In the strictest sense, it is not that I have an actual gap in writing as I’m still doing one, often two, occasionally three articles a week for the community paper. Since 1997, I was publishing at least one book per year and frequently a novel plus a non-fiction (a few co-authored). For those who may be less familiar with my writing, I have three series in novels and some stand-alone as well as the non-fictions. When people ask me how many books I’ve written I have to pause for a count. It comes up to 15 novels, 3 non-fiction, and 4 co-authored (https://www.charliehudson.net/books.html)  I have mentioned before that swapping between a novel and non-fiction near simultaneously was never as issue for me as they are distinctly different in approach. Okay, not an issue from a writing perspective; time management was another aspect.

Anyway, a series of things – again as I have either mentioned or alluded to in the blog – have occurred over the past two years to result in me not having an active book project for the first time in decades. This fall into two categories; 1) real life does interfere sometimes, and 2) priorities can get shuffled around. Part of it is the “Small Town” Quilting series was pretty much intended to be a short run of four books and I closed that out. I have now completed four books in the “Shades” and “Chris Green” series and while I haven’t closed either out, the idea I have for “Shades of Remorse” is a bit tricky. I have to use a technique I haven’t done before and I am not yet clear on how I will do it. I am getting closer though and think I’m ready to tackle it later this year which will put publication in 2024. With that said, I now also have to do some of that re-prioritizing of the time management part.