Apologies

Well, dear friends, I've been sadly remiss... I've clearly ignored my blog.

Truth is that I've been blogging elsewhere (shame on me!) and busily writing my two new books.

March Storm is my sequel to January Moon and the 2nd novel in my Del Carter Calendar Series. It's getting off to a good start but the research took a great deal of time -- and cost me emotionally -- because the subject matter is more than grim (animal abuse and dog fighting). As always, I do far more research than necessary and what I've learned is not always -- and could not possibly be -- all in the book. It's really only a wedge to open and sustain the story so don't think the book itself is grim. I hope it will be as entertaining and suspenseful and ultimately rewarding as January Moon. But as you know, I like to write fiction that educates as much as it entertains.

The other book I'm writing is non-fiction. It's what I call an adult history book and I like to say it will be loaded with all the history you never learned in school but need to know now... the information will hopefully help you make some sense out of our current political battles and culture wars in America. I've titled the book "Daylight & Deja vu" because it should shed new light on old topics that are still unresolved and and serious in today's world (thus the "deja vu" -- you'll "see" it as it was "before" and look at it again as it is "now"). My plan is to group my essays thematically (labor, immigration, the Great Depression, race, WWII, etc.) and roll them first as small ebooks and then reorganize them into a larger work that will be a fairly significant book-length work (in print and digital). 

As to my blogging over at the Pragmatic Progressive Forum -- well, what can I say? I admit I've lost focus here at the Windy City Author and need to ascertain why... I suspect it's because I wasn't sure what I wanted to do here to begin with and was easily derailed. As a result of my blogging at PragPro I've learned a lot about myself and realized that what I really love to do is write about history and currrent affairs.  I especially love to use my knowledge about history to help inform where we are as a people today.

I've also learned more about the art of blogging and think it's helped improve my skills as a writer. Well, so we'll see; the jury is still out on that.

I don't want to abandon "The Windy City Author." I've decided to reinvent it but am not yet certain how... still need to give it serious thought (your feedback is welcome).

In the meantime, while I work on that, I've decided to re-post here the articles that were published at Prag Pro.

Please read, share and comment and I'll get back to you.

:)