Happy New Year! And with that I have a super announcement.

My second book, Book Two, has been accepted by Deep River Books, the same publisher that published Caring Lessons. I am more than thrilled. This book is about our cancer experience when my husband, Marv, was diagnosed with terminal small cell lung cancer. I started writing, what would become this book, in January of 2018 as I took notes, blogged, and emailed about our experience. And I finished it about a month ago after working intensively for the past year with my editor, Laura Matthews. She helped me shape the various notes, blog posts, and emails into a narrative arc that provides a story line. I credit her also for saving me from myself when I used more nursing jargon than the reader may want to read!

The publishing process may take up to a year. So don’t look for anything soon. There is still a lot of work to do. For starters, I’m working on the back cover. I must write something with “grab” that makes you want to read the book. And write an interesting blurb about myself. Why would you want to read this author? Does she have any credentials to write? Does she sound interesting, like someone with whom you’d like to spend some time?

I’ve written a rough draft of the above and have elicited feedback from writer/reader friends. So begins my involvement in this final year before publication.

I’m calling this Book Two because any first title is called a Working Title. In the end, the publisher decides what title works best. What will again “grab” the reader.

For fun, though, I’d like to share with you the various titles that I’ve jotted down, with help from some of you, as possibilities during the last few years. You’ll see the fun (and agony) of this small, but oh-so-important, aspect of writing. Each of the following would also have a subtitle. Here goes:

Endings Matter, Adventures in Grace, Dying Lessons, Going Home, Taking Charge, Making End-of-Life Choices, Dying Marv’s Way, Releasing the Balloons, Transition, On the Way Home, Embracing the Certainty of Death, Refusing Chemo, Saying No to Chemo, Our Last Journey, The Long Way Home, Choosing How to Die, Letting Go, He Never Asked for My Opinion, You’ll Do Fine, How One Couple Faced Death, Facing Death as a Family, Writings From a Widow, My Ultimate Gift, A Wife’s Ultimate Promise, Supporting the Decision, Making It Happen, The Last Road Trip, Calling the Shots

My friends who are not writers are always surprised at the amount of time I spend on this book. They can’t comprehend the hour after hour after hour. If they like to make puzzles, an activity I don’t like at all, I equate my hours of writing to the hours they say they love to ponder puzzle pieces on the way to finding their right place. Well, I ponder words, and I love it.

I’ll update you as the publication process moves along. Meanwhile, I invite you to start writing the many stories in your mind that are itching to get free and onto the page! And, yes the photo above is of my cup nestled among the leaves of the lemon tree in my winter-in-AZ backyard.