2010 sounds like a title of a sci-fi book. Maybe it has been the title of a sci-fi book. And you know if you had written a book twenty or thirty years ago about all the things we do in 2009 it would have sounded like a sci-fi book. We have Facebook friends we talk to via computers. We want to find out about something, we “google” it. There’s not much demand for door-to-door encyclopedia salesmen these days. Drone aircraft drop bombs on our enemies without the need for a pilot to be aboard. Robots build our cars. We drive up to square piggy bank machines that spit out cash when we insert a little card into them and punch some buttons. We can hold a little book shaped gizmo in our hands and read a book without every turning a page. We put our music on something smaller than a deck of cards. We walk around with a phone to our ears or if we’re of the younger generation, type out messages on a tiny screen without having to say a word. And check the weather forecast on those phones or the movie times. We take kidneys, hearts and various other parts from one person and put them in another without the first thought of that being strange. We can make puppy dogs that glow and sheep and cats that are clones. The DNA from a hair or drop of blood can tie someone to a crime or prove he’s innocent after fifteen years.
~~Twenty ten. Two thousand ten. Ten. We’re entering the second decade in the Twenty-first Century. I had to get up and find a piece of chocolate to keep that from being too depressing. Not really. The chocolate, yes. Any excuse for chocolate. The depressing, no. I have a calendar of daily quotes and one of them reads, “Life is like an exciting book, and every year starts a new chapter.” I like starting new chapters in exciting books, don’t you? So 2010 here we come.
~~And on the way are you going to make any New Year’s resolutions? I’ve got some I could make. Use my time more wisely. Grow as a person (spiritually, not in the waistline!) and grow as a writer. Write more. Write better. Write right.
~~Write right – that’s what I’m trying to do now as I finish up the edits on my new book, The Seeker. I think I could work it over a hundred times and still see some things I might do better. So I’m trying to vary my words, make them flow smooth and easy so that anyone who reads my story won’t notice the words at all. Only the story I’m trying to tell about Charlotte and Adam. Most people don’t realize how much a story has be polished and worked over before it ever makes it out onto a bookstore shelf. So I’m doing some of that polishing now. Not a bad way to finish out a year. Then next year I can dive back into my work in progress and figure out what happens next to those characters.
~~Hope your year ahead is chock full and overflowing with all the best blessings and that you’ll find lots of good books to read as we head out through the teen decade toward 2020. Talk about a sci-fi title!! But we’ve got a few exciting chapters to go before we get there. Enjoy! And thanks for reading.
