Oh, hello dear blog. I’ve neglected you long enough. There have been a bevy of excuses: the wedding, the exorbitant amount of time I am now spending commuting, family life, publishing.
Basket Baby is being published, and I’ll have a signing at Changing Hands in Tempe. (7 pm, December 9th. Come one, come all. Bring your holiday shopping list — this bookstore doesn’t disappoint.)
There are other reasons too, namely that the older I get, the less I need to share. Also, there are roughly a dozen other ways I now keep up with friends and family that weren’t around — or I wasn’t using — at the inception of blogging. Most of the friends I’ve made through blogging have called it off, instead posting to Instagram or Facebook.
There is still a place in my life for keeping up this journal, albeit less about the daily happenings in our household and more about what’s going on professionally.
This week, I’m re-reading Basket Baby and coming up with a passionate passage for the book signing. I’m also writing the first draft of the next novel, Counting Coup. I’m on chapter 24 and I haven’t written a word in more than a month. This is an oddly terrifying place to be as a novelist. I put the project down when wedding and honeymoon plans and activities took over, whispering to Creativity I’d be back.
Now, Creativity (and Inspiration) both feel ignored — and rightly so. We’re courting. I’m hoping to have the project back on track this week, depending on how stubborn they are. My goal is to have the first draft done by the time of the book signing. I’ve got a solid idea for the next novel (Draper Drive is the working title) and I am eager to get started.
One of my greatest motivators at the moment is sitting in traffic behind vehicles with “Make America Great Again!” bumper stickers. An hour to work, and hour home, I sit in a cloud of pollution, flipping through radio programs and dreaming of a home office where instead, I write. Dogs rest at my feet. I switch up a cup of coffee for an afternoon glass of rose and listen to classical music while the words pour out onto the page. My nails are manicured. The garden is weeded. Dinner is cooking downstairs. The housekeeper is managing laundry and taking out the recycling.
Yes. The pollution might be getting to me.
I have a feeling the next four years are going to see a brilliant surge of art in America. For no other reason, this may make America a bit better.
~K