Today I establish a new home, a temporary apartment I will keep until I can close on the townhouse I found after searching and searching and searching. The temporary apartment is a cute little place filled with rental furniture. The one luxury I insisted on was a fireplace. If I'm going to be here for the next six months or so, I wanted a little bit of warmth to keep me happy.
The main thing is, my moving turmoil will slow down some and I can get back to the 2nd rewrite of the manuscript I have been hired to write. Almost a year ago, I was hired to ghostwrite the true life story of a black female soldier taken prisoner during the start of the Iraq war. For the last several months I've been listening to her story and trying to tell it the best way I could. I LOVE this book! I think it’s powerful and raw and I'm so proud of her and the story she has to tell. It’s still hard to believe that I’ve been given the opportunity to help tell her story.
I’ve been working all along, through the turmoil of this move but getting settled will help. Once I’m settled in the apartment, I will be able to concentrate on the rewrite so we can get this book to the publisher before the end of the year. If we can do that and we can get all their edits done right away, we can maybe publish by the fall of 2009. I so want that to happen. I think a lot of people will be surprised by her story and all that she survived and is still surviving.
This year, I’m thankful for this writing project, for my new apartment, for being back in the USA, for my new friend Sojue, the cutest little Siamese cat you could imagine, for being closer to my family, for the health of my family and for a new President.
M. L. Doyle has served in the U.S. Army at home and abroad for more than two decades as both a soldier and civilian. Mary is the author of The Desert Goddess series, an urban fantasy romp consisting of The Bonding Spell and The Bonding Blade. She has also penned The Master Sergeant Harper mystery series which has earned numerous awards including an IPPY, a Lyra Award and the Carrie McCray Literary Award. Mary is the co-author of two memoirs; A Promise Fulfilled; the story of a Wife and Mother, Soldier and General Officer (Jan. 201) and the memoir, I’m Still Standing: From Captive U.S. Soldier to Free Citizen—My Journey Home (Touchstone, 2010), which was nominated for an NAACP Image award. Mary's work has been published by The Goodman Project, The War Horse, The WWrite Blog and The Wrath-Bearing Tree, an online magazine for which she serves as a fiction editor. A Minneapolis, Minnesota native, Mary current lives in Baltimore. You can reach her at her website at mldoyleauthor.com.
