Family Issues AND Book Tour — Double Vision

On Thursday my 84-year-old mother took a tumble, landed on her face, and knocked herself out. Apparently she called 911 and then hung up and forgotten she’d done so. She was quite astonished when an RCMP officer entered her apartment followed by 2 city police officers followed by an ambulance crew. They convinced her that she needed to go to the hospital where she was checked over and admitted. Jim and I went over (couple hour drive) Friday to see her. She has an impressive purple and black eye (left) as well as a bruise over the bridge of her nose and under her right eye. Her nose looked a little crooked but x-rays apparently show it was not broken. She also has a small circular bruise on her left shoulder which may be from falling against her walker handle (if the walker was against the wall and didn’t budge?) It’s hard to know, because she doesn’t remember any of it. She’s living alone in an apartment a few blocks from my sister’s house and has become increasingly unstable over the past couple of months and has just consented to having the walker at all.

Now we’re believing it is unsafe for her to live alone. She gets out of hospital Monday and I will stay with her for the first week. A family friend is coming after that to pinch-hit while we all work through more permanent options. So I won’t have internet access and won’t be blogging.

Meanwhile Monday-Wednesday of this week is the blog tour for Randall Ingermanson‘s book Double Vision. I’m sorry I will be missing the tour because I really enjoyed the book and wanted to point folks to Randy’s site and his free writers’ ezine.

I did ask Randy about some rumors I’d heard around the internet, that a person’s advice is only as good as their last book and that it had been a couple of years since his last publication.

He said,

Actually, I had two out in 2004. One of those was a Christy finalist
and the other made the BookList Top Ten Christian Novels list. So I
don’t think I’m quite over the hill yet!

I had a book that was due out in 2005, but I pushed it back a year so
I could deal with my anxiety disorder. Then it was cancelled
completely, but if you ask the editors why, they’ll tell you it had
nothing to do with quality. In 2006 I was relocating with my family,
selling a house, and buying a new one. It wasn’t a good time to be
trying to write and sell books. I’ll publish more books when my life
gets back to normal. But I can assure you that my lack of new books
out in the last two years has nothing to do with quality. As Arnie
Schwartzenegger once said, “I’ll be back!”

I have two proposals circulating right now and hope to sell both of
them this year. And my plan for 2007 is to write another novel.
The last two years were an anomaly, due to disruptions in my life.

I’d hoped to follow through with more discussion with Randy but my mom’s fall has taken priority in my life. I don’t have the list of participants yet, so I’ll just say head over to A Christian Worldview of Fiction and follow Rebecca’s links.

See you all later!