Becoming History

Our area newspaper has a “Local History” section, where it reprints news from 100 to 75 to 50 years ago and so forth. Recently, there was a section under “35 YEARS AGO,” and it was about my first publication, SWEET PRAIRIE PASSION, Book #1 of my SAVAGE DESTINY series. Apparently, I am now a part of “history.” Well, being born just five months before WWII ended, I guess I qualify, but I’m not terribly happy about the fact that that was 73 years ago! 


I wrote a WWII story around 10 years ago that I never published because it needs work, but the other problem was where to place it as far as genre. Could it really be called “historical,” as compared to the 1800’s type novels? I guess by now it could be, so maybe I’ll go through that manuscript again and think about how to improve it. But if WWII is now a part of true history, them so am I!

Reading that “35 YEARS AGO” snip in the paper hit me a bit hard. Has it really been that long? I honestly have almost no memory of when or how I wrote 68 books since then. Sixty-seven have been published and I just turned in #68 to my publisher. Now I’m working on #69 and I’ve submitted a proposal to my publisher for a brand new series idea. My original writing goal was to publish 100 books, but maybe it’s more realistic to hope for 75 before I die. So far my health is holding out, so we’ll see.

It doesn’t “feel” like 35 years, but then most of us have that problem. We think something happened “a couple” of years ago and we find out it was 10 or 12 years ago. Where does all that time go? Maybe we just stay too busy to notice. We go from school to college to marriage to babies to full time work while raising a family to graduations and weddings and grandchildren, and it all flies by in the blink of an eye and suddenly … here we are … with GROWN grandchildren. We are suddenly the “old ones.” When did that happen? I never noticed any of it.

And through all those “life experiences” above, I wrote … and wrote … and wrote. And I am still writing and have even more stories in my head and hoping God will give me time to write those, too. At least once I’m gone, the books I’ve written will continue to be available for years afterward and will become a bit of a legacy that will also become “history.” SWEET PRAIRIE PASSION and my entire SAVAGE DESTINY series continues to sell in surprising numbers. Some day the history section of the newspaper will read “50 YEARS AGO” and “75 YEARS AGO.” Hopefully all the 68 (+) books I’ve had published before I die will still be selling, so that a part of me can continue to be with my grandchildren and great-grandchildren! And I will continue on into “history.”

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