I remember toward the end of July I decided to create a Blood-Red Pencil blog post early for August as well as finally posting to my own blog which has sat neglected since February 3rd. And then suddenly it was August 15th. No Blood-Red Pencil post. No post to my personal blog. What happened? I know I did stuff over the last month. I see the notations on my calendar. A cortisone shot in my arthritic shoulder (which did not help). My annual checkup which I passed with flying colors (for my age). A Saturday morning Crowdcast online event called Mystery in the Midlands . A grooming appointment for Sassy. Curbside pickups for groceries. A couple more online writing programs. A solid effort to apply the edits to my current almost-finished frontier fiction manuscript called In Defense of Delia . Critiques for two writers’ group meetings. And yet, without that calendar to look at, I might have had a hard time remembering what I did in the last four weeks to fill up all that ti...

We are made of strong stuff. We will endure. Those are strong, hopeful statements that I hang on to as I'm navigating the current situation with COVID19 and the stay-at-home practices that I need to be very mindful of. I'm in two of those high-risk categories; age and underlying health conditions, so I'm aware of how important it is to stay away from people. This has included avoiding my family, which is the hardest part of all. I love my animals, but living alone can be, well, very lonely. To keep me away from grocery stores, my kids do most of my shopping, and they come occasionally to do a chore that I can't do. Well, actually, I could, but the kids don't want me climbing up a ladder to change furnace filters.  But while they are here, we stay six-feet apart. We don't hug. We're such a demonstrative, hugging family that it feels extremely weird for any of my kids to walk back out the door, and we haven't even touched. Human touch is so imp...

I have to admit, the Covid-19 pandemic hasn’t changed my life very much. In early March, my husband and I were visiting family in Savannah. I came home for a meeting and a mystery panel at a local library. Both my events were canceled. I’d left my husband in Savannah with the grandkids, so I was alone for three weeks. During that time, I finished a book I’d been writing on and off for a couple of years. I went through it again, edited, then sent it to my editor. We're still trying to make it the best it can be. Except for not going to the grocery store or meeting friends for lunch, life went on as usual. I had plenty of food, and because I’d recently bought paper products in bulk, I wasn’t in dire need of anything. During this time I was alone, I watched less cable news—depressing, watched the Amazon series, Hunters, with Al Pacino—somewhat depressing, read more, worked on my writing, and traded critiques with my long-time critique partner. The house was eerily quiet. My neighbor...

"It was the best of times; it was the worst of times." Charles Dicken's words have never been more relevant as we endure a worldwide pandemic with widespread quarantines and stay at home orders. I have read a many dystopian novels and it certainly feels like we are living in one. In most dystopian novels, humans survive. Whether we continue to thrive or wither is on us. It can bring out the best in people, and the worst. Here is a list of ten books inspired by outbreaks. 1 .  Andromeda Strain   (1970) by Michael Crichton is by far the scariest tale I remember from my childhood. Images of people dissolving into dust stuck with me. A military space probe brings microbes back to earth, setting off an outbreak. Scientists race to understand and contain the threat. They keep it secret with total news blackouts. Of course back then we didn't have 24/7 news feeds or social media. I never looked at our space missions the same way again. 2 .  A Journal of the Plag...