“There are only two or three human stories, and they go on
repeating themselves as fiercely as if they had never happened before.” --Willa Cather
I was thinking about this quote a few years ago, when a character occurred to me: a middle-aged man, attending the 50th birthday party of the husband of one of his wife's friends, when he meets a woman who will unexpectedly alter the course of his life. A classic Boy Meets Girl scenario, only complicated by
modern times and circumstance. I started writing about him, just for fun. When
scenes occurred to me, I wrote them too. Other people in his orbit soon
appeared, people whose classic human stories may have turned out just a little
differently than they had imagined. Eventually, this project, started just for
fun, began to turn into something, something about three families living in
southern California and weathering what life had to throw at them, those times
when events go off script.
If there’s such a thing as a novel-in-stories, then maybe this
could be called a novel-in-moments. And this week, I signed with an exceptional
indie publisher to bring the finished product, BELLFLOWER, to print. More about
them, and the novel, in the coming months (not too much, I promise!), and more about
why this might be a book unlike others you’ve read, and about what influenced
it and how it came about. Life throws many curve balls, and it’s a good time
for me to delve back into this project so close to my heart.
We writers know how amazing it feels to find someone who believes
in you and your work, and I’m thrilled to have this unique novel find a path to
readers. Details soon.
"As soon as we express something, we devalue it strangely. We believe ourselves to have dived down into the depths of the abyss, and when we once again reach the surface, the drops of water on our pale fingertips no longer resemble the ocean from which they came...Nevertheless, the treasure shimmers in the darkness unchanged." ---Franz Kafka
