A new friend...

I met a new friend recently...

Whoa, you say? Is that the way to begin a blog that’s about ten or eleven MONTHS late? I suppose not. It doesn’t really get to some of the more pressing questions, such as why I’ve been absent another WHOLE year from my own blog? (Even as a newsletter, it’s marginally--okay, totally--pathetic. The only thing I could possibly be doing that is more important than updating you on my life is writing a book, right? And if that’s what I’ve been doing, then where the heck is it? Ahh...Right.

So, I met a new friend recently. A couple of them actually. And this friend was checking out my website. He commented (quite jovially) about my much-outdated blog and it got me reflecting on what I’ve been up to this past year. Out comes the natural onslaught of ‘Oh, the kids are doing this and that. We went to see my husband’s parents at the beach. We remodeled a house. We’re planting our own garden...’ But me? What have *I* been doing? Well, that’s quite a different thing--related, of course, but separate also.

What have I been doing? And where is that darn next book? Many of you have emailed (thank you!) to tell me you’ve enjoyed the Rookie Club and have asked about the sequel. What did happen to the Dennigs? It’s a question I’ve been meaning to answer, really....but I’ve gotten a bit off course.

Some call the time writers take off “filling the well.” For others, it’s truly “writer’s block.” For still others it’s truly terrifying, the “day job.” I guess I can claim a little of all of those, but this last year has been less about writing than any year since I wrote Savage Art....which was more than a decade ago.

Maybe it was necessary after coming off the intense experience of my masters. Or perhaps it’s because I’m writing something different. But there’s something else there, too. At the moment, writing this different thing has required me to live a bit more, write less. Makes for a great excuse, eh? But to a great extent, it’s true.

All Fall Down is the story of Dr. Seeley Jones. The child of a single mother, a stripper in Reno, Seeley hasn’t known a lot of stability. She hasn’t been protected. But it hasn’t made her into someone hard either. Instead, she’s extremely self-reliant. She put herself through college. On her free nights, she worked the front desk at a gym to pay for taekwondo lessons. At 22, she was a black belt. She put herself through medical school, married an attorney and had two children. Her husband is an only child of a wealthy family, working for the D.A.s office. As with most couples, they are opposites in some respects. John worries while Seeley’s already seen the worst there is; she sees it most days at work.

Getting threats has always been part of John’s job. The D.A.s office is hardly the hub of popularity among many inhabitants of the city’s underbelly. This latest one is no different. Except that John’s father brings him a gun, just in case. If it makes him feel better, Seeley doesn’t have a problem with the gun. Get a trigger lock, so it’s kid-safe. There’s nothing to worry about.

Nothing to worry about until their four-year-old accidentally shoots the gun...and kills her father.

So, what does a writer do to prepare for such a role? I have been doing some work around Seeley’s story. No shooting of fathers or husbands, I promise. I’ve spent a lot of time talking to a couple of ED docs about how they view their jobs, how it fits into their lives, and I spent quite a bit of time at San Francisco General where the book is based.

I’ve also started taekwondo, which is an interesting and often sharply uncomfortable endeavor for someone who relishes control and who has a keen talent for worry. The master (that sounds extremely odd, even to my own ears) is working hard to help me kick the habits (a bad pun for those of you who know anything about taekwondo). The truth is, there’s something to it. Some empowerment to feeling less afraid, if that’s what this feeling is. I’ll keep you posted (perhaps even before next year--we should remain optimistic).

But back to that friend I started with. You couldn’t have thought I’d leave you hanging. Six years ago, my husband and I decided to split our time between San Francisco and a small town in the Northern Rockies. There are so many things to love about a small town. But one of the hard ones for me was what felt like the absence of an artistic community. I’d always had writer friends calling for lunch or coffee; “brainstorming sessions”, we call these and sit down for a morning, across a table, and work out a character foible or a plot point.

Since the move, though, I haven’t known any local writers. Naturally, then, writing became more insular, more solitary. While more time was spent writing, there seemed to be less real progress.

There’s something to be said for feeding the extrovert, for spending time away from the work but around those engaged in like-minded pursuits. Between a few friends I communicate with online and a few I’ve met locally, I’m starting to feel some community to my writing life again. Perhaps it's been distracting for the work, but it's feeding it, too. And that's a good thing...

And there is a new book coming...slowly. Too slowly? Most likely...

In the meantime, I have a short story coming out in Press 53’s “Versus” anthology in July. The anthology is a collection of fights.

“And not just any fights, fights between our most iconic characters and forces, or even between extraordinary, original characters, or with people from our very real pasts.

In this book anything goes. Some of today’s most innovative writers and artists did just that in this book: each picked a conflict, made it come to life, and now present the aftermath to you here in the first anthology to take up this challenge, Versus.”
For more information, go to: http://www.press53.com/

Until next time....whenever that is.