I’m back! I haven’t posted a blog in a LONG time, because life swept me into a hurricane over the last year. There’s been a lot of changes, but life if good.
I’m thrilled to still be working closely with agent Michelle Hauck at Storm Literary Agency. She has a great eye for detail, plot, and tension when writing and has helped me shape my words into stories I’m proud of. As of right now, I have multiple projects out on submission so please cross your fingers and your toes for a little luck that someday I’ll be on a bookshelf near you!
My current projects include a young adult survival story, a middle grade fantasy novel, an adult romantic suspense novel, and three picture books. And now…I wait. Editors can take months to over a year to respond, so it’s not a fast-paced process. I get rejections periodically, and it’s possible that nobody will want to bring my stories to life. With patience and determination, someday, someone will connect with my work! In the mean time, I write. Right now, I’m deep into a Young Adult mystery thriller (you know the stuff—kidnapping and whodunnit.)
I’m an empty nester and it’s SO WEIRD!! 
Both my daughters are thriving at the University of Iowa as a freshman and a senior. My emotions have been all over the place: a wave of tears one minute, feeling old and useless the next, followed by an overwhelming sense of freedom. The girls are ready to conquer the world and I can’t wait to see their journey, but thank goodness for cell phones, Facetime, and text messages.
The house is TOO quiet and the cat and dog are getting much more attention than usual. The best aspects include making whatever I want for a meal without picky eaters, not having to be quiet in the morning while a teenageer sleeps past ten, and not worrying when they’ll get home at night. My husband and I have been disc golfing and even played pickleball! I’m ready for this next phase of life.
I keep my foot in the door of the medical world. I work per diem as faculty for a family medicine residency program and love it. The young doctors are filled with knowledge and facts and I hope my twenty years of experience can help the residents combine their education with a good bedside manner, empathy, and compassion. The residents are WAY smarter than me, but life experience counts too.
I have a series of nonfiction books entitled Edge of Medicine coming out this fall from the Mayo Clinic Press. Each of the four books encompasses ground-breaking events that advance medicine in the fields of Neuroscience, Surgery, Nanomedicine, and Cancer. Stay tuned and I’ll let you know when they’re out in the world.
I teach online classes through the AEA that may benefit teachers in the classroom. One is on using Picture Books in multiple ways in lesson planning and the other is unique and fun approaches to teach creative writing in the classroom. If interested, here are links:
Picture book course: https://training.aealearningonline.org/course-register
Creative writing course: https://training.aealearningonline.org/course-register
As I get older, my knees ache and I groan like an old man when getting up from a chair. In my head, I can still play volleyball and basketball and jump over hurdles, but it took one day on a pickleball court to prove that theory wrong. I’m adjusting to getting older with each phase of life, and the things I value update as well.
- Nothing matters more than my family.
- Keep friendships alive. Don’t get lazy or be ‘too busy’ to connect with the people who make you happy
- See the world. I don’t necessarily mean travel everywhere (that is always recommended) but enjoy your immediate surroundings: the low-lying fog over a cornfield, watch the sunrise , hike a wooded trail and smell the earth, or stargaze (if you can stay up that late.)
Life has changed, but change is good.
Thanks for coming to Pat’s Chat! I plan to get back to regular blogging about various subjects such as travel, writing, books, and life. Subscribe for automatic updates when a new blog becomes available!