So here’s the deal. I’ve had a dizzying ride on the medical roller coaster the last few years, and if you’d like to know more about my personal story, you can read all about it in the post on Brain Fog. But the short answer is that I am slowly getting a better handle on what ails me, and I am cautiously optimistic that the muses of creative writing will once again be shouting in my ears! Most likely, they’ll be pestering me to check in with the Koslow clan. On our real-world timeline, Leigh has celebrated her big 5-0 , Allison and Ethan are in college, and Warren has been newly elected to some state something or other. (Which is unfortunate for me, since the last thing I want to write about is politics!) As the older generation ages in style (or without it), Chewie gains more weight and Mao Tse continues her feline journey of immortality. So when and where does Leigh next trod upon a corpse? Hmmm... perhaps she will find herself in Alaska, braving the moose and the grizzlies! For more on that possibility, see the post on my own summer plans. Please also check out my post on marketing to see how I’ve been changing things up to make my books as affordable and easy to access as possible. Because to me, the most rewarding thing about writing is simply being read! Of course, I don’t even know people are reading unless they tell me. That’s why hearing back from readers is so utterly soul-warming. I've poured a lot of heart into the posts that follow, so please read on. And before you leave, make sure to at least say hi! :)

If you have zero interest in medical issues , particularly someone else’s, feel free to skip this section now. But if you’re curious why my ability to write books seemed to slam to a halt two years ago even as I somehow kept managing to post on Facebook and write other things, please read on. My particular brand of “chronic migraine with aura” isn’t quite what most people envision. I am fortunate enough not to have an extremely painful headache on a near daily basis (although some people do.) What I do have, even after years of treatment by a certified headache specialist and all the latest and greatest pharmaceuticals and alternatives both, is a never-ending string of migraine symptoms that wax and wane unpredictably. When migraines are chronic , it’s no longer a situation of a specific trigger causing a specific attack. The brain is used to migraining, it likes to go there, it can do so at the drop of a hat, and no amount of obsessive tinkering to remove specific triggers in diet or lifestyle is going to make it magically change course. The “attacks” are no longer distinct, but blend into each other in an endless, undulating stream. I can have any level of head pain, nausea, light sensitivity, skull pressure, blurry vision, and cloudy thinking at any time, sometimes all together, sometimes in tandem. Fortunately, with my meds available, I only rarely have severe head pain. It’s equally rare for me to go a whole day with no symptoms at all. But on most days, the carousel of rotating symptoms is mild and largely manageable. So why can’t I get another book written? The answer can be put into two words “Brain Fog.” This symptom is difficult to describe, even for a writer. Trying to think clearly with brain fog is like trying to swim underwater through molasses. Your short-term memory is crap. You forget the end of a sentence while speaking the beginning of it. You can’t think of the word “calendar” even as you describe a printed thing that shows you the months and days in chart form. Your mind may concentrate intensely, but not on what you want it to. You can surf around on the internet for hours, crawling down all sorts of rabbit-holes, but cannot process the directions for taking an at-home Covid test. You can force yourself to sit down and write a scene for a book, but when you read it the next day, it’s lifeless and boring and uninspired. You feel you should be able to fix it, but have no idea how to do so. If you force yourself to try, you’ll come back the next day to find it worse than before. My migraines went chronic in the fall of 2017. I was somewhere in the middle of the first draft of Glacier Blooming , early in 2018, when I finally decided to give up. I had the ideas, but I couldn’t get them on paper. The writing didn’t sparkle. It just wasn’t right. And I refused to publish something that wasn’t up to my usual, self-imposed standard. Within months, however, a minor miracle happened. A whole new class of migraine preventatives came onto the market, the anti-CGRP monoclonal antibodies. I was among the first patients in the country to start taking monthly injections of Aimovig. Two weeks later, it was as if I’d been living under an overcast sky for as long as I could remember – and the sun came out. The clouds thinned and blew away. I could think again. My head was clear! I could concentrate. I could create. I could write. So I did. I pulled out the draft of Glacier Blooming and felt like it was written by another person. Ick! Terrible! Not only were the flaws now obvious, but so were the fixes. I dove into editing, threw out huge chunks of uninspired dreck, wrote all new chapters I was proud of, and published it in record time. I then went on to write Never Nag Your Neighbor , ecstatic to believe that I was cured. The awful fog had been a bad patch I could now forever put behind me! I published the mystery and went back into romance, taking beloved characters from Glacier Blooming and bringing them back to life in Tofino Storm . I was near the end of the latter when the brain fog started creeping back again. My neurologist increased my dosage, and it helped for a month or two. Then the door slammed. I was right back when I started. I had completed writing Tofino Storm with a clear head, but finishing up the editing and publishing process – over Christmas of 2019 -- was like pushing a boulder uphill in a sandstorm. By the time Covid hit in the spring of 2020, I was mentally and emotionally exhausted. I was migraining regularly again. I was dispirited and miserable. There was no question of starting another book now, not when I knew I might never be able to finish it. I tried to keep the book business alive with projects I could manage by working off and on, like redoing my website and writing short, soap-opera style scenes for Kindle Vella. But social media was killing me . The nature of the beast for authors is being constantly available to answer comments, remaining upbeat and positive, presenting a more-perfect-than-life face to the public, and posting and sharing new content on a regular basis, all of which I found soul-crushing. Putting so much of myself “out there” had always been fundamentally uncomfortable for me, as I am by nature a private person. But once I wasn’t writing anymore, the direct interaction with readers that was always my favorite part of the process turned into a never-ending marathon of delivering bad news. The same flattering question that used to fill me with pleased excitement -- “When does your next book come out?” – now only made me feel sad. So I made the tough (and commercially suicidal) call to get off social media altogether. Hence, the creation of Cafe Eclaire. Aside from enjoying the excuse to eat an eclair, I liked the more private, intimate feel of being able to host the content on my own website, and the once-a-month format was infinitely easier to manage. Predictably, reader participation dropped off over time, and I began to space the Cafe Days out farther and farther. I tried a second monoclonal antibody, Emgality, but it didn’t seem to be helping at all. My creative energy was limited. I had no good news to share. In the summer of 2021, I found hope again. The third monoclonal antibody I tried, Ajovy, was working. My headache frequency dropped significantly; I had more good days, more energy. But even as I felt better physically, I noticed something distressing. The sky was still overcast. Even with occasional holes in the clouds, the sun stubbornly refused to shine. Brain fog. Why did I still have it? Perhaps it was a matter of sleep deprivation . I had noticed my insomnia getting worse, my quality of sleep steadily deteriorating. I would lie awake tossing and turning, note the time on an hourly basis, wake up too early. So I committed to one of the most effective remedies known: a course of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy. I made some progress, but not enough, and my therapist recommended I consult my PCP to look for a medical cause. I did, and we found two. Turns out I had both subclinical hypothyroidism (Hashimoto’s disease) and obstructive sleep apnea. Either of which can cause -- guess what? – brain fog. What I’ve learned through this unfortunate saga is that brain fog, which until quite recently was not taken seriously by the medical profession as a real symptom of anything, is in fact a symptom of a wide variety of diseases and conditions . Migraine, hypothyroidism, and sleep deprivation can all cause it. But so can Covid-19, Lyme’s disease, and a whole host of autoimmune diseases that predominantly affect – guess who? – women. Consequently (ahem) these conditions have historically been understudied, underfunded, underdiagnosed, and undertreated. Even now they are largely still misunderstood. (For a fascinating foray into this topic, I highly recommend reading The Invisible Kingdom by Meghan O’Rourke.) One thing that is clear: a person with one autoimmune disease is very likely to have more. Now that I’ve been diagnosed with autoimmune thyroiditis, it’s entirely possible that some part of my brain fog is coming from an autoimmune source I don’t even know about. The last part isn’t too encouraging. But whatever the long-term future holds, treating my sleep apnea in the last month has at least blown another hole in the clouds. There are no guarantees. But for now, the sun is shining.

Those who have read my Pacific Horizons books already have a pretty good idea of my dream for my golden years... to spend winters in Hawaii and summers in Alaska , just like the humpback whales! Barring that fantasy, I would at least like to be a snowbird, leaving my home in the snowy woods of Pennsylvania every winter for a few warm, sun-drenched months in upcountry Maui. During the long years of covid I’ve watched the latter dream steadily erode into fantasy as well, thanks to the insanity of the current real estate market. (The medium condo price on Maui, FYI, went from $515,000 in 2019 to $820,000 this month. And that’s just for a condo. Actual houses average well over $1 million!) So... we adjusted our aspirations. I’ve always really wanted to have a “winter place” where I putter around a new garden, create a second community of friends and neighbors, see different species of birds and plants, and enrich my writing by broadening my experience of different parts of the country. But when my youngest up and moved to Alaska, I had a new idea. How about a “summer place” instead? Fast forward to summer 2022... and my official Alaskan Cabin Retreat! It’s a solid little house on over an acre of forested land, within walking distance to a lake, just off the edge of a giant state forest with miles of nothing but glaciered mountain range beyond. Head the other direction, and it’s ten minutes away from Resurrection Bay and the absolutely gorgeous fjiord town of Seward, setting for Alaskan Dawn . Grizzly bears, anyone? I am told they are regular visitors, along with black bears and giant roaming moose! Call me crazy, but I can’t wait! Stay tuned to the Cafe, because my wildlife cam is coming with me, and I look forward to sharing my adventures. Perhaps Leigh and Warren will wind up in Alaska too? I can see Bev and Hap from Never Murder a Birder traveling from Texas to spend their summer living the RV life at the Seward waterfront, birding and fishing and volunteering at the local sealife center. Why shouldn’t Leigh pop up for a visit? She probably wouldn’t run into a grizzly. Much less another body... Such delightful possibilities! I believe that after the long days of covid and brain fog, a change of scenery is exactly what I need to get the healing vibes and creative juices flowing again. So, here’s to hoping! What would you like to see the next book be?

I’ve been writing and publishing novels for over twenty years now, and during that time the industry has faced sea changes akin to multiple tsunamis. My favorite times were the early days of ebooks , when people were buying their first Kindles and authors faced a brave new world of selling their work directly to readers. Back then, I loved not just the writing, but the marketing as well. Marketing meant coming up with ideas for my own covers, writing the jacket copy myself, picking my own titles, setting my own deadlines, keeping 70% of the sales price instead of 7%, and generally being my own boss. Social media was young, free, unpolluted with ads and politics, and allowed unprecedented possibilities for authors to communicate directly with readers. A few independent websites starting helping people find books, and services like BookBub were born, where for a reasonable fee an author could present their books at a sale price to readers who were hungry for more. With no middle-man except the booksellers, readers could read more for less, while authors could not only write what they wanted but keep more of the profit besides. Today, the world of publishing in general, and the process of marketing in particular, is radically different . Amazon has changed from a user-friendly bookstore into a bloated behemoth where full-length novels are all but lost amidst the clamor. Social media has become monetized, politicized, and sometimes plain unsafe. The role of author has changed from taking a virtual podium, saying a few words, and answering questions to standing in the middle of a crowded stadium jumping up and down, waving, and screaming, “Buy my book!!!” Under the new rules of “pay to play,” our book listings and social media posts cannot even be seen by searching readers unless we pay for the privilege. An author can spend $12 to make $1, with most of the difference going to Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg. Authors who don’t pay the price, who don’t jump and scream, are unlikely to make enough to live on. I am blessed to be at an age and place in life where I don’t need to support myself with my writing. So no... I’m not going to jump and scream and further enrich billionaires. I’m going to party like it’s 2010 and do my own thing! That will mean fewer sales, for sure. But it doesn’t have to mean my books get read less. And being read is what matters most! Towards this end, I have just this month lowered the price on all my ebooks across the board . Those that were over three bucks are now a dollar cheaper. Furthermore, I have opted in to every possible library service, including Hoopla! (If your library doesn’t have Hoopla, you should ask them to think about it. Their audiobooks seriously saved my sanity during the pandemic.) Hoopla has very slow processing times, but eventually every title I’ve written should be listed, which means anyone with a card for a library with Hoopla access can read any or all of them for free! In addition, I’ve revised the big boxed sets available only on my website to include the latest releases – and these “Edie Claire Collections” remain the best bargain available for purchasing. (See the “Shop Boxed Sets” tab on this website menu.) And as always, I have three first-in-series books available for free , so that anyone can check them out before spending a dime. In summary, I’m done with marketing. Marketing Schmarketing means I plan to conserve all my energies for more important things like writing new books. I’ve always believed that good old-fashioned word of mouth is the best way to reach new readers anyway. So if you know anyone you think would enjoy them and happen to say so, thank you very much!!!