NEW YEAR!

You met me yesterday. I hope you will come back many times and follow my journey!

I have a lot of plans for 2009. First, to get my young adult novel RUN! in shape to query agents. RUN! follows a group of children running from an abusive home. It happens in the 40's. The children cannot go home. They are continually running. One advantage for having made it to three quarters of a century, you have a lot of history!

The oldest, Kate, leaves her home after a particularly bad incident and takes the younger children with her. In the 30's and 40's a young runaway like Kate, if caught, was routinely put in jail and the younger returned home. They cannot go home, they cannot go to the police. Where do they go? To a whorehouse--to Madame Rose. There is a strange underworld operating in RUN! Madame Rose contacts her friend, Mother Philapa. Mother Philapa sends the children to New York on a train in the company of three nuns. The period made for strange bedfellows.

Of course things never work as smoothly in real life and this is real life tempered with a little spice and a little humor. Just when they are starting a new life with a benevolent spirit named Esther they must flee again. This time they end up in a broken down, decrepit hotel for old men. The children prove to be the catalyst for change in the lives of the old men.

This is the start of my story. It is one of the rare times when I've known where a story was going but when you're a writer, strange characters show up and take over. A character named Cecil showed up in RUN! and is going to influence the story--how I'm not sure as yet.

I do hope I hear from you!