Back to the Drawing Board...Keyboard

I'm not generally missing in action for a month. I'd like to say I was deep into a mystery and finished it. Not. 

I had colon cancer surgery and received my stage afterwards -- 2A. Way better than stages with bigger numbers. I'm meeting with an oncologist today to discuss chemo options. The surgeon said, and I quote, "It won't be the horrible kind."

There, I'm done. I'm not big on talking about illness details. I'm willing to listen if someone else needs to talk about their situation, but I'm generally more private. That said, I will tell the world when the chemo is done and I'm entirely out of the woods. 

At this point, you can say, "Tell the world? Who does she think she is, King Charles?" 

My Newest Book Project

I'm written several chapters of another Jolie Gentil mystery and am ready to move ahead more quickly. The break was good in that when I came back to it, I realized my choice of an opening scene would not draw in readers. 

Initially, the first chapter featured a scene with Jolie, Scoobie, their kids, and best friends at a high school football game. It relayed some important components of the book, but intuition tells me a lot of people won't keep reading if they think the book is too family-focused. Plus, nobody got killed.

I constantly consider the balance of personal life and mystery solving. So many TV shows became too much like soap operators, in my opinion, after lead characters got married. House comes to mind. It went from being a tightly presented, funny medical mystery series to one that focused on personal problems. Boring. I'm trying to avoid that.

Okay, back to work. More gripping blog posts to come, I hope for a long time.

Update: Turns out my tumors are among the 15% of colon cancer tumors that don't respond to chemo. The doctors think they got it all, but they can only be sure through future scans and other tests. I wish there were a magic pill, but I remind myself the cancer was caught through a routine colonoscopy -- much earlier than is sometimes the case. Lots of check-ups to come.

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