And thank you for your kind remarks on my books.

Can you spell out what happened to you, and whether you can battle back to good health?

What I’ve found is that while I can still write, and write well, it’s a lot more difficult because my husband isn’t here to talk writing with. That makes for a much slower process, because I tend to write better when I can verbalize what I’m writing about. But I do continue; eventually, I figure it out.

I fully intend to succeed even though there’s been a long delay. But I’ve redefined success; it’s not about a best-seller at this point, even though I’d enjoy it if this somehow happened. Now, it’s about being a professional in all aspects of my life. That way, I can be proud of what I’ve accomplished, which to me is success.

That I finally found a publisher this year for “Elfy” really helped; now I know it will see the light of day next October (or thereabouts) as an e-book. (I understand this from two fronts; one, if I were putting it up myself — had I managed to solve the HTML file issues, that is — it would’ve been put up as an e-book. And two, it is a lengthy book.)

I’m not sure if my reason, such as it is, will make much sense, but here goes: just as my husband and I had started to find some success, he passed away, suddenly and unexpectedly. (This was in 2004.) We wrote both together and separately; his loss was completely devasting in every possible respect.

What ended up happening was this: the grief cycle drastically impeded my writing for several years. But I kept going; it was slow, and much of what I was doing rather than writing fiction was along the lines of editing, or writing poetry, but I just kept after it.

Then I started reviewing books again at Amazon (there was something like a two-year hiatus between reviews due to my husband’s passing). And started my own blog. And reviewed books at a different blog.

Then I finally found a publisher for my 240,000 word novel, “Elfy” — Twilight Times Books — after many years of searching for an agent, then a reputable publisher after it was clear that due to market changes and fluctuations, no agent wanted to take on a lengthy humorous urban fantasy from an unknown writer. And of course the majors weren’t interested — too risky.

I still don’t write with the output I had when my husband was alive. I haven’t had many short story sales (four, in total; three are to very small presses). I have sold only three poems. So there are still many things I’d like to do that I haven’t yet done.

But I continue. Which is what I need to do for myself — that it’s also what my late husband Michael definitely would want is just a bonus.

(Other novels — six in all — are in the pipeline are at various stages of completion, and I refuse to give up on them. As far as I can tell, the only way to win is to do exactly that: if you know you can write, just keep trying.

(And I’m also still trying to sell my late husband’s work, too, because I believe it was and is good enough. If I have to go independent, so be it — my reasons thus far for not doing it have more to do with file conversion issues than lack of belief in either my or my husband’s writing, and the money is *not* there for me to hire a professional to make sure the files are clean and readers will actually be able to make sense of what I write without a bunch of HTML gumming up the works.)