Labor Day

Today we (in the U.S.) celebrate the worker. In my day jobs, I was never management, always the worker. My volunteer life with Girl Scouts was another story. Frankly, I liked being a worker bee better.

Retirement is supposed to mean no more work. Yeah, right. Life goes on, and the "jobs" at home continue--cooking, cleaning, laundry, yardwork. I'm fortunate that Hubs (also retired) shares many of the household jobs. Retirement also meant for me more time to write.

I've always treated writing as a job. Fortunately, it's a job I love. Giving form to ideas/dreams, bringing characters to life, going on adventures with those characters (vicariously), falling in love for the first time. What's not to like?

I'll keep writing as long as my mind lets me. I watched my mom slowly lose hers to Alzheimer's. If there's a worse way to go, I don't know it. And it's a fear. Although Mom's was probably due to age, I fear Alzheimer's or any form of dementia. My doctor gave me some good news, though. My writing will (in all probability) keep dementia at bay.

So work is good. I celebrate Labor Day because I can still work.

This week, my work takes me to different (virtual) places. I'll be visiting writer friends' blogs with interviews, articles, and teasers from my new sci-fi romance, Mission to New Earth. Here's my schedule:

Tuesday, Sept 6: Gina Conkle  a teaser

                                 Veronica Scott  "Goldilocks" planets

Wednesday, Sept 7: M.J. Schiller  Meet Marsh Rayburn

Friday, Sept 9: Barbara Edwards  Why I Wrote Mission to New Earth

I hope you'll join us. You'll have more opportunities to enter the Giveaway.

Now I'm off to write blog posts for next week. A writer's job is never done.

Mission to New Earth

a science fiction romance novella

Length: 88 pages (25k words)

Blurb

Would you go on a one-way trip to explore a new planet? Would you do it to save humankind?

Earth’s overpopulation and dwindling resources force the United Earth Space Agency to expedite exploration of new planets for a possible new home. When new crises ensue—a giant tsunami and the threat of nuclear winter—the timeline changes. Eight years of training crammed into four. Sara Grenard and her team prepare for launch, but are they ready for the one-way trip? Will the Goldilocks planet prove just right for Earth’s inhabitants? Before time runs out.

  

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Labor Day

The official end of summer. The highways are clogged with vacationers returning home. A day for picnics and one last visit to the beach. Pools close tomorrow and school begins for the kids in Michigan.

For the 56^th time, thousands of people, led by the governor, will walk across the Mackinac Bridge. Labor Day is the only time the bridge connecting Michigan's Upper and Lower Peninsulas is open to foot traffic. Although my sister, uncle, cousin, and friends have walked the 5-mile span, with my fear of heights, I won’t be a participant. It’s all I can do to drive across, white-knuckling the whole way.

Despite my fears, I never get tired of looking at the bridge. Its beautiful white spires rising above the green base with the blue of two Great Lakes (Huron and Michigan) 200 feet below. Before it was completed in 1957, people traveling from one peninsula to the other had to use a car ferry. I remember summers as a child waiting in long lines snaking through Mackinaw City (and St. Ignace on the way back) to board the ferry. We watched in fascination as the bridge was being built then finally got to ride over the longest (at that time) suspension bridge in the world.

As beautiful as the bridge is in summer, travel can be so treacherous during high winds and/or blizzards that authorities will close the bridge. Every time my son returned to college (Northern Michigan University in Marquette), I worried about him driving across the bridge. With my fascination for this icon, I have to use the Mackinac Bridge in a story one day.

Today while everyone else is picnicking, traveling, walking, or just relaxing, Hubs and I are (still) packing the contents of the house we’ve lived in for nearly fourteen years, preparing for our move to the Lake Michigan shoreline.

How are you celebrating Labor Day?