February Blahs!

I have been dragging my butt for a week now and just can't seem to shake the winter blahs. Truth be told, I do have lupus and that has been making me feel pretty lousy lately, that and the fact that I took a spectacular fall down the stairs last week and somehow managed to bruise my liver and spleen! Who knew!! I guess it's safe to say that I am a mess all around! Oh well, on the upside, which I can always find, it's a great reason to curl up and read so I have been doing a lot of that lately. I have to admit that some of the reading has involved flipping magazine pages (that takes such little effort) but I did finish reading "The Stone Angel" by Margaret Laurence. I have to start reading "Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close" by Jonathan Safran Foer soon as that is the next one up with my book group. I did read it last year, but will go through it again before our March meeting. I also have a strategy session coming up this week that I have been trying to get ready for. I am on a committee with Lupus Canada and at the moment we are working to grow one of the national campaigns that happens each October. The committee members are mostly in Ontario, with the exception of one member in British Columbia. Up to this point, our planning has happened through conference calls and email, so this will be the first time we are all meeting in person. I am pretty excited and also hopeful that our strategy session will be very productive! I'll have to get that dragging butt in gear before Friday!
Cheers!!

February's Book and A Writing Milestone

I thought that I would let you (whomever "you" may be) know what our book group has chosen for the February read. We will be doing "Sweetness in the Belly" by Camilla Gibb. I have just picked it up from the bookstore and I am really looking forward to reading it. Gibb was nominated for The Giller Prize for this novel and it has had a lot of good buzz around it, so I will certainly keep you posted on how it goes for me. On another note, I finally shared some of my creative writing. I get really ill at the thought of showing any of my fiction work to anyone, but I really trust the person I gave it to. I know that she will be honest and helpful. She is also a writer and keeps giving me a hard time for being so weird about getting my work "out there"! Anyway, I gave her the first chapter of a new project I just started and...drum roll please...she liked it, she really liked it! I still feel sick, but phew! I hope it will be easier next time. She gave me some helpful feedback and some pretty serious compliments too. So, yay for me! It's weird because I do freelance writing for magazines and newspapers (definitely not fiction) and I have no problem with that work being read and commented on. I guess I just don't get as attached to those projects as I do with my fiction. Well, now I have to press on with the fiction project because my reader wants to know what happens next, and I know she will give me a good swift kick in the arse if I let it slide too long! I would love to hear writing stories from you. Do you get sick thinking about sharing your work with others?? I would also love to know what you are reading right now...I'm am always looking to expand my list of books to read.
Cheers!