A Fresh Look

Getting my brain out of vacation mode and back into writing mode hasn't been easy. During my time off, I got used to the loveliness of reading for much of the day, and I'd sure rather keep losing myself inside books that someone else has already done the work of writing. But I've managed to nudge myself back into my own manuscript, and I expect I'll soon get the rhythm back and recall that the world of my novel is interesting, too.

In honor of the new year, I've been taking care of various catch-up tasks and finally getting around to stuff I've been meaning to do for a while. (Okay, this has also been a way to put off writing for a little longer.) The big stack of magazines from the corner of my desk is gone, unread, because I decided if I hadn't read them all year, it wasn't really that important. And I now have new socks.

I also have a new profile photo on this blog's About the Author page (thanks, Louise!). The picture that was there before showed me with long hair and no glasses, and I haven't sported that look in some time, so I thought it was time for a change.

The other updated page is Work in Progress, which now describes THE EXTENT OF THE DAMAGE in much greater detail. I went back and forth on whether to post this synopsis, which summarizes more of the plot than I normally reveal when discussing someone else's book. But I realized I haven't given most people much idea of what my novel is actually about, even family and friends who've asked lots of questions and expressed such eagerness to read it. Since you can't read the novel yet, here at least is a better explanation of what I've been writing about for all this time.

Good Stuff Out There:

→ Marcy Campbell writes at The Millions about the evolving tastes of her book club: "I'm in the heads of these ladies, imagining the silent demerits they will offer to words like 'heartbreaking,' (too sad), 'epic' (too long), 'thought-provoking' (meh, could go either way). Any book that features the loss of a child is out, no debate. Spousal abuse, cruelty to animals, anything hinting at a conservative world-view (unless it's written by someone who abandoned that world-view), nope, nope, and nope."