I shared this to my personal Facebook page on a whim the other day, but this is something I want to remember, so here we go, blogged for all posterity (er, or just for my archives): The other morning, I woke Cian up for school, as usual, at 6:15. He opened one eye. “What’s for breakfast?” he asked. I told him, and he nodded with approval. Then: “What’s for lunch?” I told him, and he nodded again. There was a final follow-up question: “What’s for dinner?” I told him, and this time I got a smile in return. He opened the other eye and motioned me off his bed. “Okay,” he said, this time with a sigh. “I’ll get up.” I’m still wondering what would’ve happened if he hadn’t liked what he heard…
Hi! Tuesday is Publication Day in Book World. It’s the most exciting day for an author: new books are released by their publishers, we get to read them, and all are happy. Because I know many of you like to read as much as I do, I want to share with you a lineup of some new titles available to us today. Fiction And Now She’s Gone, by Rachel Howzell Hall The Book of Two Ways: A Novel, by Jodi Picoult Daughters of the Wild: A Novel, by Natalka Burian To Tell You the Truth: A Novel, by Gilly MacMillan Nonfiction We’re Better than This: My Fight for the Future of Our Democracy, by Elijah Cummings Poetry She’s Strong, but She’s Tired (What She Felt #3) by r.h. Sin Young Adult Far from Normal, by Becky Wallace How it All Blew Up: A Novel, by Arvin Ahmadi White Fox, by Sara Faring Happy reading…
I’m sitting at a desk littered with paperwork. I see two planners here (why two?! We’re in a pandemic. WHAT AM I POSSIBLY PLANNING), plus an old grocery list and a messy meal-planning list I’d scratched out on the back of yet another grocery list. There’s the disclosure statement for my mother’s property, the paperwork for her car, photos of my kids and business cards I pulled out of the last purse she used before she became homebound. In the middle of the mess, at my right elbow as I type this, is forty-eight pages of the manuscript I was working on before the summer hit. I loved this story–when I sat down to write it’d fly from my fingers, and now it’s been so long since I stepped away from it I worry I’ve lost the thread. In Big Magic, Elizabeth Gilbert talks about a story idea being a real thing that tries to find its teller: if one person doesn’t pluck the story out of the air and set it to paper, someone else will. That…
