Snow on Starvation Lane

It's been more than a month since I last posted here. Since then, I've mingled with some fine writers at the Women Writing the West conference in Colorado Springs; met with my editors there, flew home and the following day my husband developed severe abdominal pain. We ended up calling the ambulance and air life who transported him 160 miles to the medical center where he'd been treated for cancer. They discovered a blown colon and fixed it! Hallelujah! He's had some setbacks with bladder infections but we're hanging in there and we're back home. If you want the details you can visit my website www.jkbooks.com and click on the November Monthly Memo.

Yesterday I drove 52 miles to do the grocery shopping, run errands, mail letters and paid bills, take the dry cleaning in and made it home before the snow began. Today the canyon of the photograph is covered with fresh snow. I can barely see the tops of the breaks as the foggy horizon has blanketed the ridge tops. Only the rocks jut out like cold noses from the white hills. It feels warm and safe here at the moment. A refuge which is exactly what we had always hoped this place would be and so it's been these last 22 years.

So now I'm trying to attend to deadlines for books and commitments I've made. I did want you all to know about a writer's workshop I'm teaching with Bob Welch, winner of a Gold Medallion Award for several of his non-fiction books, winner of the Columnist of the Year award from Newspaper columnists (his peers) and a winner in my heart because he was my first writing instructor when I walked through the door of a community college with fear and trepidation and signed up for a creative writing class back in 1982. He was a sports writer for the local paper then (the same town where Jerry was recently hospitalized). I broke out in a sweat; hated it when he read my work out loud because I knew it meant someone would see me for the fraud I was. Instead he encouraged me, suggested I try to sell come of the pieces and I did and thus my writing career began. He's a fine man, great sense of humor and as our brochure says: we're doing this weekend workshop on the Oregon coast (February 8-11) "to help you write better, believe in yourself and realize that in small, bug significant ways, your words can change the world." I hope you'll think about joining us. For more information contact info@bobwelch.net. He can answer your questions. It's limited to 50 people so expect some personalized attention!

For now, I better give my husband some personalized attention. It's time for lunch and since he's been ill, he hasn't complained about my cooking, not once! Just one more side benefit of catastrophic illness! Stay warm and well. Jane