Writing With a Bomb in Your Bra

I had an ambitious plan for my writing career in 2014. I had regained the rights to my first novel, Intelligence, and made the decision to go indie. I was going to put Intelligence out myself in Ebook and paperback, finish up my second novel, Project HALFSHEEP, and get that out as well. I would market those books while finishing my third novel, The Flat Bureaucrat.

By May, I congratulated myself on having accomplished a good portion of what I had set out to do—Intelligence and Project HALFSHEEP were out. Writing on the third novel was steaming along.

Then I went in for a mammogram, followed by an ultrasound, a biopsy, an MRI, and a consultation with the breast surgeon. The words “bilateral mastectomy” are the only ones that really stand out from that conversation. The surgery will take place as soon as the hematoma left by the biopsy shrinks. I am remarkably calm about it at the moment. My years as a counterterrorism analyst completely destroyed any tendency toward panic—panic is pretty useless in any context.

The question at the top of my mind right now is “Can I keep my writing on track?” I want to keep this summer all about Shelby, my protagonist, and not about me. This seems healthy to me. Focusing on myself and my sore, lumpy, and at the moment eggplant-colored breast could hardly be helpful. Meanwhile, I can put any morbid thoughts I have into Shelby’s head. Fortunately, he’s the morbid type. He’s also a whiner and complainer, which could come in handy. He is not a curser (not to be confused with cursor), but I may turn him into one before this summer is over.

I don’t know yet if I can keep a double mastectomy from throwing me off track. Maybe I’m being entirely too naive and optimistic. I’ll try to blog about it as I go along. When I was growing up, words like mastectomy were only spoken in coy whispers, and I effing hate coy whispers.