Now We Wait...

For the last few weeks I have been about useless for this blog and nearly everything else because I was working on the latest draft of Each Angel Burns. Writing for me tends to be all-consuming and I had promised myself I would get this latest set of revisions done by the end of January. Well, I made it.

So last night I printed it out, put it in a binder and delivered it to the next of my volunteer readers. And the wait begins. It is nerve-wracking in some senses but it is also good because I know i don't have to do anything else for the moment. After the first two readers read it last fall and gave me feedback i was somewhat discouraged. They didn't get certain parts of it but, reading back over the manuscript, i eventually understood what they were talking about. Hopefully, I have corrected those flaws and this set of readers will have an easier time. Awk!!!

So, in the mean time, what to do? Well, I have work to catch up on and a couple of short stories to get to. it is getting close to the time when I have to submit something to the Level Best Books annual anthology and that is important. I missed it last year because my Dad died just as I was getting the story shaped up and now I can't remember where I was going with it. I was thinking about Stephen King's comment that the most terrifying things can be the most common things --- the family car, a pet dog. Or in my case a plate of sausages and a piece of pie. So I need to work on that.

January has been good so far. Quiet but that is not bad. Yesterday I went out to lunch with a new client who has a wonderful project. We were sitting in my favorite little seafood restaurant across the street from the marina and, as she was talking about her forthcoming trip to Brazil to buy lace, I was looking at all the big boats hauled out for the winter and thinking about how much of our lives are spent in waiting. Waiting to go to Brazil, waiting for summer so you can take the boat out, waiting for the readers to finish the book and give feedback. Waiting.

It is bright and cold today. The cemetery behind my house is quiet and I have a lot of work ahead of me. Later on I'm going to make a big pot of vegetable soup. I have been thinking about deer. A friend sent me a photograph from back home of deer. The picture was taken by someone who lives in Mt. Jewett, PA which isn't very far from where I grew up. There was this magnificent railroad trestle there that blew down in a storm a few years back. it is very sad because many of my youthful memories are attached to that bridge. Memories and waiting.

So, I'll make another pot of coffee and get to work. I won't think about the book. I'll think about the lacemakers in Brazil and about the light on the tombstones out back and about the deer in Mt. Jewett and, eventually, I'll know what to write next.

Thanks for reading.