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Don’t worry—I left room to buy things!
I can’t wait to spend most of this month Down Under, first a couple of nights in Sydney to get over the jet lag, then I’ll wing my way down to Melbourne to stay with my good friend, author Nicole Hayes.
Nicole and I “met” online in a writers’ group about a thousand years ago. Actually, in the early 2000s. This was on an online forum called Backspace, and it’s astonishing to realize how many of us first met there before we were published—authors like Abbott Kahler, Renee Rosen, Sara Gruen, Elizabeth Letts, Tasha Alexander, A.S. King, Jamie Ford, Jon Clinch, and the founder, Karen Dionne. We were all baby authors just trying to figure out the business.
Nic and I immediately clicked and started communicating outside of the forum. For a while we were critique partners as well. And since her husband is from the States, she and her family visit here every couple of years and that’s how we met in real life. We try to get in a girls’ weekend in NYC when she’s here, and once she flew to Chicago for a couple of days. When the pandemic hit, of course she and her family couldn’t travel to the US. But we were all set to reunite this past summer when my flight to NYC got cancelled, then it got cancelled again, and we had to scrap our plans. That’s when I decided I would finally fly to see her in Australia, after talking about it forever. So—bucket list trip!
Sometimes I hate the Internet and social media, that’s for sure. It can be so toxic. But other times it can bring you wonderful gifts, and our friendship is just that.
So—follow me on social media to get pics and updates from our adventures! And when I return home in late April, after some time prone on the couch trying to figure out what day it is, I will be lashing myself into my writing chair and writing again. This time, for real. I hope to finish my next manuscript by the end of the year. (Too soon to talk about what it’s about, though.)
Have a wonderful April wherever you are—hopefully it’s warm and sunny and full of flowers!
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