Unexpected Changes

Just when things seemed to be ticking along nicely, one of our friends was rushed into hospital after suffering a mild stroke. Tony has been married to Liz for over fifty years. Liz has Multiple Sclerosis and Tony is her carer. Then this happens: Tony collapses. Their neighbours all rallied round and eventually the immediate emergency was dealt with. That was three days ago. Today, Tony is sitting up in bed looking almost normal. Pat and I went in to see him and came home relieved to know that he will almost certainly have a full recovery. He needs to so he can continue looking after Liz. The church has been praying for him and so have me and Pat. We thank God for his recovery.
This morning we had a church house group at our house. It’s usually held at Liz and Tony’s house. One of the women who had never been to our home before was sitting in her chair looking at the small row of my books taking pride of place on the unit in our lounge. After a while she said, ‘Who is Michael Parker?’ I said, ‘That’s me.’ She did a kind of double take and for a while was lost for words. I told her I was a real, live author. I must admit I got a kick out of that. Naturally I would liked to have talked about me and my books (what writer doesn’t?), but we weren’t gathered here to talk about me.
My self-publishing group, Acclaimed Books (not my publishers) have an interesting offer on our website at www.acclaimedbooks.com under the heading ‘NEWS’. It’s a free gift available until the 15th of this month. Well worth taking a look.
I’m beginning to make a change in direction with my latest manuscript. I am now convinced that I will be re-writing it all once the New Year is upon us. I’ve changed the main character, introduced another feminine interest and considered an element of computer hacking as a kind of ‘tasty morsel’ in the story. I feel that I’m edging towards a complete synopsis that will finally encourage me to get my head down and put pen to paper. Still a long way to go though but my experience tells me that I will get there. Whether it will be good enough for my publisher is a different story. We’ll see. Wish me luck!