I’ve been buried in books, that’s where I’ve been. That ‘baby’ I sent off in my last blog post came back to me from the agent after three months with a nice response saying she had enjoyed reading my writing, but it just “wasn’t clicking” for her, so it probably wasn’t right for their office.

I reread a few chapters of the manuscript and decided it wasn’t clicking for me, either, so I wrote to thank her for her nice note and told her I’d found it wasn’t clicking for me, either – and I was under taking a rewrite of the manuscript, deepening the emotion and focusing more on goal motivation and conflict.

The agent wrote back right away saying, “Wow, Ruth, I can hardly wait to see what you come up with next.”

What I’ve come up with next, in the process of this rewrite, has morphed into a five-book series – Benson’s Cove, Red Bird Inn, Lighthouse Shuttle, Wild Bird Refuge and Admiral House B&B.

The good news is that in spite of difficulties in editing my blog, (it has changed on me over time), plus two years of the global pandemic we’ve all been through, and a computer crash a few weeks ago, thinking I had lost all 90,000 words of the first book, I’ve come out on the other side of all of this with the novel saved to an external hard drive (Thank you, Jesus). I’ve also found that I’ve lost my impatience with the book. Taking my time now. Enjoying it all a whole lot more.

Each book will have a double-date love story, plus some of the issues we all deal with in our lives spread out among the books – mistakes, regrets, death, losses, forgiveness, acceptance, on-going grief and so much more, plus a little trauma thrown in for good measure, as my mom used to say. Makes good Women’s Fiction, if you ask me.

I want this blog to focus mostly now on writing, the thing I seem to do best. Sometimes about a novel, other times writing in general. So far so good.