What Can Happen In A Decade

 

A Toast to Romancing The Genres! Happy Anniversary!

 A ten-year anniversary is special. An entire decade of time. I reflected on my own life of what had occurred in this length of time.

This past decade I lost the last of my family of origin, my sister and my mom. I was still working my federal job with the U.S. Department of the Interior, and commuting between Alaska and Arizona every few weeks, to help my ailing sister and my mom. That period of time was one of the most difficult times of my life. And not one that I care to recall very often.

I retired two years later, but things didn’t get easier, as my husband and I both had parents who were in assisted living facilities in two different states. All of our discretionary income went to airfare between Alaska, Arizona, and Wisconsin. When all was said and done, we’d each racked up over a hundred thousand frequent flier miles on Alaska Airlines.

When my mom passed, she generously left me her modest little house in Arizona, where my husband and I spend much of the winter now. Alaska had a harsher than usual winter the first three months of 2021, so it was easy for us to bail to the lower forty-eight.

After our parents passed, we faced all this free time and what seemed like extra money we weren’t spending on travel. I dove at the chance to do some world travel with my California cousin’s travel group. We did two tours of Europe before the pandemic stopped us in our tracks.

I’ve always kept journals, and once I started traveling, I resumed my journals. It was because of these journals that I was able to write two novels and an award-winning short story, starting in 2015. 

The summer of 2015 was the second worst wildfire season in Alaska. Anchorage had a health advisory in place for the better part of a month, due to the dense smoke that collected in the Anchorage Bowl. I could barely see my neighbor’s home across the street. Many homes were destroyed in outlying areas north of Anchorage and a total of 5.1 million acres of wildlands burned. Firefighting resources were stretched so thin, only fires that threatened lives and homes were being suppressed. Channel 2 News in Anchorage did a story of a near miss a fire crew had on a fire.

Memories came avalanching back on a near miss our crew had experienced in the late 80s. A friend of mine suggested I write up the story and submit it to The Anchorage Press newspaper. So I did. Six months later it won an Alaska Press Club award for best historical piece in all media, and a judge suggested I write a novel centered around that experience.

If you would have said to me back in 2015, I’d have several novels in different stages and published the first two, I would have stared at you like you’d shifted into a moose, exclaiming, “No way!”

A lot can happen in ten years. I’m sure you could list a trillion things that have occurred, and one of them was, we never saw this global impact coming. Although my biologist husband announced to me back in 1978 a virus like this would hit at some point. Of course, we poo-poo’ed it and got on with our lives.

In one way ten years seems like a long span of time. In another way it seems it zipped right by. That’s the funny thing about time. I remember sitting at my desk at work, watching the clock in late afternoons, as the minutes dragged. Suddenly, I’m at my retirement party, wondering how it all whirled past me so fast.

What I’ve learned from this is, to carpe the heck out of my diem! Each day when I think of something new or challenging, mostly relating to my new writing life, I say to myself, “What do I have to lose?”

Absolutely nothing.

There’s a ton of things that I was afraid to do at first. Dare I ask a New York Times bestselling author to endorse my second romantic suspense novel? What do I have to lose? She might say no. Then again—she said yes! After I picked myself up off the floor, I set to work, making my writing the best it could possibly be to be worthy of this honor.

If you’re celebrating a ten-year wedding anniversary, ten years at a fantastic job, ten years of overcoming a life-changing event or surviving a life-threatening health situation, celebrate it! Give yourself a pat on the back for your achievement. You deserve it. Especially after this past year and the challenges each of us has faced.

When we were forced into lockdown a little over a year ago, no one had a crystal ball. And being a tad older I couldn’t help but think I didn’t want to leave the planet until I published a book. For two years I had worked to get a traditional publisher. So, when covid hit, I pulled all of my submissions back from the Big 5 and learned to do it myself. Now I’m writing my third book.

So carpe the heck out of your diem!

Ten years from now, you’ll be glad you did.

I'm thrilled to announce that my second novel, Alaska Inferno, releases May 31st! 

Preorder ALASKA INFERNO!

Watch the book trailer for ALASKA INFERNO!

LoLo Paige was a wildland firefighter for the U.S. Forest Service and the U.S. Bureau of Land Management, Alaska Fire Service. She's an award-winning author of two novels in the Blazing Hearts Wildfire Series, Alaska Spark and soon to be released Alaska Inferno. Her stories contain edge-of-the-seat, invigorating action, strong-willed female firefighters and romantic suspense. LoLo and her husband divide their time between their oceanside beach house in Kachemak Bay, Alaska and sunny Arizona. 

What readers have said about Alaska Spark...

"I could almost feel the heat of the wildfires that surrounded the crews as they staved off threats..."

"The men are wild and yummy and the women are strong and lovingly feisty. The plot moves along at a fast pace..."

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