AUGUST 1, AGAIN!

Another birthday!  Now too many to count.  Still, better to keep counting than the alternative, no?

One great gift, not intended as such perhaps, but taken as such on my birthday: a wonderful note from someone who follows my writing and took the trouble to let me know how much she appreciates it.  Deborah Barlow writes her own blog, Slow Muse, which I now look forward to visiting.  She writes, as I do, about art, and books, and the wisdom we all search for in our lives.  I hope you'll join me.

Meanwhile, you may--or may not!--be wondering about The Buddha Diaries.  I have been alternately quiet or silent recently.  I hope you might have enjoyed the quick entries of the "Coyote Poems," and plan to include more of these.

Otherwise, the reason for my lapse in attention to my blog is that I am back at that novel I was working on a while ago, "The Pilgrim's Staff."  Having spent these past six months in a (rather half-hearted) inquiry into the possibility of a commercial publication, I have decided to publish the book myself.  I'm just frankly too old--see above!--to hang around for the months and years it would take to go that route.  Besides, distribution is these days much of a fluke no matter which way you go.  Might as well just get it out and leave it in the hands of whatever capricious deities oversee these things.

As a result of this decision, I am hard at work on what I hope will be a final draft.  A couple of days ago, having worked through a third of the 350 or so pages, I opted for what I thought would be a minor change--but which turned out to be one whose ripple effects took me right back to the beginning again.  Ouch!

So if you do happen to be wondering, this is the explanation.  I'm determined to get this novel finished and out of my hair.  But today I think I'll just do my best to have a Happy Birthday!