Many of my readers have asked why the long wait for the next Haunting Danielle book. I typically release four Haunting Danielle books a year, but the last couple have been spaced farther apart, and the next one won’t be released until the latter part of January. Why? my readers ask.
The answer is simple. Life has been giving me other demands I need to deal with, which have been taking a great deal of my time. One is my 93-year-old mother, who lives with us. Mom suffered a stroke the end of 2019. Since then, she has been diagnosed with vascular dementia, and I’ve become her full-time caregiver.
But Mom is not the reason for the date of my next release. While she is a contributing factor, there are other issues at play.
First, we are moving—leaving our home of some 17 years in Arizona and heading to Oregon, to be closer to our son and his wife—and closer to an airport which will make visits with our daughter and her family much easier. Plus, I will be closer to Walt and Danielle.
Next week Mom will be going to my sister’s house in Morro Bay, California, where she will be staying for a month, until we get settled in our new home. Then my sister will be driving Mom up to us. The movers are arriving around September 7th, and after they pack up the house, Don and I, along with the pups, Danny and Lily, will be heading for our new home in Oregon in our motorhome.
To make things more exciting—we have never seen the place in person. Crazy, right? Yet our son and daughter-in-law have seen it, and the Realtor who helped us is a childhood friend of mine. We realized if we wanted to make this move, it would be impossible to go property hunting so far away, during a pandemic and with my mother.
Another reason I must push the next book out farther—I need a knee replacement. Several months ago, I went to the doctor to check on my knee, which kept going out. He told me I need a new one. My husband had a knee replacement, so I am aware of what I’m facing, along with the time involved.
It was impossible to get the knee done before our move, so I got the injections to hold me over until surgery. At first, they seem to work great, but recently, my knee goes into this spasm-like Charlie horse thing, where it seems to take on a painful life of its own and tries to jump off my leg. It usually happens when I am in bed and turn wrong.
Anyway, what this all means, after we get settled in our new home, arrange Mom’s room and move her here, I need to find an orthopedic surgeon in Oregon and see about that knee. When I get all that done, I can focus on my next Haunting Danielle book. And while I won’t be getting the book out until January, it doesn’t mean I haven’t started working on it; I have.
We’ve some hectic weeks ahead of us. There are stacks of filled cardboard boxes in every room (see above photo). This morning the shredder arrives and will be destroying some twenty boxes of old documents and receipts. We’ve already donated numerous boxes of items to the Hospice gift shop, and we still have some furniture to donate and get moved.
In the meantime, I am thrilled with the positive reception I have received over my recent release, The Ghost and the Birthday Boy. Each time I put out a new book I fear my readers might tell me, “Okay Bobbi, time for you to wrap this up, it is getting stale.” But so far that hasn’t happened, and you have no idea how positive reviews inspire my creativity and desire to write. I love working on this series, and I hope living not far from Walt and Danielle will give me more inspiration and story ideas.
Stay safe everyone!
