Category Archives: Writing

It’s True

I’ve been a little quiet lately, but only on this here blog. Every other part of my life is very, decidedly, not quiet. It’s been moving so fast and demanding everything. Yes, it’s true. I have a book contract sitting on my desk. Right now. After 2.5 years it appears that Who in This Room will finally be published and available in October 2011.

I was shopping for my niece at the GAP when I got the call. It was all oh, ok, well, that IS good news. Then: Can I get this shirt in a kids size 8? Sometimes it takes a little while for these things to sink in. And then when they do… Oh, heavens.

Because the publisher, a small press called Calyx Books, wants the book to be out in time for Breast Cancer Awareness month, we need to hurry. The usually tight publishing timeline has to be compressed. I’m in a world I know nothing about. I’m reaching in all different directions. I’m reading, researching, asking questions and begging for favors. (Thank you friends.) I’m learning, processing and trying to crystallize the important. I’m building a plan, a divine master plan in my head. When I have it, when I see how the next few years will roughly play out, then I will rest.

Oh, and by the way, this 5 page questionnaire about you and the book and how it will be promoted, we’ll need it by the end of the year. What? Yeah, goodbye holidays.

But I’m not complaining because if all continues in this direction, I’ll have a book in 10 months. It’s a book I’m looking forward to holding in my hands and, eventually, closing.

For My Word-loving Friends

Be with me, words, a little longer, you
have given me my quitclaim in the sun,
sealed shut my adolescent wounds, made light
of grownup troubles, turned to my advantage
what in most lives would be pure deficit,
and formed, of those I loved, more solid ghosts.

— John Updike, Spirit of ’76