Please welcome author Terri Gregg, who’s working on finding the time to write. Who said retirement would make it easy?
During most of my adult life, I’ve had a strong desire to write fiction. I spent 9 years as a science writer for an encyclopedia and wanted to try my hand at something more creative. But as has been said before, life has a way of getting in the way of your best-laid plans. Three children to raise (we had a child under the age of 8 for 21 straight years) and a series of demanding jobs left a shortage of time for creative writing. The six months I spent in Australia with my husband while he was there on an exchange teaching post did allow me to complete my first (but probably never to be published) novel.
Ah, I thought as the children launched into their own adult lives and retirement loomed, now I will have all the time I need to write book after book.
Silly me. The first years saw us traveling full time around the country in an RV. My husband is also a writer, so we sat with two laptops facing each other across the dining table in the RV trying to be creatively productive. Not much of any value was accomplished.
After two years we settled down, bought a house in Sarasota, Florida, and prepared to get some serious writing done. But part of my platform for my first series is archeology. (I got my M. A. in Archeology at age 60 partially for background for the books and partially because it fascinates me.) That lead to travel—Stonehenge, Machu Picchu. Great Wall of China, Great Pyramid of Egypt and of course Cahokia, the great Mississippian Indian city in Illinois where the first book of the series, Bones Unearthed, is set. (Photos of some of the sites appear in the gallery on my website, terrigregg.com.)
So here I am. One book out. The second in the series moving slowly along. For those of you that are not familiar with Sarasota, Sarasotans are 
surrounded with a myriad of distractions—golf, tennis, concerts, theater, not to mention beautiful beaches and a huge number of restaurants.
So here I am. I keep working, even though slowly. Maybe someday, my life will settle down to the point where I can join the ranks of other mystery writes who manage to get one or two books out a year.
Hope springs eternal.
Terri Gregg’s books is available at Amazon, and you can find out more about her on her website, terrigregg.com.