We don’t really write for ourselves, but for you. As Joni Mitchell famously said, “Art isn’t art if only fourteen other people know about it.” And so let me pause here in the deep midwinter to send you the deepest possible thanks for reading my stories and taking them seriously – most of the time.
People often wonder how writers go on with this work, like dropping a penny into a well as deep as the middle of the earth. With a few notable exceptions, it’s not for the money! It’s because sharing a story is the most ancient form of communion, from cave walls to Genesis to Twitter … stories are what make us human.
As we head toward this month’s publication of The Good Son, I feel I’m back: This is my first book in several years, because of a false starts on my part, a situation unprecedented in my writing life and a bit unnerving. So every good word I’ve heard has gone straight to this solitary heart and made a home there. As Thea, the main character in The Good Son, says, hope is my default.
May none of us, in the coming months, face what Thea must, faces the truth about the night her son’s beloved girlfriend was killed, as she tries to go on loving him as he comes out of prison for this crime, which he doesn’t even remember. May we all face, with hope, this redux time after the personal ravages of the past few years. I’m just beginning the first words of a book that, for right now, I’m calling Saltwater, about an acclaimed young underwater photographer who realizes that she has no idea what’s happening on dry land when she comes back to see her widowed father and gets a startling, appalling surprise that is only the first of many to come. It’s a story about a family torn apart by love, if you can imagine that. When I finish, you’ll be the first to know.
So Happy New Year, beloved reader. I wish you good coffee, good hope, a good friend, a good blanket and a good book.
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