Out With The Old, In With The New . . .

By Lonnie Cruse

Merry Christmas/Happy New Year to one and all!

WHERE does the time go??? Just last year many people were worried about Y2K, some people preparing by storing food and water, etc. I'm not still not sure exactly what they were afraid of, except computer meltdowns which would have shut down stores and kept us from buying food and other necessities. Well, we in southern Illinois deal with that from time to time, way out here in the boondocks, when an ice storm hits and we live without power and other modern amenities for days on end. Sigh. Where was I? Y2K. As you have already no doubt figured out, that really wasn't LAST year, it was TEN years ago and where DID that entire decade go?

Life has a way of sliding quickly by us, whether we are actively living it, or simply watching from the sidelines. A couple of decades ago I was involved in a job I wasn't totally crazy about. It was physically and mentally difficult for me. I'd often heard that we should stop and reflect every now and then about what we are doing with our lives. Are we happy where we are? Do we still want to be there in five years? Or not? My answer was NOT, so I quit and went back to college (in my mid-fifties, mind you) so I could go in a different direction with my life. With my career. That decision led to a new, better job, but it also led me to be able to become a published author, something I'd only dreamed about until then, not even daring to dream that it could actually happen.

So, dear reader, are you happy where you are? Do you still want to be there next year? In five years? At the end of another decade (2020, which sounds far away but will be here before we can blink twice!)

Where do I want to be next year, the next five years, the next decade, assuming I'm still here? Pretty much where I am now, except I need to exercise and work out more in order to maintain my current physical strength. ( I've discovered that we "seniors" lose a lot each decade, no matter how much we work out to maintain.) I want to stay published, particularly in non-fiction. I want to teach/encourage other women. I want to grow as a person. And I want to smell the roses along the way because IF time flies when you're having fun, I must be having a REAAAALLLLYYY good time!

So I repeat, Happy New Year to one and all. May it be our best year ever. And I wish us all 365 days of noooo power outages. Sigh.

PS: Just signed a contract with Harlequin to bring my latest book, FIFTY-SEVEN TRAVELING out in paperback sometime in 2011. It came out in hardback this past July.

And author Patrick Miller did a terrific article about my new book because it's set in a tourist area (Smoky Mountains) so IF you are an author with a book set in a tourist area, you might want to contact Miller to see if he is interested in doing an article about it. The link to the article is here: http://southeasternliterarytourisminitiative.blogspot.com/2010/12/murder-in-dollywood-country.tymlhttp://