Rodney Dodig

“Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the house

Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse.”

Nothing could be further from the truth in Peru. The tradition here is mainly to exchange gifts Christmas Eve and then have a huge family dinner at midnight, all this while fireworks light up the sky over the entirety of Lima. I will be spending my Christmas Eve with Steve and his family. This will be the third one for me and if tradition holds, we will have Pavo (turkey) Estofoado, Res de Rojo, rice, potatoes, green beans, a salad and some type of dessert (probably Panetone, a Peruvian fruit cake) with a nice glass of red wine. The food is delicious; Steve’s Mom is an excellent cook. Her boyfriend, Jose Manuel, will fix the Res de Rojo. It’s a roast of sorts (beef) cooked long and slow in a red sauce. There will be six or seven of us at the dinner and in all probability enough food for twenty. Sometime between two and three AM, we will head back to the apartment and I will spend a night tossing and turning from eating so late. Ahhh, but that’s tradition and you can’t fight it.

I’ve managed to get a little writing done this week. I’m 2/3^rd the way through chapter 3 in my second book. I would be further along but the character telling the story in this chapter has been hiding from me and I’ve had a hard time getting him to reveal himself. It’s a dark chapter dealing with child slavery and boy soldiers. I want to try and inject a little social consciousness in this book without being too preachy. To research for the book, I’ve been reading articles on the web about the long term affects this can have on these children. It’s a very scary and heartbreaking story. I also received some more pages from Tim Moloney on my dialog for the first book. I will work on that this afternoon. So far, I’m on track to get the first book to some agents the first week of the New Year. I’ve also decided to try and write a short fantasy story for my grandniece and nephews. I’m also going to try and illustrate it. This will be a long term project and I’m only four pages into it so far.

The writers’ group didn’t meet this week. Between illness, new students and travel; we couldn’t get enough people together for a meeting. I was already in Miraflores to meet Tim for breakfast when I started getting the calls. Instead I spent the morning with Tim listening to his travails about teaching English in Peru. He’s having problems getting a job at an established school with regular hours and benefits. I got to see the new place he’s staying in and afterwards we wandered through the Surquillo street market looking at all the offerings. I managed to keep my wallet in my pocket and came home without a bunch of stuff I really don’t need. On Friday I have my regular meeting with Larry over coffee. As always our topics of conversation were wide ranging and interesting.

Last but not least, I will probably be moving in the next three months. Due to the plunge of the Dollar against the Sol (it was 3.16/$1 when I first came to Peru, it’s now 2.67/$1), she’s raising my rent $100 a month. That kind of price increase is not in my budget so I will be scouring the want ads for the next few months looking for a place to live. I’ve been lucky so far, let’s hope the streak continues.

Merry Christmas everyone and I hope you all have a healthy and prosperous New Year.

After outlining the first twelve chapters in my second book, I have decided to set it to the side for a bit. I need to polish up book one and get it out to some agents the first week of the New Year. I’m still waiting for my friend Tim’s comments on my dialog in the rest of the book. I feel like I now have the gist of what he’s getting at in his first round of changes. I was being way too formal, polite so to speak. It’s just not the way people talk to each other in everyday life. I only have six chapters left to work on and a couple of places where Tim and a couple of other readers think I should give more insight to my two main characters, Lourdes and Rodriguez. I am both excited and nervous about this stage. I’ve braced myself for rejection. I know many famous writers went through a lot of rejection letters before someone finally accepted them. I also know that these days, some writers have had considerable success self publishing after they were rejected multiple times. I haven’t decided where that cut off point is for me yet.

This past week I got to see mysterious magical creatures parading in a mall, an unexpected rainbow in the sky over San Borja and have a plethora of beautifully feathered birds sing to me outside my window. The holiday season is in full swing here in Lima. The malls are decorated. Christmas Carols play over loud speakers. Kids drag their parents through multiple stores pointing to everything they want to find under the tree Christmas morning. One of my friends, Katrina, is having a gingerbread house baking party this Sunday. I hope she bakes some extra cookies and brings them to the writers’ group. The national ballet is putting on the Nutcracker and the museums will have free pass day for everyone. I put up my tree this past week. It is a small affair but enough to remind me of the holidays and put me in an even cheerier mood.

The writers’ group met on Thursday. Only Katrina, Kathy and I were in attendance. We went over a travel article that Kathy had drafted a couple of days before. It shows a lot of promise and with a few additions and small changes will be a great read. We also spent time socializing and plan to meet next Thursday even though it’s very close to Christmas Day. Hopefully Jack, our new member, and Victoria will be able to come to this one. I met Tim last Sunday for breakfast. Lourdes had to work on some papers for her University class. We had a nice chat and he seems to have a good goal set for the New Year. Larry and I met yesterday (Friday) for coffee. We talked about my plans for getting the book published and my ideas for the second book. Larry also told me about an idea he has for a book he wants to write, a spy story taking place in Peru during World War II. It sounds like it will be very interesting.

My dental work is progressing. I’ve been spending a lot of time in the chair getting my teeth drilled down to points to support the crowns. Yesterday I finally had the first fitting of the uppers. They look great but the bite was off so they have to go back to the lab. Monday I will have the second fitting and hopefully, they will be put in place permanently on Tuesday, then on to the lowers. It’s a long process but the smile will be worth it when it’s all over. Pictures to follow.

As I wait for my friend Tim to finish his edits on the dialog in my first book I feel the need to be productive again. So, I have started the second book in my planned three book series. The first two chapters have been completed. There are almost 2,000 words that begin a new adventure for my intrepid detective. He is starting out in the Amazon jungle. He’s been assigned to assist the anti-narcotics section of the Peruvian National Police in finding the labs that are supplying large quantities of cocaine to the street gangs of Lima. I know where and how I want the book to get there. The process of filling in all the details is left. There’ll be new characters to develop, old ones to kill off or make disappear, sad moments, happy moments, horrible moments and maybe a few laughs. I hope to provide the reader with enough action to keep them turning the pages, unable to put the book down. It will be a daunting goal to say the least.

Recently I’ve notice the fees for my banking transactions rising steadily. It’s not enough that they’re making billions of dollars in profit; they have to squeeze the poor and middle class with fees until they have nothing left. I ask you, where can you put your money, get a decent interest rate and have it be safe. I’ve come to the conclusion that burying it in a can in the yard is almost better than having a savings or checking account. The moment that brought me to this state of mind was noticing a mysterious $50 deduction from the amount of money being sent to Peru from my account in the US. Let me add that my bank in the US charges $40 to send the money, my bank in Peru charges $18 to receive it in addition to that $50 that evaporates between the US and Peru. That’s $108 a month to do an electronic transfer of funds. Excuse me! How in the hell can they justify that kind of charge. That’s $1,296.00 a year, $12,960.00 over 10 years, providing they don’t raise their rates again. What a scam, Bernie Madoff and his ilk have nothing on these guys.

On another note, today is the day my upper permanent crowns are put in. I’m looking forward to having a beautiful white smile again. When I went in to select the shade of white I wanted, I was all set to get them as white as I could. After looking at the selection, I changed my mind and went down two shades. The top one looked like a bright white plastic sheet in my mouth. Just a tad unnatural. For those people who have seen every episode of “Friends,” remember the one where Ross had his teeth whitened? Like that only brighter. I thought I was going to get them yesterday but that didn’t happen. As a result, I missed the writers’ group meeting. Apparently only Katrina and Victoria made it. Not a good for a critique. I think I will suggest we do Katrina’s work again this coming Thursday.

On Wednesday Kathy and I met a friend from our days in ICPNA (learning Spanish) for lunch at Café Z. It was nice seeing Kano again. He’s a nice young man, very ambitious and hard working. We chatted about things going on in our lives. Naturally I was all about my writing. Kano talked about the tour business he and his dad are trying to get going and Kathy talked about the trips she’s done and plans on doing.

That’s it for now; need to get to work on Chapter 3. Have a great weekend everyone. Get up, get active and try to exercise that thing between your ears also.

Have you ever had moments of discord within your own mind? This week other than the small amount of editing I did on the book, my mind seemed unable to put words together in a coherent thought process. Words and pieces of words floated around like so much flotsam tossed about by an ocean tide. I could almost feel them banging against the inside of my skull, repelled at the thought of joining together and forming a cogent sentence. I still feel somewhat discombobulated, unable to sit at this desk and work on the pieces that need working on. I’ve been calling myself lazy for the last couple of days, a cop out in a sense. I feel tired for no reason, wrung out. I’ve pushed myself away from the keyboard more than once, only to let my mind go blank, to think no other thought than why can’t I think? I’ve heard others say they go through phases like this, I can only hope it passes quickly. I want the energy to return, the obsession with entering words and dialog into my computer. I have stories to tell, characters who want a life, victims who need saving and heroes who want to save them. I need to dream and put those dreams on paper. I’m clogged, where’s the drano?

I got one long walk in this week, a jaunt up to the Pentagonito and back. It takes a little over an hour unless I’m taking photos, which I was. Other than the nice pictures I took,which are in this article, there was an interesting little incident. I stopped and took several pictures of the building as well as the entrance. I’ve done this many times in the past; it’s an interesting piece of architecture. It got its name from being the CIA’s headquarters in the old days, now it’s the Peruvian Army’s headquarters. On this particular walk a gentleman in a suit came over and asked me to erase all the photos I had taken. He actually stood and watched me do it. Not having the skills in Spanish, I couldn’t find out the reason why. I wondered if there were some important visitors there that day and it was supposed to be a secret of some type. Wonder who it could have been?

We had our regular writers’ group meeting on Thursday. It was my turn to submit a piece. Since I hadn’t written any type of short story in several months, I sent them an older piece, one of those I haven’t been able to finish. There were a few good suggestions but in the end, I doubt that I will ever finish that piece. It seems that there are some stories never meant to be finished. Then, on Friday I met with Larry for coffee again. We had our usual chat, nothing serious, just the state of politics in the US and Peru. Today I met Tim and Lourdes for breakfast. Tim is looking for a new apartment and is still trying to find a job teaching in a school. He’s tired of the private student routine, too much traveling. Lourdes, sweetheart that she is, is doing fine.

I also had my first visit with the dentist this week to fix my teeth. I will receive 26 crowns and four bridges when it’s all over. I’ve asked for one of those Hollywood smiles so get your sunglasses out. So far the process has been painless. I have the upper temporary in place now and will go for final color selection on Monday. The final crowns will be put in on Friday. It’ll be nice having a good smile again, not that the old teeth ever kept me from it.

I went to the movies with Steve and Antonio again last night. We saw “Tower Heist,” with an assortment of stars. I was all set to not like this movie. Imagine my surprise when I caught myself laughing out loud at several scenes in the movie. The audience loved it too, they laughed far more than I did. It always surprises me when Peruvians get American humor in the movies. I give it 4 Llamas. Go see it, some of the scenes are better on big screen.

That’s it for this entry. Hope all of you had a good week and weekend. I did despite that first paragraph. After all, I am living the good life now!

The last week flew by. There were moments when the thought popped into my head, I need to update the webpage, and then in an instant it was gone. Now I sit here on a Monday morning trying to think of the things I accomplished in the last week as well as the social moments. The writing and editing portion of my week was superb. I finished the second draft of the book including the addition of a prologue that will hopefully explain portions of the book. I brought Eduardo back to life at the end. Instead of having his nephew kill him, he ends up in a coma. I needed him to live and participate in the third book of the series I am planning.

I met Tim and Lourdes this past Sunday at Café Z for breakfast again. As usual I was there a few hours early and used the time to people watch. A cab pulled up and a woman in athletic gear exited holding a field hockey stick. For whatever reason, a story instantly exploded into my mind from that sight. So, I spent the next two hours writing the first chapter of what will be either a long short story or a new book. I haven’t decided which yet. For those who are curious, she’s an assassin and the hockey stick is her weapon of choice. Here’s the first couple of paragraphs, let me know what you think.

The petit girl exited the cab, field hockey stick in hand. Wearing running shoes, skin tight lycra sports shorts and bra, her thin body exuded strength with muscles strung over her frame like wires on a finely tuned piano. She had an innocence about her face, pretty but not beautiful. The pixie style haircut made it hard to guess her age. She bounced into the café and stopped beside my table.

“Emilio?” she asked, her eyes sparkling with mischief.

“Yes,” I answered. “Do I know you?”

“Gregor sent me.”

My guard went up immediately. My hand slid from the table top and nestled on the butt of my gun. A reflex when alarm signals started going off in my head. Gregor Mendez controlled the street gangs that operated throughout the city of Lima. We had an uneasy truce for the moment. I had saved his son from the clutches of a murdering pedophile. In turn; he brought the more violent members of his organization under control, which meant a few less murders in my district to solve.

By the way, Tim and Lourdes are doing fine.

I had coffee with Larry this past week also. We spent time discussing writing and the publishing business. That quickly devolved into the deteriorating financial situation for expatriates living on the dollar. The exchange rate continues to drop here. We met in Barranco again at my favorite little café/bakery, “Espige de Oro.” After our meeting ended I taxied over to Café Z to meet Kathy for a snack and a juice. We talked writing also and she let me know how the writers’ group meeting had gone the day before. They had worked on a new piece by Victoria.

I spent Thanksgiving Day with Steve. It had been awhile since we had done stuff together. It was a beautiful sunny day and we ended it with a great dinner at Brujas de Cachiche and a movie in Larcomar afterwards. His brother Alex will start my dental work soon. I’m looking forward to having a brand new smile when it’s all done, one that will look good in a photo on the back cover of my first book. The rest of his family is doing well.

Saturday, Amanda came over to spend an antisocial afternoon with me. We spent most of the time in the living room chatting about all manner of topics. Naturally the time consuming topic was our writing. She will be leaving for the states in nine days to visit family and friends for the holidays. She also graciously agreed to read a start on a novella involving my Detective Rodriguez, a prequel to the novel. I’m looking forward to her comments. Unlike the novel which is in third person unlimited, the novella is in first person limited. I’m anxious to hear what she has to say about my writing in that tense. Amanda also used the occasion to test her Pisco Sour making skills. She got it perfect on the first try. I was impressed.

That was my week; I hope you all had a good one also. This coming week I intent to make one more pass through the novel looking for grammatical errors and polishing a few lines up. I am on schedule to meet my goal of having the book out to the agents by the first of the year. I may  not express it here, but I am very excited about it all.

The social part of my life kicked in the past few days. I had to leave the confines of my work area and actually talk to people for more than a minute or two. I like this polarization of my life, being the reclusive writer and then turning into a social animal. I wonder if that’s what Robert Louis Stevenson was really getting at with Jekyll and Hyde. The act of being social requires a different set of skills than writing although my friends Katrina and Amanda might disagree. Both use their interactions with society to build their characters, plot and dialog. Mine tend to pop into my head full blown but then I have trouble putting them to paper so that a reader can see what’s already in my head. I enjoy sitting and listening to the two of them talk about the processes they use to get their stories out. They each have their own individual style and I extract useful bits of information from them for use in my writing. Maybe all writers do that; it might make an interesting treatise someday.

There were only three of us for the writers’ group Thursday. We went over the piece by Rinda, our Cusco member, and submitted our comments to her individually. I like her stories. They tell about a part of Peru that I’ve unfamiliar with, a part that goes back in time before the Spanish arrived. We also discussed setting up some guidelines for the meetings, something to keep them under control somewhat. They’ve been running a little long lately and it’s starting to cause a problem with some of the writers. Kathy’s article on Cajamarca was published by Living in Peru. It’s a nice piece and I recommend that you go to their website and read it. The group is getting away from stories exclusively about Peru though. We’ll see how that works out.

Friday I trucked over to Barranco to meet Larry for coffee again. We talked about a lot of things. Politics, child rearing, divorces, the Book and the pitiful exchange rate were just a few of the topics we went through in our two plus hours of chatting. Larry is a busy man. Lots of students and his University job keep him busy. He’s still doing his essays for Living in Peru. It’s one of his great pleasures and I doubt he will give it up anytime soon.

Breakfast and coffees were the order of the day for today. I met Katrina, Oswaldo and Amanda very early for breakfast at Café Zeta. Then, Tim and Lourdes joined us after they attended Mass. It was a good time and a good little social get together. I hadn’t seen Oswaldo, Katrina’s novio, in awhile. He finishes his degree in engineering at one of Lima’s fine Universities in December. He’s a very bright young man and I’m sure he will be very successful.

I’ve really been on tear with the book this past week. Besides the 20 chapters I mentioned in my last post, I’ve completed another 17. That leaves 15 chapters and the epilog to be edited, the prolog to be written and I will be done. I should be done by the end of this coming week.  After that, a quick pass through to fix any glaring errors and off it goes to some agents to see if anyone is interested. Everyone keep your fingers crossed.

“A dreamer is one who can only find his way by moonlight, and his punishment is that he sees the dawn before the rest of the world.” Oscar Wilde

I’ve managed to get some serious writing done since my last post. Twenty chapters of which, five are brand new, ten were totally rewritten and five had minor editing changes. That puts me back on track to have my editing done and the book submitted to an agent by the first of next year. I don’t know about other writers but for me, the hardest were the rewrites. Trying to save the good parts of a chapter, weave in the new story lines and make it seamless proved difficult at times. Lourdes cries out to be a stronger character, fearless, maybe a little too fearless. Rodriguez wants my readers to know more about him and the villains, well, villains will be villains. I’m in the process now of looking through the last forty chapters of the original book and trying to decide what can be deleted and what has to be deleted. This involves reading each of those carefully and pulling out any pieces of writing I want to save and including them in those chapters that won’t be tossed. Occasionally, I wonder if Steven King or William Faulkner ever had to go through this process. I know that all the writing books say they did but, was it this hard on them?

Dialog continues to be my weak point and I’m not sure how to work on improving that. People, my little word thief in particular, have recommended that I sit in Cafés and restaurants just listening and recording bits of conversation. Listen to the way different people speak. That’s a bit hard since I’m living in a Spanish speaking country and my book is in English. I suppose I could start going to a few of the meetings that various expats always organize, since they come from a wide range of countries that might help. Still, I need to figure out how to put tone, accent, pitch and other characteristics of speech into my dialog. I hope to make significant progress on this aspect of writing before I start my second novel.

I’m learning more and more about character development as I write. Almost all the books I have read about writing suggest that you answer at least 45 questions about each of your characters. Others suggest you write five pages on each of your main characters and two and a half on the lesser ones. Being a first time writer, I find that my characters change and grow as I write. They become a different person than the one I started with. I’m thinking that is possibly a good thing. A characters growth throughout the book can be an important aspect to good writing. I suppose that I will get my answer when I get my first critique back from an agent or publisher.

I haven’t left the apartment much since the last post either. A few trips to Wong for supplies and the Mercado for fruits, that’s about it. The days have been varied as is the wont of spring. They vary from cloudy and chilly to sunny and pleasant. I sit at my desk occasionally looking out my window and watch it all pass by. Birds perch intermittently on the roof of the house. They turn their heads, eyeing me with suspicion before flying off. Male pigeons ruffle their feathers and coo sounds to attract a mate. I watch all this for varying amounts of time. It all depends on where my thought process is at any given moment. Tomorrow my social life kicks in again. So, I’ll leave my bat cave and try to remember the rules of social interaction. Have a great week, as I am constantly urging, “do something creative.” Let’s all exercise the right hemisphere of our brains.

I woke up with my friend Steve yelling at me from the front of the apartment.

“Get up, my Mother’s bringing you breakfast.”

It was the start to a very pleasant day. I’ve never been one of those people who freaks out about how old I am when my birthday rolls around. The ages 30, 40, 50 and 60 came and went without so much as a twinge. After all, there’s not a lot you can do about it. For some reason 65 gave me a little pause. That’s a big number I told one of my friends recently. There was no deep depression though, no regret that I had missed something in my life or wish that I was in a better place now. It simply gave me a moment of reflection, a minute or two of thinking back over the good and bad moments in my life. By the way, as far as I can remember, the good far outweighed the bad. My friend Cyndi asked me on my recent visit home if I was happy with my life. I told her that if I died tomorrow, I would die a happy person. I have experienced more of the world than most and have been blessed with great friends, wonderful parents, an amazing Sister and people who truly love me. You can’t ask for more than that. It was a great birthday starting with that breakfast. A lazy day enjoying the company I was with and ending in a swashbuckling movie in 3D, “The Three Musketeers.”

The next day, the writers’ group met. We discussed an excerpt from a book that Katrina is writing. She is working with NaNoWriMo an acronym for National Novel Writing Month. She has selected a topic dear to her heart, farm life in Minnesota. The writing was rough but Katrina has a talent for taking her first drafts and turning them into masterful pieces in edit. I found it hard to critique the piece not knowing what went on before and after the six pages we were working on. Still, I can tell the book is going to be wonderful. Katrina brought me a bottle of Pisco called “Demon of the Andes” (thanks a lot, I can feel the hangover already LOL) and Kathy bought me a piece of cake and coffee from the café. They then sang Happy Birthday to me in the Peruvian fashion. It was fun.

Friday morning I met Larry for coffee and we caught up on all the things going on in our lives. Larry’s daughter is still having problems with her divorce and he is a busy man with teaching and trying to get some writing done. We will be meeting on Fridays in Barranco for awhile. His class schedule has changed and he has very few free days. It will be nice to visit my old neighborhood and walk the malecon there.

I’ve finally made it through the 80 chapters and am ready to start working on the novel again. I noticed that Lourdes hadn’t started her investigation into the drug trade at one of my villain’s bars yet. So, I’ve started a new chapter with her sitting in a nice bar getting ready to ask for a cocaine contact from the bartender. She will be wearing a cleverly disguised wire. I haven’t decided yet whether it will be the bartenders or the waitresses who are distributing. I’ll let the characters talk to me as I’m writing. I’m going to spend the next five days concentrating on the book. I need to finish this edit and get it out there, Agents beware! I’m also ready to start writing the second book in the series and polish up the prequel I have written. My number one goal now has to be getting published.

Sunday started out with Lima’s cool gray blanket covering her with its last attempts to hold on to winter. A chill, slightly damp breeze floated through the air making me wish I had brought my light hoody with me. The taxi had to let me out a few blocks before my requested destination of Parque Kennedy. All the roads leading to this area of Miraflores had been blocked. Red banners flapped in the breeze, a bandstand had been set up to entertain and white balloons were attached to people and anything else that would hold them. A running event sponsored by Nike was in full swing. Everyone wore red t-shirts with the Nike logo on them somewhere. A festive attitude hung in the air with smiling faces, laughter, friendly chatter and excited children in every direction.

I walked past the event, stopping only to get a couple of quick photos. I then headed for Café Zeta where Tim and Lourdes were going to meet me for breakfast after attending church. Always the early one, I arrived at 8am for a 10:30 breakfast meet. I spent the time reading another 25 chapters of the book, making notes and highlighting areas I thought needed a little help as well as having my breakfast. No way I can wait till 10:30 to eat it. It was good to see the two of them, I hadn’t seen them since I returned to Lima. Unfortunately they had separated again, although they did come to the breakfast together. We’ll see where it goes. After they left, my friend Amanda showed up for our appointed lunch together at a small vegetarian Menú in Miraflores. Afterwards we headed down to Larcomar for a glass of wine and some ocean watching. Unfortunately, my backpack was stolen while we sat at an outdoor table enjoying our time together. I thought I had placed it safely between me and the wall next to my chair but the tricky little devils managed to slip it out without Amanda or me noticing it. Losing my notes was the worst part of the experience. Obviously everything else can be replaced. As a matter of fact, I’ve already purchased a bigger and better backpack. Amanda has damned the thieves to the darkest corners of existence for ruining our day. Read her blog about it, http://myllamaandme.blogspot.com/2011/11/damn-thieves.html you’ll love it. By the way, it didn’t ruin my day! I always enjoy my outings with Amanda; she is my mythical Word Thief, the good kind of course!

Naturally that incident has set me back a little where the book is concerned. I have made it to the stores, purchased a new binder and notebook as well as pens and highlighters. I have finished reprinting the first 80 chapters and three hole punched them. The bad part, I now have to start over on my re-read and try to remember my comments and places where I highlighted phrases that needed rewording. That is a little frustrating. The good thing, the story is back in my head like a living thing. The characters are elbowing each other out of the way in an effort to get my attention. I am back on course again and hopefully will be able to maintain my schedule. The biggest problem with my writing at the moment is my short stories. I have quite a few half written that I can’t seem to bring to a conclusion. For some reason, they aren’t ready to be concluded. The characters involved haven’t finished telling me their story yet. I need to take a day a week and set it aside for that. The other goal I want to accomplish before the end of the year is finishing, polishing and publishing the novella on Detective Rodriguez’s first big case. I plan to do that using Amazon and publishing it as a Kindle offer. Not sure how quickly I can get all that done though.

That’s it everyone. The writers will meet again this week. I will see Larry on Friday for coffee and hopefully have the weekend to concentrate on writing. Oh, tomorrow’s my birthday. Nothing planned and hope it stays that way. Have a great week all.

At first I thought it was a headache, later I realized the characters from my novel pounded at the locked door to my brain in an effort to escape their suffocating confinement. During my time back in the US I kept pushing them into the background as I made small mental notes about their desires to end up on a page of A4 paper. For those of you in the US, A4 paper is standard stock in other countries. It’s slightly narrower and longer than the 8½ X 11 that you are used to. All that clutter in my brain led to a block concerning the novel I am working on. I had “lost my train of thought.”  The fun of being with family and friends kept me away from the keyboard. The only writing I had done, updates for this webpage and that was far and few between. The minute I realized this, the “headache” faded and my characters started screaming again. Unfortunately when I went to work on the next chapter, the storyline had become muddled in my head. Now, I am rereading the first 80 chapters in the hopes that the story will come to life in my head again.

It’s fortunate that I’m doing this. Several areas need to be expanded and I had forgotten some important incidents in the first of the book. An important clue for Detective Rodriguez lies hidden in a file, a couple of characters need to spend a little more time together one afternoon and Lourdes needs to start sitting on a bar stool in her investigation of the drug trade are just a few. I am getting my groove back though. The clutter is being organized, the characters seem to be happy for the moment and the story line is fresh in my brain once again. I hope to back in the saddle again by the end of next week.

I’m very happy to be back in Peru and settling back into my life here. The writers’ group met on Thursday. We talked briefly about our writing but spent most of the time catching up. It was nice to see them again and next week we will return to our critiques. Katrina will be first up with something she is working on, then a short story by Victoria and finally, something by me. My friend Kathy has joined the group and is starting to write articles about her travels. I also hope to expand the group with some new members but so far, no takers.

I made it to a couple of movies this week. The first was “I Don’t Know How She Does It,” starring Sarah Jessica Parker. The movie had its funny moments although the plot was very predictable. I give it 3½ Llamas but it’s certainly not worth the price of admission at a theater. Rent it or buy it if you are a big fan of her acting. The second movie was “In Time,” starring Justin Timberlake. Although I think he is growing as an actor, he still has a way to go. The plot of the movie was very interesting but in the end I think the movie was a comment on the growing disparity between the rich and the poor. I give it 3½ Llamas also and once again recommend that you rent or buy the movie. There’s nothing about it that screams “big Screen” to me.

Time to get back to the 50 chapters I need to read before starting in on the book again. Hope you all have a great weekend and remember; “the brain is a muscle too, exercise it.”