SPRING BREAK THOUGHTS!

Spring Break - something teachers and students alike both look forward to so much every year.  Winter's dreary march ending, sunshine peeking out from the clouds, the world beginning to green up around us, and best of all, a straight week with no alarm clock intruding on morning slumber!  This year's break got off to a dubious start, but I have managed to get a number of literary projects started/finished/worked on thus far.
   The day before our break began, school was out for yet another snow day. Five inches of the beautiful white stuff this time, which made my barefoot run around the yard even more fun than the last one! But it did throw our exam schedule into a state of higgledy-piggledy, and made Friday a busy day to say the least - giving one exam, allowing students to finish another, and getting everything graded and in the computer before leaving for the day.  But, by 3 PM, I was done, and nine glorious days of freedom stretched ahead!
    Saturday my old friend Jerry and I headed up to the Sulphur River in quest of artifacts and fossils, and managed to come home with some of both: I got two solid points and one pretty, colorful flint knife, plus several fossilized vertebrae from mosasaurs and ancient fish, while he got one arrowhead, two preforms, a knife, and a nice selection of fossils as well.  I hiked nearly  six miles, so I was exhausted when we finally got  back to the truck.
    When we got home, I began work on a project that wound up taking most of my weekend, aside from church: I re-read my upcoming release, THE REDEMPTION OF PONTIUS PILATE, and made up a glossary for all the Latin terms I used in this historic epic, due to be released soon.  By Sunday night I had re-read the entire novel (you folks are in for a real treat, I promise!) and put together a glossary that ran about four pages.  In between I had church Sunday morning and a few sundry errands to run, but most of the day was spent reading and defining terms.
    Monday I wanted to get back to LOVER OF GOD, my current novel, but after a hiatus of nearly three weeks, I decided to read it from the beginning, throwing in some edits here and there, and above all making sure the story flowed nicely from beginning to end as I re-immersed myself in it.  However, this process was interrupted when I had to take a church member over to Rowlett for a minor surgical procedure, and also by my night class, since PJC is on a different Spring Break schedule from my day job at GCS.  So most of Monday passed with not much writing getting done.
   Tuesday was another gloomy, cloudy day, so I spent a good part of it reading and editing, with one significant interruption in the middle: I went to a meeting of Greenville's Book Club to hear legendary reviewer Rose Mary Rumble give one of her performances.  This lady is a marvelous speaker, and she was giving her summation of a book called AMERICAN FUN: FOUR CENTURIES OF JOYFUL REBELLION.  The club president did allow me a couple of minutes to get up and introduce myself and talk about THE TESTIMONIUM, and after the meeting, I sold three copies to the ladies there.  But the best part of it, for me, was that Mrs. Rumble agreed to read and review THE TESTIMONIUM!  She is one of the most demanded speakers in Texas, and certainly Dallas' most famous reviewer, so this was a very exciting opportunity for me!  I have no idea how long it will be before she gets the book read and reviewed, but this was a big time break! And, to sweeten the pot, the local Hastings Store had sold a couple more copies of my book, so I re-stocked their shelves and pocketed a little more money for the day!
  I got home around five or six, and sat down to finish reading up and editing LOVER OF GOD.  By 10 PM, I had read all the way up to the point I left off three weeks ago, so I began writing in earnest - I had left off in mid-chapter, with Marcus waiting to have a private interview with the High King of Parthia.  By midnight I had finished Chapter 15 and shot it off to my faithful Beta Reader, Ellie, to get her comments.
  This morning I woke up and found that she had read the chapter over breakfast and loved it!  Her commentary was so inspiring I sat down and started writing the next chapter, in between making posts in a FaceBook debate over whether or not slavery was the primary cause of the Civil War and helping my wife move furniture so she could do some painting in the TV room..
   So here I am, after a run to town for some errands,  getting ready for church tonight, pecking away at that next chapter, checking my Email to see if my FB opponent has made another post, and then I realized "Hey, I haven't updated my blog in a week!"
   So next I sat down to do that - and hey, now it's done!  Back to my book!