The Paper Demons
After publishing my first book, I went through a literary post-partum. AT&T, Verizon, Gmail, Yahoo, and FaceBook failed to deliver my phone calls, emails, texts, and messages. Friends avoided me. Students left in the middle of my yoga classes. Clients missed appointments. Clobbered with the eerie quiet of disconnection, I decided to beat trees. Yes, not live trees but a grove of dead trees somewhere rural. Wear eye protection, a long-sleeved plaid shirt, and thick men’s jeans, something like the Texas Chainsaw Massacre meets Paul Bunyan’s Alaskan mistress in the Field of Dreams.
Swearing, crying, snot flying, sweat slinging, I swung my bat for a good thirty minutes before some brave soul stopped their car.
“Can I help you, little lady?” the brave Southern laddie asked with open palms signaling, ‘Behold, I don’t have weapons’ and wide eyes indicating, ‘but I think you’re dangerous.’
“No, you can’t. It’s me. I finished my book. What if it’s crap? What if no one buys it? What if they buy it and it’s crap? I am so screwed.” I yelled into the void. “I am out of money paying for this publication, publicity, website, whatever. How am I going to eat, pay my mortgage, afford health insurance, get my toenails done?” The bat dropped out of my hands.
When I looked up, he was long gone.
Writing is a lot like a super-hero fighting an unending squadron of demons. Hold on, I had beaten the paper demons of the trees. Or some approximation.
Books
Think you really know your breasts? I thought I did — then I asked my friends for stories about theirs. The honest answers they gave so surprised, touched and amused me that this book was born.
Slayer of the Nile
Would you be tempted if I told you this will be 50 Shades of Meow in a mash-up with The Mummy for lovers of Cat Fancy magazine?
(Work in progress … stay tuned)
