To read an excerpt from the book, please click on the following link:

ashaveilbook.blogspot.com

An excerpt from The Pleasure Palace, my romantic comedy, can be found here:



Tuesday, February 17, 2015

Back to Writing

I'm starting to gear up again on Asha's book: I always think of it as hers. I can't go much further without beginning to interview people.  At least I have a lot of time right now, though how I am going to make the time when Thistle is out of school in the summer: that's going to be difficult, as I have no childcare for her over the summer and few people I trust to leave her with.  I figure: I have committed to this book and whatever I need will be given.  I need to find a good babysitter, or a few classes for Thistle this summer, though I am extremely choosy and careful about who I leave her with. 

As I think about what I have already learned about Asha, I realize that the media really skirted a lot of issues around her death and provided so little about herlife. I wish the papers would have talked more in depth to people who really knew her and loved her.  I feel I began to know a totally different, and no less wonderful, young woman after I talked to one of her closest friends, whose courage in speaking to me about such a tragedy I will respect for the rest of my life. 

There is a point in the chapters I have which talks about how hard it is to reconstruct a person who has been long gone: that one must fill in the blank space the lost one has left, a blank space in the shape of a person....and honestly, I have to accept that I am never, ever going to completely get this right.   I can only take up the brush and sketch as best I can, metaphorically.

Cleaning my Lompico house has really helped me get back on track: something about being in my own house, working on my writing space, and this week organizing closets and cupboards, and throwing out tons of old paper, and bringing old books and clothes to Goodwill, makes me feel cleansed in a strange sort of way.





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