The books just out or soon to be released are too expensive for me right now, besides, I've already bought about 2 dozen books that I am working my way through.

I don't want to stray too far from my non-fiction and fiction focus areas.

For instance, Flesh sounds interesting, but I am not so interested in men's coming of age stories.

I have a 2 year deadline on most of what I am working on right now, and the literary agent search is always there.

And there are a lot of oil and acrylic paintings that need tobe finished.

Last of all are my needlepoints.

I used to think Khin Hnin Yu, niece of democratically elected PM U NU was exaggerating when she wrote--"Now I run out of money and I have to find money."

But keeping oneself fed and watered is also a priority.

After all, no one can paint and write when they are sick or dead.

One must, as Abraham Verghese said, "Do it slowly." and he is a neurosurgeon and in hospital administration.

Colleen McCullough The Thorn Birds was a scientist with a high ranking science job.

Neurology career edit

In 1963, McCullough moved for four years to the United Kingdom; at the Great Ormond Street Hospital in London she met the chairman of the neurology department at Yale University who offered her a research associate job at Yale. She spent ten years (April 1967 to 1976) researching and teaching in the Department of Neurology at the Yale Medical School in New Haven, Connecticut, United States. While at Yale she wrote her first two books. One of these, The Thorn Birds, became an international bestseller and one of the best-selling books in history, with sales of over 30 million copies worldwide, that in 1983 inspired one of the most-watched television miniseries of all time.[8]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colleen_McCullough

Ali Hazelwood is a neurologist and was a prof. of neurology until 2023 when she took a break to focus on her writing.

Her first novel was first published as fan fiction on Archive of Our Own--as Star Wars fan fiction and noticed by a literary agent who then helped her prepare it for publication.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ali_Hazelwood

They're not writing because they have nothing better to do.

Kyi May Kaung

1-12-2026