It's May of 2013, which mean it's exactly a year ago that I finished four months of 'double dose' chemotherapy. I almost never mention the other treatment I received - the lumpectomy, the six and a half weeks of daily radiation - because they seem to be a dream. Gone.

 

But chemo lives on and often takes a year to two to run it's evil course through my system. My biggest symptom at this point is chemo brain, a phenomenon in which you act like a woman going through menopaus...

           While I'm here at the Vermont Studio Center for the Arts, I'm taking part in the Author Blog Hop 2012. Baxter Clare, a writer I've long admired, tagged me, and now I'll answer the same questions about writing that she did last week. Thanks, Baxter!

What is the working title of your book?
I'm currently at work on my fifth novel. Case Files is very much a working title, just something to name the computer file holding all the bits and pieces of my work in progress. I am admittedly ...

I'm just popping in to write a quick update and say hello. Over the last four months my life has revolved around the cancer diagnosis I received at the very beginning of the year and that makes for a pretty small life. I'm bored with it, so it's not my intention to bore readers with lots of detail about the cancer journey. So I'll sum up:

A week ago I had the last of the eight chemotherapy treatments I've undergone in the past four months. They occurred every other week, usually leaving me a f...

I have a new book coming out in about six weeks. In my normal world I would be excitedly planning all of my publicity stuff, getting ready for readings, feeling that hard to describe joy I have when my baby is about to be launched into the world. I'm experiencing all of that, but in a way much muted by the fact that I was diagnosed with breast cancer a month ago. Talk about your trump card. At this point, so early in the journey, every thought I have that doesn't relate to breast cancer, ends...