New Ideas

That's my family. Me, well, I'm the glint in my mother's eye. I'm not in the picture, but you can't have everything.

Everyone in the picture is grown up now. Even my parents. The girl on the left, my oldest sister, she's a grandma - four times over. My brother is dead. Wrung out, and overcome by mental illness, he took his life when he was 37. He'd be 54 now. I still miss him.

Those babies, the twins (mono zygotic, to be fancy) well, they took different paths. The blond is single, and thrives on steady routine and 'sameness'. The dark haired one is newly married at 43 and thrives on change and diversity.

Then there's me. The baby. I never knew what my life would be like and so I lived many years being tossed around by life. Stomped on sometimes, as life will do. I made a few messes, but I never stopped dreaming. Never stopped coming up with ideas.

Now, I have a new idea. I'm nearly done my first novel: Talking to the Dead (you can read chapter one at: http://www.bonniegrove.com/). I'm knee deep in my non-fiction (published by Beacon Hill Press, you can find out more about it on my website too) - facing the business end of a publication deadline, and yet - oddly, magnificently, I have a new idea.

A new book - another novel - that spans time, examines love and passion, and, of course, mental illness. It will walk on the edge of what we define as normal.

I'm excited about this book - this idea - this story.

We are even renovating our basement in order to create a real office for me (now that I'm officially an author, I have to have a place to write besides on the computer bottom of the basement stairs!)

What's wonderful about new ideas, for me, isn't the idea itself so much as it is the reality, the knowledge, the fulfilled hope, that I have more than one book in me - I'm not a morning glory, a one hit wonder. I've got it in me. And I needed to know that.