Behind the Lane - Coming Back

I stepped away from writing middle-grade chapter books for a couple of years. Career demands. Personal challenges that needed most of what I had. Life, basically.

But here's the strange thing — even in those quiet years, I kept writing. Just differently. Short poems, medium poems. Things that helped me hold onto a thought long enough to understand it.

And I kept reading. Piles of middle-grade chapter books, some wonderful, some forgettable. All of them teaching me something.

Then, somewhere around mid-2024, a 17-pound black Norwegian Forest-something cat sat down in the middle of my life and refused to move.

And I started writing again.

That cat's name is Oscar. He belongs to my daughter. He is pure nuisance. He is absolutely the reason any of this exists.