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:



Monday, April 03, 2017

Attrition, Part Two

I'm discovering that I am ultra-sensitive to the topic of people leaving, moving away, etc., right now. I had three people very close to me die in the last few months; no matter what my faith tells me, it is so painful. Two of my friends died of breast and pancreatic cancer; another friend died of old age.It will take me a long time to get over these losses. I am glad my friends all lived such full lives.

 It is true that, given what is happening in this country, nearly everyone I know is edgy and wants to go somewhere else, to have options. Probably that is what plays into my separation anxiety: a sense of rootlessness and uncertainty.

At any rate, I feel gratitude tonight for this blog and the ability to send my words out into the world and for the readers who keep coming back here to my little corner of the Internet.

I also feel gratitude for something a little bit off-track. Margaret Atwood's book, The Handmaid's Tale, has been adapted for a television mini-series, and it looks to be excellent. I was reading an article tonight in which Margaret Atwood described some of her journals at the time: she, too, struggles with wondering if her work is good, if she's a decent writer, how the critics will receive her work, etc. Good to know we writers all share those threads: and how, despite that, we find the mysterious, exquisite thread of words which leads us through the labyrinth. I'm glad she found the thread to write such a prescient book.