How It All Begins

Fiorella is working with friend Patricia on a murder mystery, probably a five-book series, and here's a selection from it:

The corpse, an awkward lump zipped into a white body bag, was wheeled out of the building under the gawking eyes of the students sitting at table in the study area outside the lab.

Rex Mackenzie identified with both their horror and their curiosity. Once he had been like that, a kid fascinated by the unelievability of death. And now he saw too much of it because that's what homicide invetsigators did--check out death scenes. Not all the time, of course. With XXX years on the force, he had plenty of assaults, thefts, and rapes under his belt too, but murder was his specialty. It didn't horrify him as much as it used to, but he still didn't understand the deliberate taking of another person's life. And never would.

From the Past to the Future

Fio has started cleaning out her upstairs office, and this afternoon, she went through a bundle of stuff from when she was teaching--accolades from students, their parents, and colleagues. Needless to say, she's not tossing a single page. In fact, she may even request they all be put in her coffin as grave goods.
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Hip, hip hooray! Fio and friend Patricia are off and running on the romance/murder mystery, and the ideas are flying fast and furious. Keep an eagle eye out for excerpts.
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Sabrina's story (formerly Phillipa's story) is riding high. Fiorella is whizzing through 40 pages of revisions a day now, but will probably slow down to about 20 per day when she crosses the halfway mark. The good thing is that she's finally worked out all the plot knots so all that's left is pulling the whole thing together (gulp).
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Lolly's story got a solid boost last week when Fiorella had to close down the murder mystery until friend Patricia got back from California, and Fio is more excited about it than ever. It's wonderful to start reading something you packed away five years ago and realize it is hot, hot, hot!
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Fio's gradually adjusting to her new computer, but she's going to have to run off to Click tomorrow to learn how to make her Kindle reappear and how to "find" numbered pages. She'll also visit a Michael's store for adhesive alphabet letters and Mazda for touch-up paint. Yes, your Fio is a busy bee.

Bounce Back

Things are looking up this morning. Fio slept well, probably because she has drastically adjusted her diet to combat the GERD that can wake her up in the middle of the night and keep her up for hours. Also, she is busily engaged in setting up the aforementioned computer era murder mystery/romance she and a friend are planning to write.
Another thing that is putting a smile on Fio's face and a spring in her step is that today is the day she calls friend Suzy in England and catches up on all the news across the pond. And today is also the day that she'll get the Microsoft sytem installed in her computer. And maybe today will also be the day she gets the family ranch land problem taken care of.