Forty seven notebooks all filled with stories, series, and above all, my writing. And I couldn’t touch them…

For the last two years a large portion of my writing sat untouched because the notebooks they were contained in were spray treated with a mold killing agent that I was highly allergic to. As it turned out, the mold killing agent had a component of mold in it itself (and in my case, a double negative didn’t equal a positive result), so every time I’d get near them my mast cell condition would kick up with gusto, causing my blood pressure to skyrocket to over two hundred. And for those of you who aren’t familiar with blood pressure levels, that’s scarily high at the level where strokes can occur, as well as kidney damage.

But yesterday I risked it all to bring them to you, my dear readers. After the notebooks were ozoned to try and kill the remaining mycotoxins in them (thanks to my dear editor Peg Heron Heidel for handling them while in that condition), I carefully cut off the covers and backings of them all to remove the most contaminated areas. Donned in surgical gloves and a mask, and outside to keep clean air circulating, I sorted them all out.

Most luckily, my blood pressure didn’t elevate too much once the covers were gone, so it seems handling them has finally become safe enough to do. Now comes the fun task of typing up all of what they contain. To give you an idea, once sorted, all the different piles in the photo below are different series. The largest pile you see there on the right belongs to my Destiny in the Shadows series. The rest are from other series you’ve yet to read. And each notebook has a minimum of seventy pages in it, written on front and back of each sheet.

These don’t even count the uncontaminated pile of notebooks I have upstairs by my usual writing spot on the love seat. There’s another twenty or so of those, too.

So you see, folks, some people say they bleed for their craft, but I do that and also risk my life to bring you new works. While slightly melodramatic, it’s true all the same. I often joke I bleed for my writing as it is. My hands have a tendency to get hives from the ongoing mold issue with our house and they crack while I’m writing, so my notebooks are spotted with my own blood in some places.

Here’s to the creation of new books and hopefully no more mold related catastrophes! I’ll be very busy for the near future, that’s for sure!

Love you all,

Author Maggie Lynn