You're Never Too Old!

I’ve been bad – haven’t posted a new blog for quite a while. Just too much going on, what with a fund-raising fashion show I recently took part in, decorating for Thanksgiving, Christmas, and now lots of shopping to do and presents to wrap and parties to go to, and end-of-year reports to do for our family business and getting ready to visit our condo in Las Vegas and on and on …
I think I’m supposed to be retired at my age, but I don’t see that happening … ever! There are times when I hate being this busy, but I know things will slow down again – and overall, I never want to retire. Why should I? They say staying physically and mentally active is what keeps us old folks going and out of those “homes” we don’t like to talk about. I feel and look much younger than I am, and I have lots of energy and am blessed with (so far) very good health, so why should I sit down in a rocking chair and knit? No, thanks.

They say having lots of friends and an active social life is another means of staying healthy as you grow older. Well, I have plenty of that, and I am grateful for all my friends. Laughter really is good medicine for your physical well being – and I believe that helping and caring about others is also good medicine … for the soul. Life is far too short to spend it with regrets, or with malice toward others, or holding old grudges, or to waste away your last years just sitting and watching TV and figuring out which pill to take when. Thank God I take only 1 pill a day, and I’m hoping that if I stay this active, it will help ward off having to take more.

Well, in all the “busy-ness” lately I keep thinking about how I should visit my blog site and keep in touch with all you wonderful blogger friends out there. Sorry I don’t do this more often, but this time of year I don’t even spend time on my writing like I should. That’s the only thing in my life that has “slowed down,” I guess you could say. When I was younger and far busier than I am now – raising two active sons, working full time and a hundred other things going on in my life – I was writing 2 – 4 books a year!! Well, not any more, but trust me, the books WILL keep coming.

PARADISE VALLEY, my first brand new title in years, is coming out next July, and I AM WORKING – (really) – on another new story. It has just taken me a while to decide how to handle it. My original idea just didn’t work out, so I am taking the story in another direction. Now that I have a better idea what I’m going to do, I’ll get busy. I PROMISE! My goal is to be done by April. The working title is DESPERATE HEARTS, but that could change, since the storyline is also changed. We’ll see.

Meantime, yes, I still love to write and will keep on keepin’ on as long as the Good Lord allows me to enjoy continued good health and energy. I have never lost my love of American history and the Old West and Native Americans. Recently I watched a cute little movie called “Chasing Dreams,” about a little boy who desperately wanted to go to Wyoming and live like the outlaw Butch Cassidy. I won’t go into the whole story here. What struck me was when the boy is running away with an old man who is fleeing a nursing home, they drive to Wyoming, and while heading down the highway the little boy looks out and “sees” Indians chasing them. 

OMG – that brought back such memories for me. When I was little I played cowboys and Indians all the time (yes, even though I’m a girly-girl). And even as a grown-up, when my husband and I started traveling out west, I would look out the window and envision what it must have been like to see Indians riding over the hills toward us – or wild horses roaming free. Sometimes it’s hard to envision what the Old West was like once … lawless, wild, free. There is nothing more beautiful than the American West, nothing so magnificent, no place else with such endless horizons. So much of it hasn’t changed – yet too much of it HAS changed, mostly the landscape in areas where cities have sprouted in places where there was a time no one thought anybody would even want to live.

Like that little boy, I can still close my eyes and “pretend.” I often “see” the events of my stories, and I try hard to “feel” the emotions or even the physical pain and hardship of the pioneers and Indians. I still love watching westerns and reading them. I always will. And after a few years of trying to write something different, I realized it’s just not in my heart to write anything but a good ole’ western romance or western family sagas or Native American stories. Somehow I think I was born to write them. Maybe I lived out west in another life, either as a pioneer or a Native America woman. There has to be some mysterious reason why I am so drawn to that era and those locations, and why it is so easy for me to envision that life so that I can bring reality to my stories.

Now that I have written this, I am getting more anxious to get to that book I told you I’d write next, so I’d better get my shopping done and my tax work done and push everything aside and make time to write. Meantime, Happy Holidays to everybody!! Be careful traveling and God Bless!