What Happened?

 by Charlotte Hinger    

I'm finally back after a long absence. So here's what happened:

On a long-planned and much anticipated trip to New York with two of my daughters, I ended up in the emergency room in New Rochelle due to an onslaught of sepsis and a rare strain of pneumonia. 

What a shock! In more ways than one. I was in the hospital from Saturday morning until late Tuesday night and hit with a wicked mixture of antibiotics which, of course, resulted in a prolonged case of diarrhea. 

I'm recovering well, and there's a lot to be grateful for. I received outstanding care at the Montefiore hospital. Although I hated to put my daughters through this ordeal, I'm very grateful they were there at the hotel to call 911. My blood pressure plummeted and my temperature did too. I literally simply fell over. 

In addition to the shower, we missed a lovely brunch the following day held by the mother of the bride. 

I also had a meeting scheduled with my agent the day we were to fly home. I've talked with Claudia Cross a number of times on Zoom, but this was to be our first face to face meeting. So this whole misadventure was a double whammy for me. 

The following weekend there was a family gathering over Memorial Day and that, too, was out of the question. 

Today, I would have been going to the Western Writers of America convention in Rapid City South Dakota. This is my favorite writers' organization and I love seeing friends. Also, I am a finalist for the Spur Award for short fiction and wanted to be there for the Finalist Luncheon. I emailed my remarks to a friend and asked her to accept the award for me. 

By some stroke of good fortune, I had nearly completed my large historical novel for the University of Nebraska Press. Talk about luck! I received an email from my editor saying all manuscripts received before June 30th would be published in the spring of 2024. After that, they would go on the fall list. 

And my lovely, wonderful fellow Type M'ers. It was great to see posts up and running without a hitch. I'm so happy to be a part of this blog. 

Writers are a funny lot. In spite of careening off the road, my dominant emotion was relief because I only lacked thirty pages from finishing the final draft of my book.