Welcome

So here we go...

In the end of December 2012, I was very sick with something that may or may not have been the flu.  The doctor said it was 'viral,' which probably meant, 'I have no clue what's wrong.'  It hurt terribly to do simple things, such as move my eyeballs.  I don't exaggerate.  After taking nearly a week off from work (unheard of) and spending six days in bed, I had a dream.  Shortly after Christmas, I described the dream to my youngest sister.  She simply told me, "That would make a good book."  And so, LIGHT IN THE DARKNESS was born.

The novel became my New Year's Resolution.  I said to myself, "I will write you because you are creative, and you are fun, and you are not mathematics."  One thing you should know about me is that I love mathematics, both my Bachelor's and Master's degrees are in mathematics, and I teach high school mathematics.  However, my Bachelor's in also in English, a major that has sorely been overlooked since May, 2006 when I graduated.  I also said to myself, "You haven't done an ounce of anything for yourself since your daughter was born, and it wouldn't kill you to do something for yourself once in a while."  So every night I made myself work on LitD, even if I was too tired to do much other than change a word or punctuation mark.  I started to set myself little goals such as, "100 words tonight" or "jot down that idea."  These little goals turned into, "62,000 words by Sunday" and now "finish first draft by mid-March."  Now, I have 69,003 words written, and I anticipate that I will finish it by mid-March, if only because I set that as my goal.

LitD has turned into an obsession.  I don't mean one of those unhealthy, stalker kind of obsessions.  I mean the kind of obsession where I think about it while I'm showering, driving to work, cooking dinner, and sleeping.  I even have to rewind my audiobooks during my commute to work because I space out and forget to listen to them.  Okay, maybe it's a little like a stalker.  But I'm happy, and my dishes still get cleaned, and I make lunch for my husband every night,  read to my daughter every day, and still manage rocking lesson plans (statistics is very fun to teach, by the way) 80% of the time.

A week ago, I discovered that the completion of my novel might actually happen.  I mean, I might actually finish it.  Wow.  The idea hit me hard.  I have now begun some research into what I need to do to make publishing it happen.  Hence, this blog was born.  I read something somewhere about how I need a platform, and while I have no clue how to create one, how to manage one, or any of that stuff, this is what I'll do.  There is nothing like jumping into something feet first.