacquainting myself with Shirley Jackson, one of my favorite authors who had influenced my own writing. Just read Dark Tales by Shirley Jackson, a Penguin Classic book...creepy stories that reminded me of episodes of The Twilight Zone and Outer Limits. She was the queen of psychological unease. And you can find a lot f the things she toyed with in her stories in the work of other authors and in film. Oddly enough, the Lottery wasn't included in this collection.

It made me remember when I wrote Such Pretty Eyes, a very Jacksonesque story about an unhappy young housewife who is unappreciated and practically unnoticed by her husband. There are little cracks in her psyche. What pushed her over the edge is finding herself eating lunch in the same diner that her husband has taken his mistress to-and he doesn't even notice his own wife sitting at the counter as he exits with this more vivacious woman. It more or less seals his fate.

Anyway- - I have sixteen binders full of older stories in the cabinet in the den. Such Pretty Eyes exists only as a typewritten story (electronic typewriter, not a manual at least!)- so it predates my beginning to use the computer which began when Kelly was in elementary school in the mid-90's even though we had a computer in the house since the mid-80's.

Relaxing tonight and getting reacquainted with my laptop...attending an author event tomorrow evening, and I have a meeting with two of my favorite local authors and friends tomorrow afternoon. Then I need to start getting organized for the next WhipCity Wordsmiths meeting on March 17th, and Articulture2018 on April 21st. Spring is going to be busy!